This is not, unfortunately, to report that my book has been so popular that the film rights have already been snapped up. Seeing I have not as yet been able to publish my book, it would be a little strange if the film rights were already being bandied about.
Rather, I spent last Saturday helping my good friend Mr Hill film his first directing debut 'Crazed Departure'. I can now understand why, exactly. they say that film and stage acting are two very different disciplines.
On the stage you have to be able to make a blooper and carry on, smooth it over, blend it in until your audience believes that it was deliberate. That is not easy but no means, even in a panto, as you have a habit of throwing every body else off the right track as well.
Film on the other hand involves the ability to get up at some God forsaken earlier hour of the morning and instantly be on the top of your game. It is also the ability to keep your actions and your tone fresh through take after take after take. The most takes we did on Saturday for one scene was ten and it was making me tired and I was just the assistant whose job it is to note down the scene and take number with the comments from the camera and sound men. Imagine what it was like on the set of 'The Lord of the Rings' where they did something like seventy one takes per scene. I'm surprised that none of them collapsed from exhaustion. It must have been mind numbing after a while and it's no wonder it took about a year to film each one.
It makes me glad that both the actors and the director for 'Crazed Departure' were extremely efficient so we were all done and dusted before the expected time. I will admit that it was very satisfying to know that we had done the job well and in good time. I will admit that some of the credit for that goes to the actors as we only had a handful of bloopers but it also goes to a camera team who were on the ball when it came to setting up their equipment.
I also had a couple of cameo roles so watch this space.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Friday, 22 February 2013
Leave My Bed Untidy
My friend Michelle Proby has recently had her book 'Leave My Bed Untidy' published and has give me permission to advertise for her on my blog.
Michelle was twelve years old when she was picked up by the police in her home town of Hull due to what she had been doing under the influence of her undiagnosed autism and schizophrenia. She was sectioned and housed in Rocroft. Rocroft has since been shut down due to ninety percent of the staff being found guilty of physical and sexual abuse of the inmates. My friend Michelle was one of the case studies that helped provide the evidence to shut the place down.
After that her case was reviewed and it was decided that she was too institutionalised for her to go straight into supported housing so she was moved to the low security St Luke's Hospital near Attleborough. She was allowed escorted leave, which is when I met her at the church on Sunday mornings.
A year later her case was reviewed again and she was moved to Garrow House in Yorkshire, which is the half way point between low security and supported housing. Part of her rehabilitation there has been the publishing of her poetry book, written over the years of her being on the inside. However, she is not allowed to sell the copies of her book on the grounds of Garrow House but she is allowed to send the copies to me and if I sell them in her name I can then send her back the money. How strange is that?
If anyone would like a copy please flag up a message on my blog or come to meet me at the Assembly House every first and third Tuesday of the month, 7.30pm, at the Norwich Writers' Circle.
Review of 'Leave My Bed Untidy':
"A deeply moving collection that speaks of the pain, rage, sorrow and love that exists behind closed doors. The looking into the mind of someone who has suffered much but who will not be silent. Written in a language that reaches towards breaching the barriers and crossing the gulfs that cannot be approached in normal conversation. A brave and powerful work." V. J. Bartlett
Michelle was twelve years old when she was picked up by the police in her home town of Hull due to what she had been doing under the influence of her undiagnosed autism and schizophrenia. She was sectioned and housed in Rocroft. Rocroft has since been shut down due to ninety percent of the staff being found guilty of physical and sexual abuse of the inmates. My friend Michelle was one of the case studies that helped provide the evidence to shut the place down.
After that her case was reviewed and it was decided that she was too institutionalised for her to go straight into supported housing so she was moved to the low security St Luke's Hospital near Attleborough. She was allowed escorted leave, which is when I met her at the church on Sunday mornings.
A year later her case was reviewed again and she was moved to Garrow House in Yorkshire, which is the half way point between low security and supported housing. Part of her rehabilitation there has been the publishing of her poetry book, written over the years of her being on the inside. However, she is not allowed to sell the copies of her book on the grounds of Garrow House but she is allowed to send the copies to me and if I sell them in her name I can then send her back the money. How strange is that?
If anyone would like a copy please flag up a message on my blog or come to meet me at the Assembly House every first and third Tuesday of the month, 7.30pm, at the Norwich Writers' Circle.
Review of 'Leave My Bed Untidy':
"A deeply moving collection that speaks of the pain, rage, sorrow and love that exists behind closed doors. The looking into the mind of someone who has suffered much but who will not be silent. Written in a language that reaches towards breaching the barriers and crossing the gulfs that cannot be approached in normal conversation. A brave and powerful work." V. J. Bartlett
Monday, 11 February 2013
Shale Oil - The Hidden Pollution
Shale oil is booming or at least it is in America. It is an Industrial Revolution that is now visible from space. Not because the facilities needed are hundreds of acres across, which is what I expected to be told. No, the reason that it can now been seen from space is because each and every shale oil field burns off 'unwanted' gas.
'Unwanted'? I have to admit that I thought it was a funny way of putting it, considering the size of the gas bill I had to help pay last winter, up by eight per cent and the highest quarterly bills came out in January. They could send some of that 'unwanted' natural gas in my direction.
However, when you extract oil, even shale oil, which is mixed with a lot of sand, natural gas comes up with it but it's uneconomic to capture it and then pipe it away to storage so the easiest thing is to burn it off. Oh and guess what? America isn't even the worse for burning off! Russia is the biggest burner and Nigeria, the second, burns off the equivalent of the UK's yearly gas use every three months!
So while everybody with a heart and a soul and a dose of humanity is struggling to decrease the effect humans have on the planet, the oil industry is farting out enough green house gases to heat up the planet faster than anything before. Kind of makes you wonder why you bother, doesn't it? Granted I wouldn't want to sink down to the level of the industries that put profit and ease before the worth of the planet. That and the fact that there are people and industries who are working to drop their imprint on the environment. For example the landfill dump site that, instead of just letting the methane produced by all that rotting waste dissipate into the atmosphere, pipes off the gas to a power station where it is used to produce electricity. And as far as I know they receive some money for that.
I wonder, has America ever considered the amount of money it would receive doing that with it's 'unwanted' shale oil gas?
'Unwanted'? I have to admit that I thought it was a funny way of putting it, considering the size of the gas bill I had to help pay last winter, up by eight per cent and the highest quarterly bills came out in January. They could send some of that 'unwanted' natural gas in my direction.
However, when you extract oil, even shale oil, which is mixed with a lot of sand, natural gas comes up with it but it's uneconomic to capture it and then pipe it away to storage so the easiest thing is to burn it off. Oh and guess what? America isn't even the worse for burning off! Russia is the biggest burner and Nigeria, the second, burns off the equivalent of the UK's yearly gas use every three months!
So while everybody with a heart and a soul and a dose of humanity is struggling to decrease the effect humans have on the planet, the oil industry is farting out enough green house gases to heat up the planet faster than anything before. Kind of makes you wonder why you bother, doesn't it? Granted I wouldn't want to sink down to the level of the industries that put profit and ease before the worth of the planet. That and the fact that there are people and industries who are working to drop their imprint on the environment. For example the landfill dump site that, instead of just letting the methane produced by all that rotting waste dissipate into the atmosphere, pipes off the gas to a power station where it is used to produce electricity. And as far as I know they receive some money for that.
I wonder, has America ever considered the amount of money it would receive doing that with it's 'unwanted' shale oil gas?
Tuesday, 5 February 2013
The Possibilities
O.K I am going to take a risk of loosing popularity here and confess something. I am a Practising Christian.
I am a Christian in that I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that he came to show us humans a better way to live with one another. I am Practising because I haven't got it right yet.
As such I am more than willing to talk over the points of view of others, be they atheist or a different denomination from me. As such I have had friendly and very interesting contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Granted they have some view points on which I totally disagree, however, I have come to the conclusion that it is only through contact with people of other faith that your own faith can grow.
Coming to the point is this - one of their resent publications contained an article on the promises that are testified to in the Bible. As I read through the list it dawned on me that the only one of these promises that lays outside of the grasp of humankind, right now, is the ability to bring the dead back to life. For example:
"No more war"
Just because it has never been done in the past does not mean that it cannot be done in the future. We have the Internet, we have freedom of speech, we have blogs so that we don't have to rely on the newspapers who dress up the facts to say what they want them to say. We have organisations like 'Muslim for a Month', which work tirelessly to bring understanding and acceptance between different people. We don't have to accept what the governments of this world say any more when they are trying to point out enemies to us. So we are different people? If God wanted us all the same he would have made us tins of beans. There is not nearly as much separating us as we thinking there is. Every human being bleeds red. Can we go on ignoring that common brotherhood?
