Technically Hitched

Hello, Acting Fans, and welcome to this Not-On-A-Friday Friday Blog post coming to you late only partially because Vern is rubbish at remembering to remind me now that we are splitting the blog duties when I forget but mainly because we have had a SNAFU on the technology front.

It started out so promisingly too, a lot of the props we need for our upcoming next bit of filming were mostly a matter of gathering things together we already had. We did however need certain images creating and printing out. Now I collated these images earlier in the week and on Friday I thought I'd take the time on my morning off to get the printed out. Unfortunately the Printer's Devil struck and nether of the printers in the house could manage it. Bugger. We needed them sooner rather than late. And Vern doesn't have a printer that's good enough for photos, or work at all as it turns out.

So it was that an initially simple task became more difficult and led to me trawling round various Halifax Printshops to see if they'd print off photo quality images for me, after a lot of traipsing about and a lot more of just being fed up with this I ended up getting the assistance Totally Locally from Halifax's resident Photoshop, Janet Green's. All this palaver plus some ancillary stuff I needed to sort for myself meant the blog completely left my mind, sorry, Acting Fans, so here it is belatedly - better late than never. And so are our prints, thankfully.

Yes our Prints has come. Now we are faced with another conundrum, we have so far been unable to source a certain set of props and might have to think of some sort of low-budget replacement which is going to entails me staring at a Thesaurus (well, the contents of one) to try find a solution. That's all for Last week, Internet Chums, see you on the other side of the weekend!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Role Reversal

Happy Humpday, Acting Fans, it's time for your regular mid-week hit of H&H business. This week it's a matter of trading places, what with Vern starting his new day job and becoming an upstanding contributing member of society (or as close to one as us dodgy thesps can get) and me hitting the typical off-season lull in hours due to it being the Summer at the theatre, it's been me with some time to spare and my partner-in-(Acting)crime who's been unavailable for a meet up. Bah! The Cosmic Ballet goes on.

In his absence I'm still steadily chipping away at a bit of the minor prop work we need for Episode 6 but that's about it so far this week. We've received no reply as yet from the local college Performing Arts tutor but we're not willing to write it off just yet, we might just be victims of an unfamiliar email address smacking into the wall that is the council email systems Spam Filter, even though we aren't Spam (and I myself, for one, prefer Pek...mmm, Pek!). This means we're considering a more direct approach, no, we aren't going to go kicking doors in - we just need to find a polite way to introduce ourselves.

No doubt my colleague is keeping an eye out for usable humorous situations as he experiences his training but as it is we're still stuck here on the back burner, darn it!

Stay tuned for Friday's Blog Post to see what we manage to pull together later this week. Keep your fingers crossed, Internet Chums, and...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Taking It To The Bank (Holiday Weekend)

Bad News, Acting Fans, on the H&H front this week. What's been going on at H&H HQ (production-wise, anyway) has been exactly this:

That's right, Internet Chums, despite our best efforts (and an unexpected reprieve from my afternoon shift today) thanks to Vern's upcoming employment, my current day job and the encroaching Bank Holiday Weekend we haven't even been able to do our regular weekly H&H Meet-Up, let alone anything else. Though seeing the weather outside my window today I'm glad we didn't have any filming set for tonite!

Looks like we'll have to scrub this week altogether and chalk it up to experience, or maybe lack thereof. Despite the disappointment of this weeks setback though we're both determined to get on. It turns out that Vern's new post, though it's costing him prep time now, it's starting a little later than expected. So hold on to your hats, Acting Fans, we don't want to jinx it but we're hoping to use that to our advantage! Apologies once again from the H&H crew but we'll be back with you next week so stay tuned and...


TTFN

Christopher Haigh

 

Blooomin’ SNOOOOOOOOOOW?!!!

Welcome back to fellow acting’s fans and bloggers to the Friday update.

Image source: propertycasualty360.com

Well ,at the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it's just like Wednesday. Thanks to the freak snowfall that we've had (and are still having it seems, stop it, damn you! Has it stopped? Let's hope so!) once again we have been Snowblocked! Damn blooming snow. Jack Frost is not on our side! We haven’t had much chance of getting together with Chris's hours this week to sort out things (like the cast readthrough) but I did by chance bump into one of my fellow acting buddies from the Actor’s Workshop and had a quick chat about using the Actor’s Workshop space once again.

I have also over the past week been trying to get in touch with Mr Jake Broadhurst and my other fellow actor Ross Galloway, Esq. but I have not quite managed to get a hold of them as of yet. I do know that the over the last couple of weeks being involved with the Actors Workshop they have been rather busy of late with upcoming shows and dance classes but my acting buddy assures me they haven’t forgot about us which is damn good thing, too! With any luck (and little Energon) we should be hearing from them soon so we can film the next major scene for Episode 6.

And that’s all for today, sorry it isn’t much more exciting but, well, the woes of no-low-to budget
production sometimes prevail. We are unfortunately at the mercy of the weather -  Bloody Snow!
Be safe out there, and have fun if you can!

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Lull

Greetings, Acting Fans, welcome to Friday's H&H update and, well, it's another one of THOSE posts. Yep, after our flurry of activity this past week we've now hit a bit of a Lull. Nothing, as they say, has been doing since wrapping our TOP SECRET edit (SHUSH! It's SECRET!). This week has come to something of a stop.

Not helping is the fact that I've got a run of shifts on my day job at the tail end of this week , so I'm out of filming action (it's a bit disappointing for us too but them's the breaks). Whilst I'm stuck behind my desk hanging on the telephone, Vern will be scrutinising the calendar and seeing about getting our semi-cast readthrough of the script together and look towards filming the stuff we can get away without the additional warm bodies. I'm afraid that's yer lot this week, Internet Chums! Stay tuned for more (and more interesting) news to come! Now please excuse me, I have some Hormonal Housewives to deal with.

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Milestone

Hello, Fellow Bloggers and Acting Fans and welcome to Fridays blog, which today is very special blog it is our 100th blog! Yeah, oh right, Groovy! And what are we going to do to celebrate this special time for you. Well, actually, erm, filming. Yep - that’s what we’ve been doing today shooting the main exterior scene of Episode 4. I mean, after all, we are actors and poor ones at that so we can’t afford to go out get drunk but, if you wish to donate to our going out funds, then of course please feel free. We have to get on, though.

So we have been out using our guerrilla filming making skills and dodging the rain drops too. In order to get these shots done, we even had to rope in an extra cast member (actually as well as literally but [SPOILERS]) as well for this shoot to be an unsuspecting guard. I can tell you fellow blogger it was an odd kind of shoot today.

"Huh?"

We did in fact get all of the guard footage done, after the rain had held off. The problem was trying to do our scene and main lines was well an experience of traffic, traffic and bloody traffic. It wouldn’t let up and on a road that is normal quite quiet! Honestly, it was nothing like this when we scouted the location. We had no idea what was going on. It was like somebody or something was against us. Damn them whoever/whatever they are (*Shaking fist at sky*)!

Now back to this being are 100th blog I mean, wow, have we really rabbited on for that many posts -  it sure doesn’t feel like we have. And I wonder whom out there has read all of these (and good on you if have) and to those of you who haven’t - why not, I ask? Got something better to do? No? Well get on with it then - the archive's right there on the sidebar. Don't just sit there, click to it!

That’s it for now. Chris has taken the footage back with him and is trying to do a rough cut of this
scene to see whether or not we might need to re-shoot or if some of our line takes are cuttable together. We still have a shoot planned for tomorrow to do the main scenes of episode 3 and, if we have enough time, maybe the pickups we may need for Episode 4. So we have been busy and just in the time for the 100th blog post - have mentioned already that we are up to 100th blog post? We've done 100 of these you know and there ain't no stoppin' us now!
Well, that’s it for now so keep the home fires burning, hombres and chiquitas.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

Brainstorm!

Hello, Acting Fans, we're BACK! Well it's Friday so what’s been happening in the office of H&H Productions. Well, I’ll be your captain, come follow me through my words.

First thing first is that since our catastrophic technical failure what have taken some time to take stock of what we have done so far with this production, and if you've been keeping up with the blog you should know but if not, tut tut, you bad people, you *Wags finger*.
Well, we have had our ups and downs but mainly ups though, as shown by the five trailers we've managed to get up on the H&H YouTube channel. We have some of the stock footage done and in the can, now I know what you thinking, the stock footage should be done by the second unit. And yes you’d be right on that is one of their jobs but, well, we can’t afford to have a second unit, that and we are only two guys filming, sometimes three if we're lucky and on one sequence a whole 6 people (Woo!). I mean we are a Lo-to-No-budget series. We are ALL the Units! The pilot episode is done and is now ready and waiting to go live which will be soon, dear Acting Fans, sooooooon (Date TBA).

And moving on to the present, after having a very long and quite intense rehearsal, I think we are ready to start to film the next episode. Trust me, when you see this episode, you’ll understand why it took some much rehearsing. (Or maybe not if we do it right) And, as always, when I and my fellow actor/co-creator get together we always end up thinking up and adding new ideas to the mix of the episodes. Making some of the sequences a bit longer if needed, tweaking the dialogue here and there and making them a bit more funny (Trust me I always know it’s gonna be good when Chris takes ages to tell me from laughing).
So the next for us to do get our thinking caps on for brainstorming what we do next:
How should we source another camera to replace the broken down one? When do we get on and film the next episode? We'll also start the planning and rehearsing the next next episode to be filmed, see if what we wrote does in fact work and what needs to be changed if it doesn't. And get on with the storyboards, too. Much thinking will ensue.

Wow, is that the time? I’d best get back to it, see you...in the Future!

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

Cuckoo’s Flown

Photo from Danielle In Brazil

Bad news, everyone. The play that I was due to star in for the Studio Group at the Actors Workshop has been cancelled, with some of the some the cast members dropping out due to other commitments. So no more cuckoos for me.
Just goes to show how mercurial this Acting profession can be however, on the plus side, I will now have more time to devote to working on the production of H&H:Actors At Large.

And what are we going to be working next for H&H I hear you screaming and your monitors (Well, you are in my head and, in my head, I can make you do anything I want. ANYTHING.) As of tomorrow (That’s Thursday the 5th April, 2012) we will start editing the Pilot and finish off editing a few other short sequences. Oooh, What can they be? Once again, you’ll just have to wait and see what they are. And after the edit it's back to prep and planning the next episodes.

Stay with us now we are almost there. And yes the BIG surprise coming very, very soon.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

Rainchecked!

"Uh oh."

So, this Sunday gone, the british weather decided to remind us we're at it's behest by pouring it on - the rain that is. We had to scrub the intro sequence shoot which, whilst annoying, sort of worked out OK as Matt, our trusty cameraman/soundman/pretty-much-everything-else-man, was unavoidably detained by family duties. Being a father of two has it's demands, Dad's taxi being a common one.

As we beaver away with the shot footage and other behind the scenes stuff we've often got one eye on the task at hand and one on the upcoming weather. So sometimes, we look a bit like this:

"Too late."

We are still hoping to have at least the pilot episode done in time for early next year, so wish us luck (and clement weather)!

Fings crossed.

Stay tuned.

See you soon.

Vernon Harcourt

&

Christopher Haigh

 

Power Struggle

It is my sad duty to report a hump in the road in the series production for Harcourt & Haigh:Actors At Large. Production has come to a temporary hiatus due to unfortunate circumstances.
Matt has sought it here and sought it there, the damned elusive power cord, and it remains nowhere to be found. Never fear, acting fans, Vern and Myself are going over the production budget (in other words trawling through our spare pants pockets, clearing the moths from our wallets and having a look down the back of the sofa) to cobble together the funds for a new one.
Meanwhile the writing of two more episode scripts for series 1 is underway and we are looking at setting up the next scene for shooting, perhaps with an eye to using our backup (maybe it's time to polish off the promos). While you wait for more tangible updates here's an elliptically related tune by Sunna:

 Stay Tuned

TTFN

Christopher Haigh