To The Victor, The Spoils!

Welcome to the weekend, Acting Fans, it's time for another H&H end-of week- sign off post. Now let me tell you, we haven't been resting on our laurels basking in the glory that is our brand spanking new Youtube Channel Trailer, no, sir! Though the weather was against us for filming on Thursday, Vern & I braved the wet and not particularly wild to go on a bit of location scouting for the Halloween Special. Our first port of call an abandoned factory mill on the other side of the Dean Clough complex and, as those of you who may recall other scouting missions led by myself, yes, I took us what was actually the longest way round. Again. Sorry, Vern. On the way another potential exterior caught our eye:

Mmm, rocky...

We then continued on to the mill and, thanks to a handy bit of prior fence vandalism (not by us I hasten to add), we were able to make our way onto the factory grounds.

With Vern for scale

Unfortunately, though it would make an ideal setting for a 'Last Of Us' fan film as Vern said with a scheming look in his eyes, it was a little too far out and, frankly, a bit unsafe for the admittedly-minor-but-still-a-stunt stunt we have in mind for the sequence we were planning here. That IS the point of Scouting a Location though, figuring out suitability and viability. Having decided that we headed back to H&H HQ. The short way this time, where we happened across another potential spot for the close-up shots in the sequence, which Vern modeled in this test photograph.

Laaadies.

The spot documented, we continued on our merry way ducking into the Dean Clough complex itself for a nosey as we wandered back. Where we passed a familiar location. A dilapidated but still in use building that featured in one of our Series 1 'Previously' segments. No pictures here I'm afraid, as they might be [SPOILERS]. Let's just say we found a way to do our admittedly-minor-but-still-a-stunt stunt with an exponentially smaller risk to m'colleagues life and limb than a t'other mill. 
We also got into an odd and rather fascinating conversation with two of the Dean Clough maintenance men who work out of that building. Tall tales of the plethora of wild life and the numerous (& rather bold) criminal activities that have taken place at Dean Clough. Who knew? Well, those guys, obviously. After politely parting ways we found another couple of potential exteriors as we headed back into town.

Mmm, dynamic angle...

Everything location-wise pretty much sorted, it was time to hit H&H HQ again for a refreshing cuppa. Making sure to take copious notes too, so we don't forget what we need to do next. First of which was a bit of Prop hunting so, cuppaly refreshed, I set off on a pound shop trawl.
Now I got lucky with the first couple of items I wanted, thanks to a quick trip to Huddersfield. But thar be [SPOILERS]. Sadly, despite it being 'Talk Like A Pirate' Day I returned home lacking a particular bit of Booty. Good job I don't give up so easily. Today I did a discount shop hunt a little closer to home and found exactly what we needed, thanks to The Range:

TREASURE, ME HEARTIES!!!

Now all we need is, well, everything else we have to get together for the shoot. No rest for the Wicked. Wicked Cool, that is.

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Promises, Promises

Welcome back, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, yep, it's time again for your first dose of the H&H blog this week. Let me get down to it. We have indeed been busy busy this week, as we said we would last week, we got into the editing of the Summer Special and, well, we have done just that.

Me, myself and Chris locked ourselves up in H&H HQ 2 to do it yesterday (Tuesday 27th August) and I can report the Final Cut is done (well, apart from two voiceovers which Chris is going sort out) but all of the main body of the episode has been done and finalised. And I must say it has come out rather funny indeed, if I say so myself - as I usually do but, dammit, I mean it! This time we have been quite ruthless with some of the cuts and editing because, after all, some of the things you write don't always work out on the screen and after it is filmed they just don't seem to fit in the natural flow of things.
We got done pretty quick too and for that I really have to thank Chris for taking his Bank Holiday Monday to get right into the prep of the rushes. Stripping off the "Actions" and "Cuts", sifting out the odd Outtake and chopping the selected footage up into handily-labelled, nice, edit-sized chunks. Fuelled by a lunch of exotic finger food and plenty of tea we got done, not too long after eating it.

So now we have got a complete special and as to when it is coming your way, you may wonder, 'When can we see it?'. Well, all I can, and will, say is soon, maybe even quite soon. Well, that's all of the update for today come back on Friday for more.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Staying Out For The Summer

Welcome back, Acting Fans, Vernon Harcourt here with Wednesday's late-breaking blog post. I am pleased to say the reason for delay is that we have been back filming AGAIN!

Yep, that's right, folks! Once again we have gotten behind, and in front of, the camera and been out filming the Summer Special. In fact we have been doing it today! We managed to get together with our Special Guest co-star in the form of Logan Darkholme, esq. (yes, yes, it's his real name - we've been over this already).

Esteemed (cheap) Special Guest Co-star, Logan Darkholme

We went down to very white-ish room to film the main bulk of the Summer Special, secured with the help of our friend, sometime cameraman, location manager, Keymaster, comic book shop proprietor, erotonaut and upstanding pillar of the community (who by now should probably be getting a producer credit), Mr. Simon Shaw. And, well, it did go very well. After a few small, minor hiccups that is. Such as us finding some furniture and a few chairs (well something, anything, for me and Chris to sit on) we even had to ask our good buddy if we could borrow a few things from his shop, well, off his counter top, to fill out the Mystery Supporting Person's desk.

It's the MSP!

 And we may have forgotten a couple of Props but 'Ssh!' - no one need ever know which ones they were! Of course, I'm not going to tell either, tee hee!

Now, with the main bulk of the whole thing in the can, we are just two cutaways away from finishing shooting. I now have the task of going over the rushes to see which are the best takes to use. Now, if you'll excuse me there are a few to go over, 57 shots in fact are the total we took today (Hey! Now that's quite a lot for a Low-to-No Budget production). Apart from a few which we can't use either because they are outtakes or the line delivery is better on another take, most of them are looking pretty good. So I guess I'd best get on with it!

So that's it for now, see you all on Friday!

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Taking Steps

Welcome to the Weekend, Acting Fans, and to the second of your semiweekly shots of H&H goodness! It's been 'Go!' at H&H productions this week, even after our weekend experimental shoot and the readthrough. the momentum seems to be continuing when it comes to the production of our Summer Special. Yes, this Wednesday Vern and I met up at his flat, along with our sometime collaborators in Crimes Against Acting - Jake & Hardy, to get on with filming the final shots of our upcoming escapade. Once gathered, our merry band headed not-too-far from H&H Productions HQ (yes, still Vern's shared abode) just over the road and along a bit to the Halifax Elim Pentecostal Church:

Bleh! (Architecturally speaking, sure the people inside are lovely)

As I'm sure you'll agree, as terrible a monstrosity of 60s/70s architecture as you are likely to find and therefore ideal for the needs of Myself and my Colossally Talented Acting Chum when it comes to the Summer Special setting for this particular sequence. Once set up it wasn't long (once we'd swotted up on a line or two) until we got through some nice takes of the sequence and with them in the can were once again on our way back to H&H HQ. Job well done. It just remains for us to get the main body of the special filmed, get the whole shebang edited and Bob's your Uncle* - job done! Fings crossed, Internet Chums, we're on our way!

That's pretty much it this week but, if I may, I'd like to end with a polite request for assistance. Unfortunately one of our Co-Stars is Missing!

MISSING: Muta

This young fellow, Verns flatmates' house cat (and our occasional hindrance/co-star), is missing. He answers to the name 'Muta' is 1 year old, microchipped, neutered and is an indoor cat. He went missing in Halifax town centre this Thursday morning (08/08/2013). If any Halifax-based Acting Fans could keep their eyes peeled and, if you spot him, get in touch we would all greatly appreciate it.

On that rather solemn note I'm afraid I must take my leave but stay tuned next week for more doings and please keep your fingers crossed for the cat in question, thank you and...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Saturday's Alright (& Tuesday Went Well Too!)

Well, hello there, Acting Fans and felow bloggers, welcome back to this the H&H blog for your usual Wednesday post. Let me tell you what have we been up to then over this week so far. Just sit tight right there and I'll tell you - that is if you keep reading, it IS a blog after all. Use your eyes!

