Gareth Harrison

Tonight sees two programmes with titles and graphics done by doodledoMOTION on Five in prime time!  First off, ‘Paul Merton In Europe‘ started last Monday night at 9pm, and we did the title sequence for the show (which has had so much work and detail put into it!), as well as the maps which show Paul’s journey across Europe.  It’s the 3rd travel series of ‘Paul Merton In…’ that Tiger Aspect have done following on from his documentaries about China and India, and so far the reaction to this new series seems really positive.

And then the second show for Five we’ve been involved in is also a Tiger programme – ‘Celebrity Quitters‘.  It’s a ten-part reality series that’s going to be on every week-night for the next 2 weeks, and features Linda Robson, John Burton Race, Chloe Madeley, Paul Danan and Derek Acorah as they all try to give up smoking.  We’ve done the titles and graphics for the main show, as well as their online content.

The programme starts at 7.30pm tonight, and to promote the show, Linda Robson, one of the Celebrity Quitters, appeared on BBC’s Breakfast this morning for an interview, where they showed some clips from the series.

It was a good promo for the show, but the best bit was that the main title graphic that we’ve produced appeared on the big screen behind them throughout the whole interview which is really cool!

Back to the beginning of the month, and on New Year’s Day, I went for a walk over at Alderley Edge with a group of Reach guys.

I went there a few years ago with James and Helen for a birthday walk, so I recognised quite a few places we went to.  It was pretty chilly, and we were wandering a bit aimlessly at times, but it was a really nice walk.

Then afterwards we stopped off at a really nice pub in the village called The Merlin for a meal.  It wasn’t that cheap, but the food was great, which kind of made up for it!  There are some photos of the day here.

The only other thing I’ll quickly blog about is the crazy snow we had at the start of the month.  We had a little bit of snow the day after our walk, but then on the Tuesday morning, I woke up to a crazy amount of snow outside!

It was a bit of a nightmare getting into work – luckily I’d parked on the main road rather than in my actual street, otherwise I wouldn’t have been going anywhere!  All the buses had been cancelled, so the only way I could get in was by car, and the drive in took nearly an hour compared to my usual 10 minutes!

And when I got to the office, I made the mistake of driving into the car park, where I discovered James had already done that and had been stuck there for nearly an hour trying to get back out up the slope!  Then someone had the genius idea of using some carpet tiles to build a track for the car to drive on, so we were eventually able to get out, and so we then parked on a nice flat bit of road on the front!

Luckily it’s pretty much gone now, so life is back to normal!

Just thought I’d do a quick catch up before Christmas. I’m currently at James and Helen’s house babysitting Jess, and there’s nothing decent on TV so I thought I’d do this!

We’ve had quite a bit of snow these last few days, and yesterday a few of us went for a walk in Macclesfield Forest. It was freezing cold, and we walked quite a way – and seemed to be going uphill a lot more than downhill – but it was a really great afternoon.

We were kind of busking it a little bit, since we didn’t have a map or anything, and the cloud came down quite quickly as we made it to the top of one of the hills – but Penny had been to the forest before, so had a rough idea of where we needed to go! Though there were times when I wasn’t convinced we were ever going to make it back to the cars, especially when we’d been walking so long that it got dark!!

There are some photos I took of our walk here.

Work’s been quite busy recently, and we’re trying to wrap some jobs up before we finish for Christmas. We’re working on graphics for two shows on that will be on Channel 5 early next year, so really need to try and get them pretty much sorted by Wednesday at the latest.

On Thursday night, me and James went out with a couple of the other businesses from Houldsworth Mill for Christmas drinks down at the festive markets, and then onto some bars. We did the same last year, and it’s a pretty good way of doing it, because it would be quite a small event if it was just us!

