Will Tribble has a "blog"

I don't know why I didn't just do black text on a white background before today

2011-11-30T21:47:00.004Z

I apologise to anyone who fell upon this blog before today and was forced to read the greyish text on a yellow background. I don't know what I was thinking. Feel free to contact me, as an apology I may send you a picture of a small puppy.

FUZZY HEAD

2011-11-30T13:02:00.004Z

For a while now I've been working on something very exciting called Fuzzy Head. It's essentially about a guy with a fuzzy box for a head. It's a film that can also be played as a game. It's lots and lots of cool stuff.

Detailed explanations will come later, but for now check out fuzzyheadmedia.tumblr.com . There's already lots of stuff on there.

Woo!

Will

Saskilla - Yonder

2011-11-30T12:16:00.012Z

Sorry, I should be updating this more.

Several months ago I directed a video for a guy called Saskilla for a song called "Yonder", produced by George. It was a fun excuse to experiment with video projections, contrazooms and other stuff in a cool dungeon-like car park, and it was also nice to shoot something on RED. It looks like this:

Although I'm pleased with how it turned out, and the shoot was great, I have mixed feelings about this cut. There were a lot of different opinions being thrown around by a lot of different people (we even shot a whole day of extra material that was barely used). Personally I think one or two of the best things we made for this video aren't in this video. I do have a director's cut knocking around but haven't had time/found someone with the time to grade it. Alternatively I could use the unused shots for another video and pretend they're all new (this is how creativity works).

Yes

Will.

Mary and Dan at London Independent Film Festival

2011-04-12T12:01:00.006+01:00

Hello, blog!

A short film I made, "Mary and Dan", is being shown this Friday at 6pm at the London Independent Film Festival. This is the most prestigious UK film festival it's been in, so I'm very excited! It's a five minute film that currently can't be seen online, it involves a combination of live action and stop motion animation and features robots and several cardboard spaceships. I may be around to do a Q & A afterwards (depending on various things, but I'd really like to though, I don't think I've ever done a proper Q & A before).

Tickets are free until they run out or can be booked for £2, and it's at the Shortwave Cinema. Click HERE for more details.

Hooray!

Will.

HOW TO HAVE A POSTAPOCALYPTIC THEME PARTY ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

2010-12-31T19:06:00.015Z

HOW TO HAVE A POSTAPOCALYPTIC THEME PARTY ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

WILL WRITE MORE ABOUT IT TOMORROW

SORRY THIS IS A BIT LATE, WATCH IT WHILE IT'S STILL APPLICABLE

ALSO HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Edit, 01/01/11:

Hello!

Did you have a good new year! I hope you did. I went to a party with some Germans and spent the whole night stringing a load of party poppers together into one multipopper and making a helmet out of party hats:

So this film! I made this film. I haven't made any personal films in a while so it was nice, even if it's a bit too long and the references are a little obscure I hope some people like it.

There are several reasons I wanted to to this. Basically I completely love Fallout 3. I've never played any RPGs before, and Fallout purists may sneer at me when I say I haven't played the previous games, but honestly even before the recent ones came out I was really into the story of the old ones - Fallout 1 has one of the best game intros ever in my opinion, as well as a really fantastic final boss [spoilers]. Fallout 3 is great, it made you feel like the main character in some sort of crossover between Mad Max and a sci-fi episodes of the Twilight Zone, plus it's the only game I can think of that lets you blow up punks, zombies, tin toy robots, giant scorpions and some distant relative of Satan. I've probably played well over 100 hours of it, just got New Vegas and already love it.

Also, I'm not sure if I've made this clear, but I really like 28 Days Later. It has this slightly deceptive mix of high budget filmmaking and low budget techniques, and the first time I watched it it made me feel like I could pick up a MiniDV camera and make something that looked just as good. One of the things I like about it the most were the empty London shots, and how they was achieved largely by filming very early in the morning, (I also like this in contrast to a similar scene from Vanilla Sky with an empty Times Square, when they presumably spent a lot more money for the same effect). It's something I've always wanted an excuse to do.

Also my brother has a girlfriend called Sonia, who has a birthday today (happy birthday Sonia!) which made me think about the sort of party you could have. One new year's day several years ago I spent the hours between about 10am and noon waiting at a train station for a girl who never turned up, and it made me realise how empty everything was when the world has a hangover.

So everything sort of clicked and we managed to make this. Thanks so much to everyone that was involved! It was really tough getting people, we filmed it the weekend before Christmas, and the people who weren't doing pre-Christmas things were stuck in the sudden snowfall. We had a panicky moment when it looked like only three people had shown up for the party scene, but eventually Geoff's friends pulled through and we ended up with nearly double that. We were also hoping to have more drunk zombies and fill the streets with passed out party people, but it ended up just being me and Geoff.

Some more fun facts:

It turns out that in late December the sun only rises at about 8am, and a Highgate high street at 8am on a Sunday is still a pretty busy place. Those three shots are pretty much the only shots we had of empty-looking streets, and even then they're a bit cheated. There's a lot of cropping and masking in this film, look out for any weird lines or funny patches of light or jump cuts where half the screen stays still and the other half moves slightly. Especially in the bedroom shots (Alex you're a lovely guy, but you really can't hold a reflector still. You owe me 4 hours of sleep).

Alessandro says that some of this was the worst stuff he's ever been asked to do. There's some good outtakes of him in the Zardoz costume (we should have got a fake ponytail and moustache) while I try and get him to say "THE PENIS IS EVIL, THE PENIS SHOOTS LIFE" in a Scottish accent (later on I realised that isn't the right line). Also it turns out hospital scrubs are pretty flimsy, even with jogging bottoms underneath, and winter is quite cold. Also when he pulled that tape off his chest he took a fair few chunks of skin with it, then thought we were joking when we said we wanted to do the shot again.

Ben from Candle Music delayed a date with a nice Swedish lady by like half an hour to do the music for this. Sorry Ben, hope it went well!

This is the second time I've ripped off the Awesome Face. It is truly an awesome face.

I was going to get up at 8am today and actually see what London was like, but I was too lazy and had a headache and was at a friend's house in a flat several stories above Brick Lane and it sounded like there were lots of people around anyway. I'd quite like to do this for 2012, it might be more appropriate.

Think that's all I can think of. Hope somebody somewhere likes the film, and if you do please pass it on.

Have a great Xmas and new year and general holidayness, I'm off to the Mojave Wastelands.

Will.

Time

2010-10-07T23:18:00.023+01:00

You know how when a website or blog hasn't updated in ages, then suddenly the content creator leaves a post that claims that they haven't abandoned it?

Maybe they'll make a joke out of it and playfully say "I'm not dead!" like in Monty Python or they'll whine about not having enough time to do things or they'll make some vague comments about things they're working on and stuff that's definitely in the pipeline.

Whatever they do you'll feel angry and disappointed. They've let down the tiny amount of interest you ever felt for them and replaced it with tawdry promises you suspect they'll never keep. Their pathetic offerings and claims that things will be better sometime in the distant future leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, as do the feeling of raw lies and half-truths trying to stuff themselves violently into your eyes.

Well, guess what.

HI GUYS

Someone told me they'd found this blog recently which made me realise that maybe I should give an update on stuff I've been doing. I'll try and be as chronological as I can.

Flash Theatre

Ages and ages and ages ago me and a guy called Dan (this guy called Dan) made a thing where I walked around in a raincoat and flashed members of the general public while he filmed it. It's waaaaay less sexy than it sounds.

I wasn't particularly happy with the end result and thought we could use a few more days filming and flashing, but for one reason or another we never got round to it. Eventually I gave him all the footage and my rough edit and asked if he could have a bash at doing a better edit. Some time later, he changed a few of the captions and dumped it online. I still think it could have been better if we'd had more time but it did pretty okay I guess. It got in the excellent Daily What, even if the only commenter wants to hit me.

TV Hat

This isn't exactly a thing. A guy I know called Paul became obsessed with a device known as TV Hat, an incredible invention which allows you to strap a handheld device to your head and watch it through a magnifying lens while looking functionally stylish as hell.

Finally the chance to make low budget Silent Hill/Mirrormask crossover porn

He wrote to the people who make TV Hat and said that if they gave him a free TV Hat he'd try to make something showing him wearing the TV Hat and the benefits that TV Hat would bring to his currently TV Hat-less existence. They liked this idea so much they sent him two TV Hats for free. It was a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price. He asked me to help him make something showing the joys of a TV that is also a hat.

Originally I wanted to film a montage of him making the most of his TV Hat by doing all the sorts of things he might do while watching TV - laughing, crying, touching himself - in various public places. We tried using a series of binbags to fashion a makeshift robe surrounding his TV hat, to block out excess sunlight. We thought that he could hook it up to some kind of Wii gun and play shooting games as he walks around his neigbourhood. He chickened out of all of these things. Also we were running out of time or something. So instead we took some boring old photos and that was the end of it.

yaaaaaaaaawn

I'm not sure why I spent so long telling that story or why I put it above other bigger things, but there you are.

SD Proof Machine

I directed my first proper online video "viral" ad thingy, with the Viral Factory (who helped me make this previously). It was for a brand of SD card, and uses a very real, non-CGI setup that took several weeks of fun and pain to build. I made the nailhead baby myself! Pretty much everyone who saw it assumed that the card was just put on a greenscreen separately, which is slightly sad, because that certainly would have been easier and more sensible then actually building a rig for it to fit on a remote control car. This is what it looks like:

It's called "Memory Card Testing: Overkill Edition" on youtube, which to my mind isn't as catchy as "Proof Machine" but there you go

Huzzah, actual paid directing work! Speaking of which...

More MoFilm

Those of you with both a knowledge of things happening in London and a fully functioning scrollbar may notice that

(A) Following all the Nokia kerfuffle, MoFilm nicely promised to screen Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take during the London Film Festival

and

(B) The London Film Festival is currently happening right now!

MoFilm are making good on their promise, and will be showing the film at one of their events on the afternoon of this coming Tuesday the 26th (it's a private event as one of their competitions and apparently sold out). However, by a strange but not completely terrible twist of irony, I actually can't make the showing because of some other filmmaking directory stuff. I'm doing preproduction things on a proper work-type job and am urgently required to watch and rate some kind of explosion at the exact time that the film is being shown. This is not ideal, but at least I'll hopefully be doing something else that's cool instead of going to a dentist's appointment or having my knees removed or something.

However...

The Cornwall Film Festival/Box[ur]shorts

A few months ago I finished a short film. I spent a lot of time working on it and I'm quite proud of it, even if it is slightly too long. Look, here's a random still from it:

And another, screaming!

Maybe she's SCREAMING at the claw thing! Maybe she's YELLING at someone! Maybe she's just FURIOUSLY YAWNING? Who knows! Exciting drama!

I've been holding off sticking it on the youtubes as I was trying to go for the festival circuit first and a lot of those have rules about not having things on the internet and suchlike. Its first screenings at two of these festivals are both coming very soon and happening right now! It will play on Saturday the 6th of November at the Cornwall Film Festival in Falmouth, in the morning as part of The Edge shorts competition . It's also being shown as part of "Box[ur]shorts", a festival that involves putting all the films in public jukeboxes and showing them in special locations all over the world. That's happening right now, and will continue travelling around for a while, so if you're anywhere near one go see it! Or just go to Falmouth at that one day or one time! Or look out for the next festival it will hopefully be shown at! Whatever happens you should watch it in some public space instead of huddled over your computer, film festivals and going outside are both fun. I'll certainly be at the Cornwall one and will hopefully be at many others.

Watch my film oh god please watch my film

Other things

Other things are slowly happening whenever I have time to work on them. The actual work film will almost certainly erupt in the next few months, but personal things are squeezed in between stuff like that. When I make stuff for no-one with no fixed deadline I tend to spend much more time messing around on them, perhaps more than I should. I just always feel a vague sense of disappointment when things are finally done, so the next time I make something I try to spend even more time trying to correct everything, but then when I finally stick it online I just think "holy crap I spent that long worrying about a video of me dancing in my underwear what the hell is wrong with me". I had a point to this somewhere, can't remember now.

Honorary Mention

A friend of mine called Nic Carter, who some might remember from the 2012 London Olympics Logo film, has popped up acting in a controversial viral for a climate change thing. It was put up on the site, then very quickly taken down again with lots of apologies, but is still being reuploaded elsewhere by many other people, so although whether it works as an ad is very debatable it's certainly very successful as a viral. It's written by Richard Curtis funnily enough, maybe he's trying to shed his friendly Notting Hill-type image and establish himself as more of a guy who ain't nothing to fuck with.

I'm trying to learn photoshop maybe you noticed

Anyway she only had a small part in it as an office lady who gets covered in the blood of her slaughtered wind turbine-hating coworker, but by some twist of fate and magic she's sometimes in the youtube embed thumbnail things!

The guy next to her also seems surprised to see her there. Like, genuinely horrified.

Surely if you're an actor being in the youtube thumbnail must give you extra points on CVs and stuff. I don't know.

I think that's everything I have to say for now.

Will.

Nokia MiniMo competition

2010-06-29T11:02:00.045+01:00

Right.

This is a long story, I'm starting from the beginning and trying to give as complete an account as possible, so I've dated it for all the TL:DRers. Sorry I haven't written this all up earlier by the way.

February 2009:

With lots of other people I co-made a film called Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take. It looks like this:

(If you click on the video it will take you to the Youtube page with full credits.)

June 19th-21st 2010:

A guy called Lee Moore/Chibihobo messaged me on Twitter (I didn't see it for a few days):

You can see the film he was talking about by clicking here, allegedly it's made by a lady called Jemma Lyon.

It's almost identical to our version. Same ideas, same script, same shooting style. The biggest difference is that none of us made it.

I wasn't sure how to react. If it had just been on Youtube or something I'd have been completely flattered. But someone had done this for a competition, and won something called a "Critic's Choice Award" , for which they received these:

So it based on ours, and it had been entered it into a competition alongside lots of other people's totally original film entries, then won a trip to Cannes, £600 and £1300 of film equipment.

This all seemed a bit unfair.

I thought the competition organisers might want to know about all this, so I left a comment on their website:

And I sent some strongly worded messages to them on Twitter:

(The tearoom voucher was technically an award and I completely forgot that Why I Don't Like Cellars won a Silver Award here. I think the chocolate train was from a raffle and it was so beautiful I left it in the fridge till someone binned it.)

Nokia's response, both to me and to other people who'd messaged them saying the same thing, wasn't very positive.

This was extremely frustrating.

At about midnight, I asked B3ta.com what they thought...

Sorry for angry words and swears, but I was pissed off about the whole thing. I got a fair bit of support, lots of people suggesting I email Nokia's press office, Jemma Lyon's university, etc. In the end I didn't do any of that, just decided to deal with it tomorrow and went to bed.

June 22nd:

Next time I checked, internets had been happening.

My followers on Twitter had jumped from about 30 to about 100 with lots of messages of support, Adrants had run a story on it, as did Ad Age, Mobile News and lots of other sites, and Nokia was getting a load of complaints. They quickly responded by saying it was the fault of their partners, MoFilm.

MoFilm quickly moved to do something about it. They messaged me on Twitter, got my number, gave me a ring, and generally dealt with all this in a nice professional way. They stuck a full apology on their blog:

And Nokia followed suite in a less name mentiony way, (although I got a name check on their Twitter).

So the prizes were revoked and also our One Minute One Take version got a showing at the London Film Festival! All sounded like a pretty good result to me.

And the next day the Telegraph wrote an article about it and somebody interviewed me for the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post, which was weird. All cool though!

Hell yeah internet! B3ta and Twitter are awesome lovely places!

June 23rd-28th:

Except more and more and more keeps unfolding about this thing. Manic from Bloggerheads, messaged me on B3ta suggesting that Nokia actually helped to make this other film to boost up their entries, then hoisted the blame on Jemma when it all went wrong (he's written an excellent blog about this whole thing, although I disagree with him about the other entries, some of them are very good).

I thought this was all getting a bit conspiracy theoryish. I mean I know that lots of companies asking for user generated content make a few of their own to boost up the numbers, but if you're going to do that, you don't let those ones win. Especially if you've got a fair few other entries. And especially if that film's totally nicked from something else they've seen on the internet.

Then Nokia admitted that yeah, to a certain extent they did that:

I asked Nokia what that meant, and they sent me a private message saying that all this representative had done was to lend his phone to film it and say it would be alright to enter it.

Then Jemma Lyon started speaking out. She posted statements to Adrants and the Nokia competition , and I think emailed Hello You Creatives, saying this:

“I would like to make a statement regarding the alleged plagiarism accusations from the Nokia Minimo movie competition.
I was approached by a Nokia representative who asked me to remake any video in under two minutes for his Nokia assignment. I was unaware that this was a competition at the time and did not receive a brief. The representative also promised to give me a mobile phone in exchange for assisting him with his project. I never received the phone.
The Nokia representative was present during the filming of my video and after being asked several times if the film was OK to submit he insisted it was and persisted to show the actors the original video to direct them where to stand and what to do. At no point did the representative inform any of the people involved that the film was breaching the terms and conditions and I was led to believe that the entry was valid.
Further to this, Nokia became aware that my entry was based on another video three days prior to sending me on the trip to Cannes, but they still sent me on the trip and refused to act until the public outcry.
My name has been tarnished by this event. I have been branded a cheater amongst many other things too awful to write and I have yet to be informed of how Nokia aim to rectify this. I aspire to pursue a career in the creative media industry and this libel is a great hindrance to my progress to achieving the career I want. My efforts to expose the truth have been greatly subdued by Nokia and the rule of law seems not to apply to large powerful corporations in certain instances.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that basing my video on Mr Tribble’s creative work was done in ignorance. I was not aware that I was breaking any rules and the Nokia representative never informed me that I was doing so. I previously had no interest in submitting an entry but I was misled into thinking that I was merely helping the Nokia representative, he has since personally apologised to me for the way I have been treated.
Nokia has allowed my name to be dragged through the mud by shrouding the situation with half truths and even some out right lies in order to save their own reputation.”

Finally, I got to talk to her myself over Facebook.

First I asked her exactly what happened, and whether this rep was from Nokia or MoFilm:

Then I asked if she'd name this representative so I could speak to him:

Then when I explained that MoFilm had sorted most of this out, she said this:

Whoah.

So, overall Jemma is claiming that this Nokia guy is almost entirely responsible for making the film, all she did was shoot it for him and stick it into the competition under his directions, and Nokia didn't send her back from Cannes, they just told MoFilm they had.

1st July:

I've just had a phone chat with a guy from Nokia's PR team (Mark who runs their Twitter), and this was his stance:

- This Nokia rep was a part-time employee from their street team, who specialise in doing Nokia-related things in universities, etc.

- He was present at the filming and lent his phone. He knew that the film was a lot like our one, but said she should enter it anyway. However he had nothing to do with the planning, directing or editing of it.

- Jemma was sent back on the earliest flight it was safe to send her on, on Thursday morning (she was meant to leave on either Friday or Saturday, he couldn't remember off the top of his head).

So all in all, I'm not sure what happens next and I have no idea who to believe. I don't know whether Jemma was left to be the fall girl by Nokia or whether there's been a load of misunderstandings.

It's fantastic that our film is being shown at the LFF, but I still think this whole thing has been a complete mess of confusion and half truths. I'd still like to know what's actually happened, and I think a lot of other people would as well. And even if Nokia's version of events is true (and I'm not saying they are for sure), they have suffered a massive breakdown in communication between members of their own staff. I don't necessarily think they should be holding individuals responsible - there's something very underhand about the whole thing.

Thanks again to everyone from Twitter and B3ta and the internet in general, thanks to everyone who blogged about this, I'm going to stick links to all the ones I've seen below, if anyone else has written anything else give me a message. I'm still hoping to find out more, and if I do I'll update.

Will.

Blogs/articles I haven't already mentioned:

Film Utopia - thought I'd put this at the top as it raises some interesting points. This whole thing is dealing with remakes of remakes; without Forrest Gump the movie we wouldn't have our low budget parody to begin with. Although I'd argue that Michel Gondry wasn't the only person to ever remake a big budget movie using low budgets cardboard special effects (see Son Of Rambow, which came out around the same time as Be Kind Rewind, by ex-Adam and Joe director Garth Jennings), he was an influence of ours. I think my main problem was that Forrest Chump won for its supposedly innovative ideas for representing a famous film, without whoever created it admitting that these ideas came entirely from our film. Maybe if they'd just said that theirs was based on Forrest Gump and this silly Youtube remake of Forrest Gump in the first place it would have been different.

Moments of Film (giving a nice example of a film competition gone right)

Reputation Online (another interesting take on events)

Blogs/articles I've already mentioned

Art installation thingy mentioned on Spoonfed

2010-05-12T09:54:00.004+01:00

Look! Right here!

http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/lauren-romano-8167/caged-bird-sings-2652/

The sign they mention was actually very silly and tongue in cheek, as to be honest I thought the eye was more of a fun thing to play with than something menacing. But I'm glad they like it.

Not much else to say really.

Will.

Project Friendly - 2

2010-05-05T11:52:00.008+01:00

Michaela sent me an email:

Hi Will,

Thank you very much for your fantastic envelope!

I wanted to let you know that I spent my morning putting this beast together and here (attached) is the finished result!!

Michaela.

IT WORKS! IT REALLY WORKS! I was worried for a minute that she had photoshopped it instead of actually making it, but she's confirmed that she did make it, just photoshopped out all the cut-out lines and stuff. This is extra impressive, and clearly Michaela is the greatest kind of person. I predict big biscuits in her future, oh yes indeed...

Also you can see the neater photos she's taken at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=165479&id=504383887&ref=mf.

Wooooooooot! Another hooray for Michaela!

[Edit: what happened to Blogger linking to big versions of pictures? Here's a slightly bigger one, looking much more exciting and dramatic: http://twitpic.com/1l8irp ]

Project Friendly

2010-04-30T13:38:00.013+01:00

A man I know called Dan is part of a thing called called Project Friendly which involves sending anonymous people envelopes with drawings on them and stuff. You can put whatever you like inside them, as long as the envelope is decorated in some way.

It sounded fun, and after a very long delay, I've got involved in this business:

Okay so my idea is that this is the front side, and you're like "huh this is a pretty fake hairy envelope but no big deal, what's with the scissors around the sides" but then you turn it round and BAM:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

You were holding a folded up monster in your hands and you didn't even know!

What does this mean?

I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM ANY MORE!

Just in case Michaela has little experience with cutout things or thinks the dotted lines are some weird art style thing I put some instructions inside:

I'm not really sure where I was going with the links. I just thought they might be useful. I had a slightly longer list but I kept misspelling the URLs, so I ripped out that bit, and then I was like "sod it, I've written this much and writing is hard, I might as well do little rips everywhere and pretend it is a weird art style thing".

I coloured in the front last, after I'd done the little scissors, then felt bad about it. Maybe Michaela might prefer a full colour envelope monster and not really care about the white patches and the scissors round the side. I better leave detailed instructions in case she wants to find the same colour and go over those bits.

Yaaaaay!

I hope Michaela actually does it. I hope Michaela actually does it and it actually works. I'd like to see the results.

You can see some more Project Friendlies scattered around on http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=194802919464 and http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10797&id=100000390223470 . Personally I think there should be a Flickr page so they could get more people involved. Maybe I'll poke Dan with a stick and tell him that.

Will.

PS oh go on then.

Art installation - part 2

2010-04-16T16:28:00.006+01:00

Filmed it on the opening night. It seems to work pretty well.

It's open over the weekend, but it closes some time around 2PM on Tuesday.

Hooray!

Will.

Doing a video art installation, come and see it!

