Diary

No option but to keep going

Location D the E's house, babysitting his very cute twins who are supposed to be in bed | Mood Amused | Date 25 May 2007
Just finished two weeks script writing with David and Emily . Nearly killed me. Brain imploded. Far too many great ideas and no system for marshalling them.

Never making another film

Location Sofa | Mood Lonely, but for the right reasons | Date 15 May 2007
McLibel is on at a festival in Tel Aviv soon, so I did an interview for some Israeli radio station or something today. Made my best effort to be interesting in case The Boy happens to hear it.

Very much from the Spanner mould

Location Lord Stanley pub, near the office | Mood Slightly more hopeful | Date 11 May 2007
Suddenly remembered Emily James as I was washing up for the first time in three weeks this morning. She's an indie filmmaker very much from the Spanner mould. Her film "The Luckiest Nut In the World " famously used animated singing peanuts to discuss trade liberalisation.

"Scriptwriting for Beginners"

Location Park in Red Lion Square | Mood Inspired | Date 28 April 2007
Am totally stuck on the animation script, so decided to try to do something - anything - positive and cleaned up three years of cat shit from my roof. Then started clearing the overgrown ivy with the thought of planting some veg up there. But as soon as the ivy went I could see a bloody great big crack in the wall.

D major, E major, F minor

Location The Purcell Room, don't you know | Mood 6 year old before piano exam | Date 25 April 2007
Not been going too well with the animation. There seems to be a fundamental mismatch between the Spanner Films approach - "don't know how long it is, don't know how much cash we have, don't know what style we like, what do you all reckon?" - and the professionals at Passion who work with such things as scripts, storyboards, deadlines and budgets.

Surprised it made any sense at all

Location Surrounded by empty beer and wine bottles | Mood Quietly confident | Date 2 April 2007
Been having lots of screenings of the Rough Cut to various carefully selected groups of friends & funders, with me scribbling hundreds of notes to myself and then re-editing stuff before the next one. Seems every other night another bunch of people spends the evening staring at the wall. (Looks great projected).

Biology, physics & chemistry conspiring

Location The sofa, then the piano, then bed, then the sofa again | Mood Lonely | Date 25 March 2007
Rooney and his pals failed to wop Israel's asses in the World (or is it Euro?) Cup qualifier last night, not that I care. But it did result, as anticipated, in the first communication from My Certain Someone since our New Year's Eve resolution. Exchanging some flip nationalistic football insults set me off pining for some real exchange with him.

"I assume I'm getting paid nothing?"

Location Hampstead Heath cafe | Mood Dramatically more positive | Date 21 March 2007
Fate has intervened to save Crude. I've been stuck in a terror tunnel as it gradually dawns on me how many elements we are incapable of doing. Like making animation. Or mocking up news reports. Or trawling a million hours of BBC archive.

The human eye did not evolve for this

Location Doctor's waiting room, Camden | Mood Chastised | Date 19 March 2007
Best Pal marched me off to the doctor after coming over to pick up her share of the organic veg delivery - how very neighbourly - to find me typing away with a scarf wrapped round my head blocking off one eye. I explained that the headaches get unbearable whenever that eye looks at a computer, so the interesting headgear is the only way to carry on working.

Money and website solved in one

Location Train back from Oxford. 23.50pm | Mood Clearing of the fog | Date 16 March 2007
Slightly frightening that Crude pal Mark Lynas has dreamt up, researched, written and published a book, 'Six Degrees', all within the Crude timescale. Lizzie and I went to the launch in a cold church hall in Oxford tonight. Mark was doing one of his favourite slide-show talk presentation things - think Al Gore, but way bleaker - which I've now seen plenty of times, but never fails to scare the bejeezus out of me.