Video, but not the VHS kind

I've been playing around with After Effects and came up with this little teaser for an event I'm helping with soon. I gave the embed code to another webmaster exactly as it appears here but its appeared completely differently, so this is partly a "look at me!" and partly a trial to see if blogs change things when they're not told to.

It was...Bedlam

The nights are closing in and all the students are back from a busy summer of...studentism. That must mean that the Bedlam bus is coming into town!
Yet again it was a relentless night of drum and bass, dubstep and a spot of grimey beatey type things with some wum-wum-wum-woh-woh-woh bass and I got to oversee the whole night. Me vs. two rooms of constantly changing MCs and DJs, equipment that would break when i leave the room and fix itself before I arrive and a promotor who got given a radio he couldn't hear because it was he was in loud rooms!

A list of broken equipment started forming before the clock even struck midnight, which included a sound engineer who broke his glasses by face-planting the stage! There was a welcome intermission around 2-3am when somehow amongst the smoke, haze, tobacco smoke, weed and general sweat fumes, smoke detector set off the fire alarms, causing a few thousand ravers to have to evacuate into the night air for a few minutes.

After 13 hours of Bedlam, I fell into bed and spent the next day walking as little as possible on my swollen feet and trying to surround myself in vibration-free silent things.

People were walking around with DSLRs in cinema rigs so hopefully a tasty-looking video will appear soon, you can't see much in the photos this year so i can't boast about it too much. Roll on Hospitality!

how to re-use a building

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

I've worked for a few productions with a local Am-Dram Society from Barry called Pukka Productions, and this year they've got big plans for their big yearly performance in december.

Porthkerry Methodist Church is up for sale in barry, and a local community arts group want to turn the church into the two-storey "Canolfan Porthceri Centre", incorporating galleries, a theatre and some various other arty rooms, a bit like The Gate in cardiff.

This year Pukka productions decided to utilise the space that the church offered, and use it for a week long run of performances.

The view in the panorama is what the audience will be seeing. The pews will have been taken away by December, but the heating pipes that follow the lines of the pews in a zig-zagwill most likely stay in place(above the floor!). This means that the whole area the pews now cover will have to be covered in staging a foot off the ground. 

The balcony at the back of the room is pretty treacherous to say the least, and i'm not sure about hanging fly bars from the roof beams, so back and top lighting will probably not be happening.

The first thing the Director said to me was that the play included lots and lots of complicated and drastic lighting changes! So of course I'm looking forward to seeing the script and finding out just how drastic these changes are meant to be!

It's going to be an interesting few months leading up to this play, I'll be sure to let you know what happens along the way, whether you like it or not!

Don't look down!

It's a new craze sweeping the photographers of the world!!!
Well, no actually, it's not.
But I like it.

Some good friends of mine decided to take it upon themselves to smarten up my roguish appearance and buy me a monocle for my birthday, I think it's working.

                      

Feel the burn...

Quick! the last of the summer sunshine is outside, catch it before it escapes until May!

Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm thrilled to be here

I haven't been outside much in the last few days, trying to get some work done and prepare for the coming term. Yet again I bagged a bedroom that only gets about an hour of direct sunlight so I had to venture out into Le Jardin to get some rays.

I've been playing about with taking photos holding one end of a tripod so that camera is looking down the tripod at me. When I find one I like I'll post it up.

Five go camping

Dear me, the summer times have flown by!

Cardiff's students have buggered off, so the union's been dead and I there hasn't been much else on locally. 

So, with nothing else to do I decided to go and work at Soul Survivor weeks B and C in Shepton Mallet as a video editor for the Seminar recording team. I was promised a shiny new iMac and fun times, both of which came true! It was like christmas in a field.

Although the office had no windows we were allowed out into the big wide world two or three times a day to eat and pick berries. 

This year was the first year that seminars were being filmed, so we had a whole bunch of new problems to overcome, like a 4Gb record limit on the cameras, cheap tripods that are held together with PVC tape and renders that took 4 hours for every hour of footage!

The team had a team leader, a deputy, editors and camera/sound ops, with some ops having a go at editing. Over the two weeks I got to share the office with these monkeys

Sorry if you're eating...

The office was split up into three sections, audio editing, video editing, and the cinema (with surround sound system) and that is where I lived from 8.30am to 12am every day for two weeks.

Join us...

Must...try...harder...

I was strolling around the sunnier parts of cardiff to find some graffiti I had seen the other night when it was too dark to photograph properly and noticed this planning application sign that had appeared to be attacked by a well-meaning person.
Obviously the person wanted the reader to visit cardiff more, except the sticker was put in a semi-industrial part of town so only locals would see it, and it was in the very city it was advertising. Oh well!



This is the flower that I saw on my way back from the bay one night. There are some very good graffiti artists based around the A470/A48 roundabout, but hardly any on the east side of town that i've found so far. I'm waiting to be proved wrong!

Meet the housemates!

Or one of them at least...

I don't tend to see much of my housemates these days since they hold regular jobs and I'm still a freelance vagabond with aspirations of lazyness. But tonight me and Bri sat down to watch IT crowd, so I snuck in my camera and tried to get some candid shots. Needless to say an SLR isn't too subtle so I had to make do with this:

Lets go exploring!

Given that I've had a few days where I haven't had any work to do, and that i'm now living in an area of cardiff i've only ever driven past i thought I'd do a bit of exploring.

Ever the technophile, I had to do a google maps search first, so that i wouldn't miss anything major. I was mainly looking for a small (or large) park somewhere nearby since i used to visit Roath Park a lot but now live too far away to get there comfortably.

LO AND BEHOLD! I come across Waterloo Gardens, a small green crack in the grey newport road area landscape

The area is dotted with little patches of grass, flowers and trees, with the odd stream running through them. a quite idyllic setting for chilling in and watching the world rotate.

As well as the public garden I also discovered Waterloo Gardens Teashop, which is a medium sized tae shop done up in a modern style akin to an english version of Starbucks. On the wall is a list of teas that they serve and can be bought in sachets over the counter, all loose leaf of course!

They're very much a local shop, supplying locally made cakes, vegan chocolate and exhibiting local artists work, with a commission from any sales of art given to charity.

Waterloo Gardens Tea Shop
Hipo Hyfryd (Chocolatier)

wanna buy some pegs?

wanna buy some pegs?
Originally uploaded by WierdyBeardy

Though i haven't been a student for a year my movements are still dictated by the student calendar. I moved into my new house on 1st July after a two day transition moving my stuff two days before moving myself. The timing is based on nearly every student housing contract being only 10 months long and traditionally ending on 30th June. Even though i've "upgraded" to 12 month contracts they still start on 1st July and end 30th June!

Anyway, this year should hopefully be buzzin'. Nice house, good housemates, and (fingers crossed) lots of work.

Got a tour scheduled for the autumn so i've just got to last the summer!