Commission

I got commissioned by a BBC executive - ohh yeaahhh. Well, sort of, by Helen & Simon really!
But anyway, I'm really pleased, and I'm really pleased with how my pitch went, I feel I was ten million times better than when we did our presentations last semester, I was abit more confident, but mostly this time, I knew exactly what I was talking about and really cared about it, I find the subject matter very interesting anyway, I did Philosophy & Ethics at A Level and I loved it, and also I just had done a lot more research and was a lot more prepared this time.

Had a really, really useful workshop this morning too, Helen did an essay writing guide and I feel so much better about writing them now, as before the Harvard Style citing was foreign to me! Thanks Helen!

Err, what have I watched recently? Oh, I watched a craaap film last week "Grown ups" with Adam Sandler, now normally "Happy Madison" films are very funny, but this was shocking! Absolutely NO storyline, wasnt really that funny, just some silly americans going to some cabin place, and they liked it. woohoo. not. Not recomended.

Looking forward to watching & enevitably judging this new reality/doc/fake doc/interent based show on Channel 4 tomorrow, "Seven Days", apparently its like a reality show, following the lives of people living in Notting Hill, but you can like vote or something on the website and unpopular "characters" will be dropped, dont really understand, but I may be surprised.. TV seems to be becoming too aware of the new ageness of computers/iphones/mobile tv watching and losing whats its all about - sitting and watching a good, entertaining show whilst layed on the sofa or bed! As you can probably tell, I am not a fan of modern ways of consuming media, I'm a traditional old, coach potato and proud of it :)

Inception, Summer is dead (wasn't ever really alive), back to uni, documentaries and michael moore.

Uh - oh its been a long time since I have posted, been to busy posting on Will and I's - doc blog! (http://cwdoccom.blogspot.com)

Well, there is a lot to talk about! After a long 3 month summer it's back to uni and straight back to work! But I wont start talking about uni until I have mentioned this summer's movie blockbuster: "Inception". - WOW. This was one of the best films I think I've ever seen, I loved it! I I thought, after hearing all the hype, I would have to watch it about ten times to appreciate and understand what the hell was going on! Even on the trailer, the big voice man says "even better, the second time around!" which loosely translated is : you have to watch it twice to actually get your head around it. However, I only watched it once (probably will watch it again though) and I think, (?) I understood it, probably helped that I watched it alone in my room with no distractions! And it was just magnificent! The concept is mind blowing, direction amazing, pictures amazing, story-line superb and it had dark and emotive undercurrents at every corner. Dreams within dreams, within dreams, stealing and controlling and planting ideas - crazy! If you have not seen this film you have majorly missed out!

Anyway! Back to university and we were thrown straight back in with a quick fire film project, that had to be titled "Summer is dead". Me and my partner in crime, Will, came across a beautiful poem entitled "Summer is dead" that we really liked and decided to have the poem read out over the top of the pictures in a voice over. The poem talks about death, so we though at church/graveyard would be fitting. I recalled a beautiful little church in a tiny little village named "leeds" only a ten minute drive from us. So off we set, we got some amazing shots, but as usual we ran out of time in the post production stages, so it is yet to be finished, but what we have so far, I'm really proud of!

Now though, we are avidly working on our Documentary Commission unit, read more about that on the blog I put at the top of the page, as well as thinking and learning about our Narrative and Genre unit. The handy thing about studying media at GCSE & A Level, a lot of this unit I have briefly covered before, we looked a lot at genre, iconography, zeitgeist, narratives, multi-strand narratives, linear narratives, equilibrium, disequilibrium and muuch more that I won't pretend I still remember. So that's going to come in useful :)

The other unit we are covering is the Direction unit, which I think we are all pretty excited about, we all pretty much know the director we have in mind, personally, I think I'm going to go with Guillermo del Toro, the director of my favorite film "Pan's Labyrinth", and others such as "Hellboy", "Hellboy 2" and "The Devil's Backbone". We will be doing that one in a chunk of 6 weeks once Simon returns, very tired, from paternity leave! :)

One last thing I will ramble on about is, Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", a film about gun crime in the U.S, and using the Columbine massacre as a main narrative. Now my first thing to say about this is - Americans are VILE, gross, obese, stupid pigs! OK, so thats a harsh generalization, but the film greatly angered me! I have seen it once before but I was younger then so didn't really pay that much attention. Moore is brilliant at unpacking the truth, or his views of the truth, with excellent, humorous, emotive, angering and saddening sequences.

p.s Charlton Heston is evil.