Week Beginning 24th November

I realise I have been walking around all this week having trimmed my left sideburn right back, while my right sideburn has been as virile, wiry and excessive as it has ever been. That oversight corrected this morning, I feel I am now ready to comment upon the events of the week.

Monday started with the presentation of our 3 minute pitches to Richard. I feel particularly inspired by my tale of Granny Butcher and the Pixie War. Despite finding the initial story in a book of bizarre newspaper clippings, I have searched the internet in vain for details of the Pixie Eradication Society, founded in 1982 to rid Dartmoor of garden gnomes, which they regarded as "inartistic and distateful". Nothing daunted, I have written the outline for the script. My real problem, as always, has been keeping it short and snappy enough for a 3 minute short.

The afternoon was a pitch to Adam for "Corridors of Power". The premise was a little cliched, but hopefully with the setting, the characters and the plot twists, it would have been quite watchable entertainment. We have now been set the next stage, which is an individual pitch of pretty much any idea we can come up with. I find this training in the basics of pitching very useful.

Tuesday was a wasted day. Due to a timetable error, we found ourselves in the Academy in the morning, only to be told classes all day were cancelled. It was interesting to note, in passing, the different attitudes between those paying tuition fees, and those paid for by SAAS. The subsidised individuals seemed quite happy to get time off, as if school had been cancelled. Those of us who are essentially paying for a service felt mildly disgruntled. Either way, the day was very unproductive.

Wednesday was a screening of The Kid. See my Film Review blog for my appreciative comments.

Thursday was a fascinating trip to the Panopticon. I'd heard a lot about it, but this was the first time I'd ever been inside, and it was really like stepping back in time. I think what I found particularly interesting (apart from the connection with Stan Laurel) was the setting in which cinema first appeared.
I have often wondered why the more traditional, conservative elements in my church, and in other Christian groups, are so suspicious of cinema, more so than other art forms. I can certainly appreciate that some of the content of "age rated films" can be highly antagonistic to Christian values, and can also appreciate the subtler battles between ideologies prevalent in Hollywood and the media, and the Biblical worldview. But this had not satisfactorally explained, in my mind, why little old ladies from the islands, who had never set foot inside a cinema, should be so opposed to the notion.
I think now I begin to understand: when cinema started, it was a part of the music-hall scene, with its boozing, its sleaziness, and its inhumanity. No wonder that in the Victorian age, the church spoke out against the music halls. And in traditional Christian circles, the attitudes of the past are very much the attitudes of the present.
The past generation had spoken out against music halls. Cinema started out in music halls. Therefore the past generation had spoken out against cinema also. Therefore the present generation would continue to speak out against cinema, regardless of changes in the viewing circumstances.
Fortunately such attitudes are not so strong as they were, but it has been very enlightening for me to see a possible reason for the antagonism I have experienced when I have said I am hoping to pursue a career in film.

Of course the other event that took place on Thursday was the SIE summit, where Message in a Bottle won the Best in Scotland. I got the text to let me know when I was in the middle of a maths tutorial with a student. It took me all my self control not to shout "Yippee!" while the suffering student was half way through a nasty little problem on differential calculus. Anyway - on to the global tournament next week, and meanwhile we now have a film budget for the DFTV1's to be making many more short films.

Friday was a Technical class in the morning. I seemed to be in a minority, but I rather enjoyed the class. I feel much more knowledgeable and confident with sound now. Having worked on a film where a professional BBC guy was doing the sound, I learned a lot from watching him, but it was good to be able to ask about pretty much every switch and button on the mixer.
The afternoon was a class on Sitcom's. It was interesting to see how little the format of the show has changed, though there were clearly funnier sitcoms than others. Of the four, The Simpsons was the clear front runner, and Dick Van Dyke was definitely the cow's tail. It was a bit much watching four sitcom episodes without a break.
I do wonder why they were all American sitcoms. Generally I prefer British sitcoms (Dad's Army, Blackadder, One Foot in the Grave, Yes Minister, Keeping Up Appearances, Porridge) and it seems strange that we didn't see something from this side of the Atlantic.

Final Thoughts? Trying to come up with filmable scripts, which we could film in the next month or two. Every script so far is just that little bit too ambitious.