HD Horror

Arghhh! Technology hates me!

To illustrate this I spent all of last weekend trying to produce my latest Brain Fluff in HD. This shouldn’t be difficult as I’m shooting it on an HD camera and editing it using an HD editing package.

The problems came when I compressed it. I followed all the instructions given me by the gods of iTunes, I used the correct codec and bit rates but when I played it back using iTunes it jerked and juddered like a bus running out of petrol. Well forget it iTunes you’ve had your chance to play it in pristine HD and you blew it. In the future only YouTube will get the fancy pants High Definition version. iTunes will have to make do with sixteenth century standard definition. In your face iTunes. Oh and thanks for making my stuff available to the world for free, I love you.

Besides that, things are continuing apace. If ‘apace’ actually means not moving at all – which in this case it does. It is not writers block, I don’t believe in writers’ block. In my case it is writers’ fear. Every time I approach the computer start a script my stomach turns over and I can’t write.  I’m afraid that the next script will be my last ever chance. This is nonsense of course but it is a psychological barrier which Ineed to  burst through like a man who’s good at bursting stuff.

At this very moment I have two scripts in my pipeline, which makes sitting really uncomfortable. The first is for a radio play and the second a television series. I am really looking forward to writing the television piece but dreading doing the radio play. The problem with radio plays is that they can be either utterly brilliant or awful beyond measure. The awful ones are often set in Yorkshire. They always seem to cast actors who are incapable of doing a Yorkshire accent and who portray the characters as drawling halfwits. This means that even though I live in Yorkshire, I would be reluctant to write a play featuring Yorkshire characters. Plus I’d hate to be a ‘professional Yorkshireman’ as my accent is far too mangled. It lurches between generic South East and North Halifax with every sentence which would make it difficult for me to be the next Michael Parkinson – who inexplicably is proud of being from Barnsley, even though Barnsley is a shit hole. Then I suppose it is easy to be proud of a town, if you don’t actually live there.

Blimey! I’m being honest today. It’s like being in the psychiatrists chair with the ghost of Dr Anthony Clare. Not the same chair of course; that would be weird. If you even thought for one moment that I would be occupying the same chair as a psychiatrist ghost, then you are quite mad. I will be in the chair alone while Dr Clare floats on a magic wisdom cloud. Do you know nothing fool?

Right! Back to the video rendering.

Roast beef for tea!