Archives: Firsts

Everything I’ve seen about Heath Ledger’s final film has told me two things: 1) It’s Heath Ledger’s final film (he died half-way through production, to be variously replaced throughout the film by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrel and Jude Law) and 2) It’s utterly rubbish.

From watching the film myself today, I’ve discovered three things:

1) It’s almost the ultimate Terry Gilliam movie, combining the tangible, off-kilter world of a only-slightly-stylised reality with the final-given-enough-money beauty of the CGI creating the heavily surrealist world beyond the mirror that take people inside their own minds. Where his previous films have failed for me has been the difficulty in realising this clash of the real and the fantastical, but Parnassus does it almost perfectly.

2) The three actors who came in to finish the film, playing 3 versions of Ledger’s Tony who appear through the mirror did a great job. Admittedly, knowing the story behind the film made me almost predisposed to look on them favourably: all three stepped in as friends of Ledger’s to offer their services, all three fitted the film in around their other filming commitments and all three donated their fees to Ledger’s young daughter. But all three of them also hit just the right balance of the surrealist elements of a shape-shifting lead character by keeping just the right amount of Ledger’s original performance while infusing it with a spirit and attitude of their own. It never feels like 3 people pretending to be Heath Ledger, which would have been dreadful.

3) I really, really, really liked it.

So I may well be the odd one out in all of this, but frankly, who cares? I unashamedly love this movie. I love all that it stands for, I love all that it means, I love all that it’s been through and I love the end product more than any other Gilliam film I’ve seen before.

As a side note, K’s come back up to Liverpool with me today and we saw Parnassus at FACT, an amazing Liverpool cinema and gallery space which impresses me more and more every time I go. Today’s screening was in a small-ish box room with the audience all seated on 2-person sofas; a brand new experience for me, but a great one. There should be a flickhouse like this in every city.

The one upside of Willows going into rehearsals this week of all weeks (LIPA reading week, that is) is that I was still around to witness this year’s first Masterclass with the legendary Jonathan Pryce of Evita, Pirates of the Caribbean and Miss Saigon fame.

Once again revealing quite how aged I am in relation to the rest of the students at LIPA (or at least the majority), I first saw Jonathan Pryce when he played Fagin in Sam Mendes’ revival of Oliver! in the West End way back in 1994 when most of my classmates were learning to walk.

Thanks to the Pirates series, he’s now famous throughout the student body at LIPA and, since he’s literally just up the road (about 500 yards from LIPA) doing The Caretaker at the Everyman at the moment, he stopped in to talk to us all today.

He may have been nervous or just unsure at the start, as he was somewhat bland and struggling to relate to the audience to begin with, but as time went on he warmed up and became more and more ebullient and amusing with all of his anecdotes. Among my favourites:

• He turned down the opportunity of taking over from Michael Crawford in the title role of the original production of Phantom of the Opera
• He gave first jobs to both Julie Walters and Bill Nighy, recalling of Nighy’s audition that he thought we was either an absolute genius or absolute rubbish. He maintains (jokingly) it’s the latter.
• When he and Nighy were reunited on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Nighy performed in a lycra body suit with motion-capture markers all over his body and face. The sight made it impossible to get through an emotional scene without laughing, prompting the writer to approach Pryce and ask if everything was OK with the scene.
• He never actually read the entire script for Pirates and frequently only knew what was going on by asking Jack Davenport while the shots were being set up.
• When performing in the ill-fated National Theatre production of My Fair Lady, he remarked to one audience “This is you first Eliza, but it’s my second today and third in two days. If anyone would like to apply to play Eliza in this production, please contact Stage Door after the show.”

It’s amazing to be studying what I love in a place I can’t get enough of and to have the added bonus of people like this coming in to talk to us. After almost 2 hours at it, I think the entire audience of actors, dancers, technicians and managers left the room utterly inspired and energised.

Who’s next?

I say it begins, but for most of the backstage staff, it already has – weeks and weeks ago. But all too often in theatre the start of a production is marked by the start of the rehearsal process.

Like the dutiful techies we all are, foregoing our reading week to be here for the show, we trudged our way to the 4th floor of the main LIPA building and into the room which will house rehearsals for Wind in the Willows for the next 4 weeks before we hit the Paul McCartney Auditorium for a week of technical and dress rehearsals to realise the show everyone’s had in their heads since the first week of term.

