Archive for January, 2009
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
Welcome to the End…
Weird. After updating this blog for several months, writing this entry seems much scarier as there’s a chance you’re actually out there reading it…(shuffles awkwardly from one foot to the other then uses nice polite speaking voice)
Hello! Welcome backstage to my production blog for ‘THE END IS NIGEL’
This project was my first crack at exploring how to write an online narrative so thank you very much for clicking your way through to find me. As it was an online venture, it seemed a good idea to blog as we worked our own way through so please have a look back at this project’s development since Summer 2008. (Click here to read the blog in chronological order) Having enjoyed writing this blog, I am now going to keep writing it so please feel free to leave comments or ask questions.
Originally this project was commissioned as a two-minute film for mobile phones so I want to give massive thanks to commissioners Screen Yorkshire and Andrew Wilson at Blink for allowing me to stray so far from the brief. But while the project expanded, there was no way to make the budget any bigger so I also want to thank the fantastic cast and crew for giving me their time and talent on a very reduced rate. (Do have a nose around their links and websites on the credits page)
But before this sounds like an Oscar speech (thanks Mum and Dad!! x) my plans for this blog are to keep you up to date with what happens next as I try and develop this and similar projects further, as well as looking back at the project itself now that I’ve gotten to the end this first chapter. For example, I still can’t decide whether to beam proudly or cower apologetically for the pun-worthy title! (although the award for most cringeworthy gag definitely goes to:)
Ideally, I’d like to have this project or a similar one running live, ie - happening over a specific, finite period of time. This way, I could ensure the project was far more interactive and could give all of the characters their own facebook or myspace profiles as well as the audience being able to communicate with them directly via txt and e-mail so that if it were Tuesday 13th June in the story, it were Tuesday 13th June in the real world too. Ultimately, audiences need to be able to influence the outcome of the story - like this were some kind of online choose-your-own-adventure book. I really only consider what’s online as ‘the little scary teaser-bit before the opening credits’ in an episode of ’The X-Files’ in terms of how much story I still have and would still like to tell.
But first things first. Thank you again for following your way through ‘The End is Nigel’. I have had a lot of fun and learned a great deal producing it and really hope this isn’t the End.
John.
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Aftermath
The scary bit. Having got the project to a point where I am happy with it, I sent it off to our commissioner, Andy, at Blink. Way back into the middle of last year, Andy and I had a big chat about all of the wondrous creative possibilities achievable with an online project. And yet I wrote something about some nutter predicting the end of the world. But with a quick e-mail back and forth, Andy has said:
Well done, that is excellent. It’s just what I’d been hoping you’d come up with.
Phew. As you can imagine that came as quite a relief. He did have a few suggestions about breaking up the text of Verity’s blogs which I had been umming and aaahing about myself - for example, the quotes from other characters now appear in those colourful boxes which they didn’t this morning. I think the pages now scan much better.
Right, the next thing is to actually launch this properly online so that everyone can see it.
Ulp.
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
The End is ACTUALLY nigh.
Sigh…oh the fun of the Post Office at Christmas. Director Chris had mailed a dvd of the last video edits the week before Christmas which never seemed to turn up. Now in early January, he dilligently sent over another copy which arrived the next day…along with the one he’d sent two weeks earlier. Like a little time paradox had occurred in our letter box 
But we have now the finished videos and are so very nearly there with the whole project. One of the last things we’re doing is the credits page and I really like the brick background we have for it. It is actually the same wall that Verity’s intro video is set against. I liked the idea that red brick walls signify the borders of the story. Once you click ‘Enter’ from the first brick wall, you’re into the story-world and everything’s played real. Once you get to the brick wall with the credits page you know you are out the other side.
It’s these sort of little details that I’ve really enjoyed on this project. In researching other online ventures, the plots have always been pretty basic - deliberately so - and the real joy has been in the little nuances and details that a film or tv program would have to lose but which suits the online audience perfectly.
Having shown all of what we’ve done so far to my friend Tom (who has married the lovely Lynsey since this blog started and who foolishly also appointed me as his Best Man) has, off his own back, made me this picture.
Innit brilliant! I sent it to actor Chris who played Nigel who also thought it was fantastic. I was thinking ‘ooh, I could use that as the cover of any promotional material when pitching the project’ when it occurred to me that I wanted it in the project. Moving things around slightly, I thought it only appropriate to have the character of ‘Tom’ provide it within the world of the story.
Other than that, Heather has done her final mixes for the fake teaser-trailer on the Apocalypse Nige site and we are realising that this project is practically ready to send out to everyone. Perhaps I’d better go and tweak the blogs one more time…