Anyway, we ended up in probably one of the most pretentious places I’ve been to! I’d heard of the Circle Bar, but had never actually been in there, and to be honest, I don’t think I’d be that bothered if I never went there again! The beer was nasty, the music was rubbish, and the other people there were just really strange! It was like they were all people who thought they were something special, but weren’t at all! The only positive think was that there was a sofa that we’d managed to grab, so I was able to get a comfy seat!

Thought I’d better do a bit of a catch-up…

It’s been a busy few weeks – we’ve had a lot on at work, which is obviously a good thing, but it would be nice to take a decent break at some point!

A few weeks ago, I went down to Soul Survivor North in Stafford as a day visitor. James and Helen had taken the Vinelife youth there for the week, so I met up with them as they were dishing up tea to a crowd of teenagers in very wet conditions! They’d taken Jess with them, which must have been interesting for them, but she seemed to be really enjoying herself, and I got to feed her a bowl of pasta which she wolfed down! It was just a shame the weather was so poor, because camping’s much better when the sun’s out!

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been to Soul Survivor, when I was working down in Shepton Mallet venue doing visuals in the Underground venue. It actually felt a bit weird being there as a punter – you kind of can’t switch off from being aware of all the behind-the-scenes stuff that’s happening!

Then that weekend it was John and Carolyn’s wedding up in South Shields.

I won the prize of being the driver for the trip, so it was a full car that set off from Manchester at 7am on the Friday morning up to the North East. Me, Dave, John, Jimmy and Mike were all crammed into my Focus, but luckily we actually had a really clear run up there, and it was a good laugh!

The wedding went off without a hitch, which is always a good thing! Terry did a talk, which looking at the minister’s face, did seem to worry him for a while since Terry basically asked them why they got married in a church when they could have had a service in much more glamorous surroundings, and then even why they were bothering to get married at all! Obviously this led to a turnaround explaining why it is done the way it is, but you could tell there was a bit of nervousness from the local church for a while!

In the afternoon, we had a few hours to kill, so went and had a pub lunch with Michael and Becci and their kids, and then took a walk on the beach and briefly went round a really crappy funfair!

The evening reception was at a really posh hotel in County Durham (£4 a pint!), and John and Carolyn impressed everyone with their first dance… choreographed ballroom dancing!! Apparently Chagit had been teaching them for quite a while in preparation for it!

We stayed overnight at Mel’s parents house in Gateshead, crashing on sofas (me) and bits of carpet (the others!), then on the way back home, we stopped briefly at the Angel Of The North to have a really cheesy boyband-esque photo taken in front of it!

There are a load of photos from the wedding and the rest of our trip here.

Bang up-to-date, and I’m on my own at the office for the moment because James is in Kenya doing some filming for a video we’re making for the American organisation that Tim Karas works for – The Reckoning. They’re a non-profit organisation that aims to mobilise people to make real changes through international development projects.

James flew out to Nairobi last week where he met up with Tim and the rest of the team, and then did some filming in one of the city’s slums, where over a million people live. Then he flew on Sunday to a more remote area to meet some people who have been able to set up businesses through loans given to them by The Reckoning. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he’s shot – he sent me a short clip that he filmed in Kibera slum, and it looked amazing. That’s probably not quite the right word to use when it’s about images of such poverty, but the footage did look impressive.

Oh, and the only other thing I need to mention… I get to see U2 live on Thursday… I can’t wait!!

Yesterday I was down in Tamworth and got to spend some time with Brandon and Chloe. I think it’s been about 3 months since I was last down there, so I could really see how much they’ve developed.

They’re now walking (and running!) and it really does make a difference. It’s kind of strange to see!

They seem so much more independent now, and they’re pretty chatty, even though you can’t make sense of anything they say other than the odd word! They’ve got such character, and are really cute! Obviously I’m biased because they’re my nephew and niece, but they really are the best kids in the world!

We played in the garden for a bit, then they spent some time in their sandpit, where basically they poured sand over each other! It’s a pity I don’t get down to see them more often, but at least I get to chat to them on Skype every so often – although I’m not sure they totally understand what’s going on when we do that!

