Well, hello again, Acting Fans - it's blog Friday and we start today with a bit of Bad News. During the sorting of Wednesdays footage, something went awry with Vern's PC. Whilst sorting through shots strange bitmapping and mouse arrow trails occurred before a sudden total shutdown. Fortunately no footage was lost but, after getting a bit of expert help, it turns out that his 8-year-old 80GB hard disk had given up the ghost (in the Machine), it spins up no more, it is an Ex-Drive, it spins with the choirs celestial.
Vern's a good soldier though and wasn't about to let total disaster stop us, so he decided to stick to this week's shooting schedule. After a bit of a think I realised my old laptop might come in handy and it did. Although we couldn't review the footage on it due to the outdated OS, the computer allowed us to transfer it to my flash drive to get it home to the Editing Suite (AKA me bedroom). It has put us a little behind on the reviewing of the rushes but we have still managed to get most of the first episode filmed with todays shoot. Praise Shatner! Today's shoot was once again back at H&H HQ AKA Vern's Flat and was, for the most part, Vern-centric. Though there was some call for my appearance, full costume wasn't required. Yep, I didn't even need my pants on for my segments. Er, I mean I didn't need my ACTING pants on, of course. I was wearing trousers, honest. After wrapping the interior shots we broke for lunch. Having refueled we returned to the flat for the final exterior shots for Episode 1. Before shooting outside we remembered there was a single pick-up shot we needed of the interior first. Then that was that job done. Next week we'll be getting down to editing the episode and it'll be 2 down, 4 to go! Woo!
Fings crossed Acting Fans the series could be here sooner than you think, stay tuned and...
Hello, Acting Fans, and welcome back, boy, do we have some news to report this week. And not just our usual stuff lately of hang-on-we've-got-stuff-in-the-works-going-on. What is it I hear you cry? Well, me and my Acting-Buddy-&-Co-Star Chris had an all planned out shoot for today. We were going to film a major part of the third episode (why the third? And why aren’t we filming the second next? More on these question much later on, i.e. not on this blog entry, mate. No, I'm not calling you a moron!) But, yep, as you may have guessed by the world “were” it didn't go quite according to plan - so what we went wrong? Well, todays attempt at a shoot went something like this:
Not exactly like that, obviously, as no zeppelins or hydrogen were involved (being a Lo-to-No Budget series we can't afford them) it was however like the above in that we had a major technological breakdown! The camera, after being used many times in the previous shoots and working fine, stopped working. In the later stage of the Pilot shoot we had had a few glitches in the footage but it seemed there was a chance that judicious use of a head-cleaning tape would stop the problem. Unfortunately now the heads appear to not be working right at all, the video camera doesn’t want to play back anything we film, although testing the tapes in our back-up camcorder revealed it was actually recording but just heavily corrupted footage. (Man, we just have all the luck, don’t we?) But, hurrah, some good news not all was lost from the shoot we did go out (with our trusty backup Emergency Camera, AKA Chris's Dad's Camcorder) and hung around the Calder Royal Hospital to get some stock footage of an ambulance for the Episode [SPOILERS] later on in the series. As we chased ambulances by not moving we ran through the lines for the episode that we were originally going to film today. Only to then almost miss our cue while doing so, when mid-flow a sirens-and-all ambulance showed up but luckily, thanks to my quick reactions (and the camcorder booting up just-in-time to catch it before it passed us), we got it the can. Groovy. We returned with our prize, and a little additional improvised outdoor stock footage, back to Chez Vern for a cool drink and a final line run - the dialogue's shaping up pretty well. Now we take stock and, yes, plan some more (always with the planning) what to do.
Until next time, which is Friday in case you don’t know,
