The Long Way Round

Hello, Acting Fans, fellow bloggers and people of the Internet. It's Friday, time for me to insert my ramblings in your eyeballs. What did we discuss at our Wednesday meet up? Well, as we usually do, we went the looooooooooooooooooooong way around (but this blog wont, so don't panic).

Okay, so at first we had a talk about the up and coming H&H Actor's Log vlog where and how we are going to film it. As we need a plain white sky (something we are getting a load of at the moment) with none of those pesky building, we need some fake desolation, after some back and forth we thought of going back high up on a hillside to where we filmed an H&H episode but, after a bit more thinking about it, we weren't sure it would be such a good idea as the wind might well be a factor. A Bad factor. Well, it is rather rough up in the wilds, if the weather turns and the wind picks up, and if the wind picks up the camera mic picks it up and we sound really bad on camera, if you can hear us at all. So instead we settled on Manor Heath Park, which means I have a wee camera test to do but I had to bit of research for it too, which involved me watching one of my favourite films again (and, no, not 'Big Trouble In Little China' again) to see if we could match up the sky and snap some screen grabs for Chris to see what scenes we need to use to splice into the Vlog.

Now comes the fun bit we went off on a wild tangent about films and how they are shot and filmed now and then (yes, regular blog readers, it was a bit of a continuation of our last film chat)to Hong Kong and Japanese cinema and then skidded off sideways into the history of swordfighting, how it has usually come to be depicted in film and how if someone did an actually really well shot fight that abandoned most of the movie cliches on screen how cool it would be. Now I bet you are all wondering where this is going and how it is going to lead in H&H? Well we got on to some historically recorded behaviour of swordsmen meeting on the battle field who were equals and how their behaviour towards each other wasn't quite like the movies would have it but to say any more in detail would be [SPOILERS] because, yes, after a bit of laughing about it we realised it would make a funny sketch, but at first it wasn't H&H. Luckily after a brainwave on my part, I thought of a way to make it work.

HUZZAH! Inspiration!

Now you are wondering how could this work, well, obviously I can't tell you all about because then you wouldn't have to watch would you? But it's good that you're curious, so stay tuned and you might just find out. You'll just have to trust me when I say it will be one of the Vlogs for the New Year. (Cripes, nearly that time already!) This means as it stands we now have 7 video ideas for next year already. Wow! We are getting good at this, it's almost like we've had some practice or something! Some do need to be finished, fully fleshed out and and written but, hey, the ideas are there, 7 is most definitely better than none, and written down wait and ready to go!

Well, that's all for now see you in the Future.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

Fine Tuning

Welcome, Acting Fans, fellow bloggers and people of the world's Internet. It's Friday once again it's my turn so, first thing first, an apology! Sorry for no bloggy blogging on Wednesday as Chris had a staff meeting at work late afternoon/early evening after doing his normal working shift pattern for the day but we did get to squeeze a meet-up in before the meeting, so go easy on him.

Not quite what Chris looked like on the day but close!

Okay, so what was the meeting about? What did we get to talk about at our squeezed in meeting? Ok, ok, ok, sit right there and I shall tell you all about it. For once we got straight down to it, no talking about other films, (mainly because we didn't have a load of time with Chris's staff meeting looming) we planned out some more for this months Vlog. Which hopefully should be filmed very soon, also we sorted out some more stuff to do with next months vlog - mainly going over a few of the jokes and fine tuning them - as both of them are written down and almost ready to go. It's very rare that the first draft is ever filmed by us these days, they often go through a few mutations (sometimes even on the actual days of shooting themselves, with us not always sticking to it on the day). Plus this time we've not got too many props to get together, well, at least one of them we already own, luckily.

Which then lead us on to the planning of the Christmas Vlog (not long now, about 12 week away in fact, eek!)! Yes, even we have started to plan for our Christmas fun! Before that though we have Halloween coming up and, well, we've managed an Halloween special over the last couple of years, so we got on talking about that (after all it would be a shame to drop the ball on the third year when third time's the charm) and at this moment we are... well, rather a bit stuck on what to do this year. So, er, if anyone has any ideas send them to us via our Facebook page and/or twitter lol teehee...

Alrighty then, that's all for now folks...See you in the Future

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

One Vision!

Yes, Acting Fans, it's true! The H&H Production team has at last managed to swim the tides of time and actually get ourselves together for a meeting! At last, after our unintended hiatus, we are taking our first tentative steps (still keeping our eyes out for job- and life-type obstacles) towards getting the whole production into an upward swing.
Yesterday Vern and I managed to get together in the afternoon for a chinwag, having a bit of back and forth on how we should proceed with the shooting schedule. We'd both prefer to start as soon as possible with a view to getting episode 6 finished before the Summer and before Vern starts his new job proper. Then, with that out of the way, we can look at getting some short skits put together which will play out until we have Series 2 bashed out and ready to get going. Yes, I'm afraid we don't plan on stopping.

Goodbye, Old Friend

 Another thing that came up at the meeting was that both of us had noticed that the enforced change over from old school Youtube to the new 'One Channel' format was 7 days away. Now we didn't have any issues with the old layout, in fact we were both pretty chuffed with it in the end, but as Vern put it we can only be so Retro being the analogue age boys we are, so we'd really hung on to the old fella as long as we could and ought to make the effort to get it done before it was thrust upon us. That was my task yesterday which would have been a darn sight easier if, instead of scouring the 'net to find a resizer that would make our banner image the correct (and frankly MAHOOOSIVE) size of 2120 x 1192. Yep, all that hunting around - when I had a perfectly good freeware photo manipulation app right on my Mac (Gimp, in case you were wondering), staring right at me from the Dock at the bottom of my desktop too! D'oh, did i feel like a Gimp? Yes, yes I did. Anyhow, I got it done so now you can gaze lovingly upon our new look, BEHOLD!

Feel free to 'Oooh!' & 'Ahhh!'

And if you asked me, yes, I'd have to admit personally I feel it looks a bit blander without a wallpaper background option but I think the banner fares well across the multiple platform formats as seen on the preview option:

Especially on the TV format. Mmm, nice!

With that business out of the way, that's it for this week, Internet Chums, feel free to peruse a video or two on our new look channel to tide yourselves over until Episode 6. A fresh look for a new start, you might say. See you on the other side of the weekend!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

 

Chin Wagging

Hello, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, yes, it’s Wednesday again (whoa, they're coming around fast). Right let's get on with this. What have we been doing? Well this week we're up to something besides the usual planning and preparation, we'll be getting in touch with folk about helping us out.

To whom have we got in touch with? I hear ask (and I do indeed hear you, my ears are that good). ACTORS, of course! Not just any actors, though. Actually the Studio Group Actors at the Workshop where I was in fact once a member many years ago. The place where I learned some of my craft. We are not only actor-hunting, though, we are seeking a meeting as we could also do with use of their building for the some of upcoming scenes.

We are to meet them Thursday afternoon to see, hopefully, when will be the best time to use the building. Fingers crossed and as to the rest of what’s happening we're still on with the planning and find materials for the props and puppets that we need to make. As well as a few more people to get in touch with about sorting things out for the upcoming shoots.

But that's for another blog and another time!!

So it’s Goodnight from him and it’s Goodnight from me.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt