Archives: Projects

I was up middlingly-early this morning to drop K at the station to go in for an exam – she’s all done with lectures for the year now, just exams and assignments left – then home to go through the minor email backlog that I’ve built up over the last two days.

That cleared, I jump in the car and head to Toddington to the house of one of the writers whose pieces I’m directing for the MKT Snippets showcase. We’d planned a read-through so we can all meet – KH (the writer), myself and the cast – and go through the script to polish it up. I was a little concerned about some of the dialogue but actually most of it read fine and the bits that didn’t KH was really open to changing and adapting into the right language for the characters as the actors felt it.

Lots of valuable work on one script done, I came home to try to collar the cast for the second piece, to discover that one of them had pulled out and the other we STILL hadn’t heard from. The last remaining cast member has been absolutely awesome in trying to find us replacements, but it’s not easy at such short notice. Here’s hoping.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spending tidying up the application and cracking on with the rewrites. I finished the major load of script work by the early evening, had a break for dinner and chill time, then went back in to redrafting one of my shorts and polishing another pair of scripts.

It was another late night/early morning finish, but I’m really happy with where I’ve got the scripts to. The short – the ambitious project I was talking about having written a couple of weeks ago – will need a further tweak for dialogue and authenticity, but I’m really excited by the whole thing now. I’ve got lost of projects which are really getting my creative juices flowing at the moment and it feels fantastic – I suddenly feel like I know what I’m doing and precisely where I want to go rather than sitting feeling open to all possibilities. I still want to work in multiple mediums, but I know what I want to do within them now, rather than having aspirations all over the place.

Now I just need to apply myself and push forward to get myself where I want to go. To borrow from a friend, “Onwards and upwards!”

It’s interesting how you end up perceiving time when your wake up calls move all over the place. I was up at 7am again today, which feels like an early start. When K is in the middle of a uni semester, though, it’s actually an hour-and-a-quarter’s lie in if we get to wake up at 7am. Strange.

Anyway, it was another early start this morning to get to the Grove for a short follow up to the first aid course in January to learn the specifics of paediatric first aid. We all expected the course to be a full day, but it turned out to be only a half-day, which was a nice surprise, although equally frustrating as I’d just paid £4 to park when I could have spent £1.50.

Still, post-course I headed straight home and settled down to my Arts Bursary application. MK Community Foundation offers an annual grant of £10,000 to an artist to help them develop their practice and create opportunities to earn their income from their art forms. The application calls for examples of your work, so while I had finished DVDs of my film work and some really nice photography to give them, I realised hastily that I needed to do a re-draft of one of my screenplays for my writing submission, as well as a polish on two others.

This afternoon, then, was dedicated to pushing on with the redrafting of the script. It has to be said there weren’t a huge number of wholesale changes to the script, but there was a lot of re-jigging and dialogue revision to be done. I worked on it solidly from 2pm to around 7pm with a couple of breaks, then settled on the sofa with K to chill and watch some TV.

When K called it a night I was back at the computer, getting to around halfway through the screenplay by the time I called it a night around 2am. Late night writing suits me, but it’s a pain in the proverbial if you’ve got things to do the next day. Luckily, I don’t have a heap of stuff on tomorrow, other than forging on through the redraft and application.

Crazy-busy day today. After the late finish last night, I was up at 7am this morning with just about enough wakefulness to throw myself in the shower, down some breakfast and jump in the car to get to the Royal for 8.30.

Once there I ran through the video cues with the DSM and made sure they all worked, inserting a few extra elements as we came across things that didn’t quite follow. Then the cast arrived and we set to work on a full technical run through, where I found myself doing my usual tech work of running around like a madman sorting all the extra little bits and bobs to make things work nicely and seamlessly.

Come 1pm we broke for lunch and I left the Theatre, heading back home with enough time to grab a sarnie before jumping back in the car and heading to the Grove for the first Youth Theatre session of the new term.

With the two Grove workshops dispatched and a couple of minor incidents dealt with, I was back at the wheel and headed North as quickly as legally possible (and possibly a little quicker) to get back to the Royal for the 8pm curtain-up on the first performance of Vikings and Darwin.

It went fantastically well, especially considering I’d not been there for the dress and the immediate audience reaction was brilliant, as was the feedback from the party of suits from the National. They came to see the show a few weeks ago in a scratch performance to judge whether it could go to play the festival at the National (sadly deciding “no” the following week), but commented on just how far the show had come.

I escaped the Royal around 9.30pm and was back home within the hour, with about enough time to chill out with K for a while in front of Hell’s Kitchen, to which she’s become addicted and I’ve found myself being drawn into as well. After that, it was an early(ish) bed for another early start in the morning.

Spent the vast majority of the day/evening today back in the auditorium of the Royal Theatre in Northampton where we were running the technical rehearsal of Vikings and Darwin, the Youth Theatre show for the RNT’s New Connections festival.

I can’t describe how great it felt to be back in the Theatre and working on something.

I had the morning off, which I spent catching up on piles of work which were still demanding my attention, then had a huge drama with the file I was delivering to the Royal. Somehow the PowerPoint presentation that was being used to facilitate the projection had stopped recognising and playing the video. Cue two hours of mad scrambling to-and-fro between computers, re-encoding video to try to get it to be accepted by stupid, stupid, stupid PPT. I profoundly hate PPT. but what can you do? It’s by far the easiest way to control projection when it’s not running as a full movie, but need prodding for each new element.

Crisis averted, I arrived at the Theatre about 4pm and settled in to a seat to watch the lighting plotting session that was in full-flow whilst we waited for the projection screen to arrive and be hung.

As soon as it was up, we got to work making everything fit, then the cast arrived in the early evening and we began running through it, making the necessary adjustments and changes as we were going.

The cast departed around 9.30pm and we carried on plotting and working through the cues until 10.45, at which point I escaped back home, getting back at about 11.30 and taking myself almost directly to bed for a 7am start the next day.

After a personally-enforced Easter away from all things work-related, a blissful 4 days off, I spent the large part of last night sitting awake in the lounge unable to sleep. Frustrating isn’t the word.

Still, having been mulling over a new short film project in my head for a little while, I finally managed to get it down on paper. A 13-page stream of constant writing from 3am-5am got me through the whole thing in one shot and I’m actually really proud of the result. I’ve got to assess the options with it now, but I’m likely to “go big” with it – watch this space for grand plans to follow.

In the rest of the world, I slept for a grand total of about 3 hours between 6am and 9am before taking K to the doc’s in Northampton where I intended to work while I waited but ended up listening to a Radio 4 doc on Tommy Cooper instead – it’s almost work! Also chatted to my bro about advising me on certain parts of the new script, so I’ll print him a copy and drop it to him tonight.

When we got home I took the camera kit down to a friend who’s looking to borrow it for a donation to LLTGL so he could do a camera test with his Red Rock 35mm lens adapter and we were all impressed with the results. While I was there I also caught up with the guy who was on board to produce my last short before the casting when tits-up and it fell through. We chatted about our respective current projects and got into a great creative groove, which was awesome. I’ve not really got many friends in the same fields as me – particularly filmmaking and writing – so it was really nice to have a chance to sit and bounce some ideas around with people who think on the same wavelength and are happy to brainstorm ideas without thoughts to practicalities and everything else.

When I got back it was into full helpful-boyfriend mode, helping K encode and burn a DVD for one of her Uni coursework pieces to be handed in tomorrow, before bathing, shaving and dressing to go out.

My bro wanted to thank us all as a family for keeping him semi-sane with gifts and letters while he was away, so he took the five of us (him, me, K and the ‘rents) out to Loch Fyne, the seafood and oyster restaurant in Woburn. I say “new” in the title as it’s not a place I’ve been before, but it’s a real family favourite for everyone else.

Unhappily, many of the best things on the menu are on the big list of Forbidden Items for me post-tx, including Oysters and Mussels, the latter being one of my absolute favourites. I did, however, enjoy a fantatic meal of Squid followed by Bream, the latter being served almost plain such was the quality of the fish and the cooking.

We may also have enjoyed the odd tipple or two.

Back home after dinner, I finished shouting at iMovie (piece of rubbish) and wishing I had taught K how to use Final Cut Pro to edit her vid on, then manage to get it burnt and give her essay a quick proof-reader’s once-over before printing, binding, filing and packing for the morning before bed.

I am now officially in recovery following my first full week’s work for, well, ages.

Although I’m frequently busying myself with many different things, most of the are done from home in the study and involve writing, planning or other such creative-type endeavours. This week has been all about graft. If you count workshopping as graft – it’s not building a house or anything, but it’s chuffing tiring.

Over the course of four days I’ve been working alongside my usual Youth Theatre co-conspirator with a group of 6-11 year-olds to teach them a little about the theatre, some performances skills and putting together a short performance with which to entertain their parents this afternoon at the en of thei week’s work.

I have to confess to having been mildly trepitdatious of the project before it began, having had such a hard 10-week term with this age group in my Tuesday sessions, but the week’s been a dream. The group are all fantastic, all keen and eager and willing to learn and absorb things.

