Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Been out film making today (well technically yesterday). Went down to the union for a film making competition and the end result was a movie called Random Questions to Random People. It was awesome, I was directing it though we didn’t really stick to assigned roles, I even felt like a producer when I was rounding up interviewees (or victims as some would call them ;)). I’m putting the DVD together now.

It’s time I got my next movie started. I’m leaving my Sleepless script for the moment and see what the Film Making Society writers group can do with that. In the mean time I am working on a new script currently under the name of “Project Grant.”

It’s a horror movie an I am going to try and round some people up from my halls to get involved, it’s only a 2-3 person cast anyway so hopefully that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Once I get the movie out of the way I can get on with the important stuff – special feature documentaries, audio commentary and so on.

After the Branch Planet VNU successfully made it into Google Video I have just updated the other three VNUs that I have so far produced. I also noticed that the transcript for the video has been accepted though there appears to be no way to view it on the video page.

It can however be viewed if you search for the video and click list rather than grid.

My laptop sucks. It hates to be moved. I’m using it on my bed after moving all the power cables and stuff because I can’t run it off better and now I’m laid down because I can’t put it on my bed. The D, U and O keys don’t always work it is running even slower than normal now it’s running solely on a wireless network connection.

Anyway, since the launch of xmeltrut.com over a year ago, Branch Planet has been number one in the number of news stories, mainly because it pre-dates all the other sites.

Now though Britney Planet is climbing fast. Just 23 stories separate the two sites and which Britney Planet regularly has several stories per day, Branch Planet just has one story per day around 75% of the time.

The D key isn’t working properly on my keyboard, it really sucks. Anyway, I’ve just finished watching my LoTR: special extended edition boxset (well I have all the extras and audio commentaries to go through but I have finished the movies themselves).

I spent 6 hours solid yesterday watching from 11:30 – 17:30 which took me well into The Two Towers. Then today I spent from midnight to 1 am this morning finishing off The Two Towers and watched disk 1 of Return of the King from 15:00 – 17:00 followed by the secon disk from 21:00 – 23:00, slightly delayed, taking me to now.

That totals up to 11 hours of LoTR in the past 2 days. Not bad at all.

My special extended edition boxset of The Lord of the Rings arrive this morning. I’ve been watching The Fellowship of the Ring since 11:30 this morning. I recon there is about 70 hours of stuff in this boxset counting all the commentaries presuming there are 4 for each one (I’ve only checked the first one).

This is actually the 4th time I’ve seen The Fellowship. Until now I had seen each of them three times. Not that anyone cares but because this blog is mainly for myself I’m going to lay them out.

I saw The Fellowship twice at the cinema.
Saw The Two Towers once at the cinema.
Saw The Return of the Ring twice at the cinema.
Saw The Fellowship on Channel 4.
Saw The Two Towers when we watched it at Bod on Channel 4
Saw The Two Towers again last Sunday on Channel 4.

Hmm, actually it occurs to be that I haven’t seen The Return of the King three times yet. Judging by the last gap it is going to be a while until it is on Channel 4. Not that I need to wait now I have it on DVD anyway. Oh well, on to watching The Two Towers DVD. The credits are listing the charter members of the fan club. It’s been going for like 5 minutes and has only reached C.

Continuing my mission to make use of our 24 hour computer lab facilities I decided to drop by Eniac and make a quick blog post. I came down for Film Soc which doesn’t start until 7 so I need some time to kill and here seems the best place to do it. I will get here at like 2-3 am one day!

Last time I came down to Film Soc, ironically also the first time, we didn’t set off until like 6:30 for the 7:00 start and so ended up late. But then if I get the 6:15 bus then I end up early and have like 10-15 minutes to kill which is hard to justify going all the way down to Eniac for. Well, for a normal person, I’d do it anyway as it kills some time. That said if buses really were every 15 minutes then there should have been one at 6:30 although maybe we missed that, long time ago now.

Film Soc are showing some quite good stuff at the moment though, they have “Capturing the Friedmans” on tonight which I’ve never heard of but when I read the description it looked really good. Then on Thursday they are showing 12 Angry Men which I’m hoping I can round up some more people for; Elle said she really likes it.

Today after many hours, 40gb of video sitting on my hard drive and a DVD or two wasted I got a working copy of my cousins wedding video on DVD. Not that I had much interest in doing it really but then again I can never pass up the chance to work on my special features production skills. I just love doing them.

This one featured deleted scenes, outtakes, audio commentary from myself and a director’s cut. All very flash. All the editing and stuff has really got me back into the movie making spirit now that I actually have a DVD done again even if it is one that you would never actually want to watch.

I keep having ideas but I haven’t been able to throw together any kind of real plot yet. I’m thinking horror but what exactly happens? I don’t just want a serious of visuals so do I have a killer? Too generic? How about an object? Too cheesey? I’m not too sure, I need some kind of inspiration. Or to just steal the plot of an old 1970’s horror flick.

Have a gander at this. Oh yes, it’s me :). I logged onto Google Video just now expecting my movie to still be in processing what with it being a Windows Media Video file that I couldn’t get particularly close to the specification but it’s on there and searchable. Cool.

Google Video is now using flash player apparently though as I tried to play it just now and it came up with the missing plugin thing in Firefox. Weirdly enough it actually will play in Internet Explorer. It even creates automatic chapters throughout the movie so you can jump to them. I think I’ll be uploading more VNUs very soon.

Hmm, the way I see it, my computer is on so I might as well blog. Just got back from a house party at Elle’s friends. Quite a nice house actually though the stairs are a little steep. That seems common with most terraced houses though. Anyway so yeah, myself, Spanky, Olly, Precious and Stoner Matt got some chips then got the bus back. We actually just missed a bus which is a bitch when they are every half hour.

Jess was absolutely wasted though. Ben and Tom had to take her home a little after midnight after she feel over three times trying to stand. On top of that she has lost her keys (she left them in Grant House though so it’s not like they are really lost, she is just too drunk to remember at the moment) so she is currently sleeping it off in Ben’s room.

On top of all this there was in interesting event at the bus stop. I don’t really know the story although the events including a guy throwing a drink in a girl’s face which was full of ice so it half blinded her and one of the guys got cut up with broken bottles and had blood running down his face. Leeds is a cool place really :).