June 2024

Life Imitating Art

Actors, actors, everywhere; with a dash of natural magic and a sprinkle of film making.

Super Charly

Welcome to June.

Super Charly is still trundling on as you can see from the images above.

Long time friend, actor, stuntman and collaborator Kester Reece Longhurst kindly returned for some additional green screen filming and on the CGI front, one has been making Charly talk; which has been great fun.

Also the script is still ebbing and flowing to the finish line.

My passion project is still taking shape and with my first feature film coming up to it’s twentieth birthday I look forward to making this third feature film a reality.

The journey has been an interesting one. I have written three previous scripts and worked with other script writers on developing a third feature film. Each story being completely different, but yet, the have all shared the same message and theme; even if I didn’t know it at the time. I even have a personal favourite scene centred around an apple pie and custard being a metaphor for the meaning of life, which I wrote about six years ago and yet, now, I find myself wanting to incorporate it into this new script. How life twists and turns as we travel along! And I’m always overjoyed to share the journey from time to time, with such special humans such as Kester.

All's Fair When Fact Crossed Fiction

Looking back over the last month I have to confess to a first for me. Reality TV. It’s never been on my, ‘to watch,’ list, but I shall not knock it; if they weren’t so popular then they wouldn’t be so many of these programmes on the ‘o’l tube’. I know there are avid followers all round the World, so when I read on social media that an actress I had worked alongside a few years ago was to be one of the contestants on the UK version of a show called, Love Triangle (all episodes can be streamed on E4) I just had to tune in.

Apart from the drama that ensued from the shows format of having thrown complete strangers on together via flirty text messages, the main thing that struck me was that life was, truly, imitating art!

You see, Kelly Michelle Grey and I worked together a few years ago on a web series that she created. She had cam up with the format of a six part web series telling the adventures she had will using the dating app Tinder to find true love. The little twist would be that her numerous, potential, suitors were all played by the same actor, Christophe Phillips.

This is a lovely chap who I had worked alongside on a few live shows and they had, by the time our paths crossed, already completed series one, which had been received well and Chris had an idea for a second series, but this time the focus would be on his Tinder misadventures and Kelly would take on the role of the women he would meet.

Chris introduced me to series one and, due to the unavailability of the original Producer, I was asked to bring my skills to bare.

The budget was nonexistent. Time was extremely tight, due to the availability of both actors and the film crew just about made up a skeleton! But we did complete the project.

It just tickled me that a reality TV show mirrored a web series project that is fun, silly, a bit naughty with the nature of the subject matter and stretches credibility a tad (all in the name of having fun with the material), but then a reality TV show comes along and tops the whole absurdity of the project and the icing on the cake is one of the creators and stars of the Web series was one of the contestants of the reality show!

The episodes of Alls Fair In Love And Tinder are available to watch on a few platforms via the inter-web. I’ve included links below and for series one of All’s Fair (which I wasn’t involved in) and …the reality TV show that Kelly appeared in and I’ll have links to the actors Bios, as they are both extremely talented and lovely.

Warning: All’s Fair In Love & Tinder does contain adult content and a turd!

Link to Series 1 of All's Fair

Devious

Devious

After the showing of episode 5 at the DWAS convention it's time to get back to work, but before we can start on episode 6 the crew want to re-instate the Spiker scene, which were removed for the convention due to time restrictions. So now I have to slave away at my keyboard and attempt to bring the Spiker to life once more. Of course I will be turning to the ever faithful Blender and Brekel to help me accomplish this. Below will be my obligatory advertisement for these two amazing programmes.

The Aroura Borealis in Sussex

Helen and myself had just returned from a holiday in Cornwall when my Aroura app (on my phone) pinged and told me that the Borealis would be visible from the South coast of the UK. Being a fan of such a special phenomena I rushed up to the Sussex Downs (naively believing that I would be a lone wolf on the hunt) and I found myself in the middle of a group of Aroura Hunters; all out at 22:30 with their cameras out. By 23:00 we began to see the start of the Aroura coming our way. A green mist just on the horizon and then, of the course of the next two hours it became a canvas of colours that one could only dream of. And as the Borealis grew across the sky, so did the crowed. It seems as people began to read and see about this via social media they all began to head to higher ground to witness this most special of spectacles! Indeed, by 23:00 I looked at the narrow, winding road which leads to the small car park where myself and my fellow Aroura Hunters looked on in wonder and I was greeted by another magical sight. I was the re-creation of the end shot from the movie, ‘Field Of Dreams’, The whole winding road painted out via shinning car headlights. It was almost as moving as the Aroura itself. For the moment I was trapped in the middle of the night, at the top of the Sussex Downs, it was cold, it was dark, I was surrounded by strange humans from all walks of life and we had all been brought together by this natural event.

It was a gift from the universe as, for a short while, this group of humans were all unified and at peace with the natural world around them. It was magical.