Ok, Internet Chums so last Saturday we did indeed manage to get ourselves up to Manor Heath Park to do the experimental bit of filming and it was a sunny, shining success. It turned out we didn't end up going into the Jungle Experience to do it, nope, we filmed at a nice spot we found out in the Walled Garden area up there. We did sneak a peak at the Jungle Experience facilities but, well, while it might have had some nice exotic plants, it didn't look right. The 'Greenhouse' look of it seemed like it would be too hard to hide in the shots and we might not have been able to get as up close and personal with the Flora as we needed to, so we layed down on the grass in our ideal chosen spot, got out the [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and went to work, and I must say having now reviewed the rushes that it does indeed look very good and should be funny. (Plus we saved TWO WHOLE POUNDS not going in, hey, every little bit helps on a Low-to-No Budget!)

Ooh, there's more............Yes, we have been busy!

Yesterday (Tuesday 6th August, 2013) Me, Chris and our good buddy Logan Darkholme (yes, that really is his name...legally) met up for a read through of the Summer Special script as we have found this is always good to iron out any problems with the script and change any lines that might not work or flow naturally the way we first wrote them (it does happen). It was a roaring success too, we laughed through it too, well I did - I'll have to put a lid on it for the shoot which won't be easy, it's pretty funny if I say so myself. All in all I am very pleased with how this script is turning out. You know it could be our best Special yet......could be. Though the other two out of three ain't bad!

Well, that's you lot for now we have now things to doing during the week but I leave that for Friday.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Life Finds A Way

Salutations, Acting Fans! It's the weekend and this one myself & my partner-in-crimes-against-acting will once again be on H&H productions duty. Yes, we're heading out on something of an experimental bit of shooting at Manor Heath Park tomorrow, now we know what times it's open of course.
Before then, however, I had dispatched Vern on a mission today with a very specific target and the old Colossal Acting Talent himself did not disappoint after scouring the various shops of Halifax he came up with this:

Jurass is MINE!

Yes, after being let down by all the pound shops and their ilk in the roundabout area, he managed to snaffle these from the Borough Market. Shop Locally, it is then. Excellent. Now whatever shall we do with them? Well now, that would be telling!

Stay tuned next week to see if our little experiment comes off okay, that's all for now, folks, so...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

The Call To ACTION!

It's the weekend, folks of the Internet, and time once again for your second weekly update on the goings-on at H&H Productions. Well, I can confirm that my approach to the management of the establishment we need for tonight's shoot (done just before my night at the theatre, dahlings) was a complete success. We got permission to do our filming almost before I'd got the full question out, I'm not complaining that means it's a Go - ACTION STATIONS!

Thanks to some assistance from our friend (and proprietor of local comic book shop, Legacy Comics!) Has lent himself to us for the evening so Vern & I can concentrate on getting our H&H on. Yes, we'll be braving the summer heat in our rather toasty costumes but it's a minor bit of suffering for our Art. All Fings crossed by the end of this evening we'll have the footage we need for the intro to the Summer Special, then all we have to do is film, well, the entirety of the rest of it. At this rate it might even be done THIS Summer ;-) !

That's where I'll be leaving you this week, Acting Fans, we've got to get everybody and the stuff together before we blow this scene. You'll have to find out how it went next week. Until then have a grand weekend yourselves and...

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Black To Black

Welcome back, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, yep, it's Friday and it's blog time again and this week we have actually done something practical relating to H&H. Yep, I know, a shocker compared to our recent posts! ;-) We met up for a second time this week to go out and do a test of one of the moving shots I have conceived of for Episode 6. It's a shot sequence that will start at black move across the gangs then back to black. For our start and end in black we used a fairly heavy grade black card that Chris already had (Low-to-No budget, remember) which he would hold while I filmed with our camera. It took a bit of practice, and will probably need a bit more too, but it worked. We tried a number of different ways and what seemed to work best was if the card was held in a curve so that it also 'hooded' the camera, stopping light reflecting from the surface of the card itself and creating a darker black in front of the camera. We will hopefully be using this technique to show intercut shots all of the acting 'gangs' in what will appear to be a continuous shot.

