Joel Morris

That’s the one joke I could remember. From when I saw it as a kid. And I mistakenly thought that would be it. But it’s full of good gags.

The bus itself is an incredible build. It was two buses, apparently, and the guy in the rear bus had zero visibility.

Maybe this is the place to say that the Smile films are SO much better than they have any need to be. You’d be fine with workaday drive-in trash, but neither of them is. Really slick jump scare horror, with both heart and brains. And that sequel is as dark and pointed as the South Park Britney ep.

And the running gag after Dr Hagman says “this man must not be moved!” so he and the injured man spend the rest of the film in the car park, being rained on, is absolutely wonderful.

Yup. Beat Airplane by three years. It’s good.

That turns out to be a way better film than I remembered. Utterly charming and daft.

Don’t worry. I took a break around lunch to watch Stockard Channing in The Big Bus. Cleanse the palate.

Feeling stinky with a heavy cold and have taken myself to bed where I have chosen of my own free will to watch back to back Sapphire and Steel, then a double bill of Smile 2 and Event Horizon and now I feel weird and evil. Maybe I was just matching the media to the headspace.

You could do worse than just watch all the 50% movies with a strong female lead and what looks like it might be some sort of allegorical content. They’ll probably all be great.

It’s the lads from the video shop in Royston Vasey, isn’t it?

If a Shudder subscription proves anything it’s that all good well written psychological horror movies have a 50% audience approval rating, presumably thanks to the number of horrible people who sign up to a horror streaming service merely to watch women’s heads be cut off.

Waiting for an ad about restoring old photographs and hanging around in petrol stations.

AAAAAAARGH!

“Have you ever been to a place where time flowed differently? Luxuria holidays…”

“I don’t have much time. But Banko does my accounting leaving me free to do my job. Repairing clocks and watches…”

Watching Sapphire and Steel on YouTube (cos the DVD is downstairs and I’m not feeling well today). The ads are scaring the shit out of me.

It’s the most natural way to shoot ensemble comedy.

Watch how Terry Jones directs the Pythons in widescreen in Life of Brian. Big set up shot to show location. Then straight into mid shot to capture everyone bouncing off one another. Not too many close ups.

That’s the point. You can’t do comic timing and crashing across each other if the people are in the same room. The tech is designed for a clean audio experience. Just like it’s almost impossible to brainstorm over Zoom. Every time someone contributes, someone else shuts out. Not how humans fizz.

What I’m saying is if you ever want art as significant and lasting as Allo Allo, you need the cast on set at the same time.

It changes the nature of the art completely. There are jokes you just can’t do.

If you look at beloved sitcoms from the past, studio ones especially, you’re watching a whole ensemble react at once. Increasing costs, and single camera habits from drama, shot, countershot, mean often performers aren’t even booked on the same days.

Yes. Was talking to a comedy producer about how great widescreen telly was for comedy, cos you could get shot and countershot in the same frame, and capture the genuine reactions of two performers.

Now sketch comedy is one performer in their kitchen in different hats… shot, counter shot.

Nasty business.

Yes. Just try paying two people for a collaborative project. I talked to Substack and a couple of other places - Acast etc - about how creators might be able to work together on stuff and share income, and there is zero interest. It’s all for solo acts.

No. The Adobe one. It’s really good. But the hallucinations are fucking weird, and uncanny valley, so I won’t be using it unless something is really desperate, and even then, only briefly.

RHLSTP Book Club 169 - Jay Foreman | RHLSTP with Richard Herring This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters)

RHLSTP Book Club with Jay Foreman of the Map Men talking about This Way Up! shows.acast.com/rhlstp/episo...
Can't recommend this book enough, informative and entertaining uk.bookshop.org/p/books/this...

I deliberately do that. Even if the feeds are clean and match, I give them all different textures scene to scene. It’s part of the story. Like lighting.

So it would be impossible to mix those two cleaned feeds together, to make a mic mix, because the hallucinations would render both speakers unintelligible.

It was fascinating playing with the sliders, and hearing the second voice in the routine (caught on the overspill of the first mic) turning from unclear speech into fragments of hallucinated gibberish.

When I say I avoid AI, someone always suggests something it’ll be able to help with, and eight times out of ten, it doesn’t.

It’s not designed for what I want to do. And cos it’s a closed box, I can’t tinker with it to make it do what I need.