Work-wise, me and James have been busy. I’m trying to get the 29th Chapter music video sorted, but it’s taking a lot longer to do than I’d hoped. I think it will look good, but the work on it is more intense than we’d first thought.

Also, we’ve been working on the graphical look for Channel M’s new daily magazine show. We shot the titles for it with Tim a couple of weeks ago, and we delivered the majority of it on Monday for their pilot week ahead of the show launch next week. It’s not exactly what we’d originally planned to do with it all, but I think it still looks good – especially with the amount of time we’ve had to do it in!

A couple of weeks ago, me and James went down to London for two days to do a shoot with the 29th Chapter for their new music video.

It was a pretty manic couple of days – we headed down late on the Tuesday night and stayed in a Travelodge on the M1, and then arrived in Ealing for about 10 o’clock. The shooting was split into 2 blocks – the first day was a chromakey day, and the second was a live performance.

The greenscreen that had been hired for the shoot was massive! We spent the morning rigging it up, then tried to light it evenly which was easier said than done! Then the guys got into their costumes (which I won’t reveal at this stage – I’ll wait until they’ve announced what single they’re releasing!) and we spent the rest of the day filming various set pieces and individual verses. It was a pretty long day… we wrapped around 10.30pm and then had a bit of a drive to a really nice hotel in some other part of London (I have no idea where!)

Then the next day we shot a load of live performance footage using Rob’s EX1 with a Letus 35mm adapter, and the shots looked really great. It’s amazing how much difference using 35mm lenses makes – the depth of field you get makes it look so filmic. I really want to get one, but need to make sure we’d get enough use from it to justify the expense!

We finished at around 11pm on the Thursday night, and then had to drive back to Manchester, and it took forever! We were both really tired so shared the driving, and I finally managed to get to bed about 4am… but had to be up at 8am to take back the equipment we’d hired – brilliant!

Then yesterday was John Cieszynski’s stag day, which saw me try paintballing for the first time.

I didn’t realise how expensive it can be – I basically rationed the paintballs that I got as part of the basic price, but some of the others spent a fortune buying extra ammo!

It was a good laugh, although it would probably have helped if I was a bit fitter! And during the first game, I got shot in my leg by a member of my own team! And it really hurt – I’ve had quite a big bruise come up today! I also got hit on my ear and the back of my hand, so it was a day of pain!

Then in the evening we met up in town for some food, and as we were arriving the heavens opened. I’d not seen heavy rain like that for a long time – the streets of Manchester turned into rivers! It was a good day all in all, and looking forward to the wedding in a month’s time!

One not-so-good thing at the moment is that on Thursday I discovered that I may be going to the Coldplay gig on my own in September. I’m supposed to be going with James and Helen, but they’ve now found out they have a family wedding on the same day which they can’t get out of. It’s quite gutting for them, because we bought the tickets last October, and James bought Helen’s ticket as a Christmas present. For me, I was looking forward to going with both of them – obviously the gig itself will be great, but the fact I’d get to spend some time with them outside of work was definitely a bonus. I think they’re going to see if they can get there later on, but obviously with so many people there, the chances of us meeting up there would be impossible. I’ve still got a spare ticket to sell, which might mean I find someone else to go with, but I don’t really know anyone else who wants to go, so might have to just sell it to a random person. Just a real shame, because I was really looking forward to it.

Well it’s been quite a busy weekend – on Friday I was over in Liverpool shooting a live music video for thebandwithnoname and LZ7. They’ve done a joint track and need some kind of promo video to go with it, so I organised a 9 camera set-up at the monthly ‘Space’ event. I dragged Dave Bateman and Bruce from The Message along to operate cameras, and then used a few guys from the event itself, so I’m going to have a lot of footage to go through! The only downside of it really was that the stage was tiny, and it was really cramped with effectively 2 bands on there at the same time, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Then on Sunday, I went over to Rob’s in Ramsbottom (because he’d lent me some cameras for Friday’s shoot and I had to return them) and we ended up having a bit of an impromptu barbeque which was pretty cool.