If we can get this shot right, it will lend a very movie look like. We also talked further about the shooting schedule and the difficulties of it, especially due to the summer nights getting darker so late it might just take a bit longer than we thought. Taking this weekend in particular we were hoping to get a short 'gang' sequence done but the lateness of the hour has put off the majority of the folks we were hoping to get together for it and, unfortunately, we can't do it without them. This has led us back to thinking about widening our reach for additional cast so we may be looking wider than our immediate circle of friends and family to get the extra bodies we need - time to get begging to those drama course students! We still do have some other things to sort out for the episode to keep busy on, but don't panic, Actings Fans, progress is looking like it might slow again but we will get there with this episode!

Well that's all for now,

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Back In The Saddle!

Welcome back fellow bloggers and acting fans yep it’s Friday an well you know the drill by now, so what happened? As you well know we said in Wednesdays blog we intended filming outdoors last night (Thursday 2nd May, mark it in your diaries as an Historic Event, folks) and, yep, we did! Oh yeah, H&H are truly back in the saddle!

Yes, we actually did some filming - it was only a few scenes, all scenes where it only required the two of us, like our opening scene of the episode and couple of the other scenes where it was just me and Chris. And in true H&H style some extra lines might just have been added in on set, you can’t help ad lib every now and then - mix things up a bit. Well, it always works for Robert Downey, Jr., dammit!

We even turned into lighting directors for the night, using different light sources to get the right effect. Though our lighting rig consisted of the ambient street lights, a mobile phone flash and a pair of lava lamps (not necessarily at the same time, the lava lamps power cords aren't that long for a start). Well, we are a Low-to-No budget feature so we have to do these things ourselves with what we have to hand.

Sneak Peek

We were going to do some of the many running shots but, alas, it became too late as we really needed to see and review the footage from the shoot before Chris had to scoot on the last bus. Plus I wasn’t wearing the right foot wear for the running shots; I was all very Peter Cushing on set. Yup, Slippers. What can I say, never sacrifice comfort for speed.

Well, that’s it for H&H fans you all have a good weekend and we’ll see in the future.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Foiled/Wrapped

Welcome back, fellow bloggers and Acting Fans, to our regular Wednesday blog post. Let me tell you what has been happening since last we wrote. Well a hell of a lot indeed as it turns out! Once again Chris was sent out on another night trip as 2nd unit director to get some stock footage, this time all the way to Leeds! We wanted some shots of the Big Wheel in Leeds city centre for the opening of the last episode of Series 1. He first tried on Sunday evening but this led to another lesson for my travelling colleague - check the venue you want to film is open BEFORE setting off! He arrived to find the wheel in darkness - foiled! Still it didn't cost him anything and, after making sure through the power of the internet that it was indeed in full swing (or maybe rotate, I guess), Monday's second attempt went pretty smoothly.

Wheel of Morality turn, turn, turn...

So don’t worry, we are still getting on with the series finale and we will be starting to film the main bulk of it very soon in fact. We've just got a few last bits of planning to do, a puppet to build and those warm bodies to herd. We are planning another readthrough but with a couple of other cast member so we can get a better flow of it and maybe punch some scenes up a little.
I say 'Don't worry' because as some of you might remember we have we been doing a little something else, that TOP SECRET thing I have been on about. Well, I can tell you now it has been filmed AND finished - it's a wrap! In fact you could say it’s been FOIL wrapped and it will be appearing soon soon for you all to see - that's as much of a clue as I'm going to give you. Maybe you might see it in a few weeks or so even, yep, that’s right it could be up that soon!
We are in fact getting very good at all of this editing lark and we got it all done in record time and it’s, well, really rather good if I do say so myself. I would like to tell you more like that it is in fact an [TEXT REMOVED] and it’s going to feature [TEXT REMOVED] with what might be seen as a SLIGHT overreaction, so now you understand then or don't, teehee!