"Plenty of Grain Upon the Earth"
If you take this to mean all food then we already have more than enough. America has 'food mountains'. England has a third of all food bought being thrown away. Half of the fruit and vegetables grown in Britain are thrown away before it even reaches the shops because it fails the 'asetics' tests. All that food thrown away just because it doesn't look quite right. If people would stop
being greed then instead of our cargo ships sailing out to Africa and the Third World using sand as ballast, they could use all that (to us) unwanted food. If humans valued the common good above gold then no-one would have to go hunger. Maybe the Western World won't have so much but won't that help with the obesity crisis?
"There will be no more sickness"
'If people would stop wasting money on war we'd have the care for cancer by now.' A professional doctor told that to my Nan twenty years ago and what is really sad is that we have the cure for cancer (search for Salvestrols) but the man who discovered it could not advertise because he will not sell the patent to the big pharmaceutical companies because he believed (quite rightly) that they would make people pay thousands for each pill. Because he won't sell out to the big companies they told the University where he researched that if he ever advertised his discovery the companies would stop all funding to the University. So he didn't advertise but the knowledge starting spreading word of mouth.
When the death threats started on his family he lost his mind. It's only because he was able to set up branches in America and Canada before hand that the work has been able to continue in his absence.
Again the Internet can help us take back the power from those who would abuse it.
Looking at in that light the only thing that stops mankind taking a huge step towards a world paradise is greed and laziness. Think of the possibilities if we started standing up for what is right instead of for what is easy.
PS. I have tried using a different computer to upload my photographs but still no luck. Will keep trying.
I am a Christian in that I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that he came to show us humans a better way to live with one another. I am Practising because I haven't got it right yet.
As such I am more than willing to talk over the points of view of others, be they atheist or a different denomination from me. As such I have had friendly and very interesting contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Granted they have some view points on which I totally disagree, however, I have come to the conclusion that it is only through contact with people of other faith that your own faith can grow.
Coming to the point is this - one of their resent publications contained an article on the promises that are testified to in the Bible. As I read through the list it dawned on me that the only one of these promises that lays outside of the grasp of humankind, right now, is the ability to bring the dead back to life. For example:
"No more war"
Just because it has never been done in the past does not mean that it cannot be done in the future. We have the Internet, we have freedom of speech, we have blogs so that we don't have to rely on the newspapers who dress up the facts to say what they want them to say. We have organisations like 'Muslim for a Month', which work tirelessly to bring understanding and acceptance between different people. We don't have to accept what the governments of this world say any more when they are trying to point out enemies to us. So we are different people? If God wanted us all the same he would have made us tins of beans. There is not nearly as much separating us as we thinking there is. Every human being bleeds red. Can we go on ignoring that common brotherhood?
"Plenty of Grain Upon the Earth"
If you take this to mean all food then we already have more than enough. America has 'food mountains'. England has a third of all food bought being thrown away. Half of the fruit and vegetables grown in Britain are thrown away before it even reaches the shops because it fails the 'asetics' tests. All that food thrown away just because it doesn't look quite right. If people would stop
being greed then instead of our cargo ships sailing out to Africa and the Third World using sand as ballast, they could use all that (to us) unwanted food. If humans valued the common good above gold then no-one would have to go hunger. Maybe the Western World won't have so much but won't that help with the obesity crisis?
"There will be no more sickness"
'If people would stop wasting money on war we'd have the care for cancer by now.' A professional doctor told that to my Nan twenty years ago and what is really sad is that we have the cure for cancer (search for Salvestrols) but the man who discovered it could not advertise because he will not sell the patent to the big pharmaceutical companies because he believed (quite rightly) that they would make people pay thousands for each pill. Because he won't sell out to the big companies they told the University where he researched that if he ever advertised his discovery the companies would stop all funding to the University. So he didn't advertise but the knowledge starting spreading word of mouth.
When the death threats started on his family he lost his mind. It's only because he was able to set up branches in America and Canada before hand that the work has been able to continue in his absence.
Again the Internet can help us take back the power from those who would abuse it.
Looking at in that light the only thing that stops mankind taking a huge step towards a world paradise is greed and laziness. Think of the possibilities if we started standing up for what is right instead of for what is easy.
PS. I have tried using a different computer to upload my photographs but still no luck. Will keep trying.
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