What's he up to, eh?
Dannsa hits Episode the Third with a trip to Taynuilt, near Oban. Well, relatively “near”: Taynuilt isn’t near anywhere, which is sort if the point of Ballet West. In idyllic surrounds, the ballet degree students have few distractions, other than the odd stag sticking his majestic head through the studio window to enjoy a rehearsal.
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Following on from last week’s blog, here’s what I have to say for myself regarding the music choices in Dannsa, episode 2, which is on tonight at 10pm, BBC Alba.
This week, we concentrate on the Fusion dance group in Aberdeen, with a brief sojourn with Livingston’s b-boyz (and girl), the Heavy Smokers, kicking off with… Continued…
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
A new show TV started last Monday, 10pm on BBC Alba. It’s called Dannsa[1] and you’ll all be able to get it, because BBC Alba has just become available to anyone with Freeview. That’s you[2]. I recommend the show to you, because it’s rather good. I know this because I worked on it, along with a string of extraordinarily talented people.[3] And frankly, we all worked damned hard. I don’t want to give too much away, but one aspect of the post-production that I feel I can discuss in some detail is the choice of music. Obviously, the dancers featured dance to something, so music choice was a primary concern.
The show follows six dance groups from all over Scotland with wildly varying ages and dance styles, from classical ballet to contemporary, an over-60s group to a breakdance crew. There’s something for everyone, and it was a joy spending time with them all, particularly when they start coming together later in the series. Episode One introduces us to them all, whereas subsequent editions focus on one group at a time. So this introduction to them all is, itself, a kind of compilation album, a mix tape, a playlist. So the music better be good.
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Just watched the political discussion show, Empire, on Aljazeera. Jolly good. I’m quite enjoying switching to the Doha-based network whenever BBC News starts wittering about cricket and there’s nothing good on Parliament. They had, among others, Carl Bernstein of All the President’s Men fame going on about Wikileaks, cyber activism and national security.
The whole thing got me thinking, though, how much of my morality is framed in the context of Star Wars. No, really.
Categories: confession, Personal, politics, tv.
Started a show today featuring the formidable Margo MacDonald, MSP. I was aware of Ms. MacDonald before most other MPs-that-weren’t-on-Spitting-Image because my mum had gone to college with her, back when in Scotland you had to go to Aberdeen to learn how to be a P.E. teacher. My mum would never miss a chance to tell us when Ms. MacDonald was lying about her age; I was just chuffed she knew someone semi-famous.
I’ve only digitised and logged the footage so far rather than cut any of it, but the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Lothians is not only formidable, it turns out, but very funny, pragmatic, passionate and caring. It was she, after all, who campaigned for prostitute-tolerant zones in Edinburgh having worked directly with the girls and woman (mostly drug addicts) caught in the oldest profession — “seen the whites of their eyes,” as she puts it — only to have her bill rejected by the “moral” majority in parliament, whose morals were academic, distant and, in the end, no help at all to the victims of the situation. Her views on drug policy are equally practical, sensible and, of course, unpopular, borne of the desire to actually help people and reduce the problem, even though it precludes the lofty superiority of those less bothered by engaging with the reality.
In short, she’s the kind of gutsy, down-to-earth, yet highly intelligent heroine who gives Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep the chance to win Oscars. She cuts through the bull as a matter of course and can smell the shite in anyone else’s argument a mile away. She also cheerfully admits to lying about her age whenever she can.
I’m looking forward to this one. I always look forward to an edit, sure, but it never makes it less exciting to look forward to an edit. I just hope I can do the woman justice.
Categories: editing, Personal, politics, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Occasionally, when I have only a little money left to my name and it’s getting me down, I might be tempted to blow it all on a silly purchase of purely entertainment value. It reaffirms that although I may be poor, I’m still in the category of people who can spend money on silly things of purely entertainment value. So it was that, a while ago, I was standing in Sauchiehall Street’s HMV, upstairs in the Comedy section, admiring a box set of Absolutely, a sketch show I used to watch when I was in high school. Back then, it was universally acknowledged to be the best since Monty Python, and we were all lucky to have it. There, in HMV, I seriously considered blowing forty quid I didn’t have on this paean to my formative years, when I first had a TV in my room and could watch whatever I damn-well liked. (In a side note, I’d like to thank the French film industry for featuring so much nudity in their output, and to Britain’s Channel Four for showing so much of it after my parents had gone to bed.)
I didn’t succumb, though. It was too much money, and I, like most folk, have come to realise that much of the time the memory of things is better than the reality of them. Then, the other day, I sauntered onto YouTube to find an oversized banner ad for 4oD (Channel Four on demand, see?). Included with the temporarily available new shows were permanently available older programmes. Among them was Absolutely.
Not only can I report that the show is just as brilliant as it once seemed to my teenage self, putting all subsequent sketch shows to shame, IMHO, but that I discovered to my delight and astonishment that I’d begun watching the show originally from the last episode of the first series. Which meant I had new Absolutely to watch!
All of which is great except for a few things. As YouTube and Channel Four have arranged it, the ads which play before and during the show seem to be independent of the show itself, presumably to keep them replaceably current. A result of this system of dynamic video in the middle of static is that I can’t watch it on my phone. Plus, if I stop the playback for any length of time and try to resume, I get an error message and have to reload the page (and watch the ads again). These could just be teething problems with the new embedded video ad system, but it means that, regardless of content, the videos of amateur uploaders are better than this classic TV. It’s inferior YouTube, from a customer point-of-view. Not the best idea.
Still, better that this great series is available than otherwise, and if I get fed up with Pepsi Max and Sony Bravia ads crashing my browser, I can just ask for the DVD boxset for Christmas, can’t I? Now I know I’m not fooling myself and Absolutely remains the best Scottish comedy since Stanley Baxter went to LWT.
Categories: complaint, confession, Recommendation, tv.
A few weeks ago I spent a long weekend editing a programme for STV called, Susan Boyle: Two Weeks That Shook Show Business. I’ll assume you know who Susan Boyle is. The programme was to play on the Bank Holiday Monday, dividing the double episode of Coronation Street and going up against East Enders on BBC1. No pressure, then. The producers quickly decided to structure the two halves of the show thusly: part one would illustrate the story, the humble beginnings, the audition on Britain’s Got Talent, the YouTube sensation, the twittering celeb couple and global super-stardom; part two would analyse the phenomenon, offering possible explanations and suggesting where it might go next.
Part one would take care of itself, but part two was tricky, basically because we didn’t really have any idea why the story had gotten as big as it did. All of us working on the programme knew the story, of course, you could hardly escape it, but the why of it was quite baffling. Luckily, the crew came back with some very insightful interviews, with Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus being particularly eloquent and perceptive. So, over the course of four days (with the Saturday shift extending to about four in the morning, only for Sunday’s to start eight), we lived and breathed Susan Boyle. The picture that emerged was of a talented woman who had dedicated her life to the the care of her elderly parents, and when they had both passed decided to take her best shot at a singing career, fully aware that if success eluded her it wouldn’t make her a failure. She knew, I think, that it was the attempt that mattered, giving her all. That’s why she took the initial jeers and skyward glances in her stride: she wasn’t going to let anything stop her from doing her best. What happened then was out of her hands, but she’s handled it with the same philosophy — as long as she tried her best, nothing else matters.
The programme got 27% of the TV audience that night, beating East Enders’ 25% and the ITV network by 10%. That’s a success. I know our hard work on it wouldn’t have initially made viewers choose it over East Enders — Susan herself was the draw. I do like to think, though, that when they arrived they got something a bit more thoughtful and considered than they might have expected. A few of my pals in the business (who can be a tad cynical) praised it for not sensationalising the story any more than it had been already, and for not trying to pretend Susan was something that she’s not (while still being respectful and complimentary of her and her obvious talent). The Scotland on Sunday bemoaned the lack of an interview with the 1:24 girl or backstage info (like whether the judges really had no idea what to expect from Susan), but concluded: “for what it was, 2 Weeks That Shook Showbusiness was still pretty good.”
One observation I’d make is that much of her success is because of mainstream media’s failure to understand Twitter. I don’t blame them: as everyone who uses Twitter knows, it’s impossible to understand Twitter unless you’re doing it. It simply defies explanation. Boyle’s story went ‘global’ because it went American, and that only happened thanks to a pair of tweets from Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. That’s it: one tweet apiece. Kutcher’s was something along the lines of, “That made my night,” to which his wife replied, “You saw me getting teary.” To anyone not tweeting all day it may be easy to take that as ‘Demi Moore announces to the world her admiration and love of Britain’s Susan Boyle!’ She didn’t announce anything of the sort. Well, she did, but she didn’t. That’s where Twitter’s unique form of communication lies — idle musings, random thoughts, passing notions. Sure, plenty of people tweet things of great importance to them, but it’s clear to me from the slightly indirect tone of both tweets that they were meant primarily for the other’s spouse, rather than all their fans and followers. As such it was tenuous to suggest that she’d captured the heart of Hollywood. It’s a tiny point in the Boyle story, admittedly; the fact is that once it had been brought to the Americans’ attention via Fox and CNN they lapped it up, so does it really matter how it got there?
But why did they lap it up? Clive James wrote and read a piece on Radio 4 where he praised her voice but made the point that voices as strong grace opera choruses and am-dram groups up and down Britain. It’s a lovely voice, don’t get me wrong, but is it really that extraordinary? Is her talent the equal of this five year old from Korea who can play any piano piece she hears but once, Mozart-style?
For my part, when a female singer is introduced to the world I usually find her vocal talent sufficient to justify the dedication of the managers and publicists that got her her break, but the back of my mind will always whisper, “Lucky for them she’s gorgeous, too.” The implication, of course, is that an equal talent in a more homely personage will be ignored. I haven’t heard anyone in the business say this explicitly, apart from snide remarks on X Factor like “you don’t have the right ‘look,’ dear,” nor have I seen any research to suggest that for every good looking singer I’ve heard of there’s at least one unattractive one who’s doomed to lead a ‘normal life.’ It’s just a feeling I have because, deep down, I know I’d rather look at an attractive woman than an ugly one. Comely over homely. It’s self-evident, obvious, but it’s also harsh, shallow and unbecoming. So, do I like the Susan Boyle character because it affirms that I can see past the glossy veneer, thus proving I’m really a good guy? Do I like her only because it makes me feel good to like her, to flatter my own ego?
There are other reasons to like her, of course, more objective reasons: her handling of the sudden media attention, for instance, seems Herculean to me. Though she’s lacking any technique at all in dealing with journalists (all her interviews consist of barely-useable one-word answers) she seems perfectly happy to deal with them anyway. She was interviewed by Larry King from her living room and was completely unfazed by the heavyweight champ of talk show hosts. When a film crew ambushes her on the streets of Blackburn, she chats amiably and with humility about her new situation, and while she is unpolished, she carries herself with considerable grace. And though she may not be Kiri Te Kanawa, she can sing. As McManus pointed out, she has a great deal of talent and she’s on a talent show so why shouldn’t she find success?
So cutting this particular show was a revelation for me and hopefully for the viewer too. Come her next appearance, I wish her all the best. Whatever happens it’s difficult to see her suffering any bad will now. She’ll forever be a hero in her own community and if she’s remembered outside of that, it will be fondly, I’m sure.
Categories: editing, tv, Work.