Sometimes this blog will just be me playing "Tiny Sticks" on the ukelele.

With thanks to – and for – Emerald Sapphire and Gold. (First wormed into my ear in The Tennis Show.)

 

 

(recorded 11pm this evening)

10,000 Bad Drawings #00013-#00024

Ahh, drawing monsters and making no-budget sci-fi films, this is the life! I've got some catching up to do clearly, but here's twelve more. (Really though, I am going to make more films. I think Mintu's going to turn up in one. Watch this cyberspace.)

 

 

 

 

48 Hours

 I directed my first film in 1996. And 1997. It took a year to edit. I directed my second film this weekend for the London Sci-Fi Festival's 48-hour film challenge - "The Healing Room". Like the first, it consists of performances I could watch for ever and decisions I'm pretty pleased with, all foolishly compromised by my total lack of technical know-how, equipment and crew. I won't lie though, I like it an awful lot. Enjoy:

 So thank you Craig. Thank you Katy. Thank you Lanna and your work laptop and camera. An hour-by-hour account of the making of this follows in the comments.

  I'm going to do more of these.

Minimalism's all I'm capable of, which keeps costs down.

"Take what you've got and fly with it." Jim Henson said that.

My mate Paul Thompson also said something along those lines, and equally pithy. I was talking to him about how I wanted to make an album before the year was out, even though I couldn't play a musical instrument. We were crammed into the Players' Bar. Paul's a musician, but we've known each other from the London Dungeon for seven years or so. Here's something of his:

He'd asked me to appear as a post-apocalyptic clown (plus sundry other supporting characters) in a play he'd written for the London Horror Festival back in October. (I based my performance on the video at the bottom of this post, of Max Wall dying in Germany). It was Paul's first play as a writer, and it read like a dream in at least two senses. I reckon musicians are good at dialogue. Rehearsals involved a trip to his flat, a few ideas on how we'd perform these lines - who'd take what, and when - then just running this through, script in hand. Then having something to eat. The next rehearsal we'd try it differently... It was a very nice way to work, and when we finally came to perform "It's Only A Matter Of Time" in a pleasingly packed Etc Theatre a number of the things we attempted on stage had never been rehearsed.

 Photo by Lanna Meggy

But not so you'd know.
Anyway, as the pianist at the Players' launched inevitably into Rocket Man and those people finally left that table, Paul and I talked about making things and - I guess - mininalism - or at least the Mirroboy video, and how I only played two notes on the guitar and how that was one of the jokes, and he put something very important very succintly:
"It's about making it matter."
Well said, Paul. That's exactly it. Whether it's Galton and Simpson and a Sunday afternoon, Shakespeare and the verb "to be", a bowl of fruit, a wicker chair, the colour blue, or four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence and waiting for Godot, it's just about making it matter.
That's why I wanted to make an album in the first place, I think. I like writing lyrics. There are fewer words, and they matter more.
So I'd better get on with it.

Speaking of not much, shall we look at the rest of that aborted draw-a-monster-a-day project? Yes, they're dreadful. Let's get that out of the way.

 

 

 

 

Oh well.
Here's that video of Max Wall then.
Who knows how these things happen?

Hey, hey, I'm the Monkees.

 Remember how I occasionally went on about that film I wanted to make of "The Secret Agent"? Well this isn't it, but it has a tang. Presenting: Mirrorboy –

 

 

Embiggen.

  Gerard suggested making a video for this song after he saw it performed at the fundraiser where my friend Katy broke her fist punching a fish which is why we have rehearsals. He also suggested the locations, mixed the track, and kept the camera rolling as I attempted to restage some happy accidents. So we had a hoot, met some Father Christmasses, and fourteen months later, here's the finished article. Enjoy responsibly.

 (And if you liked that, or even if you thought "seven bloody minutes???" there's more of Gerard's magic here, featuring a robot, Nick "Colonel Dalby" Lucas, and a proper song from possibly London's Last Londoner.)