We tried to get Rob’s reclaimed gas barbeque working, but even though we could hear gas coming out from somewhere, it just wouldn’t light. Eventually we gave up, thus averting an explosive disaster(!), and used some disposable ones instead! Clare made burgers from fresh minced beef and onions, which I’ve never done before, and they tasted really good. Next time I have a barbeque, I think I’ll give the frozen ones a miss and make my own!

I got home late Sunday night and watched the season finale of ‘Fringe’ on Sky+, and wow… it was excellent! A pretty major plot twist, and quite an unexpected ending! Won’t say much more if people haven’t seen it yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to the next series!

On to Monday, and with it being yet another Bank Holiday, a group of us headed over to Formby beach again.

The weather wasn’t too bad – we had a few spits of rain later on, but the rest of the time was okay, and I even caught the sun a little bit! We did the usual beach volleyball, which again was really very funny! And there were also a couple of excellent sand sculptures produced by Tom and Chris which had to be seen to be believed!

There are some photos of all our beach shenanigans here.

Then in the evening, we went back to Phil’s because Ralph was house-sitting there, and after a false start with a slightly inappropriate film starring Russell Brand(!), we ended up watching a quirky little film called ‘Son of Rambow‘ which I thought was really good, and was something I probably wouldn’t have watched otherwise.

Other news – I mentioned last month about doing the graphics for 2 documentaries about Fawlty Towers, and they’ve both now gone out on G.O.L.D. The pre-publicity for the programmes generated a lot of interest in the press, There’s a video on the BBC News website which shows the amount of press at the launch!

For the first of the shows – ‘Fawlty Towers Re-Opened’ – we produced the opening titles, but for the second 2-hour show on the 17th – ‘Fawlty Exclusive: Basil’s Best Bits’ we provided opening titles, episode guides, interview backgrounds, as well as other in-programme graphics.

I thought they were really well put together shows, and had some great behind-the-scenes stuff as well as obviously a load of hilarious clips. And on top of that, they were voiced by none other than Stephen Fry!

Well it’s been a pretty busy few days… I was in the office for most of the Easter Weekend trying to get some graphics work finished for this show we’re doing for Tiger Aspect. It’s basically a couple of documentaries about Fawlty Towers for G.O.L.D. (very similar to ‘The Vicar of Dibley‘ and ‘Blackadder‘ ones we’ve worked on previously), and we’ve been working on titles, stings, episode guides and interview backgrounds.

But I did manage to get a few hours off on Monday to go to the beach! I was in the office preparing another time-consuming render, when I got a text from Dave saying that a group was heading off to the beach for the afternoon, so I decided to go to that instead and carry on with the graphics later!

We set off to Formby in a few cars, and it was all fine until we actually got near our destination – it appeared that everyone else in the North West were heading there as well! Rather than spending the whole afternoon waiting to get into the car park, we eventually managed to park up on a housing estate and then took a short walk back towards the beach.

We eventually found a bit of the beach that wasn’t full of people, and also didn’t have bits of brick sticking out of the sand – not ideal for playing sports! I didn’t bother with the game of American Football, since I have no idea at all how the game works!!

But later on, we played beach volleyball with a proper net that Dan had just bought from Decathlon (he was taking it seriously!) I was pretty crap at it, but it was good fun!

There are some photos from the afternoon here. All in all, it was a good Bank Holiday Monday, even if I had to be in work for part of it!

I’m pretty excited because I’ve bought a pair of tickets for U2’s 360° Tour in Sheffield this August. They went on sale at 9am yesterday morning, and I’d bought them by 9:01am! I’ve always wanted to seen them live – I was disappointed that I didn’t see them play in Manchester a few years ago – so thought I’d try and buy tickets to see them this time round, then find someone else to take the other ticket!

