Finished the script for a short film today, ‘All I Know is Nothing’. Draft 4 and finally, I think, making sense.

Now, to talk to two very talented lighting cameramen I know (no sexism intended, they happen to be men) about how best to shoot it and when they might be available to help me.

It’s a quite personal film (in theme) about obsession and how the end of a relationship can bring out the worst in people.

Anybody interested in reading it and offering up ways in which it could be improved upon, let me know.

After much deliberation and a shed load of procrastination I think I may have decided which camera I’m going to buy. I think it would be useful (if only for encouraging me to get out there more often and experiment) to have a DSLR capable of shooting video.

It was always going to be a Canon until a friend threw a curve-ball into proceedings and suggested the GH2. I must admit having picked it up a few times in Jessops it does feel quite substantial compared to the Canon range. However …

… it became a three horse race between the 600D, 60D and 7D. My gut instinct was the 7D purely because I have some experience of using it but I liked the flip out screen the other two offered as that feels more ergonomically correct for video. So I started researching the 60D and imagined I had found the one.

Turns out though that despite the 60D and 7D being more controllable and having greater functionality for stills photography there doesn’t seem to be any real difference (apart from build quality) in their video performance when compared to the 600D. In fact unless I’m very much mistaken they are identical in that regard.

So the 600D it is. Which is a bonus as its cheaper and I’ll be able to spend any money saved on lenses and peripherals.

Now I just have to order the damn thing!!

I didn’t really tick off many (any) of my to-do list.

This year I’m wondering if I should even generate a list. Although it is looking likely that I may have a little more time free to do things which will become apparent imminently I think. I’m just going to internalise my plans and only mention them if they look achievable.

Have applied for some volunteering positions though which I would be very interested in doing.

I’m doing some research for a possible project based in Brum and getting strangely nostalgic for the place.

I’m hankering for Moseley Village and Kings Heath high street!

The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign Trailblazers won the Uscreen prize at the Slough Film Festival today for the film I produced and directed for them (with a whole lot of input and help from the Trailblazers themselves of course).

If you haven’t already seen the trailer you can catch it here.

I’ve decided to enter the Great British Home Brew Challenge 2011 with two of my beers.

Snorry Mouth and All Cats Are Grey.

Mercury Rev going head to head with The Cure. Bitter versus Porter (respectively) doing battle in the turbulent environment that is the UK home-brewing scene.

Well occasionally anyway (for me).

I played at the Bridgnorth Music and Arts Festival on the August Bank Holiday Weekend. For the first time in well over 12 months. I do miss annoying people with my poor singing voice and almost comparable guitar playing skills.

Actually I’m not quite that self deprecating but I find it more in keeping with my nature to at least acknowledge I’m not going to set the world alight anymore with my low-key music.

It’s still a young festival but is very much starting to find its feet and it offers a very diverse programme of events over what is nearly a two week period (the Bank Holiday bonanza only being a fraction of what it’s all about). Thankfully I think I was at least good enough to not have to beg to play next year, just politely request a slot.

All it needs is professional audio description and then the film I’ve been working on at Herd for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign Trailblazers will be done and dusted.

The trailer is already signed off, encoded into ones and zeroes and doing the digital rounds on the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign website. So I don’t feel I’m stealing anyone’s thunder by posting it here too.

Tanvi Vyas from Trailblazers blogged about the campaign today for The Guardian website. There’s a direct link on there to some of their other films too (most of which were filmed as part of this project in order to provide wider context).

Even more exciting (for me anyway) is that the trailer and possible even the longer documentary may well be appearing on a cinema screen near you!!

Those crazy kids F&M are on teevee tomorrow afternoon in Saskatoon (Shaw TV if anyone can get it) promoting their tour, their new album and their new video! Yeah you know the one. The one you can see here too.

So here it is! This Winter (Revisited) by F&M.

Basically Ryan and the band are always on the road, spreading the joy with their music and decided they might as well use their downtime productively to film some footage on their iPhones to help promote one of their songs.

Which they then handed over to me to ‘do something with it’.

I was at a loss really. There was so much footage but I couldn’t see how it could just fit coherently together, especially as one of the quirks of the iPhone video recording is that it never seems to shoot at the same frame rate twice! Plus half of the footage was landscape, the rest was portrait. So I had to try and frame (literally it turns out) the footage in some kind of narrative framework.

I’ve got two nephews and two nieces and it always amazes and frustrates me at how they have sexual/gender identities stamped onto them from the moment they leave the womb. All of it well-meaning and as a result of how as a society we’ve blindly accepted that that’s just how things are. If they’re boys then they like trucks and fire engines and building things. If girls then they must be obsessed with the colour pink and dolls and cute fluffy kittens.

And those dolls? They are evil sexualised images that children are taught by toy manufacturers, tv executives and pop music producers to aspire to being themselves. Plastic, perfect and sans genitalia they live problem free imaginary lives.

And I thought. F**k that. Why can’t they have problems too? Why can’t they abuse their bodies with drink, drugs and nutella (and that’s another story altogether, the nutella story)? Why can’t they mourn for lost loves or be closet transvestites?

With actual hard cash I would have liked to make something a little nastier but on a budget I think myself and Paul (cameraman, safe pair of hands and good friend) did the best we could in one very very busy afternoon in my front room.