2010-04-14T11:14:00.014+01:00

Hello!

Me and an exciting computer researcher called Tom Haines have made a video installation for an art show! Neither of us have been in a proper exhibition before, it's exciting!

I'm not sure if I should say what it is yet, but it's quite a fun simple looking thing and it interacts with you. It's quite small, hidden away in the corridor of an attractive central London crypt, but maybe you might like it? It's also part of a bigger art show, so there'll be lots of other stuff to look at, like paintings and sculptures and photos and a performance artist. Also there's the natural excitement of being in a crypt to deal with. And it's in this church, which I've often passed and wondered about:

Intriguing, right? Bet you'd want to see the crypt of that place, bet there's zombies and cult people and secret rooms full of Victorian gentlemen plotting to destroy the Empire. I like St Pancras, they still appreciate the value of random Gotham Cityish giant statues round those parts.

The exhibition is "Caged Bird Sings", the website for it is barenot.wordpress.com, and the website for the gallery is www.cryptgallery.org.uk/current_exhibitions.htm. It's at St Pancras Church, which for some reason is literally right across the road from Euston station rather than St Pancras station, and it's on Euston Road. It's the one that looks like the photo, and if you go round the back of it there's a stairway to the crypt. Last time I was there there was a huge banner saying "THIS WAY TO THE CRYPT", but I'm not sure how long that's staying up.

It's free entry, it's on from Thursday the 15th to Tuesday the 20th of this month including the weekend. On most days it's open between 12:30 and 6pm, but on Thursday there's a special magic party viewing instead between 6pm and 9pm where there will be a limited amount of free ART WINE™! It says "private viewing" on the crypt site but you read this, come to that and tell them you're my cousin or secret lover or something. Am I allowed to say that? Maybe! Me and Tom will be hanging around the one on Thursday, I might come back at the weekend to check it's still working, but you should come whenever you're free, it's just an art thing, you go look at those whenever, long as it's open and stuff.

Come and see it! Come and see it! Please come and see it.

Will.

Embracing the inevitable

2010-02-21T19:08:00.006Z

Well not exactly inevitable, but necessary. Well not exactly necessary, but useful. Well not exactly useful, but oh forget it.

http://twitter.com/WillTribble

BEHOLD THE MARCH OF PROGRESS

Maybe later I'll write what I had for breakfast or something.

February 15th is Anti-Valentine's Day

2010-02-13T13:28:00.003Z

Share it with that special someone.

(Made in my cellar very late at night with wine and copious amounts of lipstick. Bear voiced by Henry and played by Pinky, who had a passport once. Also lipsynching is more complicated than I thought).

TIGER WOODS SEX TAPE HOT HOT HOT TIGER WOODS SEX TAPE SEX TAPE TIGER WOODS SEX TAPE HOT HOT HOT TIGER WOODS SEX TAPE SEX TAPE

2010-01-15T12:55:00.028Z

Hey guys I was just a college cheerleader who gets soooo hot when I think aboout about TIGER WOODS SEX TAPE so I was searching online for TIGER WOODS SEX TAPE and guess what I found this HOT RUDE FURIOUS LEAKED ACTION and I was just like "OMG this just makes me so INSANELY EXCITED that I have to place it immediately on my blog website comments page for everyone at this website to see DANGEROUS ILLEGAL TIGER WOODS ACTION NOW

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I probably should have put this here before it got set to EXTREME ADULT CONTENT on youtube.

Oh, and happy new decade and Christmas and things.

Special thanks to Laurie Newman for building the web page, and Joe Beaver and Alexandra Appell for their gif making.

28 Days Later, in 8½ minutes, in several takes

2009-10-17T21:13:00.011+01:00

Patrick Bloomfield brought his camera along to the shoot of one minute one take 28 Days Later, So I put together a little "making of"-type video. It's nearly nine times as long as the film we actually made. The bit at the end is my favourite.

Also The Metro still reads my blog! It was posted to me by a family friend, hence the name highlighting. I don't highlight my own name in papers. Normally I just highlight all the letters in different words that would make up my name if you put them together. Then I cut them all out and stick them into a square on the last page, I like to call it the Will Corner. Then I quietly slip it under my dad's door and return to the whisky.

The Metro, 28/09/09, p.27.

I've just looked on web version of their article, not only have they credited my blog but they've suggested people go and watch it at College Humor, which is inordinately nice of them. Did I mention you should watch it at College Humor? Maybe even log in and get an account and watch it at College Humor? Well, you should definitely watch it at College Humor. Somehow my notebook and a spiky laminated copy of Slaughterhouse Five have ripped the pocket lining of my last wearable jacket, I can't carry around a little satchel/manbag forever.

Top dongle!

Will.

College Humo[u]r

2009-09-26T21:51:00.012+01:00

A while ago, I had an email from Sarah Schneider of Collegehumor.com, who must work damn hard, saying that one of our videos had had over 75,000 views, and because of their new policy they can now give us money when that sort of thing happens. We here are all big fans of being given money to do things we like, and could definitely use it to buy larger supplies of paint and glue and videotape maybe, so if you like our films please watch them here if you can - I made a profile to upload the one minute one take videos myself, but someone keeps beating me to it, which is all very convenient as I don't have to worry about high quality exporting and file sizes and other time-wasting stuff.

So just in case you missed the links above -

For Forrest Gump, click here.

For Kill Bill, click here.

For 28 Days Later, click here.

Or, preferably, click all three. Extra points if you get yourself a College Humor profile and click the "Like" button on the pages.

Hah, memories. Back in 2004, my friend Josh gained the admiration of our late-teenage social group by getting an email posted in one of their articles. It was one of those furious sweary articles that were popular then, back when online writers were largely anonymous, and believed that no blurry Realplayer videos, flash cartoons or low-resolution webcomics could ever replace writing angry angry words, preferably in white text against a black background. It's weird seeing it now, five years later, with links to Digg and Reddit and Stumbleupon and all the social networking sites and a nice photo of the guy who wrote it. Now College Humor has got videos and user profiles and even its own TV show, such a wide variety of stuff, and that sort of pent-up, vaguely secretive online fury at the world seems so dated. Maybe I'm wrong.

That last paragraph didn't have anything to do with anything. Oh well.

Wheeeeee!

Will.

28 Days Later, in one minute, in one take

2009-09-25T22:54:00.006+01:00

Told you so!

The first one we made in two days, including about four hours to edit. The second one we made in about a week, including about six hours to edit. This one took at least a month to make, including two days to edit, during which Rocco and Joe introduced me to their friend Cass Lowe and his fantabulous sound recording equipment. Before we'd just used the same camera to film ourselves talking when we needed to dub stuff.

When we came to stick some music over the top, we hit a slight hiccup. The well-known music from 28 Days Later falls into two categories. The first type is so completely, soul crushingly bleak that as soon as you hear its grim repetitive chords you know that there is no hope for anything, no possibility of survival, no chance of happiness, the only thing even darkly comic being humanity's pathetic struggle against its own insurmountable doom; the other is AM 180 by Granddaddy. It was tough finding something that was both sort of dramatic without making you want to die. So Cass decided to record a Bossa Nova version of John Murphy's In a Heartbeat. It was fun watching him scat fake Portugese. I hope he'll send me a high quality version of the song soon. In addition he introduced me to the wonders of panning, so that when you hear this video in stereo sounds on the right will actually come from your right speaker etc. Knowing someone who can do sounds is basically fantastic.

[edit] Cass has now given me his myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/casslowe , and asked me to call him Cass Lowe. Okey dokey.

An update

2009-09-23T01:07:00.012+01:00

Hello.

There seems to have been a bit of a pause here. As there will be an update on a specific new thing very very soon, I thought I'd better fill you in on what's been happening in the past four months.

1) A PLAY HAPPENED.

The theatrical version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch I directed has come and gone. It did really well, and was loads of fun. It's all a bit of a haze now, but I think I managed to get by without yelling at anyone, which was good, or organising a drama game, which fills me with a weird sense of pride. And putting together what was for all intents and purposes an actual rock band was awesome. It was a collaborative effort, and I should probably write a long list of people who need to be thanked, but that might be quite long, so I'll save it for another time. We filmed the last night, and I'm slowly editing that together, and I want to make a big file for all the paintings and photoshops people did for the set and posters and projections. Until then I'll just post a couple of samples. These ones are painted, made and photographed by Alice Cox:

2) WE KIND OF MADE ANOTHER ONE MINUTE ONE TAKE, BUT KIND OF DIDN'T.

We told a lot of people we'd do Star Wars. All of Star Wars. I mean the prequels, that Clone Wars animated movie, the Holiday Special, the originals, maybe even reference some of the cartoons in between. So, with about a week to go for many of our final essay deadlines, we all sat in Vanbrugh bar with Wikipedia in front of us and tried to reduce every single film down to its bare bones, with a main character moving through it.

Then we realised it was completely impossible.

Sure, maybe if we'd just picked one trilogy, cut out the stories of some minor characters, and reused some cardboard spaceships, but that felt like a cop out. But then, maybe everything would be a confusing horrible cop out. And the Star Wars parodies and tributes make up about half the content of Youtube, which felt very disheartening.

So we decided to go in a different direction.

The comments were funny.

On the plus side, we have done another "proper" one, for which we've put in loads of effort and our largest supply of cardboard yet. Uploading that made me realise I should probably write something explaining what had happened in the big blog gap, in case anyone was desperate to know.

3) I GRADUATED.

I got a hat and everything.

That's pretty much the story so far. But more to come very very very soon...

Will.

I like it slightly more this way

2009-05-04T01:56:00.008+01:00

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=24&cols=24&id=TJl7nSQV5EA&startZoom=1

Others:

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&cols=36&id=pAwR6w2TgxY&startZoom=1

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&cols=36&id=UjoUaj3w2eg&startZoom=1

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&cols=36&id=Q16KpquGsIc&startZoom=1

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&cols=36&search=donkey%20rhubarb&startZoom=1

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&cols=36&id=s1eNjUgaB-g&startZoom=1

There are more, but I should be doing something else right now.

Jamie Harrison, Man Is Slapped, Thomas Flipping Truax

2009-04-19T02:13:00.017+01:00

There's a dude called Thomas Truax who I've been a fan of for a while. He invents his own musical instruments out of gramophone horns and bicycle wheels and his website introduced me to the word "Steampunk" and he's all sorts of awesome. When I noticed he was coming to York last December I started hopping from foot to foot with excitement, and sent him an email asking if I could film him for posterity. He emailed me telling me to ask the organisers, who told me to ask the venue manager, who stuffed a load of fliers into my hands then told me to ask the organisers and Thomas again. The whole thing sort of went ahead with everyone expecting everyone else to say no.

I don't go to gigs as much as I should. It was weird finally meeting someone you are massively in awe of among a couple of people who aren't quite so much; people were setting things up, discussing sound levels, asking where I wanted to put the cameras, and all the time I was just standing there looking like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of The Body Snatchers.

I'VE SEEN YOU. ON THE INTERNET.

The whole gig was amazing, the supporting acts Jamie Harrison and Man Is Slapped were utterly fantastic, because of it I ended up writing a 2500 word essay between the hours of midnight and 10AM but it was totally worth it.

And then somehow it took me four months to edit. I mean, I had lots of other things to do in the interim, but I also got into dangerous levels of nitpicking. It's easy to do this with editing live music shows, you think you've got a nice little rhythm of cutting from one camera to the other and back again, then one of the cameras jerkily zooms in to a close up of someone's nostril or a chair leg for two minutes and your silly arty little crossfades pattern falls apart. Then there were actual problems, like one of the cameras of our two camera setup dying halfway through one of the segments. It was all a bit silly. Anyway I've finally declared it done and stuck the whole thing on the internet tonight. I'm not sure what people are going to think of it. The B3ta board has been silent so far, maybe they thought I was trying to sell them something. Maybe it was because I posted it at one in the morning.

The playlist of songs can be found here, here are some of my favourites:

See? Awesome. You should watch the rest of these.