Phil’s buying the other ticket off me (hopefully he’ll be up for trying to get as close to the stage as we can!) so it should be a great day… and Elbow are supporting which is cool because I really like them as well!

And then in September, I’m going to see Coldplay at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground with James and Helen, which should be amazing as well, though I’m not that fussed by Jay-Z playing beforehand. I’ve still got an extra ticket for that one I need to sell before the gig!

Other news… work’s busy at the moment – which is good considering we’re supposed to be in a recession! We’ve got quite a few projects on the go, and in a few weeks we’re delivering graphics for a show on G.O.L.D. which will be on this summer I think (I’ll post more about it when it’s been scheduled!)

36 years old – rubbish!

Yep, it’s my birthday, and it’s not something I really want to celebrate! There’s nothing great about getting older – you’re basically running out of time to accomplish the things you always hoped you’d do, and the likelihood of them happening just gets less and less.

Anyway, in true tradition I’m spending my birthday working late in the office… we’ve got a job that needs to be finished for the morning, so I’ve got to stay until it’s done, and might be a few more hours yet.

To be fair, as a kind of birthday treat to myself, I’m off to see Delirious play in Liverpool on Wednesday night – it’s their last UK tour, so I’m hoping it’s a really good gig. I first saw them live back in 1995, and have seen them many times since then, so will be weird knowing it’ll probably be the last time.

Been a bit of a gap since my last post, so need to do a bit of a catch-up!

Firstly, tonight on G.O.L.D. (it used to be UKGold until this week!) there’s a documentary about one of the funniest shows ever – “Blackadder Exclusive: The Whole Rotten Saga”, and we did the graphics for it.

It’s on at 9pm (and I think is repeated throughout the week, as is the way with digital channels), although there’s another show next Thursday night at 9pm called “Blackadder’s Most Cunning Moments” where we provided a lot more graphics, as well as doing the background images for the interviews.

It’ll be quite strange seeing it, because we were working on it back in May and June, so seems like ages ago now! I won’t forget it though because it coincided with James’ paternity leave, and the week it had to be delivered I was juggling that along with the Drama Trails 3D stuff! Fun! The programme was originally going to be aired in the summer, but then it was decided that they’d save it for the channel relaunch which happened this week, hence the gap between working on it and it now being shown. I’ve watched some of it on DVD, and they’re actually really well put together shows, so hopefully the viewers will like them!

Other news… a couple of weeks ago I was down in Tamworth for Brandon and Chloe’s dedication service.

They looked cute – Brandon had a little suit with a waistcoat and cravat, and Chloe was wearing a dress with little flowers on it, and a sparkly headband!

They were really well-behaved and seemed to enjoy themselves, although Brandon does manage to be sick at pretty regular intervals!

Both are really happy babies – they seem to laugh all the time, and really know how to pose to the camera! I guess they’ve got pretty used to having people taking pictures of them all the time!

And it’s amazing to see how quickly they grow up… obviously I don’t get down there that regularly, so when I see them each time, I can see how much they’ve changed!

Anyway, it was a really nice day, and it was good catching up with my cousins again, and also getting to see Dave & Tanith’s baby Evie, who’s a similar age to the twins, but it was the first time I’d seen her for real, and not in a photo on Facebook!

And to carry on with the baby theme, we had a bit of a random day in the office last week… Helen turned up with Jess and James’ mum on Wednesday afternoon, so it was really nice to see them. I hadn’t seen Jess since July when she’d last come in, so she really had grown since the last time I’d seen her, and she’s really got her own personality now, and pretty cute smile!

Then, about an hour after they left, Brandon and Chloe turned up with Vikky and my mum! They’d been up in Manchester for a photoshoot for Littlewoods catalogue, and popped in afterwards before travelling home.

As you can see, we made sure we put Jess, Brandon to Chloe to work on some doodledoMOTION projects!

