We say hello...

The current Meconopsis Films showreel via Vimeo (see below for the YouTube version), with some of the stuff we do.


Meconopsis Films' showreel from Ben Bruges on Vimeo.

"I suffer from English teeth..."

So starts the video on the front page of Dentaprime.

Getting a commission to interview people about their dental experiences might not sound that exciting - but it was a real pleasure to meet the four people featured in the video. They had diverse experiences and reasons for traveling all the way to Bulgaria to have serious amounts of dental work completed but one theme ran through all the interviews - the truly appalling and expensive experiences they had at the hands of dentists in the UK.


Dentaprime from Ben Bruges on Vimeo.

Terri Colley was left with a phobia of dentists. She was lectured about the state of her teeth every time she visited - far from the sympathetic service you might expect. Her visits became fewer and fewer until she needed serious treatment.

It made for good testimonials, as all of them were genuine people who wouldn't have given a testimonial if they hadn't believed in it. And that meant that they gave good interviews - you can't fake sincerity (albeit a lot of people try).

An interesting comparison is the German version created by a German video producer. (Or click the German flag at the top of the page) It seems Germans have dental work for cosmetic reasons - the type of people and the reasons they gave for having work is completely different. Is that because their national dental service actually works?

Anyway - a lovely little job, and we're pleased with the end results. Any comments or feedback welcome, as always.

It was an ironic experience for me: I too suffer from 'English teeth'.... maybe I should be saving the pennies for a trip to Bulgaria? I certainly couldn't afford the treatment I need in the UK.

Surely no one sane thought this was a good idea. Go on - try clicking it for the full sized disaster, then hit the back button.

As Photoshop Disaster say, "Red Bull in Hungary makes you wish you had never seen this image. Scrubbing your eyeballs doesn't work, I tried."

for the hell of it...

Some things are made just for the hell of it. So, for the hell of it, I thought I'd share.



The derelict radio station. from Druskq on Vimeo.

If you're interested in 3d creation and motion detection software have a look at the user comments below the vimeo page, and Druskq's comments in response. Interesting stuff.

Textual events

And now for some BOOKS (remember them?). THREE of them.

One. Or, rather, one hundred and one: "101 Screenwriting Tips". I met Alexis Nikki through an on-line writer's group. We were the only two scriptwriters, and quickly realised that feedback from prose writers was actually not that helpful. They got hung up on commenting on irrelevant things (objecting to the use of the present tense, the lack of description, the apparent lack of internal life of the characters, the lack of their thoughts, the lack of shading on how to deliver dialogue) or suggested adding things like camera movements, character's thoughts or various other no-nos. Nor did they help with aspects that really needed their input. So the two of us ended up playing script ping-pong.

Meeting up on London's South Bank would have been great, but she'd brought along some third person, so we couldn't get down to as much of the shop talk, writer's discussion and gossip that we wanted to. And then we lost touch when the writer's group folded. As you do.

Now she's surfaced again (to my attention, I'm sure she was around all along) with a new book, 1o1 Screenwriting Tips and screenwriting and film review blog The Third Draft. She describes her approach thusaway:

"The merit of my book comes from the very fact that I'm a relative beginner in the business. I'm the rookie whose struggles are still fresh in her mind and whose enthusiasm remains undimmed. These pages don't contain a complete philosophy or method, but practical tips that you can consume. If you're a beginner, this book provides encouragement, motivation, and a wealth of information. If you're more advanced, you'll discover some new angles amongst the usual advice."

Which is refreshingly honest or a great spin, depending on your level of cynicism. It looks interesting and I'm sure I'll return to it to do more of a review. The timing seemed apt - just as I was going to do a screenwriting workshop for my local IOV meeting. So I bought it forthwith. (Well, clicked a button, forgot about it, then it arrived weeks too late to be useful. Thanks Amazon.)

Two. Me mum! My copy of Alison Wilson Smith's book Nature's Playthings arrived today and it's fantastic - the company have done a really good job with it! I was 'proud son' material anyway - but here's yet more reason to be so. It's a hard book to define adequately. On the one hand a manual for the games children can play with things they find in nature. It's also a memory of three or four generations of bringing up or being around children. On another level it's an oblique commentary on the 'thing'-obsessed, sedentary, overly-protected, TV and computer-focussed childhoods we provide our children. I'm not sure the cover conveys all that, but the inside certainly does.

I have to declare an interest (apart from the obvious filial one), there's some lovely pictures of my son Tom, and I took a few of the photos in the book, including this portrait of her on her boat on the Cam. Given that I only had a point and shoot camera, I'm quite surprised at how well they have printed. Meanwhile Tom (at four years old) is completely unfazed at his 'Nanny-on-the-boat' writing a book - after all she writes him lovely letters so why not a book? And it's not as if it's the first book his picture has been in - he also appears in Colin Barratt's Digital Video for Beginners with his other nan.

Three. My dad! (Yes, this is getting silly.) James Bruges first brought out The Little Earth Book so the obvious sequel The Big Earth Book is a sumptuous coffee-table update and revision of the little one. A former architect, he's been a green activist for a while now, and both books are highly recommended for direct, positive, big-picture solutions to our current ecological crises. And more power to his elbow: let's hope they make a difference.

So, as former writer's group colleague, son and son all I can say is, "BUY! BUY! BUY!"

Web video

It's not really there yet, is it. I'm currently testing the various services to see if I can get something half decent through one of the 'sharing video' services...

And so to this one. Frankly, I'm appalled. How can the blue (of the Mec petals at the beginning) change colour? It's a different blue! How can that be an encoding issue? And that's before we get onto the rest of the quality issues. Well, see for yourself:


... and this is following best advice. I encoded to a high bitrate MPEG2, square pixels, Main Concept codec care of Adobe Media Encoder - which looks stunning played directly. Then I uploaded to Google and let them do their worse. Hence the above.

I'll do the video-geek thing of putting up a few more tests, to see what you think. Next is Google via MP4, and I'll try latest advice for encoding for YouTube and I also try, yet again, to see if I can get Vimeo to work (reaches for the rolleyes smiley... )

This is so far away from being an acceptable consumer experience though....

Cab Calloway re-mixed by Remyyy

I stumbled upon this by accident (via the dad of the band of another track this user re-used... I think). Anyway - a re-mix of an old Cab Calloway number (with a link to the original) that is just somewhat surreal - particularly when it's a near-close lip synch. Just thought I'd share!

Just make sure you hang around until the main vocal comes in, it's worth it...



You don't know me from Remyyy on Vimeo.