Before I start using this blog for interesting things again I thought I’d link to the the 2012 retrospective post I wrote on the Dice Productions site about our last 12 months in animation, film and comedy. I also give a little preview of some upcoming projects in 2013, so please nose away.

I think the next post will be a practical one about writing, more specifically about asking for, receiving and using ‘notes’. So look forward to that.

Oh hallo. I haven’t updated this site for a short while. But thankfully it’s because I’ve been busy rather than lazy. This post is just me thinking aloud (and if a blog isn’t the place to do it I don’t know where is) and reminding myself and anyone interested about some of the things I’m up to at the moment.

Don’t Fear Death commissioned by Channel 4

The big news is that our new animated comedy short Don’t Fear Death has been commissioned by Channel 4! We’re really looking forward to making this one and watching it on the actual telly. It’s nice and twisted and we’re also in contact with a stellar voice actor that would really make this short something special (I can say no more).

Big thanks to Chris Shepherd (of Big Train Stareout Competition fame) and Lupus Films for picking us for this season of Random Acts. It’s due for completion June 2013 and should air shortly after that.

Pets Win Prizes

In other news, Man in a Cat gave us a nice surprise by winning another award. This time the film won the First Professional Film prize at Krok Animation Festival, which incredibly is held on a steam boat that travels through Ukraine to St Petersburg. To top off this latest achievement, the organisers are currently working with the Ukrainian embassy to send us a customised bell as part of the prize. Ding dong.

Judging the London Comedy Film Festival

Having won the short film prize at last year’s inaugural London Comedy Film Festival it was a nice surprise to be asked along with Louis to judge the 2013 short film prize. We’ve just watched the 13 shortlisted films for the first time and the standard is pleasingly high. We’ve certainly narrowed it down but we aren’t going to rush our decision.

Louis and I will be presenting the 2013 LoCo Discovery Short award during the festival on 25 January, so you’ll have to wait until then to find out who won. Tickets for the fest are on sale now.

Anna & Katy

I was lucky enough to be invited to the first screening of Channel 4′s new sketch show for 2013 Anna & Katy.

Louis did some animated segments for the show (which I chipped some ideas in for) and I’m pleased to say they worked really well. The whole show is joyously funny, so look forward to that on C4 next year.

On top of the screening I had the pleasure of meeting Laurence Rickard, writer and star of Horrible Histories who script edited Anna & Katy. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the projects he mentioned hit the screen in the not-too-distant future.

Writing

Aside from that I’m writing a lot. I’ve been in pitch mode with my co-conspirator Louis recently and have a couple of comedy collaborations with fellow writers lined up that I’m hopeful will produce some lovely results.

Screenwriters Forum

I’m now a member of the Screenwriters Forum. It’s a meet-up for writery types in the Midlands to discuss screenwriting, learn from peers, and see talks from invited speakers. My first event was with Henry Swindell, head of BBC Writersroom North, who took us through the basics of story and got us to apply structure to films and TV we’d recently seen. Always a useful exercise no matter how well you think you know it.

That will do for now. There is more going on, as ever, but those are the notable bits and bobs from Dice land.

I’m a big Stanley Kubrick fan. This video demonstrates a small percentage of why that is the case.

Kubrick // One-Point Perspective from kogonada on Vimeo.

The guy who made this video, Kogonada, has made some other cool stuff like compiling all of the POV shots from Breaking Bad, another of my favourites (beware of spoilers in this one)

Breaking Bad // POV from kogonada on Vimeo.

You can see more of Kogonada’s videos on Vimeo.