We’ve got through so much stuff in the last four days – more, in fact than we got through in an entire term with their contemporaries up to now. They’ve been brilliant fun and really entertained us while we’ve worked with them. Being able to have a laugh with your groups is so important to creating a good working atmosphere in any theatrical workshop setting, whether it be Youth Theatre, short projects or professional rehearsals.

It’s been pretty tiring and a real test of my stamina, but I’ve impressed myself with my ability to stick with it all day. Most of the week, it’s really hit me on the way home and I’ve been a bit of a vegetable when I’ve got in, but I’ve absolutely loved being able to stay the course all day.

This was driven home to me more than ever at Holly’s Donor Drinks on Tuesday (read more about them here) I was chatting to Emily’s mum and pointing out the fact that I’d just done a full day’s work then steamed home to jump on a crappy train to bring myself down to London to spend all evening at a drinks reception, followed by a late train home that got me in just before 11pm for bed and up for work the next morning. That’s something I’d never have dreamed of being able to do.

It’s strange working with a group of young people and looking at them with their whole lives ahead of them thinking that I’m so amazingly blessed just to be in the same room as them. And all thanks to the generosity of my donor and their family for taking the time to talk about their wishes and sign the Organ Donor Register.

Up again around 8am – second lie-in in a row! – and ran K down to nursery before popping in to see a friend who’s right at the end of her pregnancy and trying desperately not to let Baby come along yet. She was feeling awful today and really struggling, but she’s almost full term and there shouldn’t be any issues, which is something I tried to reassure her of.

I ran home quickly before popping down to the nursery to film an interview with K and the nursery manager for her course, which she then has to come home and edit into something coherent for her tutor to observe her clinical practice. Or something.

Had a look around the nursery, too, which is absolutely lovely. It’s a private nursery just down the road from where we live and it’s so beautifully set out with so many stimuli for the children. I dropped in on the babies (3-18 months) who were all unbelievably cute and gorgeous. The nursery itself is a large private house that’s been converted for use and the back garden is jam-packed with awesome play equipment which really let’s the kids throw themselves around and have fun.

Popped home again (lots of popping today, clearly) for half-an-hour before going back to collect K and coming home to polish up the multi-media stuff for the Royal’s scratch performance tonight, when I’ll finally get chance to see the whole piece as one and work a little on the timing of the various elements.

The majority of the afternoon was spent between Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, making logos and composites in the former and editing together a montage of war footage in the latter, all of which went pretty quickly and easily, to my surprise. I wasn’t sure I’d get it all done for the rehearsal/performance tonight, but in the end I did it fairly comfortably, which I was really chuffed with.

Headed to Northampton and dropped K at her appointment, then went on to catch up with a couple of friends I’ve not seen in ages. Suze, who I’ve worked with extensively for nearly 8 years, gave me some really good ideas of how to try to engage the Youth Theatre groups we’ve been struggling with recently, which I’m hoping I’ll be able to put into practice over the next term to try to pull the young people into the sessions and get them to engage.

After a quick coffee and catch-up, I moved on to the scratch performance, which started a little late but was hugely useful in working out how and when my pieces can slot in most unobtrusively, in order to best support the work that the group are doing on the stage.

Late start meant late finish again, getting away from the Royal around 9pm, which was quite a bit later than I’d wanted to get out, then picked K up from her bro’s house where she was babysitting while our niece was out with them for her birthday meal. I did get to see J, though, to wish her a happy birthday, which was really nice because I wasn’t expecting to see her.

Dinner, then, was incredibly late, getting home as we did around 11pm, which then meant I wasn’t getting to sleep until well after midnight as I was wide awake from the food. Ho hum. At least I get a proper lie-in, veg-out session tomorrow morning. Bliss.

Between organising some other bits and pieces today (and having a “lie-in” until 8am) I spent a lot of the day putting together the multi-media stuff for the Royal’s New Connections project, which was quite good fun.

In order to get it all to run properly and easily for the technicians operating it on the night, the best way of working it is to put it all into a Powerpoint presentation, which can then either be automated or run with single-push button progression. The only problem with that is that I absolutely hate Powerpoint. Apart from anything else, it’s so inflexible – there’s so many things I want to do with the transitions and other things, but you have a choice of 3 or 4 options which have no adaptability and no ability to customise them to your wants/needs. Frustrating to say the least.

In the evening I headed into MK Theatre to talk to their script writing course writers about possibly directing a show-case of their work, or part of it. Not sure if it’s going to work out with my dates and availability at the moment, but we’ll see if we can make it work somehow. It’d be great fun to work on some new pieces, but also educational to work with new writers on the first performances and developing/evolving the script.