After six months of us moving into our office, we’ve finally (almost) finished sorting it! I say ‘almost’ because we’ve still got a few little jobs to sort with the edit suite like some internal skirting boards, and some shelves that need putting up, but now we’ve got some pictures up on the wall, it feels like a really nice place to work in.

Also, we’ve just launched the proper version of our website – www.doodledomotion.co.uk. There’d just been a single page there before now, but I think the new one looks great. Our biggest challenge with it is to make sure we find the time to update the blog, and keep our portfolio up-to-date! Also, due to some music and copyright restrictions, we can’t put examples of everything we do up there, but hopefully we’ll be able to get a good range of the kind of stuff we do.

Work’s been a little bit less hectic over the last few weeks, though there’s enough to keep us occupied. Drama Trails really took its toll – I ended up doing 63 days in a row which wasn’t ideal! Not had a chance yet to have a proper break, but it’s been nice to get my weekends back!

A couple of Sundays ago I went down to Reading to catch up with some old uni mates – Ali, George, Hazel, and Helen & her new blokey! It was really nice day (although the train journey down was a bit of a rubbish one – an hour late to start with, then decided to terminate at Birmingham rather than Reading!)

We went for a pub lunch, then for a nice walk alongside the canal, and it was a really sunny day which definitely helped! Then in the evening I went to Bristol to kip over at Ali’s house, then back up to Stockport on a very overcrowded train on the Monday. You can check out the photos from the day here.

Well my excuse for not having updated this blog since February is that I’ve just been too busy with work! And it’s pretty true to be honest! I’ve not had a day off for over six weeks now and I’m feeling pretty knackered! I’m currently in the middle of doing a load of 3D graphics for a series that starts on ITV3 this Wednesday night at 9pm called Drama Trails. I’m actually really pleased with how our stuff’s all looking in it, but it’s a 10 part series and I’ve still got 5 more episodes worth of graphics to do, so it’ll probably be a few more weeks until I get a day off!

The show’s being made by Tiger Aspect, and we’ve also just completed graphics for another of their programmes – a Blackadder special which is going out on UK Gold in September, so I’ll probably blog about that a bit closer to the transmission date!

I mentioned a while ago that we were going to be moving into an office – well that happened at the end of February, and it’s great have a proper space to work in. It’s not 100% finished yet… we’ve still got to put the finishing touches to the edit suite, but I think me and James have done a pretty good job with it!

The picture here shows mine and James’ desks, which is currently where we spend most of our time. To the right of the bookcase, we’ve got a little seating area, and to the left of the shot is an edit suite that we built ourselves using lots of wood and plasterboard! Check out my photos to see how we did it all!

In my last blog, I announced the birth of my little nephew and niece – Brandon and Chloe. Well they’ve certainly grown a bit since that week! This first picture of me holding both of them was taken as they were about to leave hospital, and they were just 4 days old. You can see how tiny they were by the fact I could hold both of them at once!

They’re now 19 weeks old, and I last saw them a couple of weeks ago when I made a fleeting visit to Tamworth for my mum’s birthday, and they’ve really grown into little people, and are definitely developing their own characters. I don’t know how my sis copes with looking after 2 babies, but she seems to be doing a pretty good job!

(Brandon & Chloe – top: 6 weeks old, bottom left: 11 weeks old, bottom right: 17 weeks old)

Staying on the whole baby thing, James is now a daddy!

Helen gave birth to Jessica Grace on the 4th June, nearly 2 weeks overdue, but if I’m really honest, I was so glad that the baby held on those 10 days, because work was crazy, and we’d have struggled to get it done otherwise!! (sorry Hel!!)

Anyway, James brought Jessica to the office for a visit when she was just a week old, and she’s so cute – though as is the norm with babies, she didn’t do much more than sleep and cry!

I haven’t discussed it with James yet, but as soon as she’s old enough – 18 months should be fine – we’ll be training her up on After Effects to take the workload off us a bit…

It’s been a couple of months since my last post, so I thought I should bring my blog up-to-date with stuff that’s been going on.

The big project we worked on at the end of last year was ‘The Vicar Of Dibley’s Greatest & Top 40 Moments’, made by Tiger Aspect for UK Gold.

We did the titles, interview background graphics and studio backdrops, plus the animated stings to appear before each clip as they counted down – basically anything graphical in the two 90-minute shows! Our work got a really good reaction, and UKTV said the show was one of their highest rating original programmes which was good to hear. And the show was repeated loads over Christmas, so it’s sure to have been seen by a lot of people! And we should have another show from Tiger Aspect to work on from March – this time a series for ITV, so a busy time ahead!

Also before Christmas, I spent a lot of time working with Rob editing the Cannonball 8000 programme. It was a pretty big job because we had to deliver an hour long episode for ITV1 and ITV4, as well as re-cutting it all into 4 half hour episodes to go out on the Extreme channel later this year. There were a lot of late nights, and I was even editing on Christmas Day and Boxing Day!

Then, at the beginning of this month, we had to produce 2 commercials for Channel M which are running on Granada this week. It was a crazy turnaround time, with us doing the recee in between Christmas and New Year, and then we shot one of the commercials in James’ house, and the other one we made using clips from the news programme, with specially recorded pieces-to-cameras from the reporters.

Both the commercials we produced came out really well I think, and Tim did one for music which also looked great – especially in the time we all had! I think they should also be running again in a few months time, so watch out for them if you miss them this week!

The final bit of work news is that we’ve found ourselves an office! It’s in an old converted mill in Stockport, and we’re going to be renting one of the units on the top floor. The plan is to move in sometime next month, and we want to try and build an enclosed edit suite in the space, so we need to try and find time to do that before we move all our kit there!

Other news – I forgot to mention on here before that my sister Vikky (and her husband Damien of course!) are expecting twins! She’s due in March, and when I was down in Tamworth just after New Year, her bump looked pretty big! I think it was a bit of a shock when everyone first found out they were having two babies – it’s going to be a busy time for them when they’re born! Also, James and Helen are expecting a baby this year – in May – so we need to try and make sure we don’t have any major jobs happening when theirs comes along! I’ve offered my services for babysitting, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time with all the work we have! I think we need to make sure James trains the baby up in Avid and After Effects as soon as they’re born!

Wow – I can’t believe so much time has passed since I last blogged on here!

It’s been quite a busy summer – I’ve just got back home after being away working for a couple of weeks down at Soul Survivor. I spent 10 days in the Underground venue doing visuals for the venue, so spent most of the time either down the side of the stage or in our make-shift edit suite! This year I had Tom Steward helping me – it was pretty last minute because both Andy and Kate weren’t able to come this year – but I was really impressed at how quickly he picked it all up, and the stuff he was shooting on stage every night was brilliant.

Some of the video features we did can now be viewed on Youtube so check them out!

So we finished there on Thursday morning, and then I headed up to Bristol to meet up with Ali, and on Friday went with her and some of her friends to Greenbelt.

It’s the first time I’ve ever been to the festival, though obviously I’ve heard lots about it over the years! It’s very different to Soul Survivor – much more of an arts festival – and in some ways I found a lot of stuff really watered down, although there was a lot of passion for environmental issues and the like, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s quite a political event really, and the bands that appear are from a really wide spectrum – from Delirious and Matt Redman to Chas & Dave!! Not sure whether I’d go again, but I’m glad I checked it out.

Work news – me and James are now officially joint directors of doodledo MOTION Ltd which is pretty exciting! We got all the stuff finished for the BBC2 series ‘British Film Forever‘ though it went on a bit longer than we expected – we thought the edit would be finished at the end of July, but James was still having to render graphics whilst I was at Soul Survivor! It was a good job for us to do because it was quite high profile – they even advertised the programme on a big board with some of our graphics on the front of the BBC building on Oxford Road! I think all the stuff we did looked really good when seen in the context of the whole show, and it’s a good job to stick in our portfolio!