WARNING: SPOILERS LIE WITHIN

Before I begin I must state that for about an hour I did enjoy Berberian Sound Studio. There were laughs at the terrible, schlocky dialogue, there were audio pyrotechnics, it looked lovely, and the premise was a strong one. But somehow I left the cinema underwhelmed. Here I’ll try to figure out why from a writer’s perspective. Apologies for the rambling nature of this. It’s not a review, but a set of notes for myself. Here goes…

For me, Berberian Sound Studio isn’t about isolation as I had assumed before reaching the cinema. In the claustrophobic confines of the studio there are people all around Gilderoy. There are technicians, the producer, the director, the actors. They might not be the most hospitable, but on the whole they are there and are not overly detestable until later revelations about the director. A surly receptionist isn’t out of the realms of possibility now, is it? It is also revealed that Gilderoy was used to working alone in his shed, so isolation cannot be cited as a cause for his cracking psyche.

My interpretation of the story was more about being an outsider. Although the sound studio is Gilderoy’s natural habitat, he’s out of the loop as people talk behind his back in Italian and he has to work on the questionable material of the film. However, I got the impression that Gilderoy was, at least in part, guilty of making himself an outsider. If he wanted to he could have ingratiated himself better. He was bumbling and quiet from the outset. A shy, garden-shed perfectionist and not one for conversation. It is therefore surprising that the lack of camaraderie would have affected him so much.

It could even be argued that his employers were actually quite hospitable. They put him up in a house, they treated him with respect for his skill, they wanted him to do a good job. It seemed as if Gilderoy’s withdrawn methods were the main cause of tension as the team grew frustrated with his lack of comfort with the material. Their flaws became apparent later, obviously, but even they were not directed towards Gilderoy but added to his feelings of discomfort in that situation.

The other frustration with Berberian was the amount of dead end ideas. Several uses of imagery and plot points just weren’t addressed and didn’t feel like they fed into the themes being explored.

Spiders turned up throughout but didn’t seem to have much bearing on Gilderoy’s story. They linked his temporary home and the studio, but otherwise shed little light into his situation and failed to serve as an effective motif.

His struggle to be reimbursed for his plane ticket was another dead end idea. He tried half-heartedly to get his money from a reluctant employer. Annoying yes, but I’m sure most freelancers face this problem on a regular basis and it hardly warrants a descent into madness (freelancers may disagree). When he does finally stand up for himself and confront the accounts department he is shot down immediately. He doesn’t change, he reverts back to being a meek doormat, his status quo.

The plane ticket subplot also results in Gilderoy being told there was in fact no flight on the day he travelled. This made links with the psychological masterpiece The Shining, echoing the supernatural paranoia of “You’ve always been the caretaker”. Yet this hint at Gilderoy’s delusions was never explored. There was no indication that the supernatural elements of the film-within-a-film had started to encroach on his reality. If anything, by the end I was left feeling that he was just not dealing with stress of the job and perceived isolation. His hallucinations or dreams suggested he was losing grip of reality, but were a consequence of his own psychology, not external factors. The missing plane journey, if intended to be an actual occurrance, doesn’t chime with the strong hints from everything else that ‘it’s all in his head’.

My main issue with the film though is the lack of escalation. While I don’t agree that all films must escalate to fever pitch every time, the building nature of Gilderoy’s madness only reaches a peak with a fractured montage of camera effects and his audio torture of the actress. But even this he backs down from. He can hardly claim to have completely tipped over the edge of sanity when his guilt for his actions is so apparent as the film fades to its conclusion. I suspect many people would have expected Gilderoy to be so affected by the gruesome nature of his work that he began to join in, perhaps killing in his fragile state. But this promise is not delivered and this results in a deflated feeling that things weren’t actually too bad for Gilderoy.

For all the audio trickery and camera effects, Gilderoy’s journey from quiet technician to fractured mind feels underwhelming. If intended as a character study, Berberian refuses to let us in on the reasons for Gilderoy’s attitude and mentality. His backstory is similarly undercooked. We don’t find out why he was hired, what films he used to make, or what his life at home was like (and if it was, perhaps in the countryside documentary section, it was not explicit or relevant enough for me to care).

