tommyoswaldswork (5 hours ago) Show Hide

I've started putting together a YouTube Channel which consists of mostly just things I've made but other people have uploaded, because:

1. it's easier than uploading them myself
and 2. they've already got the hits and it looks better.

We all know YouTube comments are the single lowest form of communication in the history of mankind as conscious being, but if it's your video, could you resist reading them? I found this in the comments after one of my Asian Hip Hop videos I did several years back for Mentor Kolektiv, featuring AC, who's a super cool guy who you can meet outside every single hip-hop and R&B event in London shotting AC and Terra CDs, their sound is lively London hip-hop with humour and gusto and you should buy one off him.

sukhchain12 (1 year ago) Show Hide
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AC looks lyk a twat but da songs r gud

acandterra (1 year ago) Show Hide
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chek my new video get rowdy featuring des-c and genesis elijah see if you think i look like a twat there too, safe, ac

g4rr3y (9 months ago) Show Hide
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yes, you still do

Walking along the snakey cycle path at the beach this afternoon, a cycle party of middle-aged tourists rolled past me, riding upright on shiny hire-bikes, helmet chinstraps done up snugly to the final hole. The man in front called out behind him that the group should go off to the left, off the cyclepath and onto the boardwalk, but the last guy misinterpreted it and turned off immediately left, straight into the middle of the Venice Beach skate area. As the skaters in one of America's most notorious street spots buzzed, clattered and circled around him he wobbled through, stiff as a board, looking as terrified as if he'd found himself cycling onto the 405 freeway.

The Ambassador Will See You Now, Mr. Valenti.

Saturday Connie brought me along as her guest to the British Consulate Garden Party, that was being thrown for the BPI conference she's been in town for this week. It was up in an area called Hancock Park, LA old money, beautiful, dappled avenues, clipped lawns and antiquey-looking mini mansions. A big Union Jack flag in the front lawn and a black Triumph motorbike parked outside. Photek pulling up in an Aston Martin.

Shook hands with the ambassador on the way in, who was dressed oddly like a James Bond villain. The lawn was kitted out with a stage, two bars with dicky bow bartenders, ambassadorial staff expertly zig-zagging the lawn, dishing out drinks and miniature versions of English classics like mini slivers of coronation chicken white bread sandwiches, two-bite lamb chops and steak and kidney pies. A cheese table had pots of Branston's.

It was a blatant recording industry network opportunity and guests wore badges spelling out name and company, which makes everyone instinctively look at each others chests first before addressing anyone. I try and fight the impulse, because it feels rude and insincere when someone does it to you, and plus it could potentially end you up in a situation where, let's say you and the other person clock each other's badges, and then the flag drops as one of you realises that there's nothing to be gained from a stop-and-chat, no common ground, no business opportunity and no physical attraction - and you are both forced to shuffle out, and hope you can avoid the other all evening. Excruciating. So I battle to avoid looking straight at the badge, but it's difficult, because you know they're there. It's like being in a room with nothing but chesty women in low cut frocks.

Drift Race Video is Up

Finished the Rogue Status Formula Drift video last night, and here it is.

I'm pleased with how it turned out, not a bad one man effort. The general high-octane rowdiness of the sport comes across, the suction mount worked really well so theres some nice on-board shots. Hopefully it's a good move in the campaign to work an angle as Rogue's video director, cos they need a lot of stuff doing.

Oh and the documentary proof of my contact with car at 94mph is in there too. Wait for it...

It's a shame you can't step through YouTube videos frame by frame, because if you could, you can see that there is a camera mounted on the spoiler that hit my camera. Someone somewhere has the reverse angle.

Celebrity Spot Of The Month

Ron Jeremy, in grubby black sweatpants, asking the price of a porno mag at the newsagent on Hollywood and Cahuenga, 2am Saturday night.

Where's Rosco P?

I'm really getting into the swing of American life. Only been in the USA two months, and I'm sueing already. I was at the Santa Monica courthouse yesterday to file a small claims case I'd really rather not have to do - from the outside a shining white building on manicured lawns - inside, just the same dusty, wood-venered municipal red-tape matrix you'd expect in England. (disappointed to find the Sheriff's Office wasn't full of cops in cowboy hats). Weapons search on the way in, followed by a 25 minute queue outside Room 116 to file claims. Filing a claim to sue is like booking concert tickets.