Will.

Sort of interview for this site called NewTeeVee

2009-04-17T23:34:00.021+01:00

Right here . I taught her how to Skype.

Jessica Ashman told me I should get Twitter. She said it would be helpful for networking or synergy or something. I'm quite fond of Jhonen Vasquez's Twitter things, much as I'm quite fond of Jhonen Vasquez, but the idea of signing up to a networking group in the hope that a celebrity cartoonist may one day whimsically insult me is kind of depressing. I could just simulate the experience by texting myself with short stories about horribly murdering random collections of nouns using other random collections of nouns.

[edit.] Also some German Myspace video people asked if they could feature our Kill Bill in one of their videos. I hope they're saying nice things about us. Or at least not erroneous things. Does anyone know what they're saying? http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=55939910

Hello Rachael!

2009-04-04T23:24:00.000+01:00

You are lovely.

General bragging, Kill Bill/Forrest Gump photos

2009-04-02T20:09:00.036+01:00

I was in the university library a couple of weeks ago, throwing away my last few pennies on photocopying microfilm (experts agree this is the least awesome way to throw away your last few pennies). Two people in the foyer were staring at me oddly, I assumed because I'd spilled a ketchup packet over myself at lunchtime and was covered in unidentifiable shiny stains, but after a while one of them asked for my sodding autograph! And was kind of serious! I got her to give me her autograph to prove it:

YEAH!

Since then we've had an increase in the weird, internet novelty fame we've been getting. We had a few new web shout outs, including the next b3ta newsletter, the excellent Cracked.com (scroll down to 03.20.2009), and this thing:

We've somehow appeared in some sort of online Smash Hits type popushow, and a blonde Smash Hitsy sort of lady called us a Rad Farm!

We got in a few more papers, including the Sutton Guardian:

Sutton Guardian, 25/03/2009, p. I Don't Know

And the Metro:

The Metro, 22/03/2009, p.27

[edit] Graaah reading back over these two Rocco and Joe have not received enough credit. I feel like a dick now. To be fair the Sutton Guardian one is trying to localise it, and the Metro just pulled quotes from my blog so it's my fault for not saying their names in gigantic letters when I posted it here. [edit]

And York Vision and the Yorkshire Post and the Telegraph (in the Science and Technology section what the hell), but I don't have scans of those.

Then there was flipping TV!

GMTV, 26/03/2009 (skip to 3:00)

Then we got flipping interviewed on flipping TV!

ITV Calendar, 27/03/2009

My conclusion from all this is that everyone is weird. And can anyone give me some money to make a music video or film for them now? Please? Come on, I've had recommendations from Lorraine Kelly.

I've also found some pictures people have taken of the Bill and Gump shoots, and would quite like to post them here. I like how some of these effectively summarize our summaries, saving you even more time. If you flick your scrollbar down really quick it's a lot like watching the movies in five seconds.

Pics by Caroline Cooper:

More pics by Angela Liu-Wilkin:

More pics by Stuart Lindsay:

Congratulations if you've made it this far! In terms of one minute movies, there will be at least one more, possibly the final one. We have said Star Wars a lot, but we're not sure. Whatever we do, it'll be after a break of five weeks or so. It would be nice if we have time to do one more, if we did we're not sure what that would be. My girlfriend has strongly vetoed Back to the Future, I am not in a position to argue as she bought me food that week I spent all my money photocopying microfilm.

And that's all from me.

Will.

Kill Bill in One Minute, in One Take.

2009-03-21T21:46:00.005Z

I forgot to post this here.

I worked out how to embed in widescreen and I stopped half of it from disappearing off the screen oh yeah

Me, Rocco and Joe have been talking about this and we've decided that we'll probably do one more of these after the holidays (which are about five weeks) then do something completely different. We're not sure what our last one will be. I thought we could have some fun with the movie version of Watchmen, but a lot of people are saying we should do the Star Wars trilogy, and constructing cardboard X-Wings and Death Stars could be almost as good as having a naked blue man stand on an astroturf at 8:30 in the morning. Back to the Future's also popular, to be honest I don't think I've ever actually sat down and watched the whole thing.

I kind of want to do loads more of these, but we don't have much time before Real Life hits us.

Exciting things are happening

2009-03-16T17:25:00.024Z

Haven't had time to post in a while, but exciting things have been happening.

Firstly our Forrest Gump in a minute video went completely mental. It managed to get a million views in two weeks, and was featured on Digg, I Am Bored, College Humo[u]r, Fark and B3ta. It's been allegedly mentioned on Radio 1. ABC Good Morning America and something called Guiness World Records Smashed have asked if they could use it (although the Guiness one can't use the soundtrack, so it might sound a bit weird). The Independent made up for blaming me for youth violence by mentioning it in their "Life" section:

The Independent, Tuesday 10 March 2009, "Life" p.2. Yay being an idiot's guide.

Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic, but what made so many people decide that what they really wanted, right now, was a summary of a popular 90s three hour tear jerker?

But anyway, because it did so well, we've decided to make another one. I'm not telling you what it is just yet, but we filmed it on my birthday, and yesterday we spent about 6 hours messing with the speeds and dubbing the first 30 seconds. For a minute long film it's amazingly epic.

Secondly, things are finally moving forward with my mysterious stop motion project. Does anyone remember that? A nice lady called Clare Porrit finally made me the models I needed. One bit looks like this:

While another bit looks like this:

It's all very brilliant and mysterious.

Thirdly, I'm directing a play! This may not be of much interest to internet people, but I've never directed a play before and I'm excited. It's called Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and it was made into a very good film recently, and it's got men dressed as ladies and ladies dressed as men and rocking out and songs about genital disfigurement and all kinds of things. We'll be having video projections of paintings that look a bit like this:

And people will be wearing costumes that look like this:

I've never had costume drawings before. But yes, there will be lots of enjoyableness. It will be on in York for three days some time in June. Come see it. Yay!

I hope you are also well.

Will.

Forrest Gump in one minute, in one take

2009-02-28T22:18:00.009Z

While twelve clearly pissed off hockey players watch.

Check out my hair growth between this and the 2012 Olympics video.

Clicking "CLICKING HERE WILL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING" explains more things now

2009-02-18T18:30:00.011Z

Not much more, you'll still have to come to terms with your sexuality and work out where you left your car keys on your own, but I updated the list of things I've done a little, and took advantage of my new magical ability to copypaste the text next to "EMBED" on Youtube pages. I didn't notice that text for about three years.

CLICK HERE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN READING THIS AND CANNOT CLICK OVER THERE, FOR EXAMPLE IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO USE THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR BODY AND ARE WEARING A MOVEMENT RESTRICTIVE OLD-STYLE BATMAN COSTUME

We have a cheaper idea for the music video, designing/storyboarding this month. Currently planning other things, trying to get people to return my calls when they say they will, and editing a gig video. Oh and a lovely person emailed me asking if he could maybe use me and Ben's crappy Star Wars film for a documentary called The People Verses George Lucas, which is an interesting development.

Will.

2009-01-30T14:45:00.019Z

Bad TV filter starting to get overused

2009-01-16T15:25:00.020Z

Not long ago, Weezer did a music video called "Pork and Beans", very successfully using huge amounts of internet memes to sell one of their songs. I quite liked it. Recently, they (or a fan, I don't know) decided that it needed moar internet memes, and made this:

^Up here

It had more memes than I could recognise, but what I though was interesting was its use of Final Cut's "Bad TV" filter, the one I said was awesome a while ago and have made an effort to crowbar in to my stuff whether it's needed or not ever since I noticed it. I'm not sure if they're using it because they also like it, or because loads of other people like it as well, and it has become a meme in itself.

Maybe this is a sign I should stop using the Bad TV filter, is what I'm saying. So I decided to announce it to the world.

TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND CHILDREN.

Also it's 2009 now.

CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS

2008-12-25T22:23:00.016Z

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

DIRECTED BY WILL TRIBBLE

STARRING CHARLIE TRIBBLE AND HENRY TRIBBLE

WRITTEN BY WILL TRIBBLE

FILMED BY WILL TRIBBLE

EDITED BY WILL TRIBBLE

CINEMATOGRAPHY BY LIGHTBULBS

SPECIAL THANKS TO MR AND MRS TRIBBLE

FILMED ENTIRELY ON LOCATION IN THE TRIBBLE FAMILY BOMB SHELTER MMVIII

Finished this last night and decided to leave it to the morning to upload it, which was stupid, as it looked the same as it did when I went to bed, and it would have been nice if it had been up by Christmas morning. Uploading was unusually complicated and it hasn't come out quite right. Later I put it on Facebook and it looked much better, you can see stuff like the candle picture at the beginning. Watch it at http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=543706667544&ref=nf if you can.

Did you have a good Christmas? Mine was pretty okay. I got a shirt with a digital watch on it. It made a constant, slight whining noise (the instructions said it was meant to do that), which combined with the eerie green light coming from just below my normal line of vision to make me feel kind of headachey. I guess Green Lantern must get headaches like that a lot. Thankfully within a few minutes of me turning it on we realised that the minute LEDs didn't work, so we put it in the broken electronics pile. Same with Charlie's equalizer shirt and my dad's Wi-Fi detecting shirt, looked like they were from the same company. So I thought that maybe wasn't a good company. So I decided to write an unnecessarily bitter Christmas blog entry about it. I think that will show them and I look forward to their sales plunging as a result of this. Other than that Christmas was pretty good.

Hope you have a fun time, whoever you are. Thanks for dropping by.

Will.

[Edit] [PS] Apparently the Wi-Fi shirt works.

[Edit 2] [PPS] Managed to upload it so it's the right size and in HD! Lookie lookie:

Fits the box

HD YEAAAAH

Blood Sports (Projections aftermath)

2008-11-23T17:24:00.012Z

Yeah, that all went pretty well. For one scene on both nights the video did indeed keep playing for about 30 seconds after the stage went dark, but the set change took a while so no-one really cared; for another scene on both nights the projected background did indeed disappear before the scene ended, but it kind of fit with what was happening so no-one really cared either.

Uploaded the two projections that I like the most. The play's called Blood Sports and it's by David Edgar. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Horse Heaven

yeah I've worked out how to embed now

There's one scene where a horse that's played by two actors gets shot, and flies up to heaven. Me and some elves PVAed a load of cotton wool, marshmallows and a couple of sugarlumps on to some cloud-shaped paper cut outs, and hung them in front of a green screen (well, green cloth) by invisible wire. Which is why they jerk around so much. The horse is a toy horse from Poundland, with moldable wings, so we stop motioned it. The green cloth and horse were provided by one Nicola Carter, a nice lady. I don't know what happened to the other sugarlumps. I did a rough version in Motion, then redid it in Final Cut to get it in time with the music (Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, I didn't choose it but it's quite nice). If I could do it again I'd make the marshmallows and sugarlumps more obvious and less beaten up-looking, and sync up the flying horses a bit better.

Der Blood

I did it by going to the youtube page and copying the bits that said "Embed" I guess I feel pretty l33t about it

This was a bit different. The scene consisted of an actor (Simon Maeder) slumped on a chair in tennis gear, looking as if he'd been strangled by catgut, while this voiceover played. Since it was the only scene in the first act without any projections, and since the speech was a parody of The Seventh Seal, I spent a night drinking heavily while stealing clips from that movie and messing with them. Isn't the "Bad TV" filter awesome? Anyway I think if I'd had more than a day to think about this I would have done more stuff, but actually that could have been rubbish. Maybe with theatre projections you don't want loads of stuff, just little things that complement the action without detracting from what's happening on stage. I've seen/made a couple of theatre projections that haven't done anything narratively for the play they're in, they've just looked arty, and this is more stupid the more I think about it. It's like putting on another, completely unconnected play just behind the play you're meant to be watching.

In this post, I've written about theatre, an Ingmar Bergman film, and how we made a magical purple pony seem to fly through the marshmallow clouds into sugarlump paradise. Me and N-Dubz don't talk much these days.

