Red Dwarf. My thoughts.

As I've stated before I love science fiction and the numerous possibilities it offers for adventure. That being said I've never really been an avid follower of any science fiction franchise, I'm definitely not a Trekkie and although I do watch Doctor Who and am a fan of Star Wars I've never been too attached to them.

Red Dwarf however is the exception, I LOVE this show.

The setup of Red Dwarf is a basic Sci Fi story: the lowest ranking crew member of the mining ship 'Red Dwarf' named 'Dave Lister' is put into suspended animation as punishment for smuggling his pet cat on board. During this time there is a radiation leak and the entire crew of the ship is wiped out, the on board computer 'Holly' has had to keep Lister frozen until the radiation dies down to a safe level. Three million years later Lister emerges to find himself alone in deep space with only Holly, a life form who evolved from his cat and a hologram of his dead roommate (Rimmer) for company, their mission: Get back to Earth.

What makes this show work so well is the characters and the cast who play them. Dave Lister played by Craig Charles is NOT a typical handsome space hero like what you see in Star Trek and Star Wars, he's a low life, slobby, curry eating, beer drinking grease monkey. This is a nice change of pace and it's a very amusing possibility to think that potentially the last human being in existence is a lazy and uninspiring slob who lives off vindaloo and not a remarkable scientist or space adventurer.
But Lister wouldn't be as funny as he is without his opposite, the second part of the main Red Dwarf duo: Arnold Rimmer played by Chris Barrie is what makes this show what it is, he's the complete opposite of Lister, high class and brought up by a military family, aspiring to be something more than a chicken soup machine repairman, he wants to be an officer. The only problem is he's a completely idiotic, self obsessed, dis likable, stupid , slimy, deceiving coward. These characteristics are perfect as he and Lister constantly play off each other to great comedic affect.

There is also a great supporting cast who provide comic relief aside from the odd couple relationship of Lister and Rimmer. There's Cat played by Danny John Jules, who evolved over millions of years from Lister's pet cat, he's completely self obsessed and only concerned about his image, dressing in outrageous coats and suits he's the coolest character on ship. In the earlier series he displayed many cat like qualities and even look to Lister as his God (this was downplayed in later series).
Kryten played by Robert Llewellyn is an android who obeys every command no matter how stupid, over the course of the series Lister teaches him how to break his programming and become more human like, this gave him some amusing character quirks.
And finally Holly played by Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge, Red Dwarf's once intelligent computer who's now gone slightly senile.

What's brilliant about this series is that every character has a purpose and deliver some very witty and funny lines en keeping with the situation they're in, and boy do they find themselves in some bizarre situations! Backwards realities, alternate dimensions, shape shifting creatures, psychotic killer viruses and a visit to the wild west just to name a few. Yet despite the weirdness of the group's adventures they all seem scientifically possible and despite the show being a comedy the science fiction is often believable and you care about how the characters are going to solve the crisis of the week and escape with their lives (if not their dignity). The believable science fiction is backed up special effects that are very good to say they're for a BBC sitcom with no budget made in the late eighties and early nineties. Another remarkable thing about Red Dwarf is how much of a fan base it's attracted, whilst it was consistently popular in the ratings on BBC Two with the general public it attracted a cult of Sci Fi fans who were entranced by the concepts and the high production values, the show has a worldwide fandom similar to that of Star Trek and even has it's own popular vocabulary with words like 'Goit', 'Gimboid',
'Gelf' and 'Smeghead' recognisable by people all over the world.


*SPOILERS ALERT*

However despite how much I've praised Red Dwarf it does have it's weak points: There are times when continuity is thrown out of the window and some episodes feel lacking overall. The writing out of Rimmer in Series 7 to be replaced by Lister's old girlfriend Kochanski was a big mistake considering how Rimmer and Lister's relationship is what made the show so enjoyable, the reconstruction of the Red Dwarf crew in Series 8 and the crew being prisoners on the ship seemed to come out of left field and not make much sense from a plot perspective, speaking of Series 7 & 8 the very well done model effects were replaced with less than convincing CGI. There was also three special episodes produced in 2009 'Back to Earth' which received a mixed reception from fans and critics, I personally thought they weren't on par with the older series but weren't terrible either.

Red Dwarf will always be one of my favorite science fiction series and with the promise of a new series with the original cast set to air in 2012 I hope this series will continue the exciting, enthralling and hillarious tradition of Red Dwarf.
In the meantime...
"Smoke me a Kipper, I'll be back for breakfast."

Sense of Space: Update

Plans have changed concerning the Sense of Space project: The original idea which I had has not so much been ditched but put on the back burner (I may use it for another audio project I have lined up). Since I have had a meeting with my partner for this project we have decided to go for a more brief fitting idea; to properly convey sounds that are heard in a particular space (which my initial idea didn't fit). We considered trying to illustrate the metaphorical space in someones head which could be made up of the thoughts that a person has had or experiences they've undergone throughout the day, the only problem is that it would have been very disjointed if it wasn't executed properly.

Another idea we came up with while listening to the empty corridors of the university we wondered what a place would sound like after it had closed down for the night, with just the air conditioning to listen to.

However we've since opted to do the sounds of a pub, as there are a lot of sounds that can be heard in this particular area, such as people talking, drinks being poured, music playing, slot machines etc. We're still planning how this will be executed but I believe we will be able to pull it off.

Sense of Space: Mind map

Here is a mind map containing my initial ideas for this project. I decided to portray an event occuring in a place. The event would not just be an everyday one but would conjure up a reaction from people who witness it. I could interview people discussing their reactions to real events and then incorperating these interviews into the piece.

(Please note these ideas are subject to change as I am yet to find a partner for this project)

Audio Project: Sense of Space

Okay, so we've received a new project recently, an audio project entitled: Sense of Space. This is completely the opposite of our last project which was all visual based.

To get the creative 'juices' flowing we were given several audio tracks to listen to:

The Curious Ear - Meat Factory Ear Worms by Richie Bierne. A strange piece describing how a man gets through his mundane and often gruesome job by singing along to music was quite off putting with its use of sound effects, monologue and it's juxtaposition of gentle music with the sounds of animals being slaughtered made it seem quite disturbing at times.

Child of Arolyne - a more serious documentary piece documenting life in an Irish town during the recent troubles. It was hard hitting with the voices of locals over cut with the background tracks of the city and the panic that occurred when the people got shot by the IRA.

Blue Veils and Golden Suns - These tracks by BBC artist Delia Derbyshire sound as if they were supposed to match to some sort of visual aid, such as a film scene or a painting which sounds quite strange when listened to by itself.

The Sound of Sport - A much more straight to the point and easy listening documentary about a sport's commentator's career from working in a recording studio to working for ESPN.

Tunnel Visions - This is a really strange and sometimes disturbing piece concerning the more unseen nature of users of the tube and how it and the people on it provoke sexual desires towards fellow commuters.

Sonicpostcards.org - A selection of clips from a website that allows users to record audio from their current location and upload it instead of sending a text based postcard. Quite innovative.

So far I have a couple of ideas that could be utilised in interesting ways into this brief. I'll go into them in more detail later.

Camera Edit Exercise 1

Recently I have finished a pairs project in which we had to demonstrate our skills in camera operation and cinematography. Editing has been completed going through the three stages (Assembly, a rough arrangement of the sequence. Rough cut, an approximation of the final project and Fine cut, often the final edit.

We just need to burn it to DVDs (for a second time, as we seem to be having compatibility problems with PCs and MACs DVD players and burning, or something along those lines)

Video Editing Exercise

This is a short video made in an editing workshop. We were given pre-recorded footage of martial arts and were told to edit it into an action scene. Rather than going for a quick and confusing action sequence that is commonly seen in modern day blockbusters my partner and myself opted for a slower and more drawn out scene, reminiscent of the old wild west movies. In addition to the twenty second time limit we had to add at least one shot which incorporated a split screen, ours replicates the kind of shot commonly used in anime; two opponents face each other before making their advance to the fight.

Overall I'm pleased that the video looks this good given the short amount of time and the criteria we had to work by.

Portait of Place: Complete

Finally the Portrait of Place project is completed and ready for submission tomorrow. Whilst I think the project has it's flaws it definately could have been a lot worse, I just hope that I did everything right in the technical department (I'm not too confident about that).

Portait of Place: Editing

Well my partner and myself are well into the editing stage of the project. So far we've made a rough cut, which we showed our tutor who gave us some feedback on how to make the film feel more polished and professional, whilst staying within the time limit we have of 3 minutes. We've edited the flashback sequences so they transit with the rest of the film as seamlessly as possible. We've also colour corrected some of the footage where the white balance was off so the whole film looks more visually consistent.

The only drawbacks we've had (aside from the odd creative thinking disagreement) is how we've saved the footage, we've saved it (foolishly) on a single mac and the footage won't copy over to another storage device (too big??) so we need to get the film finished as quickly as possible so that it doesn't get wiped :0. The other hindrance on our progress is our unfamiliarity of Final Cut, I'm personally more fond of Sony Vegas and I used Adobe Premiere and After Effects for the majority of last year's course.

However, I'm confident we'll get the film finished in good time and that it will look reasonably professional.

'The Cops' (Possibly the most "realistic" police drama ever)

I'm a fan of police procedural dramas, especially when they focus on the regular guys on the front line over the more popular and glamorised detectives who seem to steal all the thunder for solving crimes.

'The Cops' is one of those series that only comes along every once in a while that makes everything else in its genre look tame by comparison.
The show centres on a shift of police officers working in the fictional town of Stanton (even though it's obviously supposed to be Manchester) and the grittier side of front line policing. Even though this series is semantically a police drama, syntactically it's anything but. The officers aren't portrayed as glamorous heroes who seek glory and justice, instead they're just regular guys who are trying to keep their heads above water in their Shameless-esc dump of a town.



Probably the most noticeable part of this series is the camerawork, it's all shot handheld almost like a police documentary making the audience feel as if they're there, following the cops around on their duties. The sound also appears to be all diagetic (although a lot of this would have been added in post production) and there's no music at all (not even a theme tune). These cinematic elements make the series seem hyper-realistic, in fact it was too realistic for the real police force who cut off all association after the first series, a lot of this was due to it's depictions of parts of the police that the chiefs of forces would rather the public didn't see, none of the cops are perfect, they're all flawed and they all have something to answer for.



It's this level of grittiness that sets this show apart from other programmes of this genre like 'The Bill' and 'HolbyBlue'. I find this show extremely underrated (although it won two BAFTAs it has never been released on DVD for reasons unknown, although most of the first series is available on YouTube).
Overall 'The Cops' is a breath of fresh air from the soap style drama 'virus' that has struck many other British dramas, its realism combined with its interesting take on an old idea makes this a series that has to be seen.

Portrait of Place: Shooting Report.

We recently went to Edale to film out Portrait of Place projects. We had an actress (which required improvisation as the part was originally written for a male). As we arrived by train the scene looked rather bleak: rain was falling, a fog was lingering over the hills and everyone was feeling a little glum. Whilst on the shoot we encountered several problems, some that are common in film production and others that were unique to our location.

The first problem was the aforementioned weather, while the rain wasn't constant it still could have damaged the equipment, so we had to cover the camera with a plastic bag and make sure it didn't get into shots. We also had the problem of distance between the locations we were supposed to shoot in as it took more time than anticipated getting from one location to the next, we also had the problem of multiple groups wanting to use the same location at one time which caused some compromises to be made in what was shot when (this wouldn't have been a problem if we could choose WHERE we filmed rather than being shipped off to one location, but that's just my opinion). We also had problems with locals sometimes getting in the way of shots and not realising what we were doing as well as obstructions that we hadn't anticipated, such as vehicles or trees being in a slightly different location that was seen on Google Earth. Fading light was also a problem and is noticable in some of the scenes.

But with that being said we still got all the footage needed to complete the film.