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.

Sunday afternoon blogging

Hello all! It's Sunday afternoon and it seems like it's time for a blog.

Some excellent news about the trip to Japan. Michael's picking up the tickets this week, and he reckons it's 95% probable that we'll be going first class. In a way, the first class in itself is even more exciting than the trip (although obviously not really). Only two weeks away now, should be a rip-roaring good time.

On Friday I handed in my planning folder for my film Revenge, which was the last bit of semester 1 work to be done. Ever. I'd be slaving away on storyboards for it, and they all look terrible. It's always seemed strange (and rather unfortunate) to me that my Dad went to art school and then spawned a cack-handed goon who can't even draw decent stick men. Ah well. (Incidentally, I gave my dad this blog address, so if you're reading this: 'Hello'.)

Anyway, it's was a bit of an piece of work this one, because with every other piece of work I've handed in so far I've had a reasonable idea of what mark I'm going to get, but with this one I don't really have a clue. Everyone in the module is doing such different projects and they're all at different stages so marking it must be pretty difficult. I did quite a lot of work for it though (and the script alone went through several revisions) so hopefully I should get a decent mark. (Incidentally, I put the blog address in the work I handed in, so if Nic or a secondary marker is reading this: 'Hello'.)

After handing in the work on Friday, I took myself off to Sion Hill for some more Toast Ghost action. Unfortunately, all the audio we recorded last week is apparently unusable (distorted or something), so we're going to have to get everyone back and do it again. Luckily, it was just cast from various people hanging around, so getting them again won't be difficult, with the possible exception of Dan who is shooting his film this Sunday, so will probably be pretty busy most of the week. (Incidentally, Dan has just started a blog of his own following production, so do stop by there and tell him I said 'Hello')

When the mulling over the audio was done, we talked character designs and general animation styles. I sat in the back and occasionally issued demands, such as 'I want Lizzie to have pigtails' and 'I want the Mum to look like Tina Fey', which was fun. The way it's looking like it's going to come out is completely different to how I originally envisioned it, but that's a good thing. It should look pretty unique, which is always a plus. I also spoke to a super secret musician about doing a theme song, and he seems quite excited about it, so in turn I am excited. A memorable theme tune makes a cartoon complete.

In non-working news, Robert Popper, a favourite writer of mine, has just started a blog which is mainly just amusing videos he finds on the internet. Every single one he posts is pretty hilarious, so I recommend keeping an eye on that. Here is one of them that I like:

On a completely unrelated note, it's nice to see Jonathan Ross back on TV.  I like him.

Well, that's all for now. Ta ta.

Ghostly Goings On

It's been almost a week without blogging. After the honeymoon peroid wore off (four blogs in two days), I left this place a cold and barron waste land. I'm sorry blog, I didn't mean to desert you. I am back again now, and I bring news. Toast Ghost related news! 

This lovely poster was made by Laura Kalbag, one of the people on the animation team behind The Toast Ghost. It's the first example of someone making something because of words I bashed out on the old laptop, so that's pretty gratifying. 

Anyway, on Friday a bunch of us got together and recorded all the vocals for it. We had a really fancy soundproof booth for doing it, and I made everyone do all their lines repeatedly untill they were hot and pissed off at me. Here are a couple of photos:

This is me doing some directing of some sort. I am wearing a tshirt I got for Christmas, so thanks for that Mum.

Here I am in the soundbooth with Joe and Aaron. I'm pretty sure we were just mucking about at this point.

Here are some people just having a good old chill out.

I grow weary of those blogging. I'll be back soon with some Revenge news. Goodbye all.

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:

Lunch Meeting

Today I went out to lunch with Dan to discuss his film Fiends, which we'll be shooting on the 2nd. I'll be acting in a producing role, and while I'm still not entirely sure what exactly that entails, it should be fun. Fiends is basically a zombie short (although Dan doesn't like to use the Z word), so hopefully my credit on it will be zombie wrangler. But anyway, the first bit of producerising I'll be doing is sitting in on a casting session and offering my opinion on the actors, just like in the movies.

I had a burger with BBQ sauce. The sauce cost 69p and came in a pot. You'd think for almost a pound, they'd have put it in the burger, but what can you do? I poured it myself in the end.

Going to see My Bloody Valentine 3D on Monday. Original was enjoyable enough, if a bit generic, but apparently this one's a lot better. The 3D is supposed to be excellent, and I love how they shot footage specifically for use in the trailer:

Film studios don't put enough care into the trailers anymore, and they all end up looking the same. You can't imagine anyone today financing this slice of brilliance:

Having said that, occasionally an interesting trailer (like the MBV3D one) does slip out, such as the Hot Fuzz internet only trailer, which Edgar Wright did because he's awesome:

Fans of trailers and Edgar Wright (aka nerds) should check out Trailers From Hell, which has loads of old trailers with commentary from some top directors, including Wright and Gremlins man Joe Dante.

Enjoy!

More Stuff

I've only had this blog for a couple of hours, and already I'm on my second post. But things move quickly in the Melton world and already there's more news.

News the First

As I mentioned in my last post, I wrote a review for Role Models and sent it off to Eye For Film. Well I got an email from them (or rather her, the editor Amber) saying they liked it and want me to do more reviews. So, brilliant. It doesn't pay anything, but I get free DVDs and my name in lights (computer monitors are made of lights right?) and who could ask for anything more than that. I think she's going to send me a Uwe Boll film though, so that should be... interesting. Anyway, fans of me should look out for forthcoming reviews.

News the Second

The lovely Jenny Foxon has found me a composer for my film Revenge, a young gentleman by the name of Ben Jose. Apparently he's really up for it, so I sent him the script and I guess now I just need to wait and see. He can use the finished composition as part of his coursework, so I won't feel like I'm taking advantage and hopefully he'll put his best efforts into it.

It's good for me when other people get involved in projects like this and The Toast Ghost for a couple of reasons. For one, it means I don't have to do everything myself, but more importantly it makes me want to work harder so as to avoid letting the side down. 

News the Third

My talented and handsome brother made a logo for the blog, without me asking or anything. You can see it if you direct your eyes in an upwards direction.

News the Fouth

I am hungry for soup, and luckily I have some in the cupboard.

Jona away!

The First Day of Stuff

Dear Internet,

How are you? I am well. I've finally got around to creating a blog to share the stuff what I'm doing and that, and here it is. Well, without further ado, here is some of the things I'm working on right now.

Short Film - Revenge (Terrible Provisional Title)

This is a short I'm doing for university about a man whose life is crushingly awful, until one day he finds a monster in his cupboard and everything finally starts to go his way. It's based on true events.

So far I've:

• Written a script (that I'm not completely happy with)
• Basically done a shot list
• Started storyboarding
• Got the locations more or less decided
• Decided what the monster's going to look like

But I still have to:

• Finish the shot list and storyboard
• Find a cast
• Make the monster
• Get some music done
• Finalise the locations
• Film the damn thing
• Edit it
• Enter it into some festivals and the internets and such /Stick it in a drawer and never look at it again

I have to hand in all the planning stuff next Friday, which is achievable assuming I don't spend the whole time sitting around staring into space (which I usually do). I'm aiming to shoot it at the start of March, so fingers crossed on that. 

All the planning and filming parts are my least favorite things about making films. I like the writing and I like the editing, but the rest feels a little bit too much like real work. Still, it's all got to be done, and I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end.

The Toast Ghost

I'm very excited about this one. This is a animated children's series I'm developing with an animation group from Sion Hill, who are almost frighteningly professional. Had a meeting with a few of them today, and they've got ideas and plans and notes and all sorts of proper things. There's even a fancy website thingy with a timetable and 'milestones' of what we're doing when. Frankly, I was impressed.

Apparently everyone thinks it's a good script and they all wanted a character of their own to design, so that's a plus. I really want it to be a proper collaborative thing, and I was a bit worried they might see it as me coming down there and saying 'I've written a script, now do my bidding slaves'. Maybe they do see it like that, and that's just what they're in to?

We're going to be holding auditions for voiceover artists this Friday, so hopefully we'll get a decent turnout of people to pick from. Once they're chosen, we're aiming to record the audio the following Friday so that the animation can get started and I can become increasingly megalomaniacal, making bizzare demands while growing out my beard and fingernails. Should be fun.

Non-Fiction Project: Japan

If everything goes according to plan, then I should be heading off to Japan on the 8th of February to see my good friend Paul and also see the supposedly amazing city of Tokyo. I figured since I'm going there anyway, and I have a non-fiction project to do for my dissertation, I may as well try out some travel writing. I'm currently in the process of stockpiling a bunch of travel books (as I've never really read any before) in order to familiarise myself with the genre. While I'm there I'm going to try and keep a detailed diary to record my thoughts, feelings and bowel movements.

When I get back, I'm going to aim to type it all up into something readable as quickly as possible, so I have the rest of the year to shape it into something good, rather than just pushing to get to the word limit. I think the word count needs to be 6,000, so that's about 1,000 words per day, which seems good. I guess it depends what I do there (and I am planning on doing a lot).

On the downside, it's going to be very expensive, but with Paul living there (which means I don't have to pay for accommodation) and my associate Michael working for Virgin Airlines (which means flights will be cheap), I'd be stupid not to go. When I get back I'll just have to live on old bits of bread.

Film/DVD Reviews

I really need to get into film and DVD reviews because I like watching them, so I want somebody to let me do it for free in return for a few of my words. I wrote a Role Models review which I'm sending to websites and hopefully somebody will like it and send me stuff. That would be nice. Also, good for the old portfolio.

Novel

I just finished a module in writing a novel, which I really enjoyed, and now I have the first 3,000 words of one. Obviously that's pretty much nothing in novel terms, but it's fun to write it when I force myself, so I'm going to try and keep it going. Who knows, maybe one day I will be the next unpublished bitter old novelist!

***

I think that's everything I've got going on right now. Let's take a look at the pop-culture I've been ingesting, just for fun!

Wainy Days

This is a webseries staring David Wain (director of Role Models and the amazing Wet Hot American Summer, a film I once watched three days in a row) on a quest for love. The episodes are between three and four minutes and all just really silly. This is the sort of thing I should be doing, no-budget script driven fun stuff. Need to write something that doesn't involve monsters or ghosts or explosions or locations, just some solid dialogue. I think I rely too much on gimmicks anyway, as a way of hiding incase the actual writing isn't any good. 

Another brilliant low-budget webseries is The Guild, about a group of World of Warcraft players (much better than that sounds). Again, nothing fancy, just interesting characters and decent jokes.

Last night I also watched the pilot episode of The United States of Tara, which was written and produced by Diablo Cody (the striper turned screenwriter behind Juno) based on an idea by Steven Spielberg. It's about as high concept as you can get, Tara (of the title) has a multiple personality disorder, which means if she gets upset she becomes one of her 'Alters', including a 15 year old girl called T and gun toting redneck Buck.

It'll be interesting to see if it holds up as the series progresses, but the first episode is good fun. Not a great deal actually happens because there's so much to introduce, but the dialogue's great and the cast have a real warth between them. I especially like the Dad, but I always enjoy a good TV Dad.

Finally, I just got sent this video which I really have no words for. Just watch and enjoy.

Yours Sincerely,

Jonathan D Melton