Falling Off & Getting Back On The Horse

Welcome back, Acting Fans, fellow bloggers and Peoples of the Internets! Yes, its Friday so it's time for our embloggening. Or rather it's past time for our embloggening, yes, as some of you might very well have noticed there wasn't a blog post on Wednesday as, well, we're still getting back into the swing of things and well we just forgot about it. Whoops, sorry. I mean we are only two humans and we can sometimes makes mistakes.

Though we did indeed forget all about the blog, while Chris was having a clear-out (instead of blogging) he did come across an odd little item. Yep, he found a Pre-Harcourt & Haigh in an old Dandy comic from his youth called Ham and Egghead, about two kids who after watching some detectives shows decide they'll be detectives of course hijinks ensue. And I have to agree they do indeed look very much like a young H&H (well, in sorta kinda way). See for yourselves...

Forget what we forgot to do though, let's get back to what we HAVE been up to since we last spoke, well, we haven't been totally on our laurels (or Hardy's either)! We have written the next Vlog script (Some do indeed get written, it's not all seat-of-the-pants y'know) and me & Chris met up H&H HQ to have a line run and did a bit a re-writing as sometimes not all of the dialogue can flow right on the first draft of it, what reads right doesn't always sound it out loud. We also have penciled in a shoot date for it too and, Shatner Willing (he's like a god to us) maybe even a second Vlog post too! But, sshh! I can't really say much more about that. We also got on to discussing the episode 6 of series one. Don't worry it's still coming, we are going to be looking in to start filming that as soon as we can.

And that's all for now acting chums

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Interiors

Welcome to this weekend update post, Acting Fans, I'm here today to let you know the two of us at H&H Productions have been at it again. Yes, this morning Vern & I met up once more to take a look at the location for the interior shots of the upcoming Halloween Special, above (and beyond!) the new shop location of our old chum/sometimes guest star/occasional location manager, Simon Shaw, Proprietor X of Legacy Comics.
After getting Simon's kind permission, we ducked past the Counter and up the two flights of stairs to the room at the top. With a bit of tidying up (man-style tidying up, so really just shoving stuff out of the way) and some amateur Feng Shui we got the room set up and, well, it turned out even better than we thought. Then it was time to break out the old Lumix and plan out the shots.

The Cardboard represents [SPOILERS]

Swarthy!

Thinking Time

Are we done yet?

Staring at Nothing

So with Vern having sorted out the 180° we took a few pics, including the ones you see above, as a quick storyboard, experimenting with varying angles and working out how best to capture some of the action. To post them all would potentially be [SPOILERS] so that's your lot for this week!
The site is prepped, now we have our fingers crossed that the weather holds so we can get the exteriors done sharpish, wish us Luck!
Before we go though, one last massive shout out to Simon - a big 'Thank You!' Without his generosity we'd be lucky to even have a trailer filmed. We don't know anyone else who'd put up with our filmic messings-about on their patch (apart from vern's flatmates, cheers to you guys too! Yes, you too, Muta)! As for the rest of you lot, see you on the other side of the Weekend! Keep watching!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Games Afoot!

Well here we are once again, Acting Fans, halfway into the week and there hasn't been a meet up so far but there have been things going on. First of all this weekend, whilst I was stuck behind a desk selling tickets for 'Room On The Broom', Vern was lending a hand to our old chum and sometimes Location Manager.
That's right, Weapon HX himself proprietor of Legacy Comics, Simon Shaw. Not wanting to get too much into the ins-and-outs but circumstances (mainly the up-and-coming re-development of his previous shop location) have led to our old chum having to find a new location. After hunting high and low and hither and also thither Simon has actually managed to get himself re-located to the high street. It was to this new location, handily just up the road, that my co-star and some other local reprobates helped Simon get moved to.

Sheldon is watching you. Always.

Best Wishes and warm regards from all (alright, both) of us at H&H Productions, Simon. May the re-boot to Legacy Comics 1.2 be a rollocking success!
As for the Halloween Special, though we haven't met up this week, the preparation continues. I've been on the hunt for some additional props  and it just so happens that fortunately they were right here at home. At the risk of blowing [SPOILERS] we needed to get our hands on some board games. Some of you more astute Internet Chums might get an idea from it but I'm going to say no more, except they were easier to find than I thought. I'd been thinking of where we used to keep them though, d'oh!

"When you play the Game of Chess you lose and then cry!"

Yep, as a Low-to-No budget production it sure does help to use what you already have. It's as cheap as free! Anyhow with a morning shift, another day off and a free weekend this week we hope to get a bit closer to filming so stay tuned to find out how it goes on, we hope your route to the weekend holds straight and true and we'll see you here again on Friday!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

The Horror...the Horror...

Hello, fellow bloggers, it's Wednesday again, so let's get you dosed with your regular shot of Vitamin H²! Now, after a looong week last week and after me & Chris met up to sort out some plans for the future of H&H, I thought it would be best to get on with writing some of these up. Especially the upcoming Halloween Special!

An unfilmed script, like a pumpkin ripe for the carving!

Armed with my trusty-if-slow PC and ready with the notes we made for it in hand, I did indeed do just that. It wasn't easy though, no sir! I wrote down the ideas we had thrashed out and tried to make what we had come up with into some sort of a workable script for us to film as we have just under two months in which to get it done. At first it really wasn't going too well, I didn't like too much of how it was working. I wasn't even sure if it was funny at all!
Despite my notes I had forgotten some of what we had said and trying to get the story into a working order was difficult too. I hadn't managed to get it finished when we met up at H&H HQ this Tuesday when me and Chris got together again. We talked about the Special and how lately we both realised that we'd managed to get a lot more done by this time last year and that maybe we'd let the difficulty of getting Episode 6 done get in the way of us doing more H&H stuff.
Chris encouraged me to finish off the script, even if I didn't like how it turned out, so that once we had it in hand we could give it a real going over until it did work. With that in mind I got it finished that Tuesday night and sent it off to Chris for some split & polish and, well, to add some things that I might have forgotten, misremembered and so forth.

Today Chris sent back his re-gigged and re-worked version (complete with the title we came up with on Tuesday and, no, I'm not telling you it - that would be [SPOILERS]! Tee hee!) to me. I gave it the once-over and it is looking a bit better now, definitely workable. After a readthrough, and maybe a tweak here & there, it should be ready to go, all we need to do then is find a place to film it!

That's all for now, folks, see you on Friday,

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

It WAS A Very Good Year...

Ladies & Gentlemen of the Internets, Acting Fans of all stripes, it's Humpday once again and time to blog what's what at H&H HQ. As the Summer Special 'This One Time...at Buntings Camp' steadily accrues views to an impressive 19 so far, Vern and I have not been resting on our laurels. It's the end of Summer (BOOOOOOO!) and that means it's time for that seasonal shift I always get this time of year, which means this week we only get to meet up today. And meet we did, to Moot.
Yes, we got together at H&H HQ and realised all the work that lies ahead of us to keep H&H ticking over. Yes, yes, there is STILL Episode 6 to get sorted but never mind that! 2 more important things spring to mind. The first being that in the rush to get our regular Seasonal Special out in the correct season (just) one of the previous points of order got pushed aside.
Namely our Youtube Channel Welcome video got pushed back down the production schedule. Which is what we started with today. That is the reason we were immersing ourselves in History, via the relevant Wikipedia page. What has 1984 got to do with our channel intro? Well, it was a very good year for many reasons (unless you're George Orwell) but the REAL reason we've chosen to look into that year is [SPOILERS]! Let me just assure all of you out there that us two 70s babies aren't trying to re-date ourselves to stay down with the kids. Nope. All will be revealed.
After our impromptu History lesson we came to our second point of order of H&H business but that I'll leave to m'colleague Vernon Harcourt, who'll fill you in on Friday, so stay tuned, Internet Chums!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Loading Screen

Hello there, Acting Fans, a belated blog as we careen into the Bank Holiday Weekend! Though we haven't had a H&H Pow-wow since our midweek final Summer Special shoot there's still been activity at H&H HQ II - The Editing Suite, conveniently located rather close to my bed, ladies! (For when I get TIRED from all the EDITING, my dears, REALLY, how naughty of you!) Anyway since we got the footage shot it's up to yours truly to get the lot of it uploaded and ready to edit, so I've seen quite a bit of this:

Yep, the familiar site of the iMovie loading bar and, fortunately this time, not a lot of the spinny Beach Ball O' Doom:

I HATE that guy!

I'm happy to report that, after my memory kicked in and I grabbed a little bit of extra footage that I had to dive into the ol' H&H Footage Archive to load up with the rest, this screen is loaded to bear and ready for the H&H Cutting Crew (Myself and the irrepressible Vern, of course) to get on and wrangle it into an episode-y sort of shape. There may be a little additional prep for edit to do over the Bank Holiday but that's pretty much it for this week. Have a Grand Bank Holiday Weekend yourselves, Internet Chums and...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Vern the Hunter

...and Gatherer

Welcome back, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, yep it’s Wednesday again and time for Blog! Right, let’s get down to it first: the boring bit out of the way, and it's one for all you camera nuts and geeks out there. Technical specifications! After last Tuesdays test shoot to find out which of the ISO’s to use we have settled on using 1600/800 depending on when & where we are shooting so the footage should all match up.

Now on to something hopefully a bit more fun, we (me and Chris of course) once again had one of our weekly meet ups to sort out some things, and the first was to talk about some scheduling for some filming (Yep, you read that right)! We want to start filming again soon, kicking off with some of the scenes with just Harcourt & Haigh in, with the idea that getting something in the can will help give us a bit more impetus to get the ball rolling.

We then once again needed to hunt down and gather a few supplies for some of the props that are going to use, we needed something like some sort of a sponge and some felt. After looking around some shops Chris could not find the type of sponge that he wanted (he can be quite picky, when he knows what he wants - even if the thing he wants might not exist outside of his head. He can be stubborn about his ideas) but while we hunted around in our local Range (Range and Pound Shops have been a godsend for us here at H&H Productions) I spotted something else entirely which I pointed out to him. I'd seen these polystyrene hearts:

It turned out that when cut in half they will work for what Chris wanted the sponge for, even better than the sponge that might not exist that he was thinking about! It turns out I'm so good I can find things I don't even know I'm looking for! And what exactly IS it that he needed them for, and why the hearts? Well I'm afraid I can’t tell you that just now, but you will soon find out. Heh heh.

Well, I think that’s it for now people of the world. So am signing off for now and I’ll see you on the
other side (of the week, that is) well maybe.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Master of Puppets

Greetings, Acting Fans, and welcome to this brief and belated Blogday post. Not much has changed since Wednesday due to my shift patterns and Vern having a job interview! Yes, Fings crossed, Internet Chums, if all goes well our Low-to-No budget might just end up with a slight, tiny budget. Good Luck, Vern! What have I been up to in the mean time?

Between shifts I've once again had my seamtress, er, I mean seamster hat on and I have finally skinned the main puppet. He now has a lovely pelt of blue fur as you can see here:

And that's the last time you'll see the little fella for a while as to flash his finished features would be [SPOILERS]. I can tell you, however, that getting the fur on his blue bonce was a brainscratcher for sure. In the end I just kept on sewing, even when I thought it wouldn't work, that and the judicious use of a pin or two here and there got me through. Anyway a seamster's work is never done, after his [SPOILER] face is finalised I have his supporting puppets to stitch - so that's your lot for this week...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

I Am The Night!

Welcome back, fellow bloggers and Acting Fans, yep, it’s Wednesday again and it’s time for another blog post update. So let’s get down to it!

As we said in last Fridays blog post, we went out on Sunday night to do some test shots for the light levels at nights effect on the camera, and on our lead character costumes (as they are mainly all black) we did in fact have a very successful shoot. We filmed in a couple of the locations that we are going to use and found a couple more on our travels. We even managed to get some of the shots blocked and storyboarded in stills (Yep, we actually remembered that we can also take photos), we also got in a test for a long tracking shot I have an idea for but that’s definitely going to need a bit more work. There was one thing that we did forget to do though and that was write down the different ISO settings that we used on some of the shots. This indicates the sensitivity of the image sensor to the light let into the camera through the lens.

With this in mind, after we looked over the shots, I once again ventured out into the night last night armed with the camera AND pen and paper to find out what is the best ISO to use and I got it, yay!!! Me, myself and Chris also had a small shopping trip too earlier in the day yesterday to find and pick up a few of the much need things to finish off some of the additional props for this episode - about which I'm sorry that we cannot talk about just yet. Ooh, go on then! Yep, it is to finish off some additional puppets and another of the gangs. So it has been an very eventfully week so far and, well, I think that’s about it for now so I’m guessing I’ll see you Friday then.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

It's pronounced FrankenSTEEN!

Hello, Acting fans, welcome to Friday's belated Blog! Nothing much has changed since midweek, except I have been working on my mastery of puppets. I took the opportunity of my Thursday off work to get on with the construction of the puppet we need for episode 6. Having experimented and mocked up his basic shape using foam and tights, it was time to pull him together a bit and sew his core body together. Yes, yesterday I had my seamstress hat on...er, I mean...seamster? Anyway, whatever the correct terminology I used my rudimentary sewing skills to get the puppet from this:

To THIS:

So now our mystery puppet no longer has his guts spilling out and (though it's hard to tell it's only balanced on there in the prior picture) his head is now properly attached to his body. Next phase is to give him some fur skin and features - he's metaphorically and actually coming together.
In the meantime Vern & I press on with arranging the next shoot (weather permitting). Fings crossed, Internet Chums, see you on the other side of the weekend...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh