WOAH!

Hello Blogosphere, it's been over two months since I entered your den. Two months! Imagine all that's happened in that time. Well, imagine no more, because I will tell you:

• Filmed Fiends with ol' Daniel Hooper directing, and me standing around in the cold.
• Got a haircut.
• Celebrated the birth of Aaron John Stanley Laws.
• Went in two airplanes. In business class!
• Went to Japan and saw some stuff. Spent a lot of Money.
• Made little to no progress on the Toast Ghost.
• Started a project for Writing for Television, scrapped it, started another one.
• Had a conversation about what the best sandwich is (mine 'doesn't count' because it comes from a pub).
• Held auditions for my monster movie.
• Grumbled about the title for my monster movie (Revenge) without thinking of anything better.
• Watched a lot of films.
• Made a wallchart for the new series of The Apprentice.
• Played several hours of Guitar Hero.
• Celebrated the birth of both Naomi Hussain and Lizzie Walder (in one go).
• Said the word 'Lads' a lot.
• Promised to update my blog 'soon'.
• Finalised everything for Revenge.
• Postponed Revenge by a day.
• Got in a disagreement with a Liverpudlian over money.
• Postponed Revenge for a number of weeks.
• Drank some beers.
• Got commissioned to work on a top secret project (I'm not sure if it is top secret of not)
• Wrote two of the Bristol Noise videos.
• Filmed the Bristol Noise videos.
• Avoided editing the Bristol Noise videos.
• Watched the Bristol Noise videos.
• Appeared in a photo on the Bath Spa website.
• Didn't blog.
• Discovered that I really like some hip-hop.
• Avoided working on non-fiction project.
• Bullied people into making my monster for me.
• Helped my brother move.
• Set a day to work on Toast Ghost storyboards.
• Canceled work on Toast Ghost storyboards.
• Set a second day.
• Wrote some reviews.
• Put off writing other reviews.
• Remembered 'The Game'.

So yeah, that was more or less what I did. Now I will field some frequently asked questions from the public:

Jonathan, if you've been doing so much amazing stuff, why haven't you blogged about it until now? - Kevin Horse, Stoke.

A good question Kevin, thank you. I don't really have a good reason why I haven't been updating this thing. I think it's mainly because I've had a lot of work for uni, so whenever I sit down at the laptop and think "I will do some work now," I inevitably prioritise the uni work over this. Even right now, I'm thinking about the other work I should be doing.

However, there was an unprescidented demand for more blogs. People were stopping me in the street, asking when there was going to be an update (well not really, it was mostly Aaron). Laura Kalbag (who plays Lizzie on the Toast Ghost, as well as generally doing all sorts of fancy technical wizardry that I don't understand) asked me if the RSS feed was broken, or if I genuinely hadn't updated in ages. When I told her the RSS feed was fine, she fixed me with a look that said "How can you live with yourself, starting a blog and then allowing it to wither and die. You awful, awful man." Naturally, I set back to work on the blog straight away (well, several weeks later).

Wow, Japan. Sounds amazing. Was it amazing? I bet it was amazing. - Emma Carlton, Dorchester.

Yes, it was amazing. Really different, I'd love to go back. Also, it was a wonderful treat seeing my friend Paul again. Please enjoy this photo of my stood next to a statue of a dog:

Bristol Noise Videos. - Frank Hrung, Bogner.

Not really a question Frank, but I know what you're getting at. For those of you who don't know/can't remember/can't be bothered to read through older posts, a while ago Bristol City Council asked us to make them a video for a website about noise pollution. For some reason (I forget why exactly) we turned around and said "One? One? We'll give you three!" And so we set about producing three videos about a news reporter who is trying to do a piece about the noise in Bristol. But (and here's the ironic twist) every time he tries to do the report he is disrupted by the very noise he is reporting on. It is post-modernism at it's finest.

Anyway, I wrote the script for the second two videos and held the boom pole for all three of them (which may or may not be how I got the nickname 'The Human Tripod') and here they are. Enjoy: 

Why is the second video wider than the other two? - Big Norman, Newcastle.

I can't answer that. 

What about these film reviews you've been doing then? Is there a place I can view those? Preferably from the comfort of my own computer? - Nigel 'Foxy' Peters, Southall.

But of course you can. The reviews I've done have all been for the website Eyeforfilm and can be viewed here. After looking at the film reviews, remember to click 'Read DVD Review' for my thoughts on the bonus features and such. If you're interested in that sort of thing.

Are you going to blog more frequently, or is this going to be the only post for several months again? - David Doggers, Cumbria.

Well Dave (mind if I call you Dave?), I'd like to promise you that I'll blog more often, but as we all know I can be a very lazy man. So, the honest answer is that I'll try. OK one more question.

What do you mean one more question? There's a load of stuff you haven't covered yet. - Jonathan Melton, Bath. 

This is true, but I'm bored of writing about it now, and everyone probably stopped reading halfway through the bullet points anyway. I will return soon to talk about everything else, unless of course I don't.

Well, that's it for now then. Clear off everyone, I have work to do. Bye bye.

NOISE!

On Monday a man (by the name of Steve) from Bristol counsel came to the office with a simple plea. A plea for video content. The counsel have put together a website about traffic noise and how it is bad, and they want to encourage people to get involved by blogging about it and such. For example, one of the website features will be a map where people can point out their favourite 'quiet spaces' and write about them. "I like it there," they will say. "It is quiet."

Anyway, the video needs to introduce people to the site and encourage them to contribute. Also, it should be something they would show to other people and say 'check out this kerrazy vid dude' and then they will also talk about the quiet.

Ironically, for a viral video (for that's what it is) to catch people's attention it needs to be loud, noisy (which is the same as loud) and have all sorts of things going on, otherwise they will just switch it off. People have no attention spans. That's why I'm writing a blog and not a novel.

They want the video as soon as possible, so we all need to decide on what it's going to be. Here are our some ideas I've had:

• A man goes through his day getting more and more stressed by traffic noise until his head exploads. "If someone had told him their favourite quiet space, this never would have happened." Pros: Exciting and unexpected. Cons: Impractical, violent and weird.
  
• A man is walkin' about. When he goes into areas of high traffic noise he 'hulks out', turning into a violent monster. Pros: Exciting and unexpected. Cons: Impractical, violent and weird.
• Somebody's minding their own business when suddenly someone appears, points at our hero, opens their mouth and loads of traffic noise comes out. Just like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers:

• This guy is in the street. Loads of people start advancing on him and snarling. They all have t-shirts that say 'Noise' and 'Modern Life' and such. As they get ever closer, a superhero appears and fights them off. He then gives the guy a flyer for the website and flies away again.
• A man is standing by the side of a busy road. Traffic is zooming past. Slowly, the camera pulls towards him. As it gets closer to his face, blood starts trickling out of his ear. It looks exactly like this, but with blood instead of tears:

That's about all I have. For some reason I keep watching this video, and I'm not really sure why: