'West Wing'

Watching one two minute clip of 'the West Wing' only makes me want to re-watch the entire 112 hours. My favourite TV series ever, combining intelligence, comedy, brilliant acting and writing and amazing direction of photography. Every single character of the quite large ensemble cast is amazing. Here's one clip demonstrating this.

Future Ideas

Coming towards the end of term and the end of my first year of this degree, I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do in the future. I've been uncertain about what career I may want to eventually enter into for a very long time and I still maintain this uncertainty. My interest in music production is starting to become more of a fascination and a passion, the hours of effort I dedicate to learning about it and practising it don't feel like work and it doesn't feel like a hobby and I'm starting to think it could possibly start developing into a skill - although I'll be very hard on myself before I reach that point.

However, I still maintain my passion for film and my interest in writing. I don't feel ready to concentrate all my creative thoughts onto one specialism and I also don't think it's necessary. Although I have decided that, for now, I want to integrate music, in one form or another, into as much of my degree work as possible. And I've been thinking about things I want to attempt next year.

I know one of the modules next year involves documentary, so I'm attempting to put together plans to create a music documentary and see how feasible this idea will be. Hopefully I'll know more before the summer and can plan it properly then. I have an accessible band in mind who would make an interesting subject and I would be able to get access and interviews with quite a few industry professionals and other, established bands if it worked out. However, all this rests on what my course dictates in terms of whether I'd be able to take on a project by myself or in a small group rather than a group of 4 or 5 and whether it's possible for me to travel to Brighton and London for a period of time to complete the bulk of the filming and production.

I'm also thinking more seriously about creating a website for artists to showcase videos of their songs, but with a few "obstructions" (taking influence from the work in our second term based on Lars von Trier's method of obstructing the creative process with various rules). These rules would be something along the lines of; the song must be a 'live' performance and not be pre-recorded and must be performed in an area not accustomed to musical performances - interpreted as you wish. This could mean filmed in HD or on a handycam, or even on a mobile phone anywhere from in a kitchen to on a bus or in a lift (inspired by Vincent Moon and the previously mentioned Blogotheque, and the concept of 'Guerilla perfomances'.) This is something I really want to have a stab at.

The main problem here - I know nothing about web-design. So this week I've got myself a copy of Dreamweaver CS4, a copy of 'Dreamweaver CS4 for Dummies' and some time with a Technical Instructor at Uni next week to start showing me the basics.

I want to do this!

I've recently come across a foreign website called: Blogotheque. The basic concept is there're dozens (maybe hundreds) of well established musicians/bands/songwriters, an amazing selection, that all have videos made where they're asked/made to perform songs in unusual and/or uncomfortable places. Like on top of railway bridges, squashed in a lift, or whilst walking down a busy street. They call these 'Take-Away Shows" and they're all filmed cheaply and quickly and mostly in one take, proper guerrilla style.

I was happy to find out that the mastermind behind the idea was Vincent Moon, a name I was familiar with from a music-documentary of Arcade Fire called 'Miroir Noir', a very unusual and inspiring documentary following the band through both the recording and touring process. Moon shoots and directs lots of independent music-based films as well as lots of music videos for a lot of bands I love from the Alt. Rock ("Indie" - in its true sense) genre.

I've been trying to come up with a solid idea of a project to set myself this summer. Initially I was leaning towards a straightforward documentary following my friends band that are doing fairly well for themselves at the moment. But I've always been drawn to the concept of both guerrilla filming and guerrilla gigs and I'm really keen to take influence from this and make use of the massive quantities of quality musicians I know back home in Brighton and maybe create a digital network incorporating loads of mini videos. Perhaps beginning by making them myself and then allowing people to add their own.

'Outliers'

For my birthday my dad bought me three books. The first I've already started reading, is the latest from Malcolm Gladwell. I enjoyed 'Blink' so much I'd go straight onto this one before the work of another author.

'Blink' went on to discuss the mechanics of emotion and how the muscles of the face's reaction to a feeling, displaying emotion, is linked to the bodies reaction and how if a person manipulates those muscles, effectively recreating the combination of movements that form the facial expression displaying anger, the body will react as if the person is actually angry, ie. their heart rate will increase and palms will sweat, the person will grow disorientated and find it harder to think rationally. Similarly, if a person watches a comedy with a pencil between their teeth, prohibiting their muscles from forming a smile, the person will react differently to normal, finding it less funny.

It also discussed the workings of Autistic minds, "mind-reading" (forming and reading facial expressions) and the theory of the state of 'arousal'. Using policemen as examples, Gladwell talks about the rush of adrenaline in vital situations when your heart rate increases, causing your brain to shut down and block out what it deems unnecessary information. During this state of arousal, a police officer can block out surrounding noise/gunfire, focus onto people or objects with enhanced vision and experience a slow-down of time. However, if the arousal increases, so does the heart-rate and brain's reaction, which can shut down so many parts of your brain that you can become effectively useless, even to the point of having no control over your body, unintentionally voiding your bowels and not being able to move or act.

His next book, 'Outliers', tackles the circumstances of success, "changing the way we think about what makes us unique". The first few chapters are dedicated to introducing how he's going to achieve this, beginning with 'proving' how what month you're born in proves vital to your success as an sportsman. Gladwell claimes that this 'evidence' "tells us that our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic."

Again, it's a very innovative and original idea, using other peoples work, theory and discoveries to build on and strengthen his own.

I particularly like a quote from 'the Times' on the back of this book. "He is the best kind of writer - the kind who makes you feel like you're a genius, rather than that he's a genius."