bigbrolly.com

Flash, film and old orange penguins

admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:22:17 +0000

Nostalgia – you can almost smell them can’t you?

STOP PRESS:

OK, for one reason or another the film poster retail business didn’t work out. Frankly I just didn’t have enough capital to ride the poor sales. Ideally it would have been good to test the waters a little longer but my financial and domestic circumstances have scuppered the venture somewhat.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Lately my mind has been wondering about many aspects of my life and in the true spirit of procrastination I have diverted my attention in the following ways: reading classic literature, reading self improvement blogs, undertaking video filming and editing work, learning how to program animation – specifically using Flash and Actionscript 3.0.

I’ll expound upon each of these muses in no particular turn. My motivation for reading the classics is, well, it turns out they’re called the classics for a reason: they’re really pretty good. And you can pick them up for a song from the charity shops. (Incidentally I found in me a strong attraction to the old orange Penguin paperbacks which I have vowed to seize at any opportunity hereon). In a literal binge I quickly got through Madame Bovary, David Copperfield, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Pride and Prejudice. I know, with the last choice I surprised even myself; surprise at having picked it, and even more surprise at thoroughly enjoying it. I’m currently in the middle of Henry James’ The Turning of the Screw but am struggling – not because it’s not enjoyable but my reading goes in binges, and I think I must have hit the hangover. By the way, if you stumble across a bunch of orange Penguin paperbacks somewhere (preferably south east UK) please let me know. I’ll have the lot of them!

For as long as I can remember I’ve always liked the idea of being able to simulate the laws of physics using a computer. I’ve dabbled with some programming languages but always found the development cycle excruciatingly tedious. Plus, the payoff was never good enough; hours and hours of iteration to read and display a record from some database. Yawn. So imagine the epiphany that Flash programming has brought – now I can actually see something on screen, moving! Here I am, 42, and still excited about some dots moving around on a screen.

Anyway the following attempts to model gravity, conservation of momentum and mass. The code is all courtesy of Paul Firth of wildbunny.co.uk where, incidentally you can find some excellent tutorials on game programming. He outlines the beginnings of a ‘physics engine’ there. I’m also reading Keith Peters Making Things Move – an accessible and excellent book on computer animation. So one day I’ll actually understand the code behind this:

(if you click on the animation you can use the up, left, right arrow keys to give the red ball thrust, just for fun)

I hope to extend this physics engine to accommodate some bounce and friction which it currently does not. Who knows perhaps it will become a game some day.

Really I must grow up one day. But why?

Cinema film poster shop opens in Southend

admin — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:07:42 +0000

Hi loyal blog followers. (This is heavily ironic; no-one reads this at all)
In collaboration with a good friend I have just opened a film poster shop in Hamlet Court Road Southend.
We sell genuine cinema posters, rolled or framed. Most of the selection here are the UK quad size (as it’s known in the trade) – the ones used in the light boxes outside the cinema to advertise what is currently playing.

A man with two disinterested dogs window shopping

These are quite collectible with premium examples fetching 1,00s of pounds. Regardless of value they look pretty striking when nicely framed and hanging on your wall.

We have some space in the Big Society depatment store, Hamlet Court Road, Essex. N.B. this name bears no relation to the flagship policy conception in the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto. It is intended to connote the spirit of the proprietor’s aspirations of supporting the community. One way of doing so is providing small businesses a low cost, no nonsense space to trade. Or something like that …

My business partner has been selling movie posters online for over 12 years (at favouritefilm.com, Amazon and Ebay) so this is the first time either of us have tried retail selling.

I will therefore endeavour to blatantly promote this enterprise via my blog. I’ll soon be blatantly promoting my online shop selling movie poster frames through a series of posts. First, an article on collecting film posters from my expert colleague. Then a follow up piece on framing your collection. Truly I have no shame – especially as NO HUMANS EVER READ MY BLOG. There I shouted, twice, with no chance of any remonstration.

So pay us a visit sometime. We can be found at The Big Society Department Store, 106 Hamlet Court Road, Westcliff on Sea.

Social enterprise – to boldly go

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:54:07 +0000

Right. Having just finished a brief stint freelancing in (now don’t yawn) software support I’ve found myself without a contract to go to next. I am not as disappointed as perhaps I should be. Why? Well, I was struggling to bear doing the work if I’m honest; the bespoke software I was involved with was at best frustrating to use and … I don’t even want to bore you with it all.
Suffice to say I may now have an opportunity to do something a little interesting. I’ll be broke yes. But once again I’ll have hope in my heart.
Over the last year or so I’ve been working with a Business Development Officer in Southend. Right now he’s running a 5 week (one day per week) course aimed at local budding entrepreneurs.

For someone in my position it’s ideal. It gets me out of the house meeting like minded people; just want I need right now. I’m expecting inspiration and who knows, perhaps an income at the end of it.
Anyway, for my money these guys are doing great work; anything that inspires people to start helping themselves and their community through these gloomy times has got to be healthy. I urge anybody local to check out The Business Surgery. (see links)

How to use adwords

admin — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:41:42 +0000

OK. I’m simply getting loads of spam here. To be fair, it is probably because the website really has no clear objective or purpose. I was hoping to get some kind of a dialogue going with other lifestyle entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs or even common or garden drop outs. I’ve dabbled in film-making, (which enthuses me) but, circumstances compel me back to to my old job for a while (which does not). I need to get my head above water, then get a little money together, then engineer an income through some form of self employment. I’d really like to learn about selling on the web.
Anyway, I digress. Once I have some capital I would like to run a few adwords test campaigns but I’m a total novice. I’d love to hear from anyone who has had success. For example, what type of conversion rates (clicks per sale) are you getting, and with what type of keywords? I guess the more targeted the keywords, the better the conversion rate. But how then to balance this with the your cost per click bidding?
If anyone out there wants to offer some genuine content or advice I’d welcome it. Perhaps even a page on this site with a guide would be helpful to others?

