A funny thing happened on the way to the camera

Never say no

They do say never say no, but I don't know who they are. Still there are those who wait to be employed and those for a corner shop to rent and the film and acting game is the same. You can wait for the phone to ring or demand a salary, or make a web series and win awards and get noticed. Ewe are all artists and Picasso did ask for a dollar each time he picked up a paint brush. Enough said, but we have always made and invested in films, and had we not many of the pop videos we made back in the day would never have turned into making The Krays, I would never have been able to give myself such a huge credit at the front of the film as Stunt Coordinator and got an instant career bump, and then been able to afford to make my own films etc...

The road trodden is never straight. So, just as I am at think tank conferences at the British Screen Council and with distributors learning a little about on-line morphication, (there spell checker deal with that one!) My wife asks if she can make something for the web. Coincidence my composers (Mar k Blackledge who is brilliant and has his own studios) said his son wanted to direct, so I threw about 20k at setting up a small camera set up to make web series. There was no way they were shooting that on my 5k Red Epics!

After 61 episodes of Shades Of Bad and winning countless awards, we had shot in Norway and Barcelona as well as the UK, just for a laugh and just because we could, and we ended up with a travel show - DORIS VISITS www.DorisVisits.com

Now some 200 travel films later in less than two years, we have an on line travel shop web base and people are booking hotels and cruises through us. You see when I started as a trainee DJ at radio 1 & 2 back in 1973, then went into commercial radio a few years later I never knew I would be cast as the DJ in a TV soap before the decade was out. I never knew once I got into TV that pop videos would be invented or I would produce and direct via a weaving route in and out of action.

I certainly never thought I would be a travel agent. But that is why you should never say no. Just saying, if you need a hotel use our link through Doris Visits, it is an official Bookings.com affiliate link as is our one to Monarch, P&O and a dozen other cruise lines and Tour Guide functions. That is because of volume of content and traffic, and it all came from no where.

So, the hair pin bend, and there always is one. I am given scripts all the time. Some to direct some under the guys of would I direct when what they would really like is for me to produce so they can direct. They are all normally poor. But, I was brought a series of books. Very raunchy female romance books. Why Me !!! ????  Now my wife Jean, now presenter on Doris Visits has often been heard to say that when I am offered female lead things. She nearly dies when I was asked to direct a film with Claire Danes in the USA by a producer who thought my output was female lead (Devil's Gate with Laura Fraser, The Scarlet Tunic with Emma Fielding etc) .... I stray. These books lacked a direction but had legs. It is that wonderful line I am sure is from a Linda Seger I read years and years ago... so we want to buy your script, it just needs a complete rewrite - here's why.....  Years later when I understood Hollywood a little more I wrote my own take on it, The Script Writing Cheat Guide, which I must update. But these books were / are still I have yet changed them that much, but wait. Are still about an older woman released from you will find out what in good time and when she is ready to tell you and can tell you, at an older age into life. So, to cut top the chase, she realises the clock is ticking and she wants to discover what most do in their teens. As an agoraphobic, by a route to be discover she swaps the house for a steel box otherwise know as a cruise ship. It is a fascinating look at life, and somehow I was the fit... female lead, cruise industry - obvious! (no there is no action.)

So, the SOLO CRUISER book series was in development and the table I set up (writer's table, development table) sat and criticised as they do. But I wanted to see ten episodes. Forget film, film is dead. Forget books I have no skills or interest. I needed to see a structure that worked for TV. I have an older Bridget Jones type, we all love her, where she is going but it is a mess. How would you handle it? So far this is what we have done. I have changed each book to be around a real cruise, the books starts the moment you board, ends when you get off. For arguments sake, Southampton to Southampton, round the Canary Islands. Then we have a time line, we have a looming end, we have a fixture. Book one ended up being placed into a cruise template of the Canaries that was Doris Visits Azura Cruise A628. Book 2 ended up being based on Arcadia Cruise round the Baltics and the third of Violet Becket's story, now more confident in direction uses bits and bobs of cruises in the Caribbean.

Look it is a tough life, but someone has to do it, and remember this is years of work with no fees and me investing, so that would put many off. I happen to thrive on it. My connection was this other little piece in the jigsaw, Amazon Editor Simon Okhill who came to me and got me to put my Brit Flick Freight into book form. He had the cruise project and made the fit.

What is next? Well having spent years advising soaps, and loving Jimmy McGovern's work, I can see the SOLO CRUISER books series as a soap, but each of the characters coming to the front in film fashioned with their story. That was a battle, but I seem to have one that Violet's story, as fascinating as she is, is only three books long.
Her Virgin Voyage
The Perfect Storm
American Portrait
and Panama On Your Six is a rewrite using Tank Commander Kieron Phipps as the new solo cruiser for the next series / three books. Those who know me will see a little of my influence in book 2, The Perfect Storm which is much darker.
All versions of the books are selling and as such will come up easily on Amazon searches, but I have added links. They are free on the Kindle library. What we are doing now is a simple break down into ten episodes and location structures because we obviously can't shoot it all on a cruise ship. But it will look like at as we all know, and quite wonderful. I need series two, which is three more books and I guess it is a five year project.
I also have insisted on Light versions of the books, not just the full fat versions. So there are two Virgin Voyages; Book 1, Virgin Voyage is very raunchy, but Her Virgin Voyage is the lighter version some 2500 words shorter. Book 2 is in two versions which are less than 500 words apart, and book three I think can survive in one version.

Life is strange, but who knows what will come next. The secret is to never say no.

Stuart St Paul

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.