Wednesday 11 February 2015

If you want to ever work again, just do as I say


I'm taking the day off from my real work today, because I am going to attempt to download a sophisticated software program to edit film and photos and I think it might take that long to do it, plus I have to give the massive hard-drive back to the owner tomorrow.

It might be easier than I am expecting it to be, which will leave me more time to get to know how to use it once it is there.

This is just stage one of a number of stages in producing a video-mapping project for our pub which is scheduled for sometime in May. The other stages include simple things like raising about £7000 from shareholders and local businesses, creating about 30 drawn images as a story-board for the artiste, taking as much video and archive material as possible to collate into something vaguely meaningful and - last but not least - approaching the young couple whose kitchen window is the only viable position to site the projector for the actual show.

I know what they look like, and I am pretty sure that they are not English. I don't know how amenable they will be to my proposal that I take over their kitchen for three nights in the Spring, and I don't know where their doorbell is. I am hoping they speak good English so that they do not suspect me to be an immigration official posing as a video artist in order to get into their flat.

If all goes wrong, then I have decided that rather than waste all that time and money, I will simply put up a tower scaffold right outside their window and hope that they will not alert the authorities incase I - in turn - alert the authorities to them. You need a licence to put up scaffold in these streets.

This video is a joint project between me and about 50 other people, but I have made it clear that I am putting my director's hat on for all of it. It's bad enough to have to deal with a Board of 9 when rubber-stamping building work, and I am certainly not relinquishing artistic control to a committee of 536 others. To do that would be to put forward the whole thing until May 2025.

The Cohen Brothers are the only joint video artists that I know of (aside from Gilbert and George, and they don't count) and as far as I am aware, only one person can look through a viewfinder at one time.

I am told that I have to get off the internet when I instal this program, otherwise it communicates with its creators and screams for help. This way I can tell it that if it ever wants to see the light of day again, it can just shut up and do what I tell it to do. I learned this technique from the old Hollywood producers.

Everything is too clever for its own good these days.

20 comments:

  1. Can't you just put a letter through their letter box asking their permission and giving your phone number? If you don't know which is their flat then put one through every letter box and tell them why and ask the right couple to put an identifying feature in their window if they are willing (or perhaps a rude notice if they are not)! Problem solved?

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    1. I have to know the flat number first, but I may end up doing that.

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  2. Will it let you post slightly bigger photos?

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    1. That was the biggest I could get. Also, some of other blogger's photos are so big that they take an age to fill the screen, especially on my little phone. John's chickens are too big for my phone.

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    2. You should be using the mobile version of blogger on your phone. Photos and headers are then not a problem.

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    3. You are doing something wrong then.

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    4. The only problem I have is that I have a crap phone which requires me to scroll down starting at the top with each page before I can read the comments, and large photos take up an entire page on my little screen. I know what I am talking about, because it's me that has to do it.

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  3. I've just downloaded it, and it took about 35 minutes. All I have to do now is learn how to use it...

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  4. This project sounds as though it will need substantial state funding. May we write letters of reference for you?

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    Replies
    1. Please do. A highly valuable (and highly virtual) prize will be given for the best one.

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  5. It does make me wonder a bit about exactly you are downloading. Sure you know what it is ? :)

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    1. That is the reason I didn't download it from the net. I know this to be legal, registered software.

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  6. Pornography I expect it's the only stuff that will pay his bar bill.

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    1. After a couple of weeks at trying to be civil (or not trying to make weak jokes at least), I see you are reverting to your true self. It will be time to say goodbye again soon.

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  7. Send the resulting film to the Berlinale (next year, same time as now)

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