Tag / Work

by Gareth

Catch up

Quite a bit’s happened in the last few weeks, so I thought I’d better do a quick catch up and write about some of them… I’m manically busy with Preview stuff at the moment – got to try and get it all done for Monday because they need it for a presentation in New York, so that should be fun!

In my last post I mentioned that I had a ‘possibly interesting weekend ahead’… well I ended up in Wales at Cefn Lea for the Reach weekend away, which I suppose was interesting in a way! The last time I went on it was back in 2004, and there were quite a few people there who I hadn’t seen for ages, which was quite strange, but I guess in a way, I am glad I went on it, though it was pretty tough at times. I’m not sure what I was really expecting from it all, but maybe that’s something I need to reflect on over the coming weeks.

One cool thing about the weekend was that I managed to catch up with Russ (from uni and who I used to share a house with in Birmingham) on the Saturday night – he lives a few miles from Cefn Lea so popped over to say ‘hello’. We had a really good chat, and I can’t believe it’s about 3 years since we last met!

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by Gareth

Slippery slope…

Thought I’d better do an update for February considering it’s the last day of the month!

Anyway, I’ve been really busy with work, and a lot of my time has been taken up with working on ‘The Soul Shutter‘ (notice there’s a ‘The‘ there now… I only discovered that after doing the opening titles!) I think I’ve now finished with all the CG work – there’s a meeting that Hamish and Rob are going to on Thursday to get feedback, but to be honest, I don’t really have any more time to work on it, and I’ve already put hours more work into it than I originally thought I’d have to. It’s fine because it does look really good, but they’re getting a really good deal!

Went for another bike ride with Jamie on Sunday afternoon which was good. We rode along the Longdendale Trail which is a route that runs alongside 5 reservoirs and follows the old Manchester to Sheffield railway line, and in all we did 14 miles there and back! I really enjoy going out on the bike, though I need to get some proper cycling shorts to wear under my trackie bottoms because I got quite sore from the saddle! It’s cool spending time with Jamie as well ‘cos we don’t get to catch up that often.

At the beginning of February, me and James went down to London for a couple of days to attend this year’s Video Forum event which was really good. Got to go to a few good production seminars, and saw loads of kit I’d like to buy! Did actually spend a bit of cash buying a better head for my tripod and a remote zoom unit for my camera which should be useful.

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by Gareth

Not enough hours in the day!

I’ve been really busy so far this year! This last ten days has seen me working in the capital for four of them, and then the rest of the time I’ve been working on stuff here in Manchester. Last Thursdsay I went down with James to London to shoot some interviews for Preview, and we drove back on Friday night after negotiating the mad traffic!

Then after my bike ride with Jamie on the Saturday, I spent the rest of the weekend working on various other jobs that have deadlines looming, before getting up at 4.30am on Monday morning to drive back down to London for more Preview filming. James came down later in the afternoon (he had to go to a meeting in the morning, so got the train down) and we spent an ‘exciting’ evening in the Travelodge (which has to be said aren’t the most luxurious of hotels!) The Holiday Inn that we stayed in on the Thursday was really nice, but this one was a little bit shabby, and the two single beds were so close together, it was pretty much like a double bed but with 2 matresses! It’s a good job we know each other pretty well!

Tuesday morning we drove over to Reading to film an interview with the world’s first cyborg! He was a really interesting guy actually – he’s a professor who’s experimented with having a microchip inserted into his arm and connected to his brain so that he could control stuff remotely, and also communicate ‘telepathically’! Weird stuff, but he’s convinced it’s all going to happen in the not-too-distant future!

Another day’s filming on Wednesday – this time in Manchester – but since we didn’t get back until 11.30pm the night before, I found it a pretty tiring day. Then the rest of this week, I’ve been editing stuff for the new DVD from thebandwithnoname. It comes out next month, and the master is being driven down to Milton Keynes tomorrow afternoon, and I’ve still got quite a lot of stuff to do for it!! I’m just rendering some stuff at the moment, which is why I’m writing my blog now, but I have a feeling there might not be too much sleep happening tonight! I still haven’t actually taken any proper time off since I went freelance (apart from a few days at Christmas) and I’m feeling like I could really do with a break! Can’t see that happening in the near future to be honest, and the thought of me going off somewhere on my own really doesn’t appeal to me.

by Gareth

Soul Shutter… and bridge nutter

Just got back from a nice meal at Jamie’s and I have to say that tonight I’ve seen probably the worst film ever! Well, 51 minutes of it because that’s all we could take!! It was Miami Vice, with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, and it was dire! Bad script, bad dialogue, no character development… basically just shots of fast cars and speedboats!! Total rubbish – that’s time I’m never going to get back!! Apart from that though, it was really nice spending the evening with Jamie and Dean, and we ended up watching a DVD of Victoria Wood instead!!

‘The Soul Shutter’ shoot.

Anyway, all this weekend I’ve been over at some mills in Compstall on the set of a short film called ‘Soul Shutter’, starring Georgia Taylor (who used to be in Coronation Street and has done some other big dramas since). It’s being produced by Hamish and Rob, and they’ve managed to rope in a load of people to give their skills for free to get it made. Somehow, I’ve been persuaded to do all the computer graphics stuff for it, and having been there all weekend directing the CG sequences, I’ve realised that it’s going to be a lot more work than I’d originally been led to believe!!

There’s a lot of action that takes place within photographs, so a lot of it was shot on a totally white set, and I’m going to have to key in loads of effects, as well as also doing moving images in photos on a wall, a bit like you see in the Harry Potter films… only with the budget being a few million quid lower!! Was a really good experience though, and I hope I can make it look expensive! I’ve got a load of photos from my phone of the shoot here.

Bridge swinging.

On Friday evening I got a call from Jamie seeing if I was up to anything because there was a group heading off to do some bridge swinging! I went with them a few years ago so I knew that there was no way I’d do it, but I said I could bring my Z1 and film them throwing themselves off the side of the incredibly high bridge! It was really cool and I got some nice shots of people leaping, though obviously because it was dark and my light can only really illuminate short distances you don’t really get a feel of the whole action. I’ll probably try and cut something together and maybe stick it up on Youtube or something.

I kind of wish I could summon up the courage to do it, but the thought of jumping into darkness really doesn’t appeal to me! Not convinced either that it would make the slightest bit of difference if I was able to see where I was jumping but maybe I should add it to my list of things to do before I die… just as long as I don’t die doing it!

by Gareth

Merry Christmas!

Today’s blog entry is being brought to you from Bristol! I’m down at Ali’s for the weekend because she had a party last night which I came to… it was kind of to celebrate Christmas, to welcome her two new housemates Kate and Julie, and to be a get-together before she heads off to do some volunteer work in a Christian school in Lebanon in the new year (obviously the situation isn’t the greatest out in the Middle East at the moment, but apparently where she’s supposed to be going is quite a way from Beirut, off in the mountains!)

I got here about 5.30, and because I was a couple of hours early, I had the pleasure of helping to set everything up! We put up 2 gazebos in the garden, and decorated them with fairy lights and genuine Egyptian lanterns! I made a slight effort to look Christmassy… I had planned to wear a Santa hat, but I couldn’t find the one I used to have, so just attached some tinsel to my jeans and shoes!

Helen and Ali.

The only other person I knew here was Helen who was at uni at the same time as me and Ali, and she was here with her boyfriend Pete (boyfriend/girlfriend seem such odd words to use when you’re our age!) and he was a really nice guy. Spent a lot of the night chatting to both of them which was cool, and then they popped in this morning before heading off to Cornwall for a week’s holiday. I’m not jealous that they’ve got a relaxing week ahead of them!!

I’ve been out pretty much every night this week! After the Cannonball night on Tuesday, Wednesday night saw me head up just north of Bolton to watch a DVD with John Cieszynski, and it was a nice chilled out night. We grabbed some chips and just vegged out in front of Mission Impossible III, which I’d seen at the cinema but had kind of forgotten exactly what happened in it!

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by Gareth

…And relax!

Well almost… I’ve got a job in the morning but I’ll forget about that for now!

I’ve just got back from the Sports Bar in Manchester where there was a big gathering to watch the Cannonball documentary go out on ITV1 tonight. The sound in there was really crap so it was hard to hear a lot of the speech in it (although I now know it all word-for-word!), but everyone really seemed to enjoy it. For some bizarre reason I got a bit nervous as we were waiting for the news to finish, and when it finally started I was quite relieved that we’d finally got it to air! I know I’m always over-critical of my work, and there were things that I could see that I probably would have liked to change a bit, but maybe I need to chill out a bit more and accept compliments from people… something I really struggle with to be honest.

James, Rob and me.

James arrived for the last 20 minutes of the show which was cool (I didn’t think he’d be able to make it because he’d had a few late nights and didn’t want to disturb Helen when he got home, but he came straight from a Sheffield Wednesday match so would have got in late anyway!!) He did the title sequence for the programme, and I think he’s done an amazing job on them. I was originally supposed to be doing it, and had laid out the shots to the music, but realised I wouldn’t have time to do a decent job on them, so I basically sub-contracted them to James! And what he did with them was loads better than I would have done – he’s really hot with Flash animation and had used that to create some retro animated backgrounds. I’m so glad that I’m doing more and more work with James because he’s incredibly talented, and I think we make a good team because we seem to compliment each other with our skills, and I reckon we could do some really great stuff together. Anyway, that’s enough of the back-slapping – obviously a bit tired and emotional! It was a good evening, and Rob was really pleased with the final programme… I’m looking forward to hopefully working on more of his shows in the future.

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by Gareth

In print!

I’ve been out to buy a copy of this week’s Radio Times, and that’s something I normally only do at Christmas…

…but the reason for purchasing one this particular week is because if you turn to page 94 and look at the ITV1 schedule for Tuesday 28th November, there’s a listing for the Cannonball show – woo!

They’ve actually done a pretty decent write-up in there as well. Rob originally wrote some copy to send out to the listings magazines, but often stuff like that is edited right down to the bare minimum, but I think the show looks quite prominent here. Hopefully it will get lots of viewers because there’s not that much up against it really. We’re going to be watching it at the Sports Bar in town with the rest of the crew, and some of the guys who appear in it. It’ll be quite weird because it feels like I know a lot of them having watched them solidly on it for the last few weeks!

by Gareth

I’ve gone to the dark side!

Well I’m in bed typing this post on my new MacBook Pro. I finally succumbed to the world of Apple and ordered the newly released Mac laptop and it finally arrived this morning! I’m trying to get used to using the keyboard and trackpad… it’s quite different to my desktop and I keep hitting extra keys and it makes me look like I can’t spell anything!

Anyway, my other computer is currently rendering the grading for the Cannonball documentary and when all that’s done I can re-import it and then put it onto tape to send off to ITV. It’s really cool working on something that’s going out to such a wide audience. It’s on ITV1 next Tuesday at 11pm, and then will be repeated endlessly on Men & Motors – though to be honest I’m more excited about the national ITV showing!

Other stuff – went to see ‘Casino Royale’ on Saturday night with Jamie, Sean and Selina, and it was really good. It’s only the second Bond film I’ve seen, the other being ‘Die Another Day’, and this was a really good action film, but I think I preferred some of the tongue-in-cheekness of Brosnan’s Bond. Beforehand we went round the Christmas markets in Albert Square, and had a hot pork roll from a stall with a whole cooked pig on the counter! Was a really fun night, and I know I need to do more stuff like this, otherwise I’m going to end up turning into a total recluse who just works all the time!

by Gareth

It’s not all work, work, work…

…although it certainly feels like it! I’m basically spending most of my time at present editing the Cannonball 8000 documentary which is on ITV1 at the end of the month. Very long days, but it’s looking really good, and hopefully people will really like it.