Will.

Projections

2008-11-21T16:56:00.002Z

Operating some video projections for a play tonight. I've done projections before for a couple of studenty things, but it tends to be a thing play directors don't think about practically. One of the first ones I did involved filming the actors speaking their scenes in rehearsals, and hoping that they would sync up perfectly with these scenes each performance, which was ridiculous. On top of that, the projectors were precariously balanced on a couple of books just behind two chairs on set, meaning that if the actors walked into them or sat down on the chairs it was pretty likely that any working clips would appear sideways near the floor. And if you unthinkingly say yes to someone without complaining about it like a little persnickety bitch, there's a 50% chance they'll ask you to do something much harder and only give you half the time to do it, but I guess that's the case with most things. Grah and VJing programs. Or my lack of them. With Powerpoint slideshows it's reasonable to expect that my fat fingers will mash the wrong button and the whole thing will start from the beginning or play backwards or something. For this one I'm just showing all the films from a Quicktime movie file, which means that if a scene ends too slowly its video background will magically disappear, or if it ends too quickly we either have to sit out a minute of film over a dark set or watch my mouse appear and quietly fast forward it.

But hopefully that won't happen tonight, because I actually feel pretty good about this one. I've had way more time to do stuff, so I've comfortably left clips to render for 24 hours without hopping from foot to foot and chewing my fingers off. We've actually been able to rehearse with them, even adjust the lights so they can be seen properly, which I don't think I've ever had time to do before. The directors have thought about how they're going to work, sometimes even helped me film them, so they knew what they'd look like and didn't have any reason to change stuff. And having them all in one movie file isn't necessarily good, but it does mean that there's only one button to press, which is awesome. Also since the music video went slightly breasts up I've had more time to think about them as well, so something I thought I was going to phone in ended up looking pretty good. In short I have a weird new feeling of knowing exactly what I'm meant to be doing, and believing that I'm doing it okay.

So that's that. If I haven't told you about it already but you happen to read my blog and live in the York area, I would invite you to watch out for falling meteorites and frozen stalagmites bursting out of the ground from the lowest pits of Hades, but also come along to Blood Sports at York University on 7:30PM Friday and Saturday, facebook group http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=38404580965&ref=mf, free entry. I'll put a couple of them online when it's done.

Everything is pretty damn exciting and interesting here.

Will.

Just found out why no-one from the management company came to that meeting.

2008-11-12T16:32:00.006Z

They'd gone bust.

Fucking bollocks. Back to the drawing board.

It was Will Smith that pushed me over the edge.

2008-11-04T23:22:00.009Z

Today the constant non-applicable media bombardment finally broke me. I scribbled out my own ballot sheets in crayon on toilet paper, and put in 500 frenzied votes for Barack McNader. I ran naked into the street, slipping them into post boxes, letter boxes, suggestion boxes, and the notably large mouths of a few confused passersby.

My programming obeyed, I performed a short but memorable rap about my chosen candidate's impressive track record and the social merits of his policies, aggressively implied that the opposition were neoconservative liberal terrorist Communist Muslim Nazi gays, spent between twenty minutes and an hour shouting "WAKE UP SHEEP" to an actual field of sleeping sheep, then mercifully discharged a bullet into my forehead.

"This wouldn't have happened if we'd voted for the other guy," I dribbled as my brain leaked on to a snoring ewe.

VOTE SAXON

The meeting went pretty well.

2008-10-26T19:30:00.010Z

The management company representative was called away on urgent family matters, so it was just me, George, George's girlfriend Junko, and two of the band. The Paddington Hilton quickly turned into the Camden McDonalds and a pub that didn't serve coffee. For some reason I had decided that dressing smartly but a little flamboyantly was the way to go. I looked out of place around the others, in their plain jumpers and leather jackets, like a kid at the adults' table. I realised that I was younger and a little shorter than everyone else. I think the band were in the loo when a guy at the bar, who looked tougher than me, called me over and made me say why I decided to go out wearing a bright blue plaid-looking jacket this morning. He asked me whether I was trying to look ridiculous. I said I was and moved on. Hopefully the band didn't notice.

It all went pretty well. They said they liked my idea, which was good because I was genuinely worried, but they wanted to make it a little darker. They suggested some other videos they liked. We pooled our resources, and talked about where they could get money, and how we could make it cheaper. We talked about making it in the North (London is horrible to film in for lots of reasons). We talked about how some bits could be done in a studio, hopefully without making it worse. Actors and extras were discussed. We debated costumes, masks and pelvic wear. We reached some pretty acceptable conclusions. Then the pub people kicked us off our table because another band were getting ready to play there and wanted the space.

Unfortunately someone else we wanted to work with pulled out the day before. In a three-way conference call he began by saying that he didn't believe we could make what we wanted with the potential budget we had. He eventually admitted that he had moral issues with our ideas. He was categorically opposed to about 90% of our basic concept, and a little while later we agreed that he probably shouldn't come to the meeting. I'm not sure whether to be depressed by this, or to take heart from it. It's not the first time one of my projects has been called immoral.

I don't know, I just want to make something good.

My room smells funny.

2008-10-25T00:26:00.009+01:00

My room has developed a weird smell. It hits you as you come through the door. It starts off as acceptably musty, then slowly develops into something putrid and horrible. What's weirder is that I can't place it. As you sniff around for it it seems to disappear, even from the place you originally sniffed it it, only to lurk behind your back when you give up on it, whispering in your ear and breathing down your neck. It's a haunting smell, an eldritch smell, an ungodly smell. Maybe it comes from the unearthed corpse of an ancient, interplanetary, interdimensional boggart, created and destroyed before the birth of time itself. Maybe it comes from that pile of mouldy old coats in the corner that hasn't been moved for ages. Maybe it's something to do with that live toad I found under my bed a few weeks ago.

Also, in talks to possibly direct a new music video, really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really hope I get it oh god should I write more reallys should I have a whole page of reallys oh god oh god. Anyway if I don't get it I guess I'll delete this bit and deny all knowledge of it later, it's not like anybody looks at this anymore.

Robin kind of has a site now.

2008-09-13T01:28:00.009+01:00

Following on from the last post, Robin kind of has a site now. Well not really. He has kind of this facebook page thing that can be found here. Has some of his songs on it and it's better than a stupid blog.

I'm trying to avoid doing an essay on Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, currently. Can't think of a title.

Yep.

dhaofenabfebfsdsbnafbauehbfhaehgubfubadfgsfBLEH.

I made something new, kind of

2008-08-08T23:10:00.015+01:00

It's about Star Trek! You should probably click here.

Other stuff:

Um, you may have seen this already. If you know me on Facebook it's there under a slightly different format. Can be seen here. Originally it was a Get Reel thing, so basically it was another chance to get things shown on a proper cinema screen that probably shouldn't. Plus I really like that tune. Despite apparently appearing in the new Star Trek movie, I've never watched more than about 4 episodes, so I've made this fan tribute from my vague memories of those. The aweome remix was by Robin Jordi Lindop Fisher, who sadly doesn't seem to have a website right now.

Speaking of geeky things and writing things that people have no interest in reading, I really didn't get the big deal about The Dark Knight. It was a pretty good movie, but I dunno if it deserves the massive critical acclaim it's received. Maybe it's a backlash of Heath Ledger (and mumblemumbleconway wickliffemumblemumble) mourning, to be fair he is really good in it. I dunno, for me it took off in the bit where the Joker was wearing a dress, but for the first 45 minutes or whatever I just didn't get what was going on. There were so many different characters and locations flashing by and so much dialogue with music over it (and curious amounts of complete silence during the long chase sequences), that I sort of got bored and started thinking of my own replacement film about a cat with mechanical stalks for legs. He wouldn't do much with his powers, just get onto high cliff ledges and look at views and stuff. Basically I hadn't felt that apathetically confused since the Transformers movie, and I consider that movie a strange, dark time in my life. The Dark Knight really picked up towards the end with the bombs on boats and suchlike, but it wasn't as enjoyable as, say, Iron Man, or most of the non-George Clooney films about Batman. Maybe it just depends on how much you buy into Batman as a character, whether you think he's the ultimate in toughness and punchingpeopleinthefaceness or whether you were raised on Beano and Dandy comics instead and are a little disturbed by the idea of wealthy buisnessmen tapping peoples' phones and beating up people in interrogation rooms while wearing a mask and lots of rubber. I guess it was a tacit criticism of the way vigilantes work, and the edges people are driven to when they think they're the good ones, but I also thought the film ended up supporting his worldview a bit too much.

Still, sure the viral marketing for Batman Picks His Nose And Eats The Bogies (The Third Remake) will probably be quite good.

And Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is bloody excellent.

Will.

By the way this was the Chris Cunningham ripoff I mentioned a while ago.

[Edit: okay, I've seen it again now and yeah, I can see why it's very good. For some reason the sound levels didn't bother me on a TV in a way they did in a cinema, and I could appreciate how much it was elevating comic book films from a silly cash grab to something much more epic.]

...

2008-06-20T03:23:00.004+01:00

The first google search result for "Will Tribble" now quotes the entry in which I express ironic amusement in finding that the first google search result for "Will Tribble" quoted the entry in which I commented that this blog had dropped off the search results for "Will Tribble".

Maybe I should stop googling my name.

Haha Ben, fourth result for your name.

2012 OLYMPIC LOGO FILM FINALLY DONE AND ONLINE

2008-06-17T22:13:00.010+01:00

WHOOO YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! The only way I can express my relief is by gazing at a picture of the London 2012 Olympic Logo! OKAYHEREWEGO!

BOOYAH!

See when I wrote this film I was only aware of the pink and yellow variety. Boy, was it at least five times as incredible as I thought it was before!

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself in all of this sheer unbridled logo-based joy. Maybe you should watch the film first. Pleaspleaseplease click on the line below this one:

CLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKMECLICKME

BACKSTORY: About a year ago the official 2012 London Olympics logo was unveiled, with a video full of bright, flashing, vibrant animated colours that somehow caused a string of epileptic fits (an issue sensitively touched upon in this film). Possibly chafing from this, lots of people have criticised the logo. Lots of people have even claimed to downright hate it. Obviously I was not one of these people. As the Olympic promoters have continuously stressed, all young people think the logo is fantastic (and cranky old people's opinions don't really matter), and the logo was naturally designed to appeal to me with its smooth, classy, 80s style. I loved it, and to combat the haters I made a film about a superhero that uses it to save the world from human filth. It took a long time to finish, as the entire thing was filmed in HDV and rendering was a pain, so I gave up on it for a long time and have only started again recently, now everyone's forgotten about everything to do with these events.

I finished it at 5 in the morning the day before Get Reel, and slipped it into the program. It went down way better than I expected, in the silly prize thing afterwards it was voted as "best script" and I was awarded a high quality award:

-along with a bottle of moscato and a five pound discount at York's fanciest establishment, Betty's tearoom. I'll certainly be drinking a cup of tea very soon cos I'm a FUCKING WINNER. YEAH!

The first scene has been accused of ripping off various sketches by Mitchell and Webb. Sorry. In my defense I only wrote the first two lines, the rest is improvised, and Will and Simon claim not to have watched any of these. I fitted it in because someone I knew was doing a play that required those props, so they were easy to borrow.

I'd also like to stress that Will's line around 2:51 in bloody well ISN'T improvised, also.

In short, woo. I'm going to post it on B3ta now.

Will.

Calling it "pink" instead of "purple" has totally reminded me how colourblind I am. Sometimes I really can't tell the difference between pink and purple. Hope I got it right, or at least that nobody notices.

More Get Reel TV high jinks

2008-06-13T14:34:00.013+01:00

Watch one here,

and another one here.

Originally I just filmed the TV and somehow started at 9PM and finished at 4AM despite only repeating the same action around seven times (around eight if you count the time I forgot that I'd done the fifth one and did it again), but then I tried to do the panning thing on the computer which took a bit longer. I didn't time it very well.

