24. Shades OF Bad director's cut, cutting 3 minute eps into long form.

Shades Of Bad is a story of dark wit, misunderstanding and innuendo. 

It has a new format and a new beginning, now is the time to start watching 

Doris is a strong woman, not to be melded with. But, she wakes up one morning to find her husband has not come home. She knows he is never coming home. Not because he has left for good, but because she has made a decision. She has decided he is no longer welcome. It is one of the hardest decisions any woman makes, far harder than saying yes to a proposal, then getting married. The end of a relationship is a huge decision. Moreover, it is a huge turning point in anyone’s life, not least Doris’s life. Everything changes for she is now alone. A woman against the world, and she is not, never has been, never will be a loser. Doris is a powerful woman.

The question is how to move forward, what to do, how does the new Doris Shades develop? Jean's blog on playing Doris is insightful. It might be worth coming back for after this blog on how the three minute format is so different when played in longer form which is now available.

Doris the character starts determined to kill her husband and ensure she does not take the blame. She plans and the reveal cuts deep. The second part, not taking the blame, is as important as the first but life never works out exactly as planned. 

The best laid plans go wrong and Doris Shades accidentally becomes a serial killer bringing to the kitchen the zero remorse decision making that her neighbours commute to the city each morning to work, she begins an incredible ‘work from home’ business. The thing about a suburban housewife like Doris is, that no one will suspect her. Released in three minute coffee break or bus stop size episodes that entrance to the story took five weeks or five episodes to tell. And whilst that format has it's place our largest request was for longer episodes. 

We did a test months ago and discovered the show played so differently it was not a simple request. Here were our first bullet point findings from the initial internal viewings of the longer show.

1. Wow, it plays so much better, so much more powerful.

2. In longer form we will have to throw out junk. It demands harder reductive edits especially episodes 10 to 15.
3. There is an opportunity to make this so much better by adding new content in the form of another dimension (see below)

The desire to improve what was there, and that it was possible has long been on the cards but the work on the TV Channel's new content still consumes Jean's working day and edit suit. However the first mega episode is done and released for public reaction. Please leave comments.

The 'smart' annotation, if it works on your device slips you back to the coffee break episode 6 and for the time being you will have to continue with the three minute episodes because the edits require time and consideration and are not a simple function. We would like to see your comments. The great thing about the web is that the audience can be inclusive. 

If you have never watched the show then now is the time to start.

This new first episode may yet change again because the team really wanted to give it new life, that new dimension. However the release was forced by Stuart being on BBC's TOO MUCH TV last night with Emma Bunton and Rufus Hound (Tue 8th March) and giving Shades Of Bad web series just a glancing mention. We decided to release it without the added dimension.

The second and third mega episodes need considered editing and then a music re-score, though we are now more in control of that if you have seen Jean's HOW TO video on how we now put music on the show. Then the ambition of the new dimension has yet to be considered and I guess there is no harm in sharing the idea, but first let me explain where the series has gone in three minute bites. In a character development curve of good to bad found in Breaking Bad, Doris moves from Desperate Housewives  to Dexter. Guess that sums it up. She descends into remorseless crime and reflects the nastier side of a society we have grown to accept (yes it is subtly political). Doris has started a brothel exploiting her elderly mother in law by telling her she has facial recognition dementia and it is her husband coming back over and over again. No one has dementia it is a con. She has a drug business she runs from her cellar and that all gets her noticed and head-hunted by DREK, who sends her to collect his package in NORWAY, which she drops in the sea and has to send down four skin divers for …. oh well ….  (that is the shot and soon to be released season 3)

So, the three slightly odd women have killed their first man, cut him up with a chain saw and put him in a wheelie bin (episode 40, finale of season 2), and the bin man finds it (season 3). All these are coffee break 3 minute episodes and that was the show's remit and challenge. To make every episode interesting, different, climb, peak and end on a crescendo. Sometimes, many times, we achieved it.

We have discovered that the 10.5 minute versions view so differently. The story becomes more engaging and inviting. That demands more of us. So much so our ideas were to make the whole series a reflection of the past and Doris, now incarcerated is in therapy, that being the now. We had a new opening to episode 1 that we never shot.

