All I Want For Christmas...

Do you know what I asked for this Christmas? Of course you don't, I ask for slippers, a dressing gown and two sets of PJs. I don't have these things, no one buys me these things, ever and I feel like I am missing out! What's Christmas for anyway if you don't get slippers and a dressing gown?  (I am not a moron so don’t try and put me right with your religious mumbo-jumbo).

 

I find it hard to come up with anything that I want for Christmas. There are plenty of things that I would like, but the majority of them cost a fortune and I’d probably not use them even if I got them.  I would like a sh*t hot editing suite as mine is, as you probably know from my Twitter rantings, old school. I’d like a bunch of DVD’s, but I pay for Sky Movies every month and can’t quite ask for something I’m already getting, if you know what I mean?

I don’t want for much and to tell people to spend the money that they don’t have on me of all people seems just wrong.  They will just spend it on cigarettes and wine anyway, but at least they’ll be in less debt than they were before old White Beard started dragging his sack around once more.

And I do want a pair of slippers, laminate floor is so cold, a dressing gown, I love slobbing around and PJ’s well the cold night air doesn’t do much for your family jewel’s pride. I do love Christmas, mainly because I’m not at work and because at Christmas it is fine to drink whiskey and coffee together at 10am in the morning, sometimes they aren’t even in the same drinking vessel.  I like to live dangerously... in the safety of my own home.

Time Kills Ambition

Time kills ambition. There I’ve said it. What I mean by that is a few months ago I was all hopping around getting excited about making a few videos, something I haven’t done for years, over a decade in fact. Then a sh*t storm of PC trouble came my way.  I filmed my first single hander as I call them, no sexual references hidden away in that title I assure you.  I then went to edit it on my laptop and quickly found that my expensive folding computer that I only purchased a few years ago, is in fact bobbins (olde world English for w*nk.)

So a few weeks went by and I re-acquired my old editing PC tower station thingy I had given away to my Father-in-law, which he never used, some months back.  I found that the editing software I used to use doesn’t support HD and so I had to find a new one. I updated my editing software to be told my graphics card in this PC was also bobbins.  I kind of knew that this would be the case, but had my fingers crossed.  Not tightly enough it seems.  

I have purchased the only PCI HD graphics card I can find on the interweb and tonight I am hopefully going to install it. No doubt I will probably find out that it is still not good enough and my whole video making comeback will by then be kaput.

Time kills ambition? Well, yes it has taken me so long to get to this stage that I kind of can’t be bothered. However, I know that if it does work then I will regain the enthusiasm that has waned over the last month or so...

... and you lot have probably given up waiting to see my ugly mug anyway.

Slow Down, You Red Neck (face rather than neck, but face wasn't funny).

Last night was a quite momentous night, although nothing of any great importance actually happened. I did, in the dark of night whilst utilising the wonderful area that is my conservatory, record my first YouTube video. I thought it would be interesting to do a split personality thing where I play two characters roughly known as twins.

My wife had gone out to some fund raising event for Avon and my son had kindly stayed in bed from the moment of his despatch up the wooden hill. All was good, I had the house to myself and now, finally, I was embarking on something that I have only talked about for the last few months and probably bored the life out of everyone unfortunate to witness my ramblings.

Remember that it is pitch black by 8pm at this end of the year and the conservatory only has ambient lights. Also remember that I tend to turn red at the earliest sign of hard work or physical activity. Now remember that there was only me and a camera, ambient lights and one daylight balanced cheap studio light. Yes daylight balanced, at night, pitch black, I know – idiot.

It is very hard to light someone who is not in the place of said lighting when you are trying to diminish the signs of a double chin. It is also very hard to frame someone who is in fact doing the framing whilst not sitting in the frame to... err... frame. It isn’t that hard to act one line at a time, which will help in quick editing, and it isn’t hard to do three or fourth takes of the same line with differing intonations.

However, given all of the technical stuff and script writing and storyboarding, which I dealt with already and hopefully well, it is hard for me to spend enough time doing anything. As soon as I’ve started I want to finish not because I don’t want to be doing it, but just because I work at lightning speed.  With limited time you might think this is wise, get in, get it filmed and get out before the wife comes home to ridicule me for being stupid for wanting to make these videos and the boy cries for his Daddy.

The problem is, and always has been although I cannot stop myself from doing it, is I do not take my time. I rush things thinking ‘I must get it done, now’, which doesn’t make for good production values or the redness of my face.  The redness might be down to high blood pressure and my over weightedness, but will never look good on camera even with such an excuse. The answer, edit it to black and white, which I might do. I think there is definitely a place for black and white films in this 3D high definition era, don’t you think?

So for my next instalment of this saga I must impose strict guide lines and practises to make sure I do a better job.  I’m still going to edit this video though to see where my starting point really is. The perfectionist in me is not going to be very happy and I think he might just be a little too red faced to make an appearance.

     

We Are On FACEBOOK

For all of you lovely people who like Facebook and like following people on Facebook and like err liking people on Facebook you can now do Facebook liking of us.  Phil has created our Facebook page and you can all go and join up, sign up, or whatever the hell it is you do over there and start making comments and stuff by going to www.facebook.com/Transmit7 hoo-rah!

Hopefully we will get our fingers out of our proverbial and start throwing up the odd thingamy-bob too. So please follow us on twitter at @Transmit7 and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Transmit7 and make friendly.

Can Things Get Any Worse?

So for ages now I have been working towards shooting my first YouTube video and I’ve finally filmed what I thought would be my first segment only to find several problems.  Firstly the laptop I have that I was intending to edit on has a really sh*t graphics card. Although it is a HD laptop apparently it is still not good enough to edit HD video on. The logic for this escapes me. Also the green screen that I created is just not good enough, it is simply rubbish. Finally my own performance was diabolical.

These where three, seemingly, insurmountable problems that put me in a hideous mood all day on Sunday.  I thought I was finally getting somewhere with my studio plans, but no the God of all ‘oh no you don’t’ came down and smited me long and hard.  But the torment wasn’t just left to my filming aspirations, oh no, also my camera decided to pack up, break down, get f*cked and so did my Sky+ box (the second to do so).

I really thought that someone was trying to tell me something. My wife was annoyed as The X Factor was on and she couldn’t watch it. So I got the interweb up and made her at least a bit less pissed off with the fact that something we spend literally hundreds of pounds on a year didn’t work.

I started to work out if I could use either of my old cameras to film on, which in the end I couldn’t do properly, but just then the broken HD video / stills camera started to work again. Hopefully it won’t annoyingly die on me again. Then the Sky+ box started to work again and none of the recorded programs had disappeared so I was getting happier. Three things had failed and two of them were coming back to life.

This just leaves the filming stuff. I think I know why I was so cr*p. I think I know why the green screen didn’t work and I think I will be getting my old edit suite dusted down to give me the power to edit properly, it’s just sitting in my Father-in-law’s office getting unused.  It was just so annoying to have so many problems and doubly annoying to feel so bad and be told constantly by my wife that I was grumpy all day.

So my conclusion is this a) If your technology lets you down, give it a breather and see if it is just a glitch before placing a steel toe capped boot through it. b) If you let yourself down just relax and learn from your cock ups and try again, and maybe by the time you have calmed down your tech will work to. And finally, this one is for everyone else c) Maybe if you know someone who is not on top form and having a bad day because everything is going wrong just maybe you should stop calling them grumpy and pointing out how horrible they are and try and cheer them the f*ck up!