Yes, I’ve been several weeks without my laptop - definitely harder than it sounds! Last month my laptop ended up having to be fished out of the Meditteranean…..Mmmm you may think there are no waves in the Med, clearly there are - well that is according to the unfortunate skipper who fell in on route from a tender to a yacht with my laptop! To cut a long story short and by some miracle although my computer was destroyed the hard drive somehow survived. So after a little (lot of) hassle of transferring all my data across I find myself with a brand spanking new macbook pro and back online
I’ve been working on a couple of start up projects and will be seeing where they lead! In July and August I collaborated with Studio Beyond, a new online film company for their first show. This involved a lot pre prod work sorting through potential candidates for interviews, writing scripts, looking for locations and generally learning about new(ish) types of gaming software being used to make films.
I interviewed David Andriole, an actor based in LA, and Domingo Vara the director and producer of the film Between Stories. We did the interview via online video link. It was a fascinating experience seeing (not of course the fact that it was a video chat) but how with some pretty cool software we could record them on full screen and make it appear live. I love technology and don’t care who knows!!!
My little bit of trivia on David Andriole: he voiced the Obama campaign (although was temporarily taken off it and replaced with an older voice/perhaps perceived as a more authoritative - when Obama was vying for the democratic nomination against Hilary Clinton. He was then brought back on as the voice of the campaign when it was Obama V McCain to highlight the difference in age and perhaps emphasise how old Mr McCain was/is?!!! I guess it worked……well done David.
At the end of the interview we did do a very funny “yes” or “no” fireround of questions…..I may post some of the questions and answers as they ended up on the cutting room floor – didn’t really suit the rest of the show but was lots of fun nonetheless
It was a thoroughly enjoyable interview and just hope everyone enjoys watching it as much as I enjoyed filming it. They seemed like genuinely really great guys.
I also interviewed Hardy Capo for the show. Hardy is the British man of Machinima. For those of you not familiar with Machinima (I wasn’t) it is a gaming software which people like Hardy are using to create 3d animation films and online series. One of the most notable series Hardy has created is called Café Insomniac and is perhaps my favourite project of his. The series was inspired by his own personal struggle with sleeping at night time (or so he says!)– something I could absolutely relate to. The series is set in a Café that opens from midnight and deals with all the things that go from midnight to sunrise…….in a film noiresque style. It is pretty addictive and Hardy told me he has himself been surprised by the level of attention it has been getting from the public.
Hardy has also released his first short film, Chanel Untold. The film deals with an aspect of Coco Chanel’s life that has largely remained untold and indeed unknown – the fact that her boyfriend was a very high ranking Nazi whom she lived with in the Ritz hotel during World War II. Check out the show for more info:
Here's a link to the interview:
http://callousproductions.com/home/news.html
You can click here for more blurb on machinima:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima
Here are some more photos from filming with my new laptop:)