Why does it have to wait? Just back from shooting in Dubai there are between 4 and 6 travel films in the edit. We leave for the Caribbean in a week to shoot three or more travel films, are back for a April to edit then are pencilled to travel to Toronto and then down to Niagara Falls for another travel film or two in May. June we cruise up the Baltic to St Petersburg with maybe 10 stops from Denmark onwards and more Doris Visits.

Given that spread alone we would not be shooting Shades the drama again until July, so those new elements cannot be shot for some time. Season three coffee break episode releases will start either next week or the week after and we will schedule them to auto release so we can forget about 'transmission' until the fall.

Please watch, share and comment. 

PS Traditional broadcast episodes are 10.5 minute sections. Two make a 21 min 30 second commercial half hour. Shades has around 200 minutes of drama shot excluding titles.

23. Laying music on film or web series

Shades Of Bad is a continuing TV web drama series with 40 episodes live (two Seasons), and the third Season about to start and almost fully shot. It has fully scored music.

The scored music from the very talented Mark Blackledge of Tamborine Music, and is done for us as his son Buster has directed Seasons 1 and 2 of the show. That looks to have got him his first movie.

Mark has provided us with both he sound mix and music composition up until about episode 38 but he is now doing a major TV cartoon series and a movie, so we have lost him. However, he has supplied us with a library of music cues from the first ten episodes and now Jean lays them on after the edit. The music totals over 30 minutes and obviously fits the dark and comedic nature of the show. Sinister, funny, sad, surprising.

Jean and the team have had to learn a lot more about sound in FCPX sound as before they just handed it to Mark. So, the tricks she has learnt will be shared, but it will mean the sound on all the films that never went to Mark like Ask Doris and the Travel show will be much much better.

Jean is currently editing her trip to the Dubai Mall. With 2 hours of rushes from Dubai there is no telling how many films it the visit will produce, but whether they are completed before she leaves for the Caribbean is a tall order as three episodes missing from Season 3 will be shot this Sunday. So the pipeline is crammed at DorisTV but the How To Film series has started and by far the most popular film of the first three is the one on placing music.

Jean has worked the music into the Season 2 finale episode 40, and here is how she uses the music library. At the end of this film there is an annotation to go to Episode 40, but if it fails to be as smart as it should, come back and click here.

22. HOW TO FILM a web series - after 60 episodes they show how

A very useful web series on how Shades Of Bad is filmed and other films are made.

SHADES OF BAD web series comes from a team which have made a few movies and where one member spent 26 years attached to the UK daily soap, Emmerdale as a creative advisor; from plane crash to train crash is my pub line.

When Jean asked to make a web series, Shades Of Bad was born and although we planned to be

continuous I guess the odds were against us, however, the last of season 2, episode 40 has now gone live, and for the first time the three women have left the kitchen to dispose of their first dead body. Below in a film on placing music Doris shows how the music was placed on episode 40.
Season 3 is all but shot and it is far more ambitious with episodes in Barcelona, Norway, on board ship and in the woods. Although we can't wait to show it to you, before Season Three starts we will spend next week launching the HOW TO FILM series.
It will go from page to screen then onto marketing. We will touch on the organisation it takes to put out 6 daily episodes of a broadcast soap a week and how those plans and deadlines were enforced at Shades. Kicking off these films is one of three reasons we have planned a slight delay in airing the already shot Season 3.
Reason two is that is stars Olympian and World Champion Derek Redmond and we aim his episodes to lead up to the bug affected Rio Olympics. Eventually we will share videos on marketing and monitorisation. The How to series is a celebration of 40 live drama episodes and numerous Doris Visits films and what the team has learnt.
More films on how it is filmed will appear in the weeks as Season 3 plays out.

The third reason is that we do intend to start Shades Of Bad over. But they will be different. WE will have at least one, but maybe three re-edits of the start of Shades Of Bad in 10 minute episodes. However the urge to add new material still fights with a busy team (who are in Dubai filming and saw Carlos Santana with his amazing wife and drummer Cindy Blackman).
On our return we have the
week to engage the new ideas that have been around since mid last year.
Mega Episode 1 is kind of done and will follow the start of the How To Film web series, then Season 3 will start to air mid March.