In the queue in front of me were two women, both submitting forms. As the second had hers stamped, she gestured vaguely behind her - 'So if I pay her now, I can get a certificate of resolution, right?'

'She has to sign it, ma'am, but yeah'

The other woman in the queue said 'You can pay me honey, but I can't sign that form till the check clears'

'Oh ok, right. So that means we gotta come all the way back here when it's paid?

'Yes it does, ma'am' said the clerk.

'Damn, girl, couldn't you have found us somewhere a bit closer?'. She laughed. The other woman laughed. They slapped hands. Woman One was sueing Woman Two, but they were obviously good friends.

How does that work - one friend sues another but the friendship stays intact? The very strange organism that is the American legal system. Someone's got insurance in this equation, I'm sure. Not much chance of an amicable settlement in my case, unfortunately. I will be representing myself, and invoking the ancient legal principle of volo meus argentum, meretricis, otherwise known as 'Bitch, Better Have My Money'.

Updated random sprawling observations:

You'd get publicly crucified (that's crucified in a pub) if you said this back home, but day to day stuff in America, is good quality and it works.

Examples:

When entering a shop, you always pull the door to enter, and push to exit.

The 'worst' places to eat, are at the very least clean, generous and the service is friendly.

Hot water comes out of taps very hot, and there's loads of it.

A packet of frozen oven chips has a nice perforated line you can open it with. It doesn't take 10 minutes of wrestling only to end up sinking your teeth into the plastic, tearing it asunder like Cro-Magnon man as chips fly out the end all over the floor.

It doesn't seem to be in the American psyche to put up with things that don't work, in the way that is such a defining British characteristic - the 'mustn't grumble' syndrome. Jon told me he could never understand why, for a cold country like England, no-one's central heating ever worked well. I reasoned that it was probably not because British people love to have something to complain about, but more that we like to have something we can suffer in silence for. Builds backbone, dear boy.

One success of capitalism on the American model is that competition does actually seem to breed a better service. In the UK, the idea tends to result in either a bigger monopoly, or a general all-round degradation of service with more competitors ever-streamlining in order to retain a grip on a shrinking profit margin.

But again, if I were to say that in the pub in London, I'd get a chorus of 'well, piss off back there then's, in warm baritones, tenors and mezzo-sopranos. Warm enough to take the chill out of your bones while you're being ignored for 20 mins at the bar for your measly £6 rum and coke.

Mad Noise In Long Beach

My bedroom looks like my old desk at Village Green. I've now got a new Mac, two hard drives and cameras snaking out of the back. Jasper and I have set up to edit the Drift Race footage at my place.

Long Beach was nuts. Drift Racing is a weird sport, invented by the Japanese some 20 years ago, they don't really race each other, just lead and follow, and try to slide round corners better and make more smoke than the other guy. As we arrived in the Aquarium car park, I caught my first whiff of the burning rubber, and heard the screaming of the engines - that thing everyone says when they first visit a motorsports event. The smell of burning rubber was something I was to get very well acquainted with over the 2 days.

The supercharged, stripped down, rear wheel drive cars are set up for sliding, and they scream and slide all over the place, even when parking. While waiting to race, they warm tyres up with figure-8s and doughnuts, by the end of the competition, the streets of Long Beach were obliterated with black oil-slicks of burnt rubber. Thick white tyre smoke billows out of the wheel arches as they wail round the corners of the drift circuit. It pumps into the driver's cabin. Rugged race gearboxes bang as loud as a backfire. They backfire a lot too. Drifting is just starting to get big in the US, and there's only two car companies sponsoring teams (Ford, and Scion, Rogue's team's manufacturer), so the line up was an odd mix of cars, pitting high-end sportscar R&D money, against Sam's Auto Spares of Anaheim's '91 Toyota Corolla, bodykit held on with green gaffa tape. But regardless of sponsor, all the drivers had stupid amounts of skills, sliding their cars round Grand Prix corners at 100mph, nose to tail with their competitor round their racing line, missing the concrete walls by mere inches. Nothing prepared me for the amount of rubber debris that would hit me in the face all day either.

