Cake Off

It has been a month of absences and missed birthdays, the crew that set out 5 weeks ago for Costa Rica were stranded in Madrid on the return journey so a filming trip in Spain was scrambled earlier than originally planned now everyone is late and has missed events and each other.



Back together in the production office we know several ways to celebrate – but it always starts with cake. Whiplash set the ball rolling yesterday with a classic carrot cake topped with her Ultimate Frosting Experience. Today I responded with a sticky ginger and lemon cake*. Tomorrow belongs to Cake Boy who has promised us his famous strawberry cream sponge ...


*follow the link and add ginger wine, more lemon juice/zest and chopped walnuts (worked fine without the apple)

Head Gear

In Bristol the protracted editing frenzy has finally died down, the editor has moved on to edit someone else’s film, Zena is on an Arctic Ice Tiger Wrestling Safari and Cake Boy is attending a cake-eating marathon on a European ski slope.

This leaves just myself, two Camera Boys, Miss Whiplash and The Director in the house/production office.

The two Camera Boys are young and excitable, they went through an excessive hair phase recently. This spring it seems that it is all about hats; Miss Whiplash is getting concerned about the proliferation of electricity and has been acquiring amulets, I do like cacti but the orgone accumulator is quite bulky and the office is getting a bit cluttered so we are looking for other ways to make her feel happy. Buoyed by their recent success in inventing a new lighting system, the Camera Boys are now developing a special hat for her


This has exposed a curious side of Miss Whiplash; a woman fearless in the face of litigation and all known body fluids. When she’s not looking after the production office she is on the road with her fierce band of rockers, wearing animal-print leotards and feather accessories - this is a woman who shoots flames from her fingernails.

Whiplash has suddenly been plunged into a domestic emergency where she is helping to look after a pile of children. Listening to her account of the weekend I was struck by the difference in our sense of the ultimate Nausea-Inducing-Experience. Hardened by 15 years of life with a man who thinks it’s normal to breed cockroaches to feed to his spiders, I was surprised to hear how upset she was by a few head lice,

I’ve had to spend my weekend combing them out – LIVE NITS!!!

followed by
there’s always a turd on the floor in the morning but I can cope with that!

I’d go for nit-combing over turd-between-the-toes any day – am I alone here?

Staff Dispersal

Whiplash left me in Spain, flying off to Portugal to shake her tambourine with her band. Our youngest Camera Boy went to Germany to attend a film festival where one of our films was in the competition. It’s one of a series of short insect films made for children called Smalltalk Diaries, the insects are all voiced in different British accents, he sent an email to let us know that we’d got a prize and I’m wondering if we’ll ever see him again:

hey all! just a quick email to say smalltalk has won the childrens audience award here at greenscreen - congratulations!! pictures to follow......

i've made friends with lots of german film makers, volunteers and the film watching public- yesterday I had some authentic kartoffel suppe at deutsche couple's house. the screening of smalltalk was pretty interesting because there was a live narration by a husky german man, who did put lots of effort into doing different voices for the characters. i have met some guys who are sailing to kiel this evening from eckernforde so I am joining them and have taken the necessary precautions to waterproof and protect the trophy (made from eckernforde sand).

Tschüs!

here's a bit of the winning programme




The African filming trip returned while I was away, I've heard it was a roaring success but the participants are too exhausted to talk about it (sorry about lack of updates on the Field Notes site, I think when enough sleep has been had there will be news). Cake Boy is now trudging through heaps of digital footage that needs lots of processing, he will be alone in the office for a while because I’m taking The Director to Turkey today.

Fire And Cake

It seems that we were hit by some kind of storm last week; the film crew arrived back from Arizona, frantically unpacked, repacked, people came and went with bits of engineering, repaired computers and reformatted batches of hard drives

the fridge was emptied.




At 4am this morning we hauled cases out to a vehicle for the trip back to Africa.

I’m standing among the debris of abandoned bundles of cables and surplus wads of packing – I have the stupified look of a cartoon animal that a train just ran over but it hasn’t realised yet.

On the bright side a lovely New Boy has come to work with me and Miss Whiplash

He makes cake

Today he arrived at 9am accompanied by a strawberry sponge and whipped cream

I might recover