It was important to INDYUK to keep the feature film making side separate from the web series and the web TV channel, so SHADES OF BAD TV was set up with their own kit and I guess Jean and the crew were lucky that they had what they asked for. First up in the How To series, Jean starts with the organisation of the kit.

There are a number of hard lessons the prospective film maker learns apart from 'you have to clean muddy cables and boxes', and 'no, not everyone can be a director'.
A great lesson is, 'if you want better pictures, improve the sound'. I love this ironic juxtaposed position of film, because on set without a doubt you are shooting pictures and the sound person or sound team is often not given what he or they require. Shades does NOT have a sound person at all. The actors have to learn to do there own microphones and check them, or they have to do ADR. Here is a great film from Jean on how to place a Lavalier in which they have conquered clothes noise.

But, sound is what makes a film work, in horror, romance, or drama. You can imagine it as you read this blog. You know the difference. Sound is important and in post it saves pictures and stories. See Episode 16 when Mark invested an unwritten character that chatters through the whole episode, it is marvellous. We start with the sound from set; in the next film Jean explains how to take the sound rushes and sync them back to the picture rushes using Puraleyes. For those of you who have to do this you will know the nightmare.

The reason Shades Of Bad does not record sound in the camera is not because sound professionals may suggest the digital recorders are far better than the camera digital recording which may add possible automatic limiters that make the background sound vary. It is that Shades Of Bad the drama uses more than one microphone and as we have NO sound man on set to mix the multiples into a single source as happens in much broadcast TV.
That is worth noting that TV sound recordists are often pre mixers, film sound recordists can be a different art form, sound recordists with no dream of mixing but looking for many multiple sounds and atmospheres they can record and supply.
In Shades Of Bad the multiple microphones have to be mixed in post production. You cannot plug multiple microphones into a camera and record them separately. (not yet, no doubt that will change).

In Doris Visits, the travel show spin off the radio microphone does go straight into the camera with no problem. We have a single source.
I guess if a drama had a good sound mixer on set then maybe he could use a radio link to send to camera via a radio receiver so avoid cables.


But forget that, Shades does not have a crew. Buster has done it all for 60 episodes now and he is ready for something bigger and may have a movie to direct. So has it been worth it. Ask him in ten years.

Most industries have condensed over the years and as students grow up being one man YouTubers and FilmMakers we could be heading towards THE SINGULARITY EFFECT.  I love that term, which is used by Ray Kurzweil to explain the cross over between robots becoming human, and humans becoming robotised. Each industry likes to think it will not happen to them but we have already seen news crews and documentary crews go as the reporter uses his phone or some other device to do a 'selfie'. Actors now work from home in their own studio doing voice overs. One cannot say it will not happen, the web has proven the inevitable, but we should ponder will crew learn to act or actors learn to be technical, or will just the smart ones survive doing both with ease?

Moving on, we highlight the demise of the musician and the orchestra before you feel I am picking on any particular group. For years, the digital orchestra or bedroom band has been mixed on a lap top whilst in a train or a plane. I am lucky to have as one of my best friends and collaborators Mark Blackledge. I have willing given his very talented son Buster the chance to direct Shades Of Bad and I have sat back and blogged for them occasionally.
Mark has provided us with the sound mix and music composition up until about episode 38. We now have a library of music composed for the first ten episodes and Jean and the team have had to learn a lot more about sound in FCPX. Wow, that has been an experience and now she has to choose and lay in the music from the library. So, the following films Jean working the music into episode 40, making choices on what works and what does not.

It reminds me of a lecture I went to years ago by John Hegarty of Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty, I see they are still around. It was the Levi commercial, the one where the sex symbol male model puts the Levis in the fridge.  It was conceived and created with a piece of music in mind. Hegarty played it with that music and the commercial looked rubbish. The room was amazed at the difference the new music track made, the one the viewer saw and heard. So do you see music and sound - you bet!
This is a great film from Jean.

In closing, there is one thing I mention when lecturing and that is TRUST. How film making is assembling a team of EXPERTS and letting them do their thing. On Devil's Gate Mark Blackledge had been working the score and I had been keenly asking to hear it. I heard sections but he asked if I would mind not asking to hear the end, he had an idea that he felt could only be seen and heard in a full viewing. He had my full trust. He added a French opera and the end destroys you to tears - spoiler alert.......