If intended as an exploration of mental stress, it doesn’t go far enough considering his surroundings. People have stressful jobs and are affected by uncomfortable situations with colleagues all the time. But they do not often push people into madness and the film doesn’t really show this. The film depicts a man being pushed in the direction of madness, but in truth only flirting with it. A similar story could have occurred in any office under pressure, rendering the sound studio premise not much more than a showcase for the craft of sound design. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the filmmaking process will understand the process and value of foley.

The raft of five-star rave reviews speaks more of the ambiguous arthouse nature of the film than of the entertaining or enlightening nature of the story. Which is a shame, because with some more focus on the story in second half, Gilderoy could have become a cult screen icon rather than the unreadable, brooding figure we were presented with. For me, ambiguity is the enemy of satisfaction. And unfortunately, I didn’t feel satisfied.

It took a year to create, a year to travel the world, and now it’s finally online to watch and share and comment on. Here’s our animated short All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat.

For more information about the film, check out the Man in a Cat page on the Dice Productions website.

In pleasing news, my favourite comedy actor and star of Man in a Cat, Kevin Eldon, has been given his own BBC2 sketch show! It’s likely to be completely bonkers, but will definitely be expertly performed. He’s just the funniest man.

And as a special treat, the first clip from the new show is up online:

In more Kevin Eldon-related news, Man in a Cat will be released to the masses online next month via the Future Shorts YouTube channel. So look out for that.

Isle of Spagg is the creation of BAFTA-winning friends of Dice The Brothers McLeod. They made a half-hour comedy pilot for the animated sitcom and now it’s emerged online. It’s very lovely and funny, and Louis animated a little bit of it, so give it a Spaggin’ good watch:

These audio interview podcast things just keep popping up with interesting stuff. Well, I find them interesting at least. Here’s the Nerdist Writer’s Panel with Jane Espenson (Once Upon a Time; Husbands; Buffy; Caprica) and Douglas Petrie (Charlie’s Angels; Buffy; Pushing Daisies). Follow that obscenely long link to listen to them being smart and funny.

In the early-1980s, when originally offered the lead role in The Terminator by director James Cameron, the great Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted on one condition:

July 23rd

Dear James,

I’ve just received the costume sketches. I’ll tell you everything I think, without censoring, and you take from my opinion what you like.

I assume that the designer took his impressions from the book and didn’t know, naturally, who would be playing The Terminator. And I think, for a character in general, they’re lovely sketches.

I love the main thing — the leather jacket — and I mean to show by my sketch the exact same color (black). But I’ve added two large pockets to take away from the svelt, feminine line. (Also in case of a few props.)

I also think the sunglasses are both appropriate and lovely.

And I love the same grey shirt. Also the lighter colored inner leather lining of the jacket.

What I don’t like is the precise pin-pointing in place and time as this costume does.

I don’t think of The Terminator as an eccentric who holds on to his 2029 Dandy’s Sunday suit and wears it in 1984, but rather as just an eccentric — where there’s no telling what he’ll do or where he ever found his get-up — except that it strangely fits him: Part of this world, part of another. A vain man who knows colors that suit him, yet, with all the oddity, has strangely good taste. Something mysterious, yet undefined.

I’m not a T-1000 who skips along with little mincy steps. So, as you see, I’ve suggested ditching the Robert Helpmann trousers. Jodhpurs to me belong more to the dancing master. But once elegant now almost too-tight trousers — tight through preoccupation with the impending apocalypse — is character.

Slime green trousers are icky. But black leather trousers are just as unobtrusive for your camera, but tasteful.

The shotgun is terrific, but making it 2 inches shorter would make it more special.

Also a light red scar revealing a metal skeleton shows a man who knows how to compliment his red LED eyes.

To match the boots with the motorcycle is fey. To match the boots with the shotgun is taste.

Hope all is well. Talk to you soon.

All my best,

Arnold

A parody of the great Gene Wilder notes from Letters of Note.

For an explanation, check out this post here.