Hurriedly rushing off from there, I headed over to Northampton to the Royal for their last rehearsal before the scratch performance of their piece for the National tomorrow. Frustratingly, they didn’t get around to a full run-through as the stagger-through took too long, which meant I didn’t really get to look into the timings for the piece, but I did at least get to sit down and go through the presentation with the director, who was very complimentary and had a couple of notes for me to take away.

A later night finish than I’ve had in a while, not leaving until 9.30pm, but it actually feels pretty cool to be back and involved in some proper live performance – something I’ve not really done for almost 3 years now. Exciting stuff.

As part of what I think industry and teaching call “continuing professional development” – in other words, learning new stuff – I spent my day today at the Castle Theatre in Wellingborough training as an Arts Award adviser.

Arts Award is a qualification that young people from 11-25 can take which can not only help boost their confidence and push them out of their comfort zone, but also, potentially, set them up for moving forward with a career in the arts. Encompassing all art forms from theatre and film to stone masonry (really), young people can do projects on Bronze, Silver and Gold levels to achieve certificates which will doubtless then carry weight with applications to Arts colleges, universities and – potentially – lead to avenues for employment.

It’s a great scheme and a really exciting thing for me to be able to deliver. Initially, I’m looking to set up a scheme within the Grove in Dunstable, but I can also register myself as an independent centre meaning I can run and assess young people on the award independently of a venue. It’s a great string to my bow and could open a lot of doors for me.

Yesterday I ploughed through a huge heap of work and finished off very proud of myself for getting through my to-do list, then had a really hard session at the Grove with the Youth Theatre. There are two participants who are really hard to engage and it’s totally baffling me – I don’t know what to do to get them into the fold. Having tried just about all areas of drama this term, the other practitioner in the sessions and myself are at our wit’s end trying to find out why they come and what they want from the sessions – it seems impossible to please them.

On a brighter note, the rest of the group really enjoyed it and seemed to get a lot out of it and we got some really good feedback to signpost where they’d like to go next term, which makes things much easier for us in eliminating the guess work from the planning process.

Got back and chilled out with K watching some random TV as she unwound after her exam which , after considering she’d probably just about managed a pass with 50%, she rocked up to uni today to discover she’s got yet another 1st. Can people please comment on here to show her that she needs to stop underestimating herself and realise that she’s actually pretty damn clever. Enough said. Love you.

Today I finally finished my run of 4 talks in 3 weeks with an address to the CF Trust’s regional conference in Oxford.

Rosie, the Chief Exec of the Trust, originally asked my consultant to come along and talk about the adult service, but she couldn’t make it so the baton was passed to me. I love doing talks and things in general, but especially for the Trust. And even more extra-specially when it’s to talk up the amazing team at Oxford who helped keep me alive long enough to reach transplant.

I would pop the text up on here, but it was a 30 minute speech and the text is close-on 3000 words, which is quite a good deal mroe than anyone really wants to read on a blog, but if you really, totally desperately want to read a copy of it, let me know and I can mail it to you.

It went really well – by all accounts so did the entire day – and it seemed to strike the right notes I was trying to hit. It’s always hard to pitch a speech to parents of people with CF, particularly some very young children. You need to make sure you’re not belittling the task that lies ahead, the enormity of dealing with all the crap that life with CF throws at you, but at the same time it’s important to let them know that CF doesn’t strip your life away of all meaning or ability to have fun and it certainly doens’t mean you’re going not going to be able to make something of your life.

I think – I hope – that I managed to pitch it right this time. Certainly all the feedback I received from the day was positive, but then it’s got to be a pretty awful and borderline insulting speech that will make anyone come up to you afterwards and tell you it was rubbish, so it’s good not to get too carried away.

It was nice, though, to have a chance to catch up with the team who came along. Clinic time is so precious I’m always reluctant to stay and chat too long, but today I got there at lunch time with a chance to sit down with them (and my parents, who decided to come along for the day) and have a really good catch up and chat about things – medical and non.

On the way home I developed a killer headache and was running much later than I’d planned, so I had to pull out of a rehearsal visit in Northampton for the project I’m working on with the Royal and instead couldn’t do much more than veg on the sofa and eat a bowl of soup. Really bizarre, hard-core headache, it was, but it doesn’t seem to have recurred as badly since, so it must have been a one off and probably thanks to dyhdration more than anything else. Was a sucky end to the day, but it had been a good one for most of it, so no real complaints.