I mean, I thought it looked AMAZING. Everything about it was just so BRILLIANT and NO ONE has EVER thought of filming a TV before EVER I can't think of a single film that even films a TV and that's not because of the memory blackouts it's because THIS IS SO AWESOME.

And because I'm forward thinking and proactive yet able to handle team training exercises I went round to everyone I knew and slapped them in the face and sat them down and made them watch it and watch it and watch it and watch it until they agreed it was SO BRILLIANT and then I jumped out a window and then I showed it to Geoff I was like Geoff I want to show these during the screening but should I do one or both of them and he was like Well I don't know Will it's a nice idea but maybe people will get bored of it quite quickly plus the second one is hard to read so maybe get rid of that and I was like Oh silly Geoff can't you SEE THE TRUTH WITH YOUR TINY EYES and Geoff was like Can you not hold on to my shoulder quite so tightly Will I think the eczema cracks in your fingers are starting to bleed and I was like MAKE ME Geoff I have NO TIME for your WORDS.

And later on I was thinking about Japanese spider crabs and I wrote a song about them and the song went like THIS

Clickety, Clackety, Clickety, Clackety,

We Are Giant Crabs.

Clickety, Clackety, Clickety, Clackety,

Crabs, Crabs, Crabs, Crabs, Crabs.

I GO BEYOND INCREDIBLE.

Will.

Hahahahaha

2008-06-08T17:36:00.001+01:00

The first google result for 'Will Tribble' now quotes the blog entry where I claim I've dropped off the search results for 'Will Tribble'.

There now.

2008-06-08T17:25:00.005+01:00

Let's see if that does anything.

STOP BEING SELF-DEPRECATING

2008-06-08T17:25:00.001+01:00

NYARGNYARGRYYARG

Get Reel/Tellyface

2008-06-07T16:38:00.010+01:00

GET REEL:

A screening of the films made this and last year by The University of York Filmmaking Society.

Happening on Sunday July the 15th 2008, 11AM-1PM, at York City Screen Cinema, Coney Street, York.

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=16316461644.

Proper trailer: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=526773471804&oid=16316461644.

Think entry is like four quid.

You should come.

I don't know whether it's a good idea to admit to being a student what with lots of students being publicly acknowledged as tosspots, but I am a student, so that's that.

I'm currently planning to enter Why I Don't Like Cellars even though it doesn't fit the criteria at all, as well as the remixed Madman and the Nun thing, and maybe a completed version of the 2012 Olympics Thing. Maybe anyway. Last year I was tasked with making intro videos for a similar film screening, and owing to a series of computer malfunctions I ended up making a film of me pulsating my stomach rhythmically to Windmills Of Your Mind, then sticking some eyeballs on top of my nipples. In my defense it was about two in the morning and no other option seemed plausible. I ended up really liking it (even though I go completely out of sync in the second bit), and so this year I got all high on my abilities and decided to make not one, but at least three and a bit films of a similar style. This resulted in complicated atrocities like this:

The mouth and left eye is mine, the right eye is Rachael's. It's kind of like our baby. The Get Reel trailer version of it can be seen here, other versions I messed around with can be seen here and here.

It took a long time to set up, and to be honest I'm not sure it paid off. Especially with the Wonderful Time one, should have filmed it a lot more times from different angles. Overall it looked brilliant in my living room, not so good on film. If I knew anything about motion sensors and selling things to art galleries I'd try and make it a sculpture, then it would kick Andy Warhol's video installation arse at least. I think the issue was that I was trying to politely rip off the style of Joel Veitch and Eclectech, but unlike them I don't have the smarts to combine it with anything else, like an original song or something. Some online folks have compared it to Chris Cunnigham's stuff, and the same thing happened with Cellars. I love Chris Cunnigham, but my response to this should probably be to make something that looks nothing like his films. I've kind of failed at that. The next thing I've got planned will look more like a cheap, nongood Aphex Twin video knockoff than ever. Seriously, there's even techno music and creepy dancing. However there's one other thing I'm making that maybe won't.

Yupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyup

Will.

DAMMIT reading that back why am I SO self-deprecating ALL THE TIME. I'm going to make another post telling me to stop doing this.

N-Dubz - Ouch

2008-05-25T01:39:00.003+01:00

Helped edit this for a couple of days, it was hard. Really hope it pays off. Can be watched on George's youtube channel here.

I'm really sorry I didn't like Juno

2008-05-24T23:30:00.002+01:00

I feel really bad that I didn't like Juno. Almost everyone I know who's seen it likes Juno. At least one of the people is also a person that I sleep with occasionally. I sat near the front of rows and rows of people who were watching it and they were all laughing and clapping, and kind of I shrunk back into my seat, and this hasn't happened before and I was really sorry about this.

Someone (the person I know who I am friends with and who also sleeps with me sometimes) gave me this really nice hip flask for my birthday, it says "William" on it in fancy letters, and I accidentally put a really big dent in it and I haven't told her about it yet and this might be an additional problem, but anyway I felt really glad that I had it and had filled it with cheap rum previously. I eventually put aside the popcorn that I'd bought somewhere else (it was at a student cinema in a lecture room so you have to sneak it in), and instead I went through half a flask of this rum as I was lying back in my seat. I hated Juno so much that it turned me to drink. I hated Juno so much that I didn't listen to music later, even though I kind of wanted to. I hated Juno so much that I listened intently to the speech patterns of those around me when I walked around afterwards. I hated Juno so much I'm not sure I'll ever be able to call anyone 'Dude' again. I hated Juno so much that I stopped hating Stuff White People Like quite so much, well I didn't hate the concept so much anyway, its review for Juno is just as fatuous and lazy as the rest of the site. I hated Juno so much that I started to see why films like A Taste Of Honey should exist. I hated Juno so much that it made me like an English social realism film. Based on a play. That I'm studying.

And I feel really bad about it because I'm not usually a guy that seriously hates stuff like this and now I hate a film that all my friends like and I'm writing it on the internet and yes I've been drinking but seriously, play another piece of indie guitar music and I'll smash you in the face with a two by four, physical manifestation of Juno. Use any form of title sequence or poster design made to look like a drawing in the back of an exercise book and I'll throw rocks at your mother. Have a collection of characters who all talk like you're meant to love their wit and I will shout stuff. Use brand names to imply that things are indie, or indeed seriously play up to any concept of "indie"-ness (I actually don't know what the word means but it disturbs and irritates me), then, I'll, um, do something. Play what is generally called an "indie" guitar song on the soundtrack for what must have been the third time in the movie, and then immediately afterwards have your characters play exactly the same guitar song all over again, and I'll twitch and scratch at myself a lot.

Basically, if any character uses a phrase anything like 'I don't like her, she's...Different', you are a very bad movie.

I'm really sorry. I'm not normally this much of a dick.

Oh also I'm not making MiniDV for a while, concentrating on other slightly less unfinished projects first. I don't know what to say.

Quite like using italics though.

But the film is a saddening bore, cos I wrote it ten times or more, it's about to be writ again, as I ask you to focus on

2008-05-16T00:08:00.001+01:00

BLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEUUUUUUURRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHJCKLFCKLJGLFCKJOIADNKLDNAKNHDIJIHANANIEH

Also this.

Madman and the Nun with new music and other stuff

2008-04-29T19:44:00.005+01:00

Charles asked me to do a new post. I am apprehensive about this. The day after I did my last rambling entry I switched on my computer to find a nice shade of blue filling the screen, and pretty much nothing else until the system was reinstalled. I think this is a bad omen.

Incidentally this advert is a complete lie. Whenever stuff like this happens I find this advert and shout at it. That will teach it.

On the plus side, I've actually done something. Kind of. A while ago me and Kate Shenton filmed and edited an abstract thingy that was projected on a wall during a play called "The Madman and the Nun". It looked like this. It was originally projected with some specially written music by a dude called Nik Morris. The aforementioned dude kept promising to send me the music he wrote so I could upload it with the video, but he also kept not doing it. So it's sat there silent for over a year. Then, randomly, a nice man called James Duckworth approached me with a bit of music he'd written, asking if I'd use his instead. It was unexpected and nice. I ignored his message for ages then felt bad, so I spent all of yesterday sticking funny filters on it and sound effects I'd downloaded from the Freesound Project.

So, in short, I made a new thing and you should click on this bit of text and watch it please. I suggest watching it in "High Quality" otherwise there's an annoying bit of grey at the beginning. It's ironic that I'm annoyed about that in a video which is full of fake distortions.

Oh also this is James Duckworth's Youtube channel, also his music page is lying around there somewhere. He calls himself Anthony Arundel. Dunno why.

Do I leave too many links in here? I quite like the magic blue writing.

Ah well.

Other stuff. I filmed the extra stuff for the Super Awesome Film Zap Mega Wow Project, but it also requires some animation that will take a lot of time. I should have been doing demo things for it yesterday, but instead I did the Madman and the Nun thing. Sorry. Meanwhile I haven't finished writing the script for the film about making a bad MiniDV film, but I did see Son of Rambow and notice that it had a few of the same ideas and used them a lot better. Plans are being made to film it in 4 weeks anyway, whether there's a script and actors or not. Also I quite want to get over my vague hatred of the 2012 olympics film, so might try to finish that if I have time.

Um what else. More people should watch a film called The Conformist, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. I've had to write an essay on it so I'm prejudiced towards it, but it is bloody good. Irritatingly it's not currently available as a UK DVD. A remastered copy has been touring arty cinemas at the moment, which hopefully suggests one will come eventually. The US DVD is the only one currently available, but the translation is a bit rubbish - for example a character called 'Alberi' is translated as 'Hemlock' purely because the translator felt like it. It kind of fits in with some of the themes of the film, but it's just not what his name means. Silliness. The UK translation appears to be more accurate and is certainly more engaging, but only VHS copies (mainly bad TV rips) are currently floating around. If you can ever get hold of any version of it that isn't a cheesy dub, it's a good film to watch.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Will.

A blog post.

2008-03-10T02:20:00.001Z

I feel like doing a post a bit like a normal "blog" type post. Partly because this page has dropped off the search results for 'Will Tribble' now (though ironically one of the first results is an article describing how employers look for interview candidate's blogs as an excuse to reject them). Partly because I'm trying to send my page views into minus numbers. But also because I feel like it, dammit.

So stuff. The Fusion main intro thing was done last week, projected and everything and it seemed to go down well, but as it included footage of children from the charity it sponsored I'm not allowed to youtube it. So I'll have to reedit it to include a big grey space, which I can't be bothered to do right now.

The Secret Fantastic Project Thing requires a bit of reshooting that turned out to be waaay harder than I thought it would be. It was stupid of me for not thinking about this earlier, and (for utterly justified reasons) the actor and props I need might as well have been in Mozambique. In the interim I wrote a short script about how hard and irritating it is to make a short film. I've managed to get other people interested in helping me write this other film, which is nice, and it's superficially more simple to make. Maybe it might even be done first. I doubt it though.

Here's where it gets fun. As there are several people now interested in co-writing this second script, called MiniDV, and as I want it to be more realistic than my usual stuff, I decided to create some Facebook profiles for the main characters. All the writers now have their passwords, and we all log in and change stuff. As we don't know who's changed what, it's a bit like an online ouija board. It's surprisingly addictive, a bit like the Sims, or sitting alone in the attic talking to puppets that you've given the voices in your head while Momma is on the old peculiar and Papa's having one of his Dark Days.

The profiles are here:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1165147130
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1141417313
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1148647422

And the groups they've created are here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11092381959&ref=mf
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11006961114&ref=mf

(you may need to remove the &ref=mf bit to make them work, I don't know)

If anyone's reading this, please add them as friends. Feel free to join their groups also. Though they seem quite realistic they're hampered by not having many friends, only joining Facebook about 3 days ago and having no real pictures of themselves (though when we get actors to play them that should fix that). Anyway, it's an idea I've nicked from the exceptional Achewood, which uses blogs to convince you that a collection of anthropomorphic cats and talking toy animals are real.

It's been quite interesting. Basing them on other people's, it took about a day to build the profile pages. The other writers' contributions have been slowly building up, and my characters now account for about a third of the posts on my wall. One thing I've noticed is the slight difference in style. All the other writers are girls, and when they're in control the characters are both more friendly and more businesslike. I have them posting random silly messages on each others' walls or coming close to arguing, they have them meeting for coffee. Maybe the difference in online writing style between boys and girls is more than having girls adding a load of xxxxs to the end of stuff. Maybe I'm just silly and argumentative.

I also realised how much time I waste watching films. For Colin's profile I listed about 70 films that he likes, most of which I've watched, and the ones I've haven't I'd like to watch. That's over 80 hours of my life I could have spent doing something else, like making films. I don't know how I feel about that though.

Speaking of which, last night I was tricked into watching all three of Robert Rodriguez's "Mexico" films back to back, and the jump between El Mariachi and Desperado is genuinely disconcerting. At least you can see a natural progression from Peter Jackson's Bad Taste to Brain Dead to what I've seen of Meet the Feebles, before his more standardly filmed, less fun looking pre-Rings stuff (badmovies.org did an interview with one of the Bad Taste crew about a year before hobbits started exploding all over the place, it's very interesting). El Mariachi actually looks less professional and more home movie-like than Jackson's early films. A man with a podgy face similar to mine spends a whole simplistic plot throwing an empty guitar case around as he dodges camera crews with fake guns and conservatively applied squibs for the love of a vaguely attractive woman. Then suddenly he's morphed into Antonio Banderas and he's making out with Salma Hayek and the guitar cases fire torpedos and celebrities are popping up just to have their heads explode and everything is all shiney and like a proper film and the Wikipedia page is much shorter. You can just about see a few glimmers of the first one, like the slightly older cast popping up (that Moco guy is a comic genius) and a few handheld close ups of people's faces showing exaggerated emotions (amateur films love those), but mainly you sit there thinking how the hell he managed it. And don't get me started on Once Upon A Time In Mexico. Dear God.

Anyway, I've linked to badmovies.org already so I guess I'll rip it off by saying what I learnt from Robert Rodriguez's "Mexico" trilogy:

- In Mexico, women will keep a whole drawer full of letter openers for multi-letter opening action (they wear them as gloves like Freddy Krueger).

- If people are trying to kill you in a small town, don't go out undisguised for routine errands.

- If you run between two gangsters firing at you at point blank range, they will hit each other and you will be okay.

- If you have a load of guns concealed in a fake guitar shell, don't make the guitar shell automatically open after a dramatic pause.

- Novelty crotch machine guns that look like a penis and scrotum are surprisingly common.

- If you are and someone's wrists are held together by a chain, swinging each other violently over buildings will result in no fracture whatsoever.

- Johnny Depp will never die no matter how many times he falls over and they play sad music, and Cheech is definitely undead.

- Being woken up by your significant other playing a guitar and gently singing in a different language is the loveliest way I can think of waking up. It would be even better if, instead of people shooting at you immediately afterwards, the significant other would share a packet of cookies with you and everybody lives. Why isn't there more of a fetish for people acting pleasantly? Why aren't there websites full of pictures of naked people offering you some freshly baked cupcakes or knitting you a scarf, without turning it into a creepy S&M thing? Why can't you call up sex lines to have someone offering you a nice cup of tea and helping you complete a difficult passport application form?

Anyway I'm done.

Will.

42 seconds of clips from black and white films, mainly of people dancing, set to music.

2008-02-13T19:02:00.001Z

Which can be watched by clicking here.

Fusion is a dance show at my university. In between dancing sometimes they show projections of stuff. This year they want the dances interspersed with clips from various different genres of films. I've done one of these sets of clips.

They said they wanted old films, mainly clips of people dancing, to go before a "classical" dance. I'm not sure quite what they mean, so to hedge my bets I've used films made between 1894 and 1974. I typed 'dance' into the movie section of the Prelinger Archives, and pretty much all I got was antique videos of strippers, so I used a couple of those too. Also includes one of the earliest tests of sound in film, some early experimental coloured film, and an early Disney musical cartoon (the first one to technically include Pluto, as it happens). I've been promising people biscuits if they can name 10 films I've used, but so far no-one's named more than 3. Ah well.

Another longer one coming soon, similar to the one I did last year.

Will.

For people that are interested...

2007-12-31T18:13:00.000Z

Which would be me looking at this blog 62 times, maybe the lovely Charles if he hasn't got bored.

Things are happening. A few days ago me and George stayed up till 4 drinking and making a supercool DVD of the Cellars film, with far more on it than is reasonable to assume. Though we won't be sending it off to professional printers, we will be selling it for the cost of the DVD itself, and obviously people who worked on it will get a free copy if they email me. We are also planning the first vaguely proper screening of the film somewhere in London.

I'm also currently working on cool new film things as well. Cool, secret film things, involving a green screen, a rough draft of which must be finished by August. Also there's that 2012 film to finish. And another of those Fusion explodey things to do for my next term, somewhere around March I guess. But it's the secret things that are most interesting. To me and my 61 clones, anyhow.

Will.

2 articles about me in university publications, one of them written by me, I am superstar

2007-12-31T17:07:00.001Z

O hi! Look! I'm so great, I wrote an article about it!

It is in Bad Taste, a student magazine at York University, which I go to. The pictures are by Matthew Grum, who is an awesome nearly professional level photographer, we all chipped in ideas and it was surprisingly fun. There are some really good pictures where he messed around with the wide angle lens, but sadly he didn't upload them for some reason. Anyway yes, me and a lady called Nic Carter wrote articles about ourselves. These are the scans. Click on anything to see it full size.

Page 1 (Nicola's page, the capitalization mistakes aren't her fault, also certainly not uploaded for her deferential comments about me no siree bob):

Page 2 (my page):

They cut quite a bit of my article out, I'll have it at the bottom of this entry. So this would be Bad Taste Issue 3, Autumn 2007, pages 34-35.

I was also given a sort of good review by another student paper, Nouse:

Nouse, 20/11/2007, page M19? They change the page numbers half way through for some reason.

I didn't have anything to do with the rest of the play, but I filmed and edited the projections, and the reviewing person seemed to like them. So that's good. Woo!

My unedited article for Bad Taste:

"Gimpy though it sounds, I can pinpoint the moment I wanted to make films. I was about thirteen, channel surfing Sky Movies, and I stopped on a film called Baron Munchausen. Specifically the most beautiful film scene ever made. A gigantic shell rises in the middle of a fountain in a Baroque drawing room, it opens up and Uma Thurman is standing there semi-naked, not in a cheap titillating way but just like that painting of ‘The Birth of Venus’, angels flying around her. I later discovered that this film was one of Hollywood’s biggest financial failures ever made, certainly the greatest flop out of director Terry Gilliam’s impressive roster. Right then all I knew was that it was the most amazing, clever, weird and generally gorgeous things I’d ever seen, and it involved Uma Thurman with her clothes off. I wanted to make stuff like this.

Unfortunately no-one else around me at the time did. This was the hard part. My friends were either uninterested or lazy bastards. So I searched for courses and film clubs. I started going to a little club at a local church, ran by two people who had apparently decided they could charge money to teach ten-to-eighteen-year-olds how to make films purely because they owned one small home movie camera between them. It was here I was roped into making a short film with some bloke a couple of years older than me, who I was later informed was mentally unbalanced. The film involved me and the other early adolescents filming him and his friend sitting in a half-demolished house while they pretending to be Guantanamo Bay prisoners, painting on the walls with the buckets of fake blood that he made in his spare time. It was quite a horrible introduction to no budget film-making. I never saw the finished film as he severed all contact with the club as soon as he decided it was done.

After that I decided to try and write my own short films, based on whatever I could get: my brand new rubbish video camera, iMovie, two and a half people to help, and maybe my unenthusiastic girlfriend. I wrote a silly short film based around my new house and psychotic clowns, sometimes while drunk, sometimes giggling softly and rocking backwards and forwards. At the same time I found a new film club, this time based around likeable men between twenty and fifty who saw pubs and tea breaks as important parts of the filmmaking process. I went on proper film courses, I even almost set up my own shot with a proper film camera until the teacher said it was rubbish. I did lots of runner jobs, getting up at seven to make people tea till ten at night, no pay obviously. But, really bizarrely, I managed to get people interested in my stupid, badly written demonic clown-based movie. This film student called George at the film club somehow got hold of the script and kept turning up at my house to do ‘test shots’ with his shiny camera and weird devices he’d made himself, like a tracking shot buggy made out of an old pram. A professional photographer from one of the film courses turned up with lights larger than a large cat. People from the course got their semi-professional actor friends to come along, when I’d written parts with people who really didn’t want to act in mind. One of the editing teachers from the course helped me edit it. We made a vaguely presentable short film. This was not what I was expecting at all.

After that, George went to Bournemouth Arts Institute. He got into a nightclub free one night in exchange for filming the band playing, a Camden hip hop group called Ndubz. Afterwards the manager approached him and asked if he’d make a music video for them in a week, mainly just following them around. He did, and the manager liked him. The manager, Byron, then went away and bought a load of film equipment, and asked George to make a bigger video with whatever crew he wanted, which included a load of his university mates and me. Byron was a wonderful person. The first time I met him he was talking about the video having flaming barrels of fire and dancing midgets, while George smiled and looked worried. We didn’t get either of those, but the video we did make managed to stay number one on Channel U for about five months, as did the second Ndubz video. It is genuinely weird thinking about it, we edited them in a tiny council flat with a poodle running around our legs, we filmed bits of them in my house while my mum sat next door doing her tax returns, and they actually went somewhere.

After that I went to university, and as it takes 5 hours to get to London it’s a bit harder to work on the videos. But I’ve been teaching myself stop motion and some basic effects, weird little experiments that take ages and may or may not look good. There’s this thing, I tried filming some stuff and then printing every individual frame on pieces of paper, then messed around with them, then filmed the paper again. It took a lonely, antisocial week in my room to do about five seconds, but it looked damn good. There’s probably an easier way to do stuff like this. If there is I wish someone would tell me. Then again if it was easy to do maybe it wouldn’t be worth doing it. I dunno. One day I’d like to be able to make something like Baron Munchausen (or Brazil), even if it does fail miserably. In short, I rock at self-publicising."

I can see why they cut it down.

Will.

The London 2012 Olympics Logo (unfinished)

2007-12-17T00:13:00.001Z

This has been taking up too much time. I made a silly thing about the London 2012 Olympics that I thought I'd have edited in a weekend, but it's taken 6 months. I shot it in HDV, which was bloody stupid. Every time I moved a clip around it needed rendering for 10 minutes. Anyway I'm going to dump what I've done here until I've got time to finish it completely. In fact this thing has a nifty 'upload video' button, let's see if it works.

Oh. It doesn't. Well that sucks.

Click here then.

Mindswap

2007-10-06T19:17:00.001+01:00

Which is a film that George made that I very vaguely helped with and also appear in it briefly and you can watch it by clicking on this sentence right here, this one, look, over here.

My profile views have gone up to a whopping 49, which made me excited, but then I realised that every time I look at it counts as a view. I refreshed the page and suddenly I had 50 views. At this rate my profile could have seven million views by the end of the week.

Why I Don't Like Cellars made the B3ta newsletter!

2007-10-05T17:48:00.001+01:00

GIGGITYGIGGITYGIGGITYGIGGITY

Steven Fry started a blog the same month I started a blog.

2007-10-03T13:43:00.001+01:00

It's true. Look. He even has photos of himself in the process of writing about the things in the blog. He writes about as wide ranging topics as fame and modern technology, revealing himself to be well informed about the history of user interfaces and computer design ideology. I only skim read it but still giggled at his observations and discovered things I didn't know about the Battle of Agincourt.

This is just the sort of petty behaviour I've come to expect from Steven Fry. I start a blog, he has to start a blog too. I attempt to work on a series of small films filmed on digital cameras, he has to have a career spanning over twenty years as an award-winning actor, writer and comedian, becoming generally accepted as a national treasure and the most intelligent man on UK television. It's just typical of his childish one-upmanship. Bet he'll be on here next, winning Nobel Prizes for his criticisms of my spelling and grammar, and designing a Flash interface based on the teachings of Copernicus. It's like he's pissing in my face.

Man, it's fine knowing there are people who are better than you at basically everything, but knowing their parallel blogs is just nasty.

WHY I DON'T LIKE CELLARS IS ONLINE!

2007-09-29T01:52:00.001+01:00

^this happy!

After two years of fiddling about with it, so many lonely nights and pushing people's favour barriers to ridiculous limits, Why I Don't Like Cellars, almost the first short film I ever made, is finally online. It was the first time I worked with George, and the first time I met Ben. For N Dubz I Swear, you can see the cellar set again, as well as some of the tracking shots, and that shot of someone looking into the cupboard. Please watch it, we put so much effort into it even if it is silly and cheesy and things go wrong sometimes.

PART 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iet8Qu9jBpY

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PjayQaYSqg

PART 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZgxTsd3ErM

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDmc15Q4c5o

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq5ecQ1fGvI

You may also be interested in the photo album (thanks for taking them Ben!) which can be found here.

Thanks so much to everyone who had a hand in this, to Ben, Rudey, Carly, Nicholas, Nick, Al, Louisa, Rebecca, Fred, and my mum. Thanks to Josh for lending me a surgical gown and his really nice coat for over a year, and getting up and dressing as a zombie in a tutu on a cold morning while Emily and Chris and Lucy threw tomatoes at you (Christ this film has actually been in post-production longer than several relationships). without you it would have been appalling. It would have been, like, 2 hours long, on a phone-quality camera, with nothing but me filming myself kind of staring at people. Seriously.

Thanks especially to George, who believed in this enough to chase me up after somehow getting hold of the script (Chirst knows how he got it, I don't remember giving it to him), who stopped me making it with my terrible home video camera and two people who really didn't want to be actors, who was always incredibly enthusiastic and imaginative - the man cannibalised a bike and his childhood pram to create tracking devices. Even in the editing he would step in and suggest stuff that would take weeks to fix (like those goddamn flashing eyes), but made it ten times of awesome. Oh and he found the best way to upload it. Oh and he provided his own way better camera. So yeah. I can't thank him enough really.

Letters not published yet

2007-09-27T17:55:00.000+01:00

Which sucks. Don't they have to publish them?

Editing a corporate video, orgasmically exciting.

The Independent blames me for the decline of Western Society - part 2

2007-09-26T14:51:00.003+01:00

Just wrote this a minute ago but blogger deleted it, bastards.

The article:

which can be read here.

Incredibly stupid picture of me.

Again, video can be seen here.

My mum emailed this to the letters page yesterday, so it might be in today's:

"Dear Sir

I was amused to see my 20 year-old son Will Tribble’s picture in Media Independent (24 Sept, Should grime clean up its act?). He was playing a ‘rich kid’ being beaten up by a rapper from N-Dubz.

He is a student and edited this film, currently no 1 on Channel U, and stepped in to play the ‘rich kid’.

The article claimed that the video would encourage street violence.

The writer Amol Rajan quoted a senior Hackney policeman blaming videos for spreading anger and aggression amongst those who are minded to be violent.

I was punched in the face in Hackney, in front of my two younger children, by the passenger of a car which reversed into me.

The local police refused to interview or arrest the perpetrators of this crime, despite having a picture of the girl punching me, which I took as her fist gave me a black eye, plus the photo, name and address of the driver (who also tried to make an insurance claim in a different name against me!).

A Hackney policeman said, 'No one takes photos of people around here unless they want trouble' and that I was unwise.

They could not arrest the driver or his passenger, they told me, as the driver's mother, who answered his front door, said she did not know his whereabouts. Hackney's Police Head told me and my MP Paul Burstow that he felt they had acted correctly.

It seems to me that it is the casual attitude of Hackney Police which is firmly to blame for the 'lawlessness' on the Hackney streets and not any video.

Yours faithfully,

[My mum. ]"

I emailed this to them this afternoon:

"Dear Sir

I was surprised to open the Independent yesterday
(Media, p.14, September 24) to find an article
claiming that I am responsible for criminal behaviour.
Hello, my name is Will, I’m twenty years old, and I
helped edit the video for “Love for My Slum”. I also
appear in it, being mock-attacked. It was suggested
that, because of this scene, the video encouraged
violent behaviour, and it could not be broadcast on
television.

Firstly, that cut of the video has been on television,
several times. It is number one on Channel U’s
satellite channel at the time of writing. Secondly, it
seems odd to suggest that a two second video clip from
a rap video is responsible for violent crime. Like
many other scenes of violence in the media, it is
clearly fictional – I even pop up doing silly dances a
bit later. There are also several more violent, and
more high profile videos from other genres of music
that seem unaccountably ignored. The Wombat’s ‘Kill
The Director’ features mass shootings. Lordi’s ‘Hard
Rock Hallelujah’ advocates the slaughter of
cheerleaders, and they won Eurovision. Why are there
no claims that indie should ‘clean up its act’? Why
not blame criminal behaviour on hard rock and
prosthetics? I feel that the acts of criminal violence
caused by the Eurovision song contest have been
ignored for far too long. If the worry is more over
YouTube featuring violent video clips, perhaps it is
justified. After a brief search I found scenes of
vicious gangland stabbings from productions of Romeo
and Juliet. Frankly I was disgusted. It should be
banned.

"Should Grime Clean Up Its Act?" seemed a rather
half-hearted rehash of criticisms at least twenty
years old – that rappers advocate street violence by
confirming that it exists. It is interesting that the
focus is on an extremely brief instance of a white
middle-class man being threatened, in a video
primarily about the harshness of life in the council
estates of London . If the video only featured poor
living conditions, would you have noticed it?

Will Tribble
London.
[note: if photographs are required to prove that I am
the person in this video, I can attach them]"

What will happen next? Can I be bothered to find out?

The Independent blames me for the decline of Western Society.

2007-09-26T01:20:00.002+01:00

Know it's a bit late, but Monday's Independent has an article about how I incite violence and should be banned. Or, more specifically, the scene with me being punched in this video. Will try and scan the article later, as it has some lovely blurry stills, but until then you can read it here. It's the best publicity I've ever personally had. Perhaps next week I'll be accused of crimes against humanity, then I'll be well known enough to have a successful Cafe Press t-shirt page.

In other news Cellars is technically uploaded, but is a bit squished. We're working on it.

Oh I saw it.

2007-09-22T00:57:00.001+01:00

It is here.

Okay I guess. They are very enthusiastic about the power of mime.

Does anyone know where the new N-Dubz video can be seen?

2007-09-19T16:06:00.001+01:00

Polydor got N-Dubz to do a re-release of Better Not Waste My Time, with a shiny remix and a flashier video on film and stuff with an established production company, who have something they call a 'budget'. I'm not quite sure what this strange thing is, but it's the first video that we've not been involved with in any way (well, first one George hasn't been involved in, think it's like the fourth one I haven't been involved with), and I'd quite like to see it.

I haven't got channel U and can't find it on youtube, but I've been told it's released. If anyone knows where it is on the internet can they post the link in the comments?

Only problem with asking this is that only 27 people have ever seen my blog, and I suspect 26 of them are me. Ah well.

N-Dubz won the MOBOs apparently.

S is for SATAN, Lord of Misgiving

2007-09-09T22:14:00.000+01:00

Disguised as a TRACTOR to frighten the living

READ THIS POST FIRST

2007-09-07T18:03:00.017+01:00

Hi! I make films. You should watch them. I'll help.

FILM STUFF I'VE MADE:

(In order of makingthemness)

www.worldexclusivetigerwoodssextape.com

here

- I've also done a load of stuff for York Fusion, a dance show that happens at my University. I edited a lot the footage of their live shows, which is hard and tedious, but also did little intro videos for their shows. This is the one for 2007:

The one in 2008 has footage of children from the charity they were sponsoring, which means I can't upload it. They also wanted lots of minivideo things, clips from movies that were interspersed throughout the show, and I did one of those:

SOME FILM STUFF I'VE WORKED ON:

I've helped out on a lot of N-Dubz videos. They were fun!

- Co-edited Ouch by N-Dubz, March 2008, directed by George Burt. It looks like this:

- Was a runner on a short film called Shame, directed by Paul Makkar, August 2007.

- Did various things on Love for My Slums by N-Dubz, directed by Zack, July 2007. Mainly editing stuff, but also did colour correction, bleeped out the swearings, blurred out the smokings and hand swearings (there's more than you'd think, sometimes people's faces disappear and it's surprisingly hard to notice), filmed a tiny bit of it and was also in it doing stupid dancing and looking stupid and being punched in the face. For some reason The Independent wrote an article about that last one, but more of that later. The video looks like this:

- Was a runner on a short film called Aisha and Nadeem, directed by Kothai Kanthan, April 2006.

- Worked on I Swear by N-Dubz, directed by George Burt, October-November 2007. Those were the days. I found locations like the lovely room and the cellar, sourced props (like the belt buckle), made props (like those goddamned heart pants, one time when a guy's running away he's wearing heart pants, goddamn I spent a whole day making those heart pants and you barely see them, they've got too much fabric paint on to wear as conventional pants so what the hell do I do with these heart pants), helped out during the actual shoot (including some dolly stuff), and co-edited it afterwards. It looks like this:

- Worked on the original video for N-Dubz's Better Not Waste My Time, directed by George Burt on February 2006. Found some locations for it (including the tank), set up tracks and pushed dollies around, focus pulled for the bit with the car, filmed one of the crowd bits, set up the shot for the chain bit, blew smoke at people in hot tubs, and helped edit it all together. It's the only one I managed to stick on my youtube channel, and it looks like this:

(By the way, just because I've worked on hip hop things doesn't mean that's all I want to do, I really like indie and electronic and all kinds of stuff.)

- Bleh. There was some other runner work before 2006, but it's not particularly interesting. I've also worked on other student films, here are two of my favourites.

Bella Isola

Scarlett Obsession (NSFW)

You can see my youtube account at http://youtube.com/user/whycantihavespaces. It's called that because youtube wouldn't let me have spaces and I was distracted and confused by this. My mum thought it was because I was unhappy with life. I am not unhappy with life.

Also my Myspace is http://www.myspace.com/willtribble.

I'm not very good at selling myself but the point is that I'm trying. Is this what you're meant to do, or is this ridiculous? Have I lost by asking? If anyone is interested in the things I have made it would be nice.

Will.

PS - MEDIA CLIPPINGS

[Added on the last day of 2007.]

Although the only published article directly about my films is written by me, they have been referenced by papers occasionally. The Independent blamed a scene I'm in in a music video (which I also helped film and edit) for inciting general violence. It was a clichéd article, and they completely ignored my letter back to them. You can read more about that at http://willtribble.blogspot.com/2007/09/independent-article-part-2.html .

On another occasion, one of my university papers wrote a really bad review of a student play, but said nice things about the film projections I made for it. Which was super. You can read that, and an article I wrote about film stuff, both from university publications, at http://willtribble.blogspot.com/2007/12/2-articles-about-me-in-university.html .

I drew a picture of an elf and put it on the internet

2007-09-07T17:33:00.000+01:00

It doesn't have a name, it's kind of a standard elf.

First Post

2007-09-07T01:01:00.001+01:00

Hello there. This is a blog. I am Will, I am 20, which is five years younger than Steven Spielberg was when he made Duel, six years younger than Orson Welles was when he made Citizen Kane, and allegedly four years older than Peter Cook when he wrote that One Leg Too Few sketch.

Hopefully this online diary entry-like state will only last until I make myself a proper website, or guilt trip someone else into making me a proper website.

Later I will draw a picture of an elf and put it on the internet.