Be Excellent To Each Other

What is a PPA test and what does it do?

Private Parts of the Anatomy test. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

I am Mark Corrigan.

Is he lying on his side as well ?

Mali will be most upset if we ruin the ending.







He shoots himself. And the wife. It was the highlight of their wedding breakfast.

I really should have planned a toilet stop before taking 2 hours to get home from 'lunch'

Do not have the arrows to adjust it on my S2 using the mobile website.

Mr Chinnyhill, please sir, how long does it take to film one hour of tv? Something like doctor who, could you knock filming off in a few days?

Attack 'victim' was trying to impress date.

(Read that one to the end. )

This is a complex question and depends on what you are doing.

In the old days (up until about 1990) nearly all TV production were recorded in studios using a multi-camera setup. The set would go in the previous night and then they'd spend all day setting up the studio and doing camera rehearsals. Something like Doctor Who would be recorded between 7pm and 10pm which would be a 25 minute episode less any location footage. In the earlier years it would be recorded in sequence with as little editing as possible but by the late 80's it was routine to record everything out of sequence.

However today everything is shot single camera and on location or in areas more like film sound stages than TV studios. In the old days many weeks of work culminated in those multicamera studio sessions. Today it works differently. They don't even rehearse anymore! It's all done while shooting. Until Who finished in 1989 the actors would have spent a week rehearsing before going into the studio! With only 2.5 hours and a hard shut off of 10pm, they couldn't afford not to be prepared!

Today they might go out for a days shoot only expecting to come back with a minutes worth of footage if its complex (special effects etc). But they may record several minutes worth per day if the material is more straightforward.

I think from memory new Who spend about 2 to 3 weeks on principle photography each episode. I could be wrong there. I know a hell of alot about how it used to work, but not so much about how its done now.

Crossroads is an interesting series to look at. Originally it went out live but in the late 60's they started to record it. But ATV refused to allocate precious editing resources to it so until 1985 it was recorded as live (barring the ad break in the middle).

No edits, no stopping. If you screwed up near the end of part 1, you'd have to go back to the start and do the lot again making you immensely unpopular!

I heard that about Crossroads. Isn't that the reasons that scenes before the ad break commonly ended with a phone call so the producers could wave the actor on a bit if they were running short?

They didn't use them specifically before an ad break, but they did use phone calls to get episodes to time. From memory usually when opening a scene. The floor manager would signal to the actor to keep talking while watching his stopwatch and this would create the desired delay to the time when the scene should have opened.

Because there were no edits, the cameramen had to work overtime. There would have probably been 4 cameras on the go in the studio. While cameras 1 and 2 were recording the first scene, cameras 2 and 3 would be ready for the second scene. If scene 3 was on another set then cameras 1 and 2 would have to move to a new set and get ready while scene 2 was being recorded. If they banged into something when moving (and they often did) on good speakers you'd hear it!

So this first half of an episode would have been done in one go with no edits:



Note Angus Lennie there as Shughie McFee. You may remember him as Ives from The Great Escape.

This production technique is the very reason Crossroads is remembered as being cheap, having wobbly sets and acting mistakes. The sets were actually no worse than any other TV series. But because of the lack of editing, they would let set wobbles, minor mistakes and missed cues go. What was the alternative, go again from the start? You might be recording 3 episodes a day as it was! Since nobody owned a VCR it wasn't like anyone was going to see it ever again was it?

Nice example of a Doctor Who in studio in late 1973 that has been annotated.
Slightly different production technique from usual as this one has been made on a set by set basis rather than a per episode basis. So instead of spending all day preparing and the evening recording and ending up with one episode in the can, they spread it across 2 days (1 full day prep, 1 full day recording). This was probably due to a complex set that had alot of screen time that they didn't want to take down and have to re-assemble again.

My friend wrote an excellent piece in the Independent.

I've been interviewing for a vacancy this week.

One lovely lady who interviewed yesterday for this office-based role that relies heavily on a knowledge of Excel and spreadsheet work as well as other computer program knowledge didn't know what Microsoft Word was and had never used any other word processing program or even email.