Today was also the first time I’d had to see the model box, the small, scale model of what will eventually be realised on stage. I know this is a big show, but seeing the model box today really rammed home just how HUGE the whole thing is. The monstrous set takes up the entire PMA stage and a little bit more besides and there is an incredible amount of work for us lowly ASMs to do in keeping the show running with all the appropriate scene changes as the show goes on.

It’s both extraordinarily exciting and not a little bit daunting. I’ve never been an ASM before – I’ve stage managed, I’ve production managed, but so much of the success of the performance itself rests on the ASMs getting their cues right. Because an ASM missing a cue in the middle of a show is likely to cause one of the most obvious slip ups in the theatre. It’s possible to miss lighting and sound cues without people really being aware, but if the setting and props aren’t in the right place when they’re needed, the actors can look like a right bunch of muppets.

Am looking forward to it, though. I think it’s going to be a great show and a fun show to work on. So here’s to four weeks of running around Liverpool like a loony getting everything sorted and a final week of running around LIPA like a loony getting everything sorteder.

Deep breath!

Right, first off I should offer my apologies for my mini (or maxi) rant in my last post. I really was annoyed though. For the record – if anyone from the STUDENT LOANS COMPANY or SLC happens to be reading this – I still don’t have the stuff I need to be able to square away my loans and actually get some money. Thanks to to lovely Bank of Mum & Dad, however, I’ve been able to settle myself with a computer in my room to allow me to actually, you know, work. That loan’s being called in as soon as the real one comes through.

But let’s move on as that’s not what you want to read/hear about anyway, is it? You want to hear about LIPA and – specifically – how awesome it is. And boy is it.

I’ve now been living in Liverpool for 16 days, which already feels like months. I know Liverpool pretty well now, although I’m still finding decent little short-cuts and cut-throughs to get me places even quicker. I’ve got my walk to uni down to a steady 15 minutes at a sensible pace and I can find just about every shop I want to or need to in town now, too. I’ve also learned that I’m never going to have a problem finding a Tesco. There’s at least 5 within a 15 minute walk of me, either at LIPA or my apartment.

The course is brilliant – a great mix of general knowledge technical and design stuff and more detailed, specific tasks. It is hard work though. All our days begin at 9.30am – because that’s the time professional theatre workers come in, usually – and if we have all day lectures, as I now do on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, we are timetabled to be there until between 4.30 (usually) and 7pm (on occasion).

In addition to the timetabled stuff I already have 5 assignments from my 6 modules, the first of which is due in just three weeks and happens to be the very, very hardest of them all. It’s called the Slice of LIPA project and it’s part of our design and construction course. We all have to choose a part of LIPA to accurately recreate in a 1:25 scale model.

I’ve chosen this area, the entrance to the Institute’s studio theatre venue in the atrium:

The Sennheiser Studio Theatre at LIPA

I have to say I thought it was a good compromise between tricky detailing and large sections of block colour, but as I began to measure for and – on Tuesday – to make the model, I discovered I was wrong. Apart from anything else I spent nearly 2 hours on Tuesday morning measuring out, cutting and carving all 12 individual paving slabs, after my initial plan to make it work, well, didn’t.

Across the other modules I’ve also been on a tour of the whole theatre, including the grid – the part of a theatre where all the wires holding up the flying scenery are gathered and other technical stuff happens that I either don’t know or is too complicated to get into here (mostly the former, granted). From the grid you can also get to the roof, which is where this photo is from:

The sunset over Liverpool from the LIPA roof

Not bad for a view, eh?

I have also started a stage management module, a lighting and electrics module, a context and professional development combined module and a fundamental skills module. These include climbing ladders, health & safety, soldering, reading scripts, breaking scripts down, knowing what DMX means and a variety of other things.

And on top of all this academicness (which may or may not be a real word), I’ve also been assigned my first show as an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager – get used to the abbreviation because I’m not clarifying it every time I write it on here!). I’m going to be working on the first big show of the year in the Paul McCartney Auditorium, which is to be Wind in the Willows. And when I say big, I mean big with a capital “B”. And, from the model box I saw yesterday, with a capital “I” and “G” too, I suspect.

In fact, I must excuse myself from this missive to go and wade my way through the script again and then tackle the 18 page (yes, EIGHTEEN page) props list. Wish me luck.

This is going to be a quick one as I’ve been up since 8 and in uni since 9 and am now flagging slightly.

Today was the first official day of classes for me at LIPA and I’m already assigned to work as an ASM on Wind in the Willows in November. As of right now I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing for the show because we’ve yet to be taught that bit. It’s really exciting to be involed in a show so early on and in one that’s going to be such a biggie in the Paul McCartney Auditorium. More details, obviously, as I get them, which may be soon or may – being a lowly ASM – be a while.

Today we’ve had a “Production Breakfast” that didn’t have any food (believe me, students aren’t fans of false advertising) to meet the 3rd year students who will be our heads of department on the shows we’ve been visiting, as well as a full TPDT meeting that takes place for all years of the Technical and Design courses at lunchtime on a Monday for anyone to call for help with any of their projects.

This afternoon was Essential Stage Management – a course that will doubtless be invaluable as it runs alongside our first placements within the SM teams – which was basically just an intro for this week and will become more detailed. We do, however, have our first deadline for a piece of written work, although strangely it won’t actually be the soonest deadline. Go figure.

All day, though, my thoughts have been with Jess, who is still struggling. LLTGL have been working really hard on Twitter and the web all day to raise as much awareness as possible, including their Chair Emily hitting GMTV this morning to plead people to help. There’s now a large number of celebrities supporting her and tweeting about her, but every single person who signs on the organ donor register could potentially save her life.

If you’ve not signed up yet, do so now, here, and if you have then make it your mission to talk to at least one person every day this week about organ donation, Jess and how to sign up. If you are on Twitter, don’t forget to add #savejess to any and all of your tweets this week so we can get #savejess into the trending topics list and raise the profile even higher.

The Top 20 things I’ve learned this week, in no particular order:

1) Liverpool has lots of pubs and lot of shops.
2) Drinking as a student is really cheap
3) Cheap drinks are remarkably dangerous.
4) Having a friend who works in a £1-a-shot tequila bar is good
5) Asking her to choose your shot of tequila isn’t
6) Chilli tequila is bad.
7) Banksy graffitti’d Liverpool and – remakrably – didn’t get in as much trouble as the bloke I saw doing it in the town centre the other night.
8) There’s a statue of Billy Fury by the docks.
9) The locals for some reason think he’s called Billy Furry.
10) I don’t look very good in a dress.
11) Cold showers are quite rubbish after 6 straight days of them.
12) LIPA is the coolest school in the whole entire world ever and I have no idea why anyone would go anywhere else.
13) School-leavers this year think “retro” is something from the late 90’s.
14) 3rd Years think that Steps, Five and Cotton Eye Joe are all from the 80’s.
15) All my friends live together 20 minutes away from where I live by myself.
16) My timetable is really, really harsh.
17) It’s not as bad as it would have been if I was a designer.
18) Postal workers suck.
19) Pot Noodles taste much worse than Super Noodles.

and finally and probably most importantly:

20) I’m going to LOVE IT here.

I’ve managed to grab half an hour before my day starts today to rap out a bit of a blog about getting here and what it’s all like.

The first think I have to say is that I’m sitting at a computer in LIPA’s Learning Resource Centre (essentially the library and computer room) and there’s a big plaque on the wall listing the sponsors of the room. Amoung a few well-known corporate clients, it also lists Jane Fonda, Billy Joel, David Hockney and Elton John. Reading those names on the wall of the place I’m going to be studying theatre for the next 3 years gave me such a boost this morning – this place matters.

The first few days have been crazy. I left home – as you may have seen on my Twitter feed – at almost 6am on Monday morning to get up here for my enrollment at 10. We managed to do the trip in almost precisely 3 hours, which was pretty awesome at that time in the morning, and got my keys for the flat straight away, which gave us time to unload all the stuff from the car (all 7 boxes, 1 suitcase and 1 holdall) before I had to be at uni.

I got enrolled and then filtered into the Paul McCartney Auditorium (how cool!) for intorductory talks about the place and what’s expected of all the freshers. In the afternoon, after grabbing a quick bite of lunch and then waving Dad off, I met with my course group, the TPDT guys (Theatre Performance Design and Theatre Performance Technology – essentially the same course but with slightly different focus between designing and practical tech-ing). The tutors intorduced themselves and outlined the course, then we had a couple of hours to kill before a group social in the evening, which turned out to be great fun.

Tuesday was in at 10am again for more talks and safety briefings, then a fairly free afternoon which I spent shopping for bits and pieces I’d not managed to get before hand or had left at home. In the evening I popped over to a friend’s house and we chilled and drank vodka and cokes (made with the roughest vodka in the world – the joyous life of studenthood) before her flatmate and I hit the town for a couple of hours to make the most of £1.50 Jaegerbombs (Jaegermeister and Red Bull for the uninitiated) before calling it a night around 1am.

Wednesday was, blessedly, a day off, although I woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I ended up walking down to the Albert Dock at 7am, which was actually beautiful. Got back to the flat around 8.30 and proceeded to sleep til 2pm. Nice.

I pootled in town in the afternoon and grabbed an iPod dock – my room currently has no TV, no internet, no computer or anything, so I needed something to break the silence of the room that didn’t involve me walking around with my headphones in 24/7.

Last night was Blind Date in the LIPA Bar, which was sadly compered and played out by third years who spent the whole evening drunkenly making in-jokes about their mates, leaving most of the freshers feel pretty confused and stupid – not the best was for the Student Board to welcome the newbies in the middle of freshers week, it has to be said.

And now, once I finish this I’m off to grab a chocolate bar from Julie and Julie in the canteen downstairs (they’re great – the ladies, not the chocolate bars) to give me enough energy for the next 4 hours of the TPDT Treasure Hunt! How cool!

Once I’ve sorted myself with a laptop and internet connection at the flat, these blogs will hopefully get a little a) shorter and b) more regular, but until then you’ll have to make do with the Twitter feed on the left of the page and random updates on here as and when I get chance to jump on a comp here.

After all the to-ing and fro-ing, the waiting, the build-up, the Big Secret Project is finally here.

Oscar

BAFTA

As many of you will know, a good friend of mine set out to make a short film when I was waiting for my transplant. Gone Fishing eventually reached the final 7 in the shortlist for the Oscars, some going for a little film made with the help of friends, colleagues and people he didn’t even know at the start of the project. Shot on 35mm film and finished to the highest of professional standards, Chris’ film has won far too many international festivals for me to count. If you visit his blog, you’ll be able to find out all about it and the festivals.

By far the biggest thing to come out of Gone Fishing for Chris, though, is the launch-pad it has given him into the film industry. From taking meetings in LA to signing with an agency and manager, Chris is living the life he (and I) has always dreamed of.

When I sat at home an mulled over my options for how to get where I want to go when I don’t know how long I have to achieve my goals, Gone Fishing and Chris’ experience thrust themselves into my consciousness. I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker, I’ve always wanted to make films. It’s that simple. So why sit around thinking about it when you can actually go out and do it?

And given the blessing I’ve been given – the most wonderful gift any person or family can give to anyone else – it seems even more important to push myself to achieve the very best that I can. No middle ground, no soft-peddalling. If I’m going to do this, I’m reaching as high as I can. As a wise man once said, “Reach for the stars and you may just reach the ceiling, reach for the ceiling and you will barely get off the ground.”

Every journey, as they say, starts with a single step. And this is it, “Remembrance”.

Remembrance is a 15 minute short film about war, family and memory through the eyes of three generations of a single British family. It’s chock full of action, carefully-crafted dialogue and packs a real emotional punch. It’s designed to showcase all of the things I can do as a director and writer, working with big names (if things go to plan), working with children and young actors, directing action scenes and working with stuntmen and stunt arrangers as well as working on a smaller scale with intimate dialogue scenes.

As I said when I first sat down to write about it: this one’s good. It’s really good. And I believe it can go all the way. I intend to fully document the process on here for everyone to read and for filmmakers to learn from and I will shortly be enlisting you all for your help in creating this piece of historic cinema. It may not rock the entire world of film, but it will turn my world upside down and become a launching point not just for my career, but hopefully for everyone involved.

Keep checking back for progress reports and on Friday I’ll tell you all how you can help.

So this week (well, since Wednesday) has been spent in Plymouth, home of 42 Commando Royal Marines, for their homecoming celebrations after their 7-month tour of Afghanistan.

Festivities started with a parade through the centre of Plymouth on Thursday morning. The Marines had hoped that the crowds would be big enough to ensure a solid single-file line of supporters along the route. They were wrong. Very, very wrong. There was a solid line of crowd around the whole route, but it was 3-4 people deep everywhere and at points that rose to 7 or 8 people deep. The reception was fantastic and the Marines were clearly all stuggling with a mixture of emotions ranging from proud to humbled, relieved to saddened.

Nothing like a parade of all the men in the Commando serves to highlight the loss of the 3 men who never returned. As the Commando filed passed the families of the fallen men – Marine Georgie Sparks, Marine Tony Evans and Lance Corporal Ben Whatley – on the dais, they saluted their memory. Everyone in the crowd, as jublilant as we all were, spared a though and shed a tear for the families who didn’t get to see their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers marching past with their mates.

After the parade the family all took a wander with Bro up on the Hoe, before grabbing a cracking lunch on Princess Street, after which he left us to return to Bickleigh for the tree planting ceremony for Georgie, Tony and Ben. Doubtless an emotional occasion, it does help to provide all sides with closure on the events of the last 7 months.

That evening we headed out to the Tanner Brother’s Barbican Kitchen for a meal which blew us all away. After dinner we headed out for a nightcap before calling it quits pathetically early for a party-week in Marine-ville.

Friday began with the worst hotel breakfast in the world – disappointing as the hotel at been pretty good up to that point – followed by a parade and medal ceremony back at the Bickleigh barracks, which we managed to see but sadly not hear since either the sound-system went wrong on our side of the field or else the wind simply carried the noise off.

Then we grabbed a couple of cheeky drinks before heading into the middle or Dartmoor to the Warren Pub/Inn/Freehouse where I had my first rabbit pie for absolutely ages. Apparently renowned for their pies I was soon jealously coveting Bro’s steak and ale pie after having a sneeky dunk of a chip in the gravy. Heaven. If you can find it out on the Moors – nestled at the side of the road just beyond Princetown – you’ll have a gem of an experience and a cracking meal.

After heading back to Bickers and then into the country for a bit of a walk – more sheltered than the Moors but with no less phenomenal a back-drop – we shot back to the hotel for a little R&R before another night out. This time starting at Artillery Tower restaurant, a quaint and friendly little eatery crammed full of character and quirks, we then headed back to meet Dazz at the hotel after his trek down from Leeds to spend some time with his cousin – also a 42 man – for a drink.

The hotel bar was populated by a number of…inebriated people who were all, let’s say, of a certain age. A large contingent of them were present to commemorate the HMS Gloucester’s – The Fighting “G” – stirling work during the German invasion of Crete before it’s eventual sinking in 1941. As soon as they realised/heard/overheard that Bro was a Marine, the place exploded into a riot of congratulations, handshakes, backslaps and war-stories. From a bunch of people who’d never actually been to war. Go figure.

Once we’d extracted ourselves from the bar, we headed into town and hit the nightlife hard. I eventually stopped drinking around midnight, knowing that making myself ill is a big no-no post-tx, but stayed out with Bro and Dazz watching the latter trying to keep pace with a man he should never be able to keep pace with. Ouch.

This morning, once we’d risen from our stupor, we headed out to the Dartmoor Diner outside Bickleigh for a bit of brekkie before hitting the shops on the Barbican from some bits and pieces, then heading off on a leisurely drive home.

It was a great “weekend”, spending time with my Bro and the family all together, eating and drinking far too much, but enjoying every minute of it. As you get older you realise how rare these occasions become when you can all spend time together without someone having to dash off somewhere and it was made all the more special by the true purpose of the occasion to congratulate 42 Commando Royal Marines on everything they’ve done for our country doing a sometimes thankless job. And, of course, paying our respects and tipping our hat to the three men for whose families there was no such celebration this weekend.

God bless you all, Georgie, Tony and Ben – let your deaths not be in vain.

I will update the rest of the blog at some point in the near future, but today has been too good to pass up the chance of blogging about it immediately.

As I’ve rather cryptically mentioned over the last couple of weeks I started writing a project that I’m really keen on. Many of you will now know the name of Chris Jones, a friend of mine who set out in 2007 to make an Oscar-winning short film. Many scoffed, but all were eating humble pie when he was short-listed down to the final 7. Now, that short (Gone Fishing, buy it here, it’s awesome) has landed Chris with all sorts of meetings and potential jobs as well as a top-flight manager Stateside.

Never one to re-invent the wheel when others have ploughed the furrow previously (nor, clearly, afraid to mix a metaphor), I thought I’d see if I could write something that might hit the same kind of notes and be the same kind of showcase as Gone Fishing has been for Chris.

So I started writing one night and came up with a story I liked. I sent it to my brother to look at and he liked it. More than that, he sent me 2 pages of notes to bring it up to scratch and then today we’ve spent the afternoon working through the script and really ironing out the detail of some very heavy military sequences.

What I have now is the first official draft of what I believe could become my calling card to the industry. *EGO ALERT, please look away now* I’ve known for a long time that I have the talent to succeed in this business, but I’ve never quite worked out how to convince other people of what I know I can do myself.*EGO OVER* This is it. This is the script that can change everything for me – I 100% believe that.

More than that, my brother likes it so much he’s putting the wheels into motion to get me the kind of support I could only dream of to help get this made. I can’t go into detail here as it’s in way to early a stage, but mark my words – keep your eyes out for Remembrance. It’s going to rock your socks.