Anyway, I have managed to do a couple of sociable things this week as well. On Sunday afternoon I went up to Middleton to do a bit of babysitting with Sarah… she was looking after Grace (who’s one next week) whilst Colin & Caroline took Olivia to see a kids musical, so I went along probably more to keep Sa company than be much use otherwise! Grace was asleep when I arrived so we watched a bit of TV (the Top 20 Boy-Bands(!)… worryingly I did know most of them, but at least I wasn’t the one who knew all the words to the songs… hehe) and then when Grace woke up I helped keep her entertained with a toy shark and a beaker of water! It was good fun actually – I managed to steer well clear of the nappy changing… I don’t know how I’d ever manage to do that, but maybe if I have my own kids it would be a lot easier!

Then when I got back home, I got a call from Jamie asking if I wanted to go to the cinema – but they were already in the queue, and the film was starting in 15 minutes, so I had to move quickly to get there in time! Anyway, I managed to get there with a couple of minutes to spare, and found Jamie who was with Dean and Sean, and we went in to see ‘The Prestige‘ – a film about two rival magicians… I hadn’t heard anything about it beforehand, but I thought it was pretty good, although you had to suspend your disbelief to get over a pretty major part of the plot!

Sean, Jamie, Sarah and Celia.

Then on Tuesday night, I went round for a meal at Jamie’s house. I had expected that we were going to go out and grab something to eat in town, but it was a really nice surprise to find he’d cooked, and that we were also being joined by Sean, Celia and Sarah. My fussy eating kind of made an appearance – Jamie had done rice with the chicken, but he suddenly remembered that I’m a nightmare to cook for, and I told him I didn’t mind just having it without, but he rustled up some mustard mash for me instead! And the main part was something I wouldn’t normally have had – he’d done the chicken in a slightly curried crème fraîche sauce, and although I did pull a bit of a face when I took the first mouthful, I did actually quite like it! Maybe this is another small step on the road to eating the same food as everyone else!!

by Gareth

Sleep’s for wimps!

Just thought I’d do a quick catch up blog because I’ve not posted since my birthday last month. It’s been really busy these last few weeks… in the last 14 days I’ve worked 128 hours, and I’m about to go out and do some filming for Channel M tonight which means I’ll probably be working until about midnight! I’m actually the busiest I’ve been so far… due to deadlines and stuff I managed to do a 36 hour day this week! I got up at 8am on Sunday to start work for 9, then worked straight through until 7pm on Monday night – finally getting to sleep about 8pm… I reckon Monday was probably the worst day of editing I’ve ever done!

I went to see Delirious at the Apollo on the Friday after my birthday, and it was excellent! I went with Sa, and we met Caroline and Colin beforehand, and I also bumped into a few people I hadn’t seen in quite a while. Tim Hughes opened the gig, and although he was potentially an odd choice for a support act, he went down really well with the crowd. Then Delirious came on, and they played mostly stuff off Mission Bell, but did throw some older stuff into the mix as well. It was a great gig – and they made extensive use of visuals as well, although at times I did find them a bit distracting, but that could have been because I was thinking how I’d have done a couple of them better! I just can’t switch off!

Then last night I met up with Craig who I used to work with at MUTV, and who left to work at the CITV channel around the same time I went freelance. He’s just found out he’s being made redundant so wanted to meet up to ask about going freelance and stuff. Not sure if I was any help really, but it was cool to catch up!

by Gareth

Happy Birthday to me

Friday saw another year added to my age – woo! But more about that in a minute.

It’s been a full-on week with work, and there’s no sign of it slowing for the next couple of weeks at least… I’ll really appreciate some time off when it happens!