It was really good to be given the chance to shoot this. The action was a challenge to shoot as well as being pretty cool to watch. As far as the event away from the racetrack went, it was like shooting any kind of event with one camera, where you're asked to cover as much as possible. Lots to see after the first hour and nothing to see after that. Lots of beefy cars, geeky motorsports fans and trashy models with straining silicon chests posing for paid pics with the former.

A Press pass got me onto the starting line to shoot the cars warming up, and taking off in pairs to record their best course times. The noise was insane. The start line was at the foot of a canyon of tall apartment blocks, carrying the rowdy impatience of a dozen supercharged road racers 30 stories high. The city setting of the race circuit was very cool. I kept feeling like I had raced this course in half a dozen computer games. Once I was past security, there were no restrictions on where I walked on the track, and it took a little nerve and a lot of trust as the cars screamed and slid and burnt their tyres out just feet away from me.

The closest encounter was yet to come, however. During the final races, I situated myself and the tiny HD camcorder in a press dugout, several feet of concrete block separating me from the track, right at the apex of the fastest corner of the circuit. The finalists were competing in pairs at this point, I had a wide angle lens on the front of the camera and was getting the best shots by extending the camera out on my arm, but still behind the concrete block. There was a double V8 scream, and in seconds, the two cars came sliding round the corner (at 94 mph I was later to find out). I held the shot as the second car parabola'd closer and closer to the wall. Closer, closer, closer. And in an instant, SMACK! The camera in my hand was struck by the car's spoiler and thrown back.

When the tyre smoke cleared and I realised I was still standing, the camera and chunky fisheye lens was still in one piece, barely a scuff on it. A piece of grey Team Hankook carbon fibre embedded in the lens housing bore the evidence - at that speed the car must have barely kissed the rim of the lens, it would have been a matter of microns, but still enough for the spoiler material to slice into the 0o.1mm wide gap between rim and glass. Straight away I was speechless, frozen to the spot and my first thought was about this kid and his shoe . A miraculous, incredible story and I would have had a hard time convincing people of it's truth, were it not for the fact I got it all on tape.

I didn't get to take many photographs and the video footage is taking a day or so to transcode. But here's Rogue's pictures of the day.

So Much Drama in the LBC

Heading out to Long Beach tomorrow morning with Jasper, for the preview day of 'Formula Drift - Streets Of Long Beach', a video game event name if ever there was one. I'll be shooting the Rogue Status car and the team they've got competing there. Ken Gushi is the driver. I've got a suction car mount and Rogue's brand spanking mini HD memory chip camera - since drifting is all about style, not so much speed and aggression, I'm hoping the suction will hold. Saturday is the main event.

In the meantime here's some designs I've been doing for Rogue Status. These are intended as full body t-shirt designs, on a theme of Executive Suicide:

Hot Sunny Late Afternoon, Dirty Bus Windows

This is pretty much exactly what the location and lighting is going to be like in scene 1 of my feature script.


Which is not going to be a feature any more, it's going to be a series. So now it's tripled in length.

IT’S NOT ALL PLASTIC SMILES AND HAVE A NICE DAY IN C.A.

INT: RALPH’S SUPERMARKET, LINCOLN BLVD, VENICE, CA

TOM is carrying an overloaded hand basket, looking in vain for some assistance.

NERYS, a hideous, overweight, deli-counter worker is leaning against the cake table

TOM

Excuse me –

(Nerys looks up with a look of sheer disgust)

TOM

(cont’d)

Can I ask you for some help?

NERYS

Well, not really, I’m on my break. What is it you want?

TOM

Erm, well. Ah. I can’t seem to find chicken stock, would you be willing to spare me a second to tell me where that is?

NERYS

Chicken…What?

Chicken… stock?

(incredulous)

TOM

Yeah. Erm. Like... erm... stock cubes

NERYS

Stockcubes?

(grins conspiratorially with her co-worker)

What the hell is that? No, we don’t do that sir.

(Starts to turn her back)

I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir...

TOM

You know, erm, stock. For making soup. Gravies, that kind of thing?

NERYS

(coldy staring him in the face with her dead, beady eyes, this has wasted too much of her break already)

There's a stock room, but it's for employees only, sir.

TOM

No, no. Erm... OK!...

(hits on the magic word)

Bouillon!

(with the American pronunciation - 'booleon')

NERYS

(already turning back to her colleague, eyes rolling)

Aisle ten.