So thanks Mark for the music library, and thanks Jean for the films showing how you achieve the rightly award winning and recognised Shades Of Bad.

Jean is editing Dubai travel then more How To Film films.

21. Landmark end of Season finale - Shades Of Bad web TV series

Landmark end of Season finale - Shades Of Bad web TV series

This is truly a landmark end of Season 2; episode 40 of Shades Of Bad sees 'the lady serial killers in training', leave the kitchen and house for the very first time! They have to dispose of their first dead body, our Hollywood nominated guest actor Richard Beaumont, whose character Reg is now deceased.

Shades Of Bad is a TV web series with an amazing 40 episodes up live, and like all players, teams and organisations there have been highs and lows, but this episode is perhaps the best ever. All episodes are now listed on IMDB.com (give us a click and a review please) as it stands up as a proper multi episode 'box set like' TV series that can be downloaded and watched on modern TV sets via YouTube. Smart devices may even be able to use the click and follow on function which skips titles and make it almost continuous.

The dark humour is at it's darkest in this special episode. Doris fires out suggestions as to what they should do with the body as Wilma ponders becoming a romantic author.

While the Dexter-like characters develop, remember it is Doris's house, so visually the garden is over-the-top Desperate Housewives! Buster has LED strip lights all round the pool in the garden which has a lit fountain. Watch and share.....

Where next?

The serial may appear to have peaked, but will return after a few weeks of celebration with Season 3 which is all but shot. Here is a teaser with one of the new stars, Olympian and World Champion Derek Redmond playing the gangster Drek who headhunts Doris for greater things and sees the ambitions of the show escalate along with her greed for personal success.

So Season 3, with Shades Of Bad's very own version of Idris will commence in a few weeks as the Rio Olympics get nearer - funny that (a line he comes out with when referring to 'white powder').

But, Shades Of Bad TV will continue to be more than continuous. The team are currently in Dubai shooting DORIS VISITS the travel show spin off. The film on cruising the Norwegian Fjords reveals a little taste of what to expect in Season 3 when Drek send Doris to Norway to collect a package. That was not shot as an actual travel film but the out takes have been turned into one.

Whilst the Dubai films may surface it is material behind Shades Of Bad that will be out next week as a celebration of having finished Season 2. Next week we will be releasing three films, one a day from Wednesday on HOW TO FILM. One shows how the sound was sync to picture for episode 56 in the woods when the girls and disposing of yet a future dead body.

This will run into a second week when the films will include a special on how the music is chosen and laid on the pictures. That episode shows how the music was chosen for this weeks grand end of season episode 40 above.

Then, Shades Of Bad will be a new beginning, something we have been experimenting with. The first 5 episodes cut together into a new 'all in one' mega 10 minute episode with a new slant that we hope you like. Then, on the work bench are the next two mega episodes; the second is episodes 5 to 10 and the third 11 to 16, the later being hacked in the re-edit to condense just the best. Then new viewers will be back to the 3 minute coffee break episodes that our regular followers have been treated to.

On top of that the team fight with other commitments are we will be in NY State in May to shoot Niagara Falls as we recce our next Feature Film project...... and in March cruising the Caribbean as seen here .......

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20. Not so happy Valentine, it is just a posh word for 'client'....

Shades Of Bad rather reflects the darker side of life. So what do we do for #Valentine? 
It has to be very dark, stay with it.......

Doris: What have you done to my kitchen. This is where I unpack my takeouts!" A line from episode 36 when Doris arrives back from a celebratory weekend at a spa to find Wilma has made an Emily Pankhurst type protest about being left to run her mini brothel and it has gone wrong..... too dark?

The humour in Shades OF Bad is more than often if not always deeply politically motivated and sometimes has just the occasional little knock at bankers and local councillors. (Reg our councillor was nominated in Hollywood last week, see previous blog).

The show itself was also nominated at Finow in Germany this week, so some of the buttons the team press are connecting.

With Doris we have tried to give her the zero remorse attitude that most people take to work on a daily basis, the need for cash and fame that would have a government sell off its nations utilities and protect the bankers that destroyed millions of people's lives. 

We cannot do as much as the major films that will steal the awards this year; SPOTLIGHT that tells the horror of child abuse by catholic priests, and THE BIG SHORT that asks how the super greed of the bankers has not found them all in prison. But we do our bit from Doris's kitchen.... (prepare to leave)

So how do we approach #Valentines day. Well, as you know if you have been watching, Doris had an unwanted Mother-in-Law after her husband left her for the next door neighbour, her best friend Wilma. So Doris has started a little brothel and the mother in law seems to be busy but Doris thinks that Wilma can take the better clients, the Valentines.

by the way.....

This lead to our first ever complaint. Let me explain.... a gentleman contacted me saying he would no longer watch Shades OF Bad as we were making fun of the mentally ill. He was referring to the fact that the mother-in-law is put to work in the brothel unknowingly, with Doris convincing her that all the customers are the same man but that she has facial recognition dementia. I replied and apologised that we had not been clever enough to make the point clearer, but no one in the show is mentally ill, unless you suggest that Doris is a psychopath, then yet, hands up. What the show is knocking is how as a nation we accept when it is convenient, that we can pursued each other what they should believe, from bringing a child up in a religion and having them confirmed, to selling. It is no different unless you wish to excuse it as so. Our exchanges ended and my guess is he will not watch and may have been more offended, but we just try and highlight the odd by the obscure and keep it light and dark. So the brothel is the key to our Valentines reach, though it is purely a vehicle to get Doris noticed and as society reveals many people will do many things to get noticed. Doris is later head hunted for far greater crimes. But back to Valentines day, the day of the BAFTAS and the revealing of crime ..... (my vote went to The Big Short).

As Doris says, 'well, you have rather lat your self go". But in a thought she adds, "but if we keep the lights off".  Wilma's protest goes wrong and Doris berates her when she returns....

It does get a little edgy when Wilma grabs for a knife with the wrath of Thatcher.

So, if you are on a smart device you can just click next episode and jump the titles, otherwise let us explain...... how the two girls get to leave the kitchen soon.

Doris defeats Wilma as she always does as she has bought a gun, and she has Wilma feel the guilt and scrub the kitchen. Maybe Wilma should buy her a new one. It is always reflects an attitude of what Doris can get out of life. Wilma takes the butt of it.

So, Doris is now convincing Wilma that she should do the better clients, the ones she can call #Valentines.

The upshot is that Wilma not wanting to do that, will agree to do other things, and as you will see by the end of 38 they have a dead body in the kitchen. Wilma will have to stay and they will have to leave the kitchen to dispose of the dead body. The show will grow and season 3 will be more ambitious. Enjoy. Do engage......

19. IMDB number rocket up.... numbers count for actors

IMDB number rocket up.... numbers count for actors

Is web the new fringe theatre.... 

This week I am tweeting about numbers, not just because we went to Odette's restaurant in Primrose Hill. The reservation was made in an unknown name but they knew we were to arrive because our daughter Laura Aikman who has quite a few followers, had tweeted she was looking forward to it, so the reception they gave was just a touch more special ..... but because one of the actors in Jean's (Jean Heard) web TV series Shades Of Bad saw his IMDB numbers sky rocket.

Richard Beaumont hit numbers approaching 6,000 this week, and take it from me that is great. I know that you may not be able to see the numbers unless you subscribe to the 'pro' version but these numbers gauge the response to actors and their box office and social media numbers.

When I tell you that Ricky, as we know him, doesn't even know what a computer is and thinks tweeting is what the birds do in his garden, it make the arty little geniuss achievement even more special. It also makes it more special when I suggest that unless there were huge re-runs of Digby the Dog, the show he is on is Shades Of Bad, where he is brilliant. What also triggers numbers and notification was that he was singled out for nomination in Hollywood this week, as best Guest actor in a TV Web Series, SHADES OF BAD.

Let's ponder, as a fan of Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe where Jean has taken two productions we have funded, I can say that actors do that in the hope they will get a good review, possibly be seen and find a room to work. Yet, however hard they work that town they could not get nominated in tinsel town or see their IMDB numbers rise.

So is fringe the new web theatre. YES !!!!!!

Since July last year Shades Of Bad has enjoyed a place in the world web chart that Indie Series put's together, and the actors have spent less time than they have when touring a play and less money. Should any casting director wish to see them, they can send a link to any of the 40 episodes live and find one that is closest to the casting brief.

As we hit 2016 everyone is making web series and my guess is there will be a web series TV channel soon. They will be buying up (maybe on share deals) the best series. If I had the energy I would. Who will be the first, the guys at ZooliTv? Who knows, me thinks there will be many. As well as Makers we are on a number of channels.

So, I want to say, well done Jean and the team for competing against TV shows with huge crews when Shades OF Bad is made with two crew. One shooting, one post. It has stretched to five. (I am not including me and Luke who just put the money up and point a finger, that role is just credit worthy it is not real).

This week the show was also nominated at FINOW in Germany and it has been nominated in heralded in France and Italy. Isn't the web wonderful, and isn't it fantastic that you can get yourself out there?

So, Ricky, show them your stuff. (I didn't know which episode to put up so went for 31, but see 32 and on) some of the earlier ones are good too. He joined in Ep 31, then sadly, bites the dust at Doris's hand)

Please take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, we are soon to start a full HOW TO WEB SERIES, SERIES from concept to marketing.

18. Two New Shows from Shades Of Bad despite Berlinale prep

Two New Shows from Shades Of Bad this week despite prep for Berlinale, advance filming and an office revamp!

You may ask what is Shades Of Bad, or what is Berlinale and an office revamp?

Berlinale / EFM is the first film market of the year and the workings of the film market were brought home as we did our office revamp and burnt piles of old scripts like energy brickets. I remember being at Cannes one year towards the end of the market and watching all the offices turn out the hundreds of scripts they had collected from hopefuls. They are in bulk tossed into large rubbish bins in the corridors. The truth is, most of the sales and distribution people will tell any hopeful; 'sure I'll read it and get back to you', then the hopeful writer is gone in less than a minute. If you refuse to read the argument and explanation takes longer and is harder. Basic festival training, smile, take the script, dump it. Logic dictates they will not pay excess baggage on piles of paperwork as they fly home via a
quick stop over. That was pre digital, but we had piles of paper scripts in our storage, many ours like the TV series the BBC had on option from us for years back in the 1980's called Smith and Patel..... all now burnt. Three days of burning, two filing cabinets removed and a larger desk top. The edit suit moves downstairs, under the desk top re 7 G-Raids totalling 52Tb, more than the filing cabinets could hold.

For those who watch the series the office is on the left as you come in the front door. The door seen more in season 3 which starts uploading soon.

 Shades Of Bad is a free to view TV Channel. We don't have to ask distributors to take our products, we have our own TV Channel on YouTube. (please subscribe) So, we can choose what we make and build product between our movies. This week we release two shows not the normal one drama episode and we slip to release between Sunday and midweek to fit in more with the Indie Series Network Chart.

All demands have had us running in circles this week as the European Film Market in Berlin is the first big film market of the year and sets the tone for Cannes and one actor from Shades Of Bad went down with flu which meant a change to the shooting episodes last Sunday. It happens and the team reacted. That does not affect the released episodes as shooting are still over 10 episodes in front of post production.

The two shows released this week are episode 37 from the main dark drama  series and another tricky 'how to' film in the Ask Doris series. Doris tackles removing and repairing a multipack from a front door at chez Doris where the series is filmed. Given the maintenance there it could keep her and that series of films very busy. That maintenance and moving offices round also hit this week. It was a thunderous endless week.


Whilst we are not attending Berlinale this year our sales representatives are. Let me explain what that means to the film maker. Due to changes at the last sales agency for FREIGHT, one of our movies we took an offer to move it to METRODOME. Freight (Facebook link) is a very edgy film about sex trafficking here in the UK which stars Billy Murray, Craig Fairbrass and Laura Aikman. Released in 2010 the Facebook site and rentals are still very active. It is a good film and we are proud of it. Freight now moves to Metrodome with a possible sequel but time is our worst enemy daily, weekly and as each year escapes.

A rethink has been going on here at INDYUK and we redesigned office space and moved two of our movies to Metrodome.
First goes BULA QUO starring Jon Lovitz and Status Quo the rock legends Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt as well as old colleagues Craig Fairbrass and Laura Aikman. Metronome have also agreed to take the sequel Nameste Quo and with Francis Rossi this week announcing Quo have finished electric rock touring the sequel stays a discussion point for 2018.

Metrodome will be selling our movies now which allows us to get on with the job of production because there is not enough time to do both. They have approaching 50 staff; sales and distribution is more important than production.

Time is our worst enemy daily, weekly and as each year escapes but I would like to visit Cannes; I have been going there to the film market for over twenty years. Note I refer to both as markets not festivals, and whilst they both have both, it is the market that keeps them as industry calendar keys. This is a picture from years ago, myself, Doris as she is now, and our real life daughter the much younger Laura Aikman. her first Cannes was a whirlwind from her coming with us to Hugh Hefner's birthday party to meeting the late Robin Williams in a unisex toilet.

But we are not the only ones in Shades Of Bad with famous offspring, Lynn Beaumont who plays Wilma is, with Reg (Richard Beaumont) parents to Charlotte Beaumont. Both daughters have huge careers ahead of them. Richard is a nominee for the world web awards in Hollywood for playing Reg ... well done Richard.

Shades Of Bad TV has thus far succeeded to release a new episode each week, it is a very dark amusing drama that has political undertones knocking many things wrong with society from bankers to those who induce others to believe things about themselves. Some say it is the web cross between Breaking Bad and Desperate Housewives but there is more than a touch of Dexter creeping in now as we head towards the end of Season 2.
This week's episode is episode 37 and we are heading to a disturbing end to season two. I would suggest you go back down the playlist and maybe join at episode 31 if you have missed a few. Then hit the click next buttons to eventually get to 37. Or maybe jump in at 36, a catch up on last week's release which saw Wilma pull knives on Doris, who told her she had a gun.

Follow through to this week where the kitchen is a mess as is their relationship rollercoasters on with more than just an elephant in the room of the shared husband we never see. If you have been with us since 31 you will know there is a dead body somewhere. If you are up to date here is 37.

So this week we had to confirm new delivery disks of the two afore mentioned films and get them to Metrodome and negotiate small points in clauses to close the film deals. Delivery items are what you contractually deliver when you make a film, it can go on for more than some pages and include access contracts to artists, behind the scenes footage, indexed stills, audio and video interviews, and the movie in various formats with and without titles, the copy with no dialogue and the times script for foreign dubbing as well as layered artwork and clearances... I won't bore you but thousands of pounds in a variety of materials make up a 'film'. Bula Quo sits on 12Tb of achieve hard drive and the standard delivery is just under 2TB. If you hold two copies that is double. It was all there but it has to all be legally checked again and it spurned a re-organisation.

As well as delivery, we shot two new episodes for the future (numbers 50 and 54, with yet another new character, Oliver Degnan who last worked with us in The Usual Children in 1996). Plus get out this weeks episode and another episode of ASK DORIS. That is something we are filling up but not shouting about too much just yet as it is so diverse. Episodes 47,48,49, 51, 52 and 53 all require Derek Redmond who we cannot get until March - he is a busy man. So we will shoot the Barcelona interiors next here in the UK.

We currently have two spin off shows we are building; ASK DORIS has an ambition of about 12 episodes a year, DORIS VISITS is about 25 episodes a year with is own BLOG and the continuing very dark drama SHADES OF BAD may well continue as an episode a week for some time. That alone is 80 plus episodes a year and a movie every now and again.

The travel show, Doris Visits, is being picked up by papers, bloggers and advertisers and we have confirmed and booked and paid for Dubai, with the Caribbean also looming to pull time out of the calendar before the summer starts.

But here is the thing, for the Status Quo fans, to go along with the new world sales by Metrodome and the USA release on Amazon, we aim to run a new series on the web of much unseen Bula Quo material and stories and behind the scenes and interviews, when we have the time. This keeps everything alive for the future sequel and will explain much of what we might try and achieve as we aim to fuse Bangra rock Aquostic albums and tours. This will be different to the Status Quo / Bula Quo playlist we already features on the Shades Of Bad TV channel with Quo. It has the films release of behind the scenes including the Fijian / Hawaiian unplugged sound track to Bula Quo my favourite is Down Down.

There are also changes there to as we start a complete re-edit into broadcast and box set lengths, so Shades Of Bad may find other life.



In the mean time, here is the left of field ASK DORIS episode out this week, as she mends a VECTIS MULTIPOINT LOCK.

Go figure...