Coffee & Questions Podcast #4

coffeeandquestions:

Hosts:

Nick Vanderlay, Dexter Kong, Mike Hill

Topics:

Digital Blender, 1st Childhood Memory, Primary school star buys, Hill Points, Gun to the head - limbs, Agricultural vs. Livestock Farming.

Coffee: French Roast

Coffee & Questions - No.4

This is our podcast check it out!!

via coffeeandquestions

Subscribe to Coffee & Questions on Itunes

coffeeandquestions:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoffeeQuestions

via coffeeandquestions

Coffee & Questions Podcast #1

coffeeandquestions:

Hosts:

Mike Hill, Nick Vanderlay & Dexter Kong

Topics:

Nickelodeon & competition call-ins, Would you go out with a stand up comedian, Siamese Twins, Barefoot Bandit

Coffee: Fair Trade - Kilimanjaro

Coffee & Questions -No.1

Yo this is our first podcast it check it out!

Dam you recession! Dam you ‘credit crunch’ and dam you Jason Reitman for making me believe getting fired would be as easy as George Clooney makes it!

Straight to the issue at hand, if you were not able to decipher the title, I was told yesterday that I was going to be made redundant and no it’s nothing to do with writing this blog while at work.

I’ve now only got one month to live…. on my current minimum wage salary and then it’s back out into the real world and finding my first real job. Or more likely ending up on the dole, and becoming the struggling artist I desire to be; who speaks fluent French all the time for no reason whatsoever, views life in black and white and lives on a diet of coffee and cigarettes, [Yes I do enjoy the movies of Jim Jarmursh if you haven’t already gathered].

The fact that my temp job wouldn’t last was always a given; considering it was only a temporary job, and I have stayed there much longer than expected [10 months] by working on the High Fidelity principle; I only got hired to work for 3 months but I just kept showing up.

I think it’s the shock of it that has; for lack of a thesaurus shocked me, though that is  my fault for my ignorance [though I can testify to it being bliss] and possibly to some extend that I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Up in the Air’; Jason’s Reitman’s recession based dramedy about a man who fires people for a living… Wait why I am even describing this considering you must have access to the internet and therefore do not live under a rock [or at least one without wi-fi] so I’m sure you’re aware of this award winning movie.

I knew my boss would be the one to break the news to me, but I did hope for George Clooney to be in the room at to offer some advice even if it was SPOILER ALERT! just through a computer with a webcam. Wow that was this blogs first spoiler alert! High fives all round!

Anyway enough about me. What will this mean for Redtop?

Well mainly good things I guess, I’ll have some more free time in April and can get round to editing some videos and getting them online, and finally getting round to finishing that screenplay… and putting it into Final Draft.

Who knows we might even start making our webseries ‘Sleeping bags’. Who knows?

Have a good weekend I’ll be back on Monday.

Also if anyone want to give me a job in London starting in April that would be muchos appreciated.

Mike

CUT!

Currently listening to – The Dodos – Beware of the Mechanics

Come With Us Now On a Journey Through Time and Space! Part 2

This is the second part of the history of Redtop Studios, if you haven’t read the first part what the hell are doing reading this? “You’re like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie”,  if you have read it….. congratulations you sir [or madam] are a trooper and will be rewarded with 10 puppies or kittens or something in the afterlife*.

[*Note - we here at Redtop Studios, can not guarantee there is an afterlife, but you’ll be dead anyway, so I guess you won’t be able to complain we didn’t made good on our promise].

Now where was I…. Ah yes it was Summer 2009, I had moved back to London and Nick and I had decided it was time to take the plunge and buy our first video camera, but which type? Dv or DVD? HDD or Flash SD? HD or SD? Ext mic. or no ext mic.? and many other acronyms we didn’t understand.

BEGIN RANT!

Q. Buying a product you know nothing is difficult right?

A. NO! Get with the time’s Granddad! There’s this thing called the internet and it’s got reviews on cameras, naked ladies and other shit on it!

Well that is true, the net was useful and helped us make our final choice; a Cannon LEGRIA FS200 and entertained our eyes with ladies…. it was a long process.

Reading reviews online was a frustrating activity, you can read 10 reviews telling how this camera is the bee knees [my favourite phrase about an insect’s anatomy] and then review 11 discusses in great detail how the camera is the worse thing since aids, the battery life and sound quality are dire, the menu system is difficult to navigate and that if you buy it how you’re children will hate you and your wife will leave you for a French chef named Claude.

This puts you, the reader in a dilemma, luckily neither of us have a wife or kids [that we’re aware of], but we didn’t know whether to believe the 10 reviews praising the camera or the 1 about how it will be the bane of your life.  After mulling this over, we’d take another look at the camera’s specs and realise it doesn’t have an external mic input, so we’d start the tedious process with the next camera.

RANT OVER!

Eventually we decided on a camera and ordered it, when it arrived we were pumped. We went to the local park and filmed our two silly videos, both involving trees, came home and watched them on the TV and felt like it we’d found what we wanted to do, whether we were any good was another matter, fortunately these videos will never see the light of day.

We spent the rest of the day filming more videos on the streets of London till the early hours; it was all very amateur, but a lot of fun.

And the rest is history, Redtop history……. I think that wraps it up I’ll do a post about the projects we’ve currently got on the go next week.

CUT!

Currently listening to: Echo and The Bunnymen - Killing Moon

Come With Us Now On a Journey Through Time and Space!

As mentioned in the first blog, I now give you the long-awaited origin story of Redtop Studios, it’s a lot like Rocky. Ok, I lied it’s more like a history lesson if you will, about Redtop.

It all started one windy Saturday afternoon in March 2009; the year of the Ox. I sat down at my desk in Liverpool to write a long overdue essay for my university course, though instead of writing about the intricacies of social exclusion or something equally dull, I came up with the idea for a movie and I started a plot synopsis and screenplay.

I wrote 6,000 words that afternoon, leading my housemate to mention that this was double the word count of the essay. I didn’t care, it was my epiphany, my burning bush, my road to Damascus moment [I’m all out of bible references now, goddammit] I realised I wanted to be a screenwriter.

The film’s plot was about a writer whose laptop is stolen and his search to find it, as it had the only copy of the novel he was working on, needless to say hilarity ensues and he meets some interesting characters on the way. It was quite similar to The Big Lebowski, so I reached the film as I hadn’t seen it in ages, and realised it was very similar to The Big Lebowski and I went back and made several changes

After a couple weeks dossing and occasionally working on it, I sent the beginnings of the screenplay to my good buddy, Nick Vanderlay who was back home in London. He said he’d like to get in on the action and we started working on it together and developing new projects, which I’ll keep hush-hush in case some studio execs are reading [you people make me sick!!! But can I have a job? Please?].

We soon accepted that as fun as it was writing feature films, we should start small as we had no background in writing or films [though Nick was an extra in a music video for Gorki’s Psychotic Monkey when he was a kid]. We decided making short films would be a better idea.

We kept this all on the d-low, meaning we’d have to act in them ourselves and we’d also need a name; we finally settled on Redtop Studios [a name origin blog will come later].

As we live in this digital age, with youtube and numerous other streaming sites, the next step was to buy a camera and start filming these shorts and sketches and get them viral. Part 2 ‘buying the camera’ will be the next post.

CUT!

Currently Listening to - Lawrence Arabia - Chant Darling

21 Questions or: How I Learned to Stop Being Mysterious and Love the Blog.

^ A screenshot of myself and Nick’s arm from a short film now in post production.^

Ah blog 3 and strange title number 3, I see a pattern occurring.

In other news… I started writing a brief history of Redtop Studios, however, I stopped half-way through as it was already too long and narcissistic. Though then it occurred to me, that if there is a place to be narcissistic was encouraged it would be in ones blog. After this conclusion I thought what better window into a writer’s soul than a set of questions… that they wrote themselves.

So the following is 21 questions with me, I’ll ask Nick to contribute one at a latter date, but we have pretty similar tastes in most things, apart from food, the one thing in life ironically which taste plays a big part of.

LET THE QUIZZING COMMENCE!

1. Birth Name? – Michael John Hill

2. Age? - 21 nearly 22, as sickening as that is to me I’m sure it’s more so to my   elders.

3. Sex - Male

4. Location? - London, England.

5. Current paid occupation? - Temping at an office

6. Ideal paid occupation? - A successful independent [indie] film director

7. Realistic age for achieving this dream job? - 31

8. Age of realising that it is just a dream and it’s time to grow up and live in the real world? – 38, though I doubt I’ll ever grow up.

9. Favourite cuisine? - Italian, as cliché as it is they know how to make a good dish and that’s one spicy meatball!

10. Favourite Film Directors? - Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers.

11. Favourite Comedy movie? - This is Spinal Tap.

12. Favourite action film? - Assault on Precinct 13 (original) or The Warriors.

13. Favourite film genre? - Dark comedies, notable mentions; film noir, ‘mumblecore’, sci-fi and 80s high school movies.

14. Favourite movie trilogy? - Lord of the Rings, though Alien comes close, I’m one of the minority who enjoyed Alien 3.

15. Favourite Film of last year (2009)? – Inglourious Basterds.

16. Favourite TV show of last year? - Bored to Death.

17. Favourite TV show ever? - Frazier.

18. Favourite web-series? - Nirvana the Band.

19. Favourite Guitarist? - Neil Young.

20. Why the HELL do you have twitter and now a tumblr about making films but no films on your youtube account, are you guys’ filmmaking fraudsters? –

That’s a very good question, thanks for asking, we’ve got about 7 videos in post production or   development hell, including three short films. We’ll upload a video before March.

21. You promise? I promise.

CUT!

Mike.

Currently listening to - RJD2 -The Third Hand