Have a Kit Kat

Part 2 of diary of a runner should be here. In fact it should have been here yesterday but I spent all of my writing time on my book. 111,000 words and still counting (111,417 if you want to be really exact). It's nearing the end so I think I might take a brake from this blog so I can concentrate on it a bit more. I'll do my best to run off a few articles so I'm nice and ready for coming back to this but at the moment the book is proving to be more and more complicated as it judders along.

Have a lovely bank holiday everyone!

Diary of a Britain’s Got Talent Runner: Part 1

  Britain’s Got Talent is back on telly (or so I’m told) and in celebration (or acknowledgement at least) I thought I’d make this week’s blog entry about my time working on Britain’s Got Talent as a runner. If the word runner is leaving you confuddled, the runner is basically the lowest rung on the television career ladder. Runners make tea, run papers around the building, clean and do any other jobs those above them want doing.

  My first few days working for the show was at Blackpool for the first stage of auditions. However I’m going to skip this bit since my time at Manchester was slightly more interesting. During our first briefing at Manchester there was a list of runners who had been asked to man the cameras. One of the producers was annoyed at the fact they were all boys and asked if any girls had been with them before. And wouldn’t you know it I qualified.

  My luck didn’t end there either. First let me explain a little about how this stage works. For first auditions Simon Cowell and friends (this was a few years ago now) were absent. The closest I came to meeting him was when he rang one of the producers. So at this point producers and researchers rule the roost. Each producer is given a room and a looong line of people to watch audition. Strangely the number of singers always outweighed the number of variety acts several times. I think there were about 4 rooms just for singers, 2 for dance groups and only 1 for the variety acts. You’d think the singers would maybe have a go at the X factor, the SINGING competition but oh no, they have to try any opportunity.

  Obviously the variety acts were the ones most people would want to see and guess who got assigned to that room. My job would be to film the auditions (not for going on proper TV but so the producers could look back at what they’d seen). And it was my home for the best part of a week. Even the producers had to switch rooms to give each other a break from god awful child singers. In fact the head Producer moaned about them saying “If I have to hear one more kid singing ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow’ I’m going to kill someone”. But not me. Variety acts of Manchester, you were mine.

  The most exciting thing about watching the auditions in that room was that I got to witness several acts that made it not only on to the show but on to the final stages of the competition. There was the dancing dog (probably long forgotten now after years of the buggers), the sexy karate men and a few others forgotten in time.

  In an effort to be strict about my 500 word count I’ll leave this diary here. Come back for part 2 when Susan Boyle fights a rhino, Simon Cowell makes everyone cake and a runner makes it to the finals (warning none of these things may happen).

Outa Time

  For anyone keeping an eye on my twitter and facebook statuses you may have seen that I reached the 100,000 word count for my book “The Darwin Solution”. The thing is it’s not even finished. There’s still lots to do, like the final act for example. I will finish it and hopefully before the end of this year. It’s been in the making a long time now and progress is slow.

  The trouble is for someone like me I can’t give myself a deadline, a target to reach for because I’d just ignore it. (I’m barely managing to keep up this 500 word a week blog). I have a little time table that determines how many hours of writing I should be doing a day and I pretty much ignore it. I have a full time job to work around and I know it sounds like excuses but it’s amazing how a day free to write soon turns in to something else.

  For example today, a Thursday is prime writing time. I don’t start work until 6pm and from mid-day onwards I’m on my own with no one to distract me. But for me writing depends so much on moods. If I force myself to write when I’m not in the mood I just know it’ll reflect in my writing. And this can be true with a lot of things. Matt Lucas said whilst making the new series “Come Fly with Me” that the character Taaj was so easy for him to perform because he was so clear in his head. However a scene for the final episode where one of the characters wins an award was the hardest for him to do and get right. Even before seeing the making-of documentary I had decided Taaj was my favourite character and that the awards scene was one that just didn’t work.

  Today I was in the mood for writing the only problem was it was to write something else. I had an idea for a new story and I spent a long part of my afternoon researching Grimm fairytales and thinking of new characters. Perhaps the thing I’m most guilty of is starting new projects out of excitement for a new idea and never following through. The reason why I know I’ll finish the Darwin Solution is because it’s one of the only book ideas where I know how it’ll end and where the story will go. At this point in the story my main reason for not writing when I can is because I am yet to work out the finer details. Right now I don’t know whether my character is going to be imprisoned for a while or being taken to this room straight away.

  This blog was another thing getting in the way of book writing but I want to be strict with myself and keep to my own deadlines. It’s good practise after all. The thing is once I’ve finished writing this I’ll only have 2 and a half hours left before work and that just isn’t long enough to do anything.

Threee Dee Glasses

  Okay I’ve come to a point where I feel a need to say something. 3D is not a gimmick. I’ve heard so many people either saying they have never seen a 3D film or they saw one and didn’t see the point. The first problem for 3D to overcome is to get people to stop thinking of red and blue glasses which I think the last couple of years of cinema has managed to achieve. So maybe it wasn’t worth mentioning really.

  Another problem I think stems from this need that so many people have to simplify things. With technology things have to be labelled and I think people struggle with 3D because it’s not easy to simplify. It is not the step beyond HD for the simple reason that for a lot of people the 3D effect doesn’t work. Plus so many people get hung up on the idea of the glasses, something which I personally don’t think is a huge sacrifice. So if it’s not a technological advancement then it’s a gimmick. A one-time show. A magician with a fake tan shouting “hey, hey I learnt a new trick!”

  But life is complex and so is 3D. It could be there to create a spectacle. This is what James Cameron was trying to do with Avatar, he wanted to bring the spectacle back to cinema. Despicable Me used it in a really fun way, putting you on a rollercoaster with the characters. It was brilliant. Coraline used 3D in a really clever way, purposely adding more depth to the fantasy world Coraline visited to make it seem more wondrous than the dull flat looking reality.

  Toy Story 3 used 3D and a lot of people struggled to think why. Nothing jumped out or did anything to break the fourth (or third) wall. Here 3D wasn’t a spectacle. And it wasn’t meant to be. The 3D was merely part of the fabric of the film. Like sound design, editing and cinematography 3D is there to help build the believability of the world we’re viewing. 3D made me feel like I could reach in to the film and pick up Woody for myself but for most of the time my mind failed to acknowledge that the 3D was there. My mind was focused on what it’s supposed to be focused on when watching a movie, the story.

  Another problem 3D has to overcome is the current trend of 3D conversions. For those who don’t know, the difference is that in a normal 3D movie it is filmed with a stereoscopic 3D camera (pretty much 2 cameras stuck together) whereas a conversion takes an ordinary 2D film and artificially creates a 3D effect (like Alice in Wonderland and The Last Airbender). For someone who knows what they’re looking for the difference is obvious. I’ve seen a show reel by a company that helps production companies make good looking stereoscopic films. On the show reel were a mix of dramas, sci-fi and documentaries. All of them benefited from the beauty that was the 3D effect. So take it from someone who’s seen the future of 3D, when done well 3D is a joy to behold.

Next on the 3D rant list, why the Nintendo 3DS manages to simultaneously be and not be the future of 3D