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?

Putting The House In Order

The production office personnel is suddenly expanding rapidly, Zena our Swiss warrior-princess has come back to help plan next year’s ant-filming, Whiplash is firmly back in the saddle and the Camera Boy now known as The Pepper King is busy practising his ballroom dancing moves in the kit room.

The filming team will be back here in less than a week bringing trolleyloads of kit and several million terabytes of material that will need organising in short time for an edit that will go on through the winter. It would probably be better if our building is waterproof, it should also be warmer than the outside temperature and there should be lights working in more rooms than just the kitchen.

For years I have been living in a state of denial about the steady deterioration of this house, fixing the kitchen lights last week activated the ancient law that states that 'once one thing is repaired you notice how much else is broken‘ – this is ok because we have discovered Light Man who has the power to mend things and is also extremely attractive! Today he replaced the panes in the sash windows that had cracks taped over with bits of gaffer tape, this necessitated Miss Whiplash holding onto his legs while he applied putty to the outside of upper-floor windows.


More Bad Hair
I have also been in denial about the steady deterioration of my hair and finally took myself for a haircut last week, I tried to visit Laura but her barber shop has shut down. I walked on and into a place that looked like a hairdresser's from the outside, it turned out to be run by boys wearing trousers belted below their underpants. I let one of them do something 'interesting’ with my hair. Then I had to go on further and find another hairdresser, one run by grown-ups who could make me look 'normal’ again, my hair is now several inches shorter but I no longer look as though I have escaped from an asylum - this is important because I am cooking for a new client tomorrow...

Passing Time

I’m back in the production office for a few days. Until recently it's been a hornet's nest of frantic activity here, all the parts of the filming team finally got off to Africa a week ago but then there were inevitably extra lorryloads of hard drives and cables to be sent out and lots of argy bargy about camp charges and filming fees, but Miss Whiplash sorted it all out and now it’s all gone a bit tum-ti-tum here - on the upside we finally have a chance to catch up with all the online horoscopes, Facebook and Guitar Hero.

When we’ve had enough of these activities, Miss Whiplash, the Youngest Camera Boy and myself entertain ourselves, and any passing guests, with tea parties and lunchtime events. Today a lovely man came and made the kitchen lights work - to celebrate we invited him to join us for lunch. YCB won several gold medals with his splendid stuffed peppers.

Light Man told us about his other job as a DJ;
I used to do toasting - but then I got shy.




I noticed a trendy new clothes shop today so I went in to investigate, I had a question to ask the sales assistant who was Welsh and very camp - I had to wait while he finished telling his colleague about someone he’d met at a party the previous night:
... well he made me really cross, I wanted to kill him and stab him and burn him.

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.

Office Party

Since the crew went off filming ants, the production office has gone very quiet. Miss Whiplash and I meet up occasionally to eat cake and play the office bongos but we broke out the Champagne yesterday when an email arrived to say that an episode of our insect series (Pollinators) is a finalist in a German Film Festival, I emailed the news on to one of the Camera Boys and asked him how things are going, this is his reply:


Hiya!

I've told The Director about Pollinators and he seemed very chuffed. All is indeed well here and we're churning out some darn cool footage and enjoying it too. Got some great stuff today of aphaenogaster (long legged ants) licking their queen's bottom. We are working in labs amongst lots of scientists, the rooms here are filled with hundreds of plastic boxes full of the ants - it is pretty fascinating. The daytime heat has a very similar feeling to pointing a hair drier at your face, so thankfully we're inside now! We had a seriously spicy Thai meal this evening in a restaurant and so we have put some toilet roll in the fridge in anticipation for tomorrow morning.

Cya!

Living with Boys

11th September
The newly arrived, very young, Camera Boy is here for the week to help with the Speedy Camera work. He expresses geeky joy at the sight of a new computery thing and lollopy enthusiasm when faced with a big sandwich, he is something like a combination of Scooby Doo and his mate Shaggy – Shaggy Doo? His specialist subject is playing Jimi Hendrix guitar tunes.

Shaggy retains an adolescent naiveté about domestic issues. When The Director asked him for a glass of tonic water with some slices of lemon in it Shaggy cut a whole lemon into 4 quarters, rammed the lot into a small tumbler and tried to fit some tonic in around the pieces.

Happy Camera Boy used to be a bit like Shaggy, we’ve lived through several episodes like the one when he used his t-shirt as an oven glove and the plastic motif on it melted, fusing him to the metal pan. He’s all grown up and mature now, although having had a lifetime’s diet of bad films and trashy telly, his specialist subject is still funny sound effects and singing old theme tunes.