We’re now working on some titles and programme graphics for a ‘Vicar of Dibley’ special going out in October on UKTV Gold. It’s basically a showcase of the 40 funniest clips from the series with interviews from the cast and celebrity fans.

We went down to Tiger Aspect in London back in July to meet with the production team, and the meeting went really well, and hopefully we should be able to deliver some really good work. The plan is that we’re going to do background images for each of the interviews, plus animated stings to introduce each of the clips. There’s been talk of us doing some titles as well, but I’m not sure what’s happening with that yet… we’ll probably find out last minute!!

We’ve got some other work lined up as well, so hopefully we can make a real success of the new business. It’s going to be hard work, but I think me and James work really well together, and it’ll be good to focus our efforts in building the brand and expanding what we do. Watch this space!

Oh, and after a lot of phone calls and form filling, I managed to get my money back after the betting incidents… going to be checking my bank statements a lot more regularly from now on!

As per the title really! Although I can’t deny that I really had a great time! It’s just that after getting back at 3am, then grabbing a few hours sleep on the floor, I feel like I should really have gone through all this 10 years ago – though I’m not saying I wouldn’t be up for it again! It came about from going with James to the end-of-year art show at Manchester Met, which had its private viewing on Friday night. I’ve been a couple of times before, and it’s a really good place to get some inspiration, and also to see potential artists who we could maybe get to do some work for us in the future.

So we spent a couple of hours at the show with James’ mum, as well as his aunt and uncle, and then I kind of gatecrashed a family meal at Felicinis on Oxford Road – a really nice Italian restaurant that had just enough English food to ensure I got a good meal!

So after that, we headed over to Greenroom to meet up with some of the other guys who work on the course that James teaches on, then when we got chucked out of there made our way over to Sub Space which was absolutely packed and really hot and sweaty! But the music in there was really funky, and it was just a very good atmosphere, and whereas normally I’d feel a bit out of place being somewhere like that, I totally enjoyed it. I’ve never really got into going out clubbing and stuff – even at uni – but I’m kind of realising that if I’m in the right mind for it, I can actually have a good time.

Also, this weekend saw a programme I’ve recently been working on go out on The History Channel – I’d edited a documentary on the Vulcan bomber which was being featured because of it being the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war. It was quite weird watching it because I edited it to a guide voiceover, and this was a first time I’d seen it in this version, so it did seem like I was watching a different programme! I thought the show turned out well though, and I’m sure it will get repeated many times over the coming months!

Other stuff… I caught up with Jamie a couple of weeks ago when I went for a barbeque at his with Dean and Sean. It was quite an impromptu thing… I’d been round at James’ doing some work when he gave me a call to see if I was doing anything, so I went straight to his from there, because unsurprisingly I didn’t have any other plans! The food was slightly charred, but it was okay and filled me up! I hadn’t seen Jamie for quite a while – he’s got back into his climbing again which means he’s away from Manchester a lot more. It’s great for him ‘cos he’s really into it, but for me it’s a bit of a shame because I’d enjoyed the couple of times we’d been out riding together and was hoping to be able to do a lot more of it, but I know it’s going to be really difficult to find any time that we can. My bike’s been sitting idle since February, and there’s no-one else I can really go with, and I’m not overly keen on just going out riding on my own.

Finally, I mentioned in a earlier blog about some potentially exciting developments work-wise. Well, there’s still a lot to be finalised, but it looks like things are moving forward. I’ll post more information about it when things are more definite. But in the meantime, we’re currently busy working on titles and stings for a 7-part BBC2 documentary which is going out on Saturday nights from July. It’s probably the biggest job we’ve worked on to be honest, but hopefully it’s a good sign of things to come!