Asparagus

What exactly is it? Do scientists even know? That smell when you pee is like liquid reptile.

cookin

I really enjoyed season 1 of 'Breaking Bad', AMC/Fox's critically highly acclaimed drama series, about a 50 yr old Chemistry teacher with lung cancer cooking glass-grade crystal meth in a Winnebago, with disastrous results. Great premise, great acting & writing. Abundant stylish subtext, slick and subtle.

Characters well crafted, and beautifully flawed, secrets, lies, bare-faced deception of the kind that sails so close to the wind to have you gnawing at your knuckles. I fucking love Walt White and Jesse Pinkman, the klepto sister Marie, and Hank, the DEA brother-in-law who's like a 99 cent store, small-town, big guns, bloater version of Thomas Hauk without any of the charm. Now I'm clucking for season 2 like an Albuquerque crankhead. Meth in a boxset.

Who Is The Gatekeeper In This Scene?

And on the subject of that feature script - it occurs to me that without really intending to, I am trying to write a Hollywood style story. Classic three-act structure. Man-with-everything-loses-it-all-but-comes-back-wiser. Man-with-nothing-attains-spiritual-happiness-cos-he's-basically-a-nice-dude-with-a-shady-past.

Whether this is the osmosis of being here in LA, and the lessons Jenifer attempted to bang into my head, or the result of what I've been studying (Her course, and trying to get to grips with the mythic structure and the dozen or so archetypes of Campbell & Vogler and the Hero's Journey). Or a grudging acceptance that to break the rules you need to follow them first - I'm not too sure.

Jenifer flew off the handle a bit (I have since learned she only needed the slightest provocation) when I told her I'd read a list of stale-sounding new TV commissions, and that I thought I could write something fresher, telling me I had no business believing I could debut with anything ground breaking, saying that the road to Burbank was littered with arrogant Brits who thought they could break the Hollywood rules. Well, I do see some wisdom in what she says, the rules are well established and a lot of money is at stake in this town, but I disagree, on the whole. I didn't mean break the rules, just bend them a lot. And overall I feel she's out of touch with what's being made today. Rule-bending drama is everywhere, and they are the most popular shows on US TV.

She then started slating British men, the entire entertainment community for not supporting women, slagged off several women, bought a teriyaki bowl and glared at me over the rim of it.

Yo, Dre, thats the Formula

Ok, granted, it's been a while since I updated. And not for any good reason either, it's been a slow week. Perhaps because I spent way too much time on xtranormal, creating the highly topical emotive drama 'Moving On', a tale of love, rejection and the human condition. Or possible a brutal dissection of three close pals struggling to retain the friendship dynamic when separated by 5000 miles and a transatlantic time zone.

A total waste of time? Not when you see the beautifully crafted scene structure that has gone into these 1-2 min episodes. I'm clearly learning something...

Actual writing, meanwhile has been slow. A half-remembered quote from 'Californication' - being a writer means setting yourself homework every night. I've read all my course texts, started redoing the assignments I did last year, and somewhere along the line, managed to turn a one page dialogue exercise into an idea for a feature film. This wasn't supposed to be what I was going to work on while over here - I thought, a few short plays. A short film script maybe. A TV Pilot. Instead I've spent every waking sunny day on Venice Beach writing 30 pages of plot and character arcs, mythic-based scene structure, for a feature story that I can't decide if anyone will think is worth watching. Gradually criss-crossing the elements of the story and seeing what possibilities those frictions throw up, gradually shaping the narrative. Leaving dialogue to the end, which goes against instinct.

It's a good exercise though. You can read and re-read the principles, but they only click when put into practice, and I can certainly say this, once you've put the magic goggles on, and started to understand what they show you, it's impossible to see the writing in TV and movies as you once did. This means you can immediately see the holes in your own, and other amateurs stuff. But it also has given me a much richer appreciation of great work in TV and film, and led me to realise the standard of stuff is overall much higher than I expected, even the shows I don't like. I've now realised it's not just Sopranos (6:40 - 'what are those, tic tacs?') and The Wire that create great character arcs and needs. The bar is definitely very high.

I'm not sure what I write over here will ever make the cut, but I do believe that I've turned some corners in my understanding of the craft of dramatic writing, and that is definitely something I look forward to applying to a maybe more realistic debut.