Well, it’s goodnight from him and it’s goodnight from me.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

The Night Tripper

It's the midweek once again, Acting Fans, Time marches on yomping right into, well, March already! Time for a bit of an update on what's what at H&H HQ. As I type it's another misty morning in the Calder Valley, though fortunately no signs so far of the revenant, malevolent spirits of the long dead returning for revenge. Though much like the tension building scenes of a Horror film we (Vern & I) are experiencing an eerie silence, yes we're still yet to receive even an acknowledging 'Thanks but no thanks' from any of the dramatic organisations we've dropped a line to. Ah, well - It's looking more likely that our TOP SECRET EMERGENCY PLAN may have to be dusted off.
In the meantime we have got a little more establishing footage established. After our night shoot last week I had my thinking cap on with regards to figuring out where we might be able to get a more elevated shot of a train or two on the tracks. Over the weekend it came to me - BRADFORD (Oddly enough it was a trip to Leeds that triggered it)! I remembered that the layout of the Bradford Interchange is such that a viaduct road crosses above the tracks and that might be a possible point to set up the shot. After a quick Google Map check I ran the idea by Vern and we decided it was on.
Question was: how to get there? Answer: Pass! More specifically my Metro Pass. Neither Vern or I drive but since I worked in Bradford I've maintained my Rail Zone 2-to-5 Bus & train pass, so I can pop down the line pretty much any time it takes my fancy. I thought I'd let Vern off the hook and be a one-man second unit team this time but rather than lug our Lumix FZ150 I thought I'd experiment with borrowing the Family camera, a Lumix TZ18 (it's a fair do Mum & Dad borrowed my digital camera for ages before they got it). We'd actually already had the camera along on a shoot for a test with the idea of using it as a second camera angle but the only setting we could find that shot roughly 16:9 was the HD setting which, on the 8GB memory card we had, only gave us about 8 minutes. Not great for shooting scenes but no problem when it came down to the shots we wanted now.

Mmm, compact.

Monday after work I picked up the tripod from Vern and was good to go, which I did that very evening. I had however made a schoolboy error:

 Yep, I forgot to check the battery AND to bring a spare! But:

It was a fraught moment as, set up on the overpass, I pushed the record button and crossed all my fingers as the train slowly pulled in below and the power indicator insistently flashed at me. I got it. Then I saw another trains approaching and set to recording again and...it died. It was a fraught trip home as I worried whether the first shot had recorded properly or not but, when I plugged the camera in, there it was:

Phew, indeed. Pretty much exactly what we wanted. That's it so far this week, Acting Fans, but the week isn't over yet. We have some shenanigans planned for tomorrow but, shhh, that's a bit secret! More on Friday, stay tuned!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

Adventure Time

C'mon grab your friends, We'll go to very distant lands (alright, somewhere in Halifax),
With Vern the Dude & Chris the Human, The Fun will never end!

Greetings, Acting Fans, it's Friday update time once again and...I don't quite know how to put this...well, we've only gone and actually done something!

Yes, It's true! Flabber your Gast! Not only did we get the shooting wrapped for the next 'Behind The Acting' as Vern mentioned on Wedneseday we did indeed get up to some Second Unit Shenanigans last night. Fearless of the wind-chill factor, we hung out on the platform of Halifax Station to catch some nice establishing shots.

That, however, is not all. We had hoped to find a sort of elevated vantage point for some shots of the tracks. We didn't find one. What we did find instead was some potentially brilliant locations to shoot. We only had to wander a little off the beaten path to find some spots of Halifax that we had never seen before and it all started here:

Mystery Bridge? Why not? After you...

"Follow me" "Okay."

The Gate

So keep 'em peeled while watching upcoming episodes of H&H, Acting fans, the sharper-eyed among you might be able to spot the locations.
As we got further from the Station and, as it turned out, lower rather than higher, we decided to postpone the elevated shot of the tracks for a trip to a local landmark Wainhouse Tower to take some shots of it in all it's glory by night. Once we shot the tower we took the scenic route back to King Cross to check out the usefulness of Savile Park for some scenes and it's looking promising as long as we can get some additional bodies up there with us. That was it for this week, Acting Fans, apart from the fact that today IS the First of March and we don't want to leave you empty-handed at the start of a new month - so here's the next episode of 'Behind The Acting' to tide you over!

