Author / Gareth

by Gareth

USA Adventure

dsc03648

I’m just recovering from an amazing (but exhausting!) 2 weeks travelling around America!

I decided earlier this year that with a major (and unwelcome) birthday coming up, I’d arrange to be out of the country for it, and so the planning for a trip to the States was begun! I spent ages working out the trip – flights, trains, coaches, hotels – and surprisingly, it all went really smoothly!

DAY ONE: Chicago

Manchester Airport.

The journey started on the 6th October, when I flew out from Manchester to Chicago. We left the UK on the Saturday morning, and after an 8½ hour flight, got into Chicago O’Hare Airport early afternoon (the magic of time travel! 😉 )

Actually, the descent into Chicago was quite memorable because when you first come through the clouds, you see a cluster of skyscrapers by what looks like the sea, but of course is Lake Michigan, and then from that the city sprawls for miles upon miles. Also, I won’t forget it in a hurry because as we were dropping towards the runway, the plane suddenly started pulling up again, and we went into a massive circle pattern over the city – the pilot told us that air traffic control had accidentally put us on the shorter of the two runways, which wouldn’t have been long enough for our landing, so they aborted right at the last minute! For someone who’s not the greatest flier, that’s not really what you want to hear!

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Summer Holidays and stuff

It’s been a couple of months or so since I last posted, so I thought it was time to remedy that! I’ve been away a few times this summer – twice camping, and also a weekend away for a wedding!

I got back this week from Greenbelt in Cheltenham at the racecourse, and it was so wet and muddy! I’ve been to it quite a few times now, but the conditions were never this bad before!

There’d already been quite a bit of rain during the week, so they weren’t letting cars driving up to the camping pitches as they had in previous years, and the last couple of times I’d been, I was with Ali who was working on site, so we’d been able to camp really close to the main areas, but this time we were a long way away!

Amy, Rosie, Sharon, Claire and Michelle.

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Coldplay at the Ethiad

On Sunday, I was at one of the most amazing gigs I’ve been to – Coldplay at the Etihad Stadium! I bought 6 tickets on a bit of a whim last year, so have spent the last few months trying to find people to come with me! I only got rid of the last 2 tickets a couple of weeks ago!

I went with Dave Bateman, John Cieszynski, Jon Scruby, and met up outside with my brother Steve and his mate Dan.

We were in the standing area to the right of the stage, and my legs were quite achy but the time we’d got through the 2 support acts, Rita Ora and Robyn. Not overly impressed with Rita Ora – she’s had a few songs out, but mainly vocals on someone else’s track, so it felt a bit strange, and it’s really not my kind of thing… but Robyn was a lot more to my taste!

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Sore head

Happy New Year!

I had a great time celebrating last night, but I’ve been really suffering for it today! I went to a party at Steph’s house, and there were loads of people there – mostly people I know from Reach, but a few that I didn’t know.

Me, Dave and Jimmy.

Dave.

It was a really fun night – there was a bit of a buffet, and lots of beer! We all watched Big Ben chime midnight on the TV, before lots of music and dancing! To be honest, I didn’t really do any dancing – I mainly took photos and also videos on phone! Spent quite a bit of the evening chatting to Dave Bateman – now he’s in Liverpool we don’t catch up too often now, so that was cool.

Midnight!

Abhi and Chloe.

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Coldplay gig

Seriously, wow!

Last night I was at the MEN Arena with Joel to see Coldplay, and it was flippin’ awesome! We were really close to the stage (literally just a few metres away!), and it was such a brilliant atmosphere.

When we got into the arena, we were actually led to where the stewards wanted us to be, and because we were near the front of the queue, we ended up really close! They made everyone sit down on the floor until they’d got everyone in (I guess it was to stop people rushing to the stage and pushing their way forward), but it certainly worked in our favour!

Coldplay.

Continue reading →

by Gareth

AFC video shoot

Last weekend, I was down in Gloucester filming with the Austin Francis Connection to produce a music video for one of their tracks! I first met Edi from the group a couple of years ago at Greenbelt, and have seen them at various events since then, and we’ve often got around to talking about the possibility of working together, and it’s now finally happened!

Edi.

I drove down really early on Saturday morning, and met the guys on the top of a multi-storey car park… they’d had an idea to shoot some of it on there, but I discovered they hadn’t got any permissions so we quickly looked for a plan B! Since we were going to have to shoot mostly guerrilla-style, we decided to stick to public places where we were unlikely to encounter security guards, and drove around to a park in the city centre and unloaded the jib and camera gear.

Continue reading →

by Gareth

CU reunion

Yesterday, I was in Worcestershire for the annual UCECU get-together! I drove down there with Jeb, and we got to Phil & Mary’s mid afternoon – it took us about 2 and a half hours to get there, which isn’t too bad.

It’s always nice meeting up with everyone – it feels like no time’s passed at all! I got to meet Helen’s boyfriend Dave for the first time, and he seems a nice guy.

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Crazy few weeks!

It’s been a busy few weeks, but first off, me and James have been on TV these last few weeks!

I wrote a while back that we were doing all the graphics for Jo Brand’s new documentary series on Dave – ‘Jo Brand’s Big Splash‘, so back in May, we went down to London to be in the audience for the recording of the stand-up section of the series.

Well, the series started on Dave a few weeks ago, an we both make an appearance in audience cutaways at various points! And I’m pretty sure they used our laughs over the punchlines of different jokes!

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Good times at Momentum 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I was camping down in Shepton Mallet for Momentum at the Bath & West Showground.  I went last year, after having taken a few years’ break, and thankfully this year the weathers was so much better! We had a bit of rain, but nothing like last years’ gales and flooding!

Dan, Joel, Me and Tom.

I pitched up camp with a small group from Reach, some of who I was with last year – Joel Pambakian and Tom Brown were both part of last year’s group – and there was also Golibé, Dan Butler, with special appearances over the weekend from Simon Bray and Tom Green (who actually ended up sleeping in my tent one of the nights!

Camped with us were various mates of the group, and they were really cool people! Right next to us were Rachel and Katie (who were the source of much entertainment over the week!), Kossy, and Golibé’s friend Andy.

We had pretty decent weather for most of the week – there was a bit of drizzly rain on one of the days, but we got to see quite a lot of sun! The main advantage of that is we all got to hang out together loads, so that was good. And the main meetings and after hours stuff was cool too.

Sugary Joel.

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Sharp Project launch and some publicity!

It’s been 10 months now since doodledoMOTION moved into the Sharp Project, and last week saw the official opening of the building with the handover from the developers to Manchester Council. When we moved in last September, there were a lot less people in there, but now most of our section is full, the original part is quite full, and the 2 main production stages have standing sets in them for ‘Mount Pleasant‘ and ‘Fresh Meat‘.

Christian, Matt, me and Hogan.

With the official opening, the final Gold section is now taking tenants – I don’t think we’re in a massive rush to move down there because I actually like the quirkiness of our converted shipping containers, and the amount of space we’ve got works well for us.

Anyway, it was a busy night, with a load of BMX riders and skateboarders racing past our unit for most of it, although I don’t really know who any of the invited guests were.  I’m guessing a lot of them were council-related people as opposed to any from the media industry, but hopefully there’ll be more events in the future that attracts a more relevant crowd.

And then yesterday, following on from an interview me and James gave to a reporter at the launch night, there’s been an article published about the company in Greater Manchester Business Week (also published on the Manchester Evening News website).

To be honest, I’d have rather it’d focused on some of our other bits of work, but it’s still all good publicity. In fact the only annoying thing is they’ve got me and James the wrong way on the photo!

business-week

by Gareth

Some non-work-related stuff!

We’ve been working incredibly hard recently, pulling in some all-nighters for a couple of our jobs, but instead of going on about that, I’m going to blog about some non-work stuff I’ve done over the last few weeks!

helen-ali-june-2011

Most recently, this weekend I’ve been down in Bristol visiting Ali, and Helen also came down so we could have a bit of a mini uni-get-together!

I was originally planning to drive down there on Saturday morning, but I’ve been doing such long hours at work, and on Friday afternoon I was totally knackered after having had just 3 hours sleep in 3 days(!), so at the last minute I booked a train ticket down there instead!

I got into Bristol around lunchtime, and walked the short distance from Temple Meads to Ali’s house.  It’s interesting to see how much the area has changed over the years. When I first visited Ali there back in the 90s, it was a pretty run-down area, but now a lot of it’s been replaced by riverside bars and restaurants, and hotels and posh apartments – and Ali’s estate is right next to it!

Continue reading →

by Gareth

Jo Brand’s Big Splash recording

dsc01401
Me and James have just spent the last couple of days down in London, partly for a meeting about some more graphics we’re doing for a Channel 5 documentary later this year, but also we were down there to go to the Hackney Empire, where we were in the audience for the recording of Jo Brand doing stand-up for a show that’s going to be on Dave later this year.

doodledoMOTION are doing titles and graphics for the 5-part series called ‘Jo Brand’s Big Splash’, which will mix the stand-up gig with a documentary about water, which sees Jo trying out loads of different activities including swimming, diving and rafting.

Because we were guests, we got front row circle seats, so there’s a good chance we could end up in some audience shots in the final edit.  And knowing the way editing works, I can almost guarantee that they’ll cut us laughing at some innocent joke as the reaction to something really inappropriate!!

It was actually a really good gig – I wasn’t quite sure whether I’d find it that funny, but I think Jo’s comedy has become a lot more inclusive, whereas in the past it had quite a reputation of being feminist and man-hating. I don’t really know whether it ever really was, but that’s kind of what gets associated with her!
Continue reading →

by Gareth

May Day walk in Rivington

Well today’s been the 4th bank holiday in 2 weeks which is rather odd!  We obviously had Easter last weekend, but on Friday it was the Royal Wedding, which I actually managed to avoid watching at all, and instead went and did some shopping at IKEA, which was probably the quietest I’ve ever seen it! I’d planned to buy some storage furniture for my new bathroom, but I’m struggling to find something I like – I did find a unit there that I thought might work, but when I went to collect it I discovered that they’d discontinued the shelves needed to go inside it! So the search continues!

dsc01298

Anyway, today was May Day bank holiday and I found out that there was a walk being arranged for the Vinelife / Reach crowd, so I headed up north of Bolton to tag along.

We all met up at Rivington Hall Barn, which really is in the middle of nowhere! I got a little bit lost – my SatNav first tried to take me across a golf course, and then eventually led me to a random collection of cars amongst some trees! Luckily, as I was pulling up, Dan and Gemma arrived as well, along with a few others, and we took an educated guess at which direction to take to get us to the main barn where everyone was meeting.

dsc01280

Continue reading →