Delete wordpress comments newer than 3 months

admin — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:57:58 +0000

If, like me, you are inundated with spam and a little sloppy when it comes to undertaking any anti-spam measures, then you will probably have thousands of junky-robot-scribed-comments clogging your blog.

I found this SQL handy to get rid of these pesky things. Now, don’t blame me if it breaks stuff … You need to go into your PHP Admin interface (or similar) and run this against your WordPress database.

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_date > DATE_ADD(CURDATE(), INTERVAL -3 MONTH)

I don’t know if it is perfectly safe, in terms of database integrity etc. But it saved me some messing about for sure.

The 5 shot rule

admin — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:20:20 +0000

OK, so you have a great story for a film. You’ve got some actors, some expensive equipment, a director’s chair – the whole kit. It’s time to start filming the first scene. Now, where should you point the camera?

We’ll assume here that you need to film someone doing something. An heuristic I’ve come across often as I attempt to learn something about film making is the five shot rule. It gives you a starting point if your mind has gone ablank.

Let’s imagine we want to film someone feeding the ducks. You could film material for the following sequence of shots:

1) A close up of the hands, showing the fingers tearing up the bread.

2) A close up of the face, revealing who is doing it.

3) A mid shot from the side, showing the same person and their arms throwing bread.

4) An over-the-shoulder or POV shot of a similar action.

5) A wide shot, putting the person in some kind of context.

Obviously, this sequence can be mixed up a little bit. You could throw in a few shots of the ducks in a feeding frenzy for example. Or reverse the sequence, going in the direction of wide shot to close up instead.

It turns out I have an example of just this scenario. The following clip has its faults I concede, but I hope it illustrates the effectiveness of this technique in some way.

Fed up ducks:

Some great tips on film making coming soon

admin — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:55:21 +0000

I’ve just finished an initial interview with a local camerman and acting coach. I’ll start writing up some content for my pages here shortly. So, if ever you fancied yourself as a film director, scriptwriter, actor or camera man – this could be for you.

I’ve been on a film course organised by the south Essex Open Arts project and run by The White Bus Co. Both the interviewees were involved in running it.

Making a film has always been something I’d like to do one day (hasn’t it for everyone?) and so it has been truly fascinating. I originally intended to blog the course progress weekly but I’m afraid haven’t gotten to do that. What I will do is fill the pages (available from the navigation bar above) with some content distilled from the interviews. I may also put together a chronicle of the whole experience retrospectively.

BBC – Human planet

admin — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:04:00 +0000

(Picture courtesy of BBC Human Planet: Kazakh hunters train golden eagles to hunt foxes and wolves on the mountain plateau in Western Mongolia.)

The BBC series Human Planet is simply awesome. This is the BBC at its best. I caught the one on mountains only yesterday.

To see people surviving like this in such extreme environments is interesting in itself; in my humble opinion the BBC’s treatment enhanced the experience into the realms of the sublime. Keep up the good work.
The BBC series Human Planet is simply awesome. This is the BBC at its best. I caught the one on mountains only yesterday.

Extra ordinary day

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 01:22:54 +0000

Back in October I got the chance to be an extra in a feature film being shot nearby. I gave it a go having never done that before. The movie is due to be released in June 2011 I think and is about the (true story) of a chap who served in Iraq (the first one) and then returned to Britain and became a prison warder. The film is to be called ‘Screwed’. Unfortunately.
Anyway I was in a few background shots playing an Iraqi civilian, chiefly running and cowering.
Weirdly, it was almost exactly as I’d imagined it: lots of waiting around, in the cold, with occasional calls to run here, or cower there. Anyway, an interesting experience.

I'm in the middle. I don't recall being that tubby. I'm sure it's just the cut of the jubba.

Three more recommended short films

admin — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:21:49 +0000

‘I don’t have a great deal of time to comment on these movies at the moment. Some might think that a blessing. More than anything I want to get them down here so that I don’t forget about them myself, and can find them readily.

The first I enjoyed, primarily because I had no idea really what was going on until the end. Typically that might frustrate me but I think this film makes a point, and makes it well.

No Way Through:

This is one of the first I found when I started Googling for ‘best short film’ and similar phrases. Again, it takes a while to work out what exactly you are watching. If you’ve not seen this before I’d be interested to know when the penny drops for you. Once you do though fear not; there’s a further twist right at the end that will make you squirm (cringe?)

The Parlor:

If I’m brutal the next isn’t one of my favourites. I’ll comment beneath so you can watch it un-influenced by me.

Lucky:

See? With that one you never find out really why what happened has happened and personally I didn’t care much to anyway. A great exercise technically to film I suppose but it comes over as (merely?) a showcase of someone’s technical mastery; the story doesn’t really deliver. IMHO of course.