That's All (for now), Folks!

TTFN

Christopher Haigh

This Is The Place

Welcome back Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, its Friday and also blog time again! The further happenings this week? Well we had our meeting at the Actors Workshop on Thursday afternoon and it went well and, folks, it's looking like we got the result that we wanted!

YES!!!! We can use the actor’s workshop for some of the scenes in the last episode of Series 1 (though it will most likely be a Sunday, we'll take any day we can get in there) and they’re going to have a word with some of the actors there for us to help out too. Everything is starting (be it very slowly) to come together, and I do so like that. The whole 'Plan coming together'.

A Room! Who cares about the view!?

We also decided to kill two birds with one stone (figuratively speaking) as we remembered another friend who is involved with a few amateur dramatics organisations, so we went down to have a chat with her too. She kindly lent us her Facebook wall to put the call out to people she knows. Megan, the lady in question, is also going to pass the message on and we might even be able to source some of the costuming from her associated groups too. Fingers crossed.  It’s good to have friends in theatre and in with other actors.

Oh, and I almost forgot too Today is my fellow actor/Co-creator Christopher Haigh’s Birthday! So join me in wishing him a Happy Birthday. Or as I nice gift to him maybe watch and share the first series of H&H!!!



Well that’s all for now folks so it goodnight from him and it’s goodnight from me,

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Previously on Harcourt & Haigh...

Welcome back, Acting Fans and Fellow Bloggers, and a belated Happy New Year to you all - are you ready for more Harcourt & Haigh shenanigans?

 First of all a, for those of you who came in late (& a reminder for those with poor memory skills), we are H&H Productions the producers of 'Harcourt & Haigh: Actors at Large', a web-based free-to-air comedy show on YouTube. We consist of Vernon Harcourt & Christopher Haigh the West Yorkshire based Actors/Writers/Whatevers and the brains, bodies and other associated limbs behind the series. This is our production blog on the progress of the series thus far. We are also have a fan page on Facebook and a Tumblr page as well.

Chris and I both write, star, film and edit the episodes, we are a Low-to-No budget production. We've managed to recruit a small rotating crew that help us out (Thanks, you guys!) as and when they are able to. So far we have 5 episodes live at this very moment on our YouTube channel. There are also a few trailers we have shot for the series up there (a couple of which are short skits themselves) and a pilot episode (you can see the joins a bit), there is a link on this Blog (just below, in fact) to Series 1 so far so feel free click (and catch up if you're not already exposed to our felonious thespians). I do hope you enjoy the series as much as we have enjoyed making it.
Filming itself is on hiatus right now, that is we're taking a pause to marshal our forces (we need plenty of bodies for the series 1 finale) and also because the winter weather has moved in and has made it a little too inclement to shoot outdoors. Expect regular updates on our behind the scenes progress.



Oh, and as we don’t want to leave the YouTube channel without something new going up during filming hiatus, we have a welcome back present video to post this Weekend - so  tune in to see what it is this Friday!

Until then it’s good bye from him and goodbye from me,

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

Can The Can

Welcome back, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, once again to the Friday blog post! While I catch my breath after this weeks whistle-stop schedule let me tell you what’s happened down here at the H&H HQ productions. Well, nothing much, really, only that we have...WRAPPED ON FILMING FOR 2012!
While it feels kind of sad to talk about it, yes, we have finished filming everything for the fifth episode of Series 1, and just in time too as the weather is starting to turn.

Ready to be cut to the bone - TO THE BONE!

We spent the past two days, this Wednesday & Thursday, filming all the remaining scenes back-to-back and, believe me, there were LOADS of shots - we filmed, well, I think it was about 8 scenes in total which, trust me, is a lot to film in two days (AND a couple of Exterior shot pickups that we forgot too). All of them were not without quite a few problems, never mind the costume changes too! Yes, folks, it was indeed a busy two-day shoot but, in true H&H-style, we got it all in the can, even making a few changes last minute on set to some of the scenes due to restrictions on the people availability front (good, and more importantly FREE, Extras are hard to find it turns out). We got it to work though because we are that good at working around the little problems that pop up with filming for a Low-to-No budget series.

So, I bet your wondering when you can see this looong overdue Episode Five of 'H&H:AaL'. Well, me and Chris are going to lock ourselves in the editing room next week and we are not going to be coming out until we have the episode done, or one or both of us have died in the attempt (Well, maybe for a cuppa and some food - nobody's dying on an empty stomach, not on my watch!). Two men enter, one fully edited episode leaves!

The episode will be done and up from a week today (Fings Crossed). Well, that’s it for now I’ve told you everything that needed to be told so, until the next time, keep the home fires burning and...

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

Back To The Flat!

A warm Wednesday welcome, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, to this midweek blog post. Here's the happenings at H&H Productions since the narrowly prevented script leak last week. Well, luckily enough, I don’t think anything good has been spoiled or leaked too much from the script. Which is good!

At the start of this week, on Monday in fact, we started on filming the first of the flat interior scenes for the next episode, thanks to Chris's and my flatmates free time not clashing for once - at last! It turned out I, for quite some time of the shoot, was faced down in a pizza (Don’t worry - all will be become clear soon). We had quite a lot of shots scheduled for Monday and we didn’t quite get them all done but we did get the two sequences of the first scene completed (which is good for us, especially as one of them took a while to set up, too). That one (the long set-up) was where Chris spent quite some time of the shoot but I can’t tell you any more about it as it will be [SPOILERS] (Aren’t I just bad? Tee hee). This meant a bit of re-scheduling with the last two shots now being set to get done at a later date. (This a BIG episode guys - for a Low-to-No Budget webseries).

Now today we are off out to do even more shooting this time in a location that we have never used to before - that's right, folks, somewhere brand spanking new to H&H! More on that on Friday I think, I mean I’ve got to keep on making you come on back now, haven't I?
So that's all for now, folks, as always keep them home fires burning and...

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt

 

We'll Take The Fifth

Welcome back, Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, to this this Wednesday post, so what has been happening since my Birthday last week, well -  I survived the night of the celebration of my birthday! It was an hard night but someone had to do it. Only I was up to the task, which I met head on and, only occasionally, face first.

There we go.

Me and my fellow colleague haven been hard at work this week, on Tuesday we had a runthrough of the script to makes sure that all of the lines read right. I had also managed to get in touch with the Elsie Whitely Centre to find out if we would able to use them as a location and we could but, well, we could but at a PRICE (£20 quid per hour, the standard rate they hire out conference rooms for) and for the amount of time we need it for (Which is about a half hour, if that, as it is just one or two shots) we were, well, rather shocked - so that won’t be happening. Perhaps the bloke for Elsie Whitley's didn't quite grasp it when I told him we were Low-to-No Budget and I mean REALLY Low-to-No budget ('No' being the apt word), we are either going to have to find another location, or drop the scene. Which we don’t want to do if we can help it, I'm sure between me and Chris we can figure something out though. We also did a final check on some of the locations and popped by to confirm the dates and times we would be showing up at, and today? Well, today we were out filming a load of the exterior shots of episode 5.

And here we come

We have been filming once again in our favourite place to film (and, so far, it’s free to do so), the Piece Hall. 'For what?' I hear you ask, well, it's the [SPOILERS], teehee, you didn’t think I was going to tell exactly what we were filming, did you? Oh, you did, did you? Well I'm not going to tell you! We even managed to get some extra people roped in, in fact, we got most of 'em from people who were just mulling in and around the nearest shops (I can be quite persuasive when I want to be).

What's he doing there?

We have had a lot to do on this episode with still more to go and this is why this next episode will be a little late in coming out but don’t panics! We do have a long shoot planned for next week too, where we should get all of it done. Well. with any luck we should - I mean yes, yes, WE can - in fact we SHALL get it done!

Roll up, roll up

Well that’s it for now, Acting Fans, so as I sign off today wish us 'Good Luck' and remember to keep them home fires burning.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt