fluffy sheep productions

If you’ve spoken to me in the past two weeks, and you’re anattentive listener, then you’ll know what I got up to yesterday, and also knowthat I’ve been pretty damn excited (and extremely nervous) about this event.

Ever since we finished up production on ‘Vin’ last year, wedecided we would try our hands at television and at the same time, go back intocomedy, because it was where we felt most comfortable (because we have such anextensive body of work that there is some things we like to stick to).

It’s a strange thing starting a filming project, or any sortof media project for that matter. If there’s anything I’ve learnt so far it’sthat preparation (pre-production) is the key to success, especially for aproject as large as this sitcom.

Before I move on, to make things a little easier, I shouldpoint out that we finally have a name for our bastard child of a production andit’s been officially released in our latest video(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMlycFAPygobetter quality version coming soon), which I’ll explain later. The name wedecided on last Wednesday is………

On Campus: The Life And Death Of Our Comedy Careers

*Cue rapturous applause* Thank you, thank you very much!Yes, we know the name is indicative of great success, but we swear to live upto that name, and take the world by storm with our revolutionary comedy.

Moving on, Monday got off to a fantastic start with Dan and megoing to Audio Visual Services hoping we’d be able to bullshit our way past thepeople at the desk to borrow some equipment. We’d left it a little late to bookequipment for the first shoot but we’d dealt with AVS before, and most of themare usually pretty laidback.

Why did we then have to talk to possibly the oldest man toever hold a digital video camera? The man who attended to us at the counterlooked like he would’ve taken his first date to a silent film back in the day,with a jaunty pianist playing accompaniment. As we all know, young people aretolerable of the screw ups of most other young people, but, when you get anoctogenarian(Burton is an exception to this rule however), anything that comesout of your mouth is considered “rubbish, lies and filth” because of theirhorseshit-19th Century sensibilities.

To be fair, Dan did start our negotiation with a lie, onewhich I felt was EXTREMELY transparent, but ran along with anyway. We sent theold man off to look for the “email” we’d sent, and he disappeared behind thecounter for about ten minutes, half of which I’m assuming was spent trying toturn on the computer, “what does the flickering light mean? Is that good?”*smacks the computer case* “STOP FLICKERING” (I should say that when reading whateveris between quotes, put on an old man’s voice, whether in your head or out loud,it makes it much more entertaining, try this (matter-of-fact-ly)“I think I’lljust relieve myself on the pavement”. See?)

Funnily enough, he couldn’t find the email and eventuallyreferred us onto the young guy whom I recognized from my previous visits tothis fine establishment. He was much more accommodating and was able to give usthe stuff we needed. No dramas.

We strolled away with a microphone boom pole, two microphonestands (one of them barely serving its function; that is, barely standing) anda mike lead. From here, we began our first day of filming.

Steve is directing this bad boy, so we all left it in hiscapable hands to run the shoot, and a fine job he did. Considering he had todeal with Stewart “I-crack-wise-but-get-shut-down-by-Michael” Fairweather as a cameraoperator and Carlos “my-arm-is-a-bruise” on set, Steve had quite a task aheadof him. On the other hand, Maz “I-have-experience-and-can-actually-act”Corrales knew what she was doing and was able to do her job professionallywhile fitting in with the carefree atmosphere.

I guess I can’t go on about anyone else’s inadequacieswithout mentioning my own. The last scene we shot had Antonio “I-really-should-learn-to-roll-tape”Cafasso behind camera causing a whole world of problems. But that doesn’tcompare to Michael “I-have-to-giggle-like-a-bitch-during-each-take” Jones whorendered several takes useless. I guess I’m being quite bitter though, and Ican’t really comment until I’ve had my turn in front of the camera. That remindsme, I really should learn my lines…

We ended up shooting for about 3-4 hours on Monday, whichisn’t very long in retrospect but our days will be getting longer as weprogress. Because we cut our day short, Carlos and I decided to edit together ashort video to showcase what was done (there’s a link to it somewhere up there^). We all headed back to FSP Headquarters to get a little bit of work donebefore we headed home, and for one reason or another, Carlos and I were leftalone, in someone else’s house, so we couldn’t let that opportunity go towaste.

Well, we didn’t do much, Carlos just wanted to get back atMichael for punching him so hard (that hit in the ribs was particularly brutal)and you can see what he did. After hours slaving over Daniel’s Mac trying touse Final Cut Pro (and convincing myself that piece of software isn’t all it’scracked up to be), Carlos and I were able to upload a day’s work for yourviewing pleasure.

Now we look to Thursday where we begin another day offilming, which may include loitering in a toilet. For those who haven’t read thescript (Michael, I know you’re included in that group), please believe me whenI say that it’s all part of the show, otherwise we’d leave toilet loitering toStewart.

The revolution has started, you just can’t see it yet,

Antonio