She had come from a similar office role before being made redundant from the head office at Comet where every simple system based function, point of contact and order had to be done over the phone. Apparently they used to live electricals. :face palm:

It's a shame, because she was so lovely.

Now in Sydney, it's a bit shit, too many drunk people for me to deal with. It really doesn't feel safe here.

Like Blackburn, but sunny?

It's 1am right now, so not really sunny, hopefully will be tomorrow so I can swim at bondi!

Go the Kebab shop at Kings Cross. My mate said someone was once stabbed in there and they continued to serve people until the police shut the place down.

I'm staying in kings cross. I'm going to die here aren't I.

I hope I survive these 2 nights.

What do you want played at your funeral?

Tiddlywinks.

Hahaha!

I'm bored. MrsA wants me to meet her in Saltaire when she gets back (she has gotten as far as Huddersfield). Then we will get some food, walk home, get changed, walk back to Saltaire and get on the train to Leeds as we are going out for super fun trendy party times for her colleague's birthday*. There will be lots of stupid expensive beer whihc is a good thing but I don't have much cool stuff to wear tonight.

I've cleaned the tandem, realised I need a 12mm spanner to tighten the wheels , oiled the chains. All I need now is some brake cable and some bar tape and it is in a rideable state.

*http://www.pinleeds.co.uk/

Did you take any pics of the tandem as you were going along, or are we just going to have before and after pics?

2 secs...

Not much change to be honest. Just slightly cleaner. I will pick some bar tape up tomorrow.

Kings Cross is where the Chk Chk Boom woman was.

Problem is, the dining room is getting crowded.

MrsA must really love you.

I think she wouldn't mind so much if I'd have done more than 9 miles on the blue one by now....

I hate people with kids. They buy them sledges. What did mrsa come back from Buxton with? Fucking oatcakes.

Thank you for taking the time to write this. It is very interesting to me. I'm amazed they don't rehearse, surely it would make at least some sense to do that?! 2-3 weeks to make 45 minutes of pictures is amazing to me, as I didn't realise the amount of stuff that wasn't use was so vast.

Worst. Realdoll. Ever.

If you don't want it...

I'd like to point out that that rug isn't ours. Or the curtains. The sofa cost us £50 and MrsA convinced the man we bought them from to hire a transit and drive them to us.

Alot of the Doctor Who DVD commentaries feature actors bemoaning that rehearsal is a thing of the past. They say these days you just learn your lines, turn up, run it through, do it a number of times and move on. However they usually do a read through. But that isn't a full blown rehearsal.

And play with snowglobes on their deathbeds.

..... My parent's are very nice people!
[Edit] Wait - doesn't that mean you don't like most of your friends and parents?

As a kid, I had a sledge, but never any snow.

I've never let my parents throw it out.

I live on the west coast. When we get snow, it either:
1) Doesn't lie OR
2)Comes on a School day and is melted by Lunch.

Meanwhile in Congleton, it appears a former Amiga Format editor has found work:

Sydney is a bit nicer during the daytime. Car hasn't been stolen or trashed, just shat on by a bird. The opera house is a bit nice ain't it.

"Oh" said MaliA,"Chimay Red? Yes, please"

Feel like death now.

I rarely remember dreams, but last night I apparently dreamt about a party where MissChap had to compete against another for my attention.

It was like the Hunger Games, I imagine.

Was there a glass tabel in the car?

DOWNLOAD THIS NOW: The Simpsons - Treehouse of Horrors XXIII.

The Paranormal Activity spoof is worth it alone.

It's bloody excellent I tells ya.

I've decided to de-friend anybody on Faceter or Twitbook that falls for falls for one of these, starting from tomorrow.

I wonder how long it will be before I have no friends left on my list at all.

//edit: I'm tempted to start up a National Lottery one, where they say they have £500,000 in cash that they can't do anything with so are going to give it away. Interesting experiment

Superb.