On the Thursday night after my last blog, I got back from a day’s filming in Bradford, and drove down to London with Rob so we could get to Docklands for our shoot at 9.30 on the Friday morning. Because Rob had been working late, we didn’t get to leave Manchester until about nine, and eventually got to our Travelodge at 1.30am! And then when we went to check in, we were told that they’d given away one of our rooms, so we’d have to share – so Rob had the double bed and I had the sofa! The trouble was, by now we were past our tiredness and couldn’t get to sleep so ended up talking until about four, which gave us less than four hours sleep before we had to get up!

The shoot went okay I think – it was a presenter in front of a greenscreen for a web tutorial I’m working on (although looking back at the rushes there are a few things I would probably have done a bit differently, but it’s a bit late now!) We got wrapped up by about three, but it took us about 2 hours just to get out of London and onto the motorway (although we did get to see most of the sights at the same time!) and then we didn’t get back home until about nine… so a very long couple of days! I managed to get a bit of a lie-in on the Saturday morning before heading over to James’ to finish off the cake animation we needed for Preview.

Sunday night I took a bit of a break and went out to see Rachael Kichenside perform at Oxjam which was being held at Joshua Brookes in town. I went on my own, but it was really good to hear her performing live with a full band. Was a pretty short set, but like I said, well worth hearing, and I stuck around to hear a couple of other artists as well.

Then this week, I had a final day at Leeds Bradford Airport on Monday (with a 6.30am start!), and the next couple of days saw us working again on Preview, firstly looking at the animation, and on Wednesday, after an early morning swim with James (aren’t we good!) we filmed a webcam interview which took a few attempts to get working smoothly, and then both headed over to Nottingham with Louise to interview one of the guys who’s created ‘Second Life’ – an online virtual world.

‘Preview’ shoot in Nottingham.

We were filming in an internet / LAN-gaming cafe, and there were some real geeks in there! I’m sure most of them were fine, but there were a couple who looked like they could do with getting out a bit more! There was one guy who managed to sit right in the back of the shot for half the interview, and we had to ask him to turn around because he was just staring at the camera, and then whenever he got up or sat down, it became obvious that he really could do with a belt, because you got to see more than you really wanted to!

Then Friday was my 34th birthday. To be honest, I usually wake up with the expectation of it being another crap one, so I wasn’t really planning on celebrating it… but unknown to me at this point, that wasn’t to be the case.

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by Gareth

Too much work!

Lots of apologies are in order! It’s been over a month since I last blogged (and I had wanted to post more on here) and also I’ve got quite a few emails from people that I need to reply to that I haven’t had a chance to yet… sorry to all those people! Will reply soon!

I’m so busy at the moment it’s unbelievable. In fact, I’ve probably taken on a bit too much to be honest, but there’s nothing I can really do about that now… I’m currently working on 6 different jobs that all seem to have delivery dates within a few weeks of each other! This week is a pretty mad one… Monday I was editing a documentary on this year’s Cannonball Run for ITV1, and then yesterday I was filming for a safety video at Leeds Bradford airport – although it took us 5 hours to do the 60 mile journey!! We left Manchester at about quarter to eight, and came to a standstill on the M62 at 8.40am, and stayed parked there for over 3 hours!! There’d been an accident about a mile ahead of us, and we were stuck there until just before midday when they finally managed to clear the carriageway.

Then today I’ve been filming stuff for Preview with James – the bizarreness of this job is one day you can be filming aeroplanes in the fog, then the next day we’re animating vinyl stickers on a wall, and then filming the baking of a cake in James’ kitchen as a stop-frame animation to make it go from the finished cake back to it’s raw ingredients!

Inez and James.

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by Gareth

Wedding chaos!

I’m typing this at my mum’s house because I’m down in Tamworth today ahead of my sister’s wedding tomorrow, and it’s absolute madness! I’m kind of glad I’ve only been here for one day of it, because everyone’s stressed trying to get everything sorted in time! We had the rehearsal last night, and I hope I can remember what it is I’m supposed to do! I’m giving Vikky away so I’m walking down the aisle with her, and I have a moment where I have to say “I do”! I’m sure it will all be great tomorrow, but I realised some things are still last minute when we were helping Damien write his groom’s speech just a couple of hours ago!

Anyway, I guess I should post a quick update on all that’s happened in the last few weeks since I headed down for Soul Survivor. On the Tuesday, I went and visited Ali down in Bristol and it was really nice catching up with her again. We grabbed a pizza, chatted until late about loads of stuff, and I even tried to convert her into a Myspace junkie (but I seem to have failed with that!)

Wednesday lunchtime, and it was time to continue onto Shepton Mallet, where I met up with the 29 guys, and also with Kate who did the video stuff with me there last year.

The Underground crew!

They’d moved us into a smaller venue this year, which was good because it helped make it look much fuller each night, although we were out of the way of the main venues a bit which I think meant some of the kids didn’t realise we were there until later in the week. Then for the second week, Kate had to leave because she was doing a course in London, so Andy Passey took over which worked really well. It was a great 2 weeks, and on the whole, the weather wasn’t too bad.

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by Gareth

Working in the Med

Me filming in Menorca.

Got back last night from doing some filming on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean. I spent 8 days on the Island Star which left from Majorca and visited Sicily, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Menorca, before returning back to Palma yesterday morning.

Basically we were shooting as much as we could on the ship for them to use for promotion, such as travel agents, the website and also for TV travel channels. It was pretty intense – we were doing 12-14 hour days, and didn’t really get much of a break all week, but it was enjoyable, if very tiring! It didn’t help that people on board kept commenting on what a great holiday we must have been having!

Quick recap of the week: our flight from Manchester was delayed because of storms in the south of England, but we eventually got onto the ship in Palma by about 8pm. Then on the Sunday we had a day at sea and started work filming various stuff around the different parts of the ship. Monday saw us arrive in Palermo, Sicily, and me and Sparky jumped off first thing to see if there were any good views looking back from the port. However, it was quite industrial, so we actually spent a lot of the day shooting interviews with the captain and crew. We also used a mini-jib to get some nice shots in the Guest Relations area – it was the first time I’d used one, so was a little apprehensive about operating it, but it worked a treat!

Tuesday was Rome day where over two thirds of the passengers got off to visit the sights, so we made good use of the ship being quiet to get some nice shots of the pool area (at all the other times it was very busy, and not quite the image we wanted to portray!)

Filming with the jib.

We set up the jib over the jacuzzi and the pool, and by the time we’d got some of the ship’s dancers to pretend to be holiday makers, it made it look really inviting with sweeps across the deck making it look really spacious!

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by Gareth

Catching up…

Bit of a gap since my last blog, so I’d better write one now!

It’s been really busy with work. Me and James got the first Preview DVD completed in time (just!) and the response to it’s been really positive which is good. Now we’ve got to start thinking about how we’re going to do the next one!!

On Thursday I saw Jamie for the first time in about a year which was a bit weird. Good weird though I think. He was at a mountain bike shop in Cheadle whilst on his lunch break, so popped in briefly before heading off on a site visit. Like I said, the last time I saw him was a year ago at James and Helen’s wedding, though we chatted online back in November, and I was kind of worried it’d be really awkward, but it wasn’t too bad considering. I think we’re going to arrange to go out on a bike ride together when he’s got a free weekend sometime.

Then on Friday, I helped James move a tonne of stuff into his and Helen’s new house in Levenshulme. Helen was off on her sponsored bike-ride to Paris, and everyone else from Manchester was up in the North East at Helen Mason’s wedding. Their house is really nice – it’s the kind of house I wouldn’t mind having some day. It was so hot though – not ideal for moving furniture and boxes around, but we got it done, and grabbed takeaway and a DVD in the evening.

And last night I was over in Ramsbottom (middle-of-nowhere, north of Manchester!) for Rob Hallam’s birthday barbeque. Didn’t know too many people there other than Rob (although Ajay and Martin were also there)… though I did recognise one of the guests even though he was out of his normal costume – Kenny Baker, aka R2D2 from Star Wars!