The last few weeks that have just gone by were extremely stressful for my workload. In all honesty, the past three months were incredibly stressful for my workload, full stop.

To refresh your memories, for my University course this semester I had to create a 3 – 10 minute film on anything I wanted. My initial ideas developed into Project New York, a project that was put on hold after a relationship breakdown and a financial storm. The film then evolved into what would have been called “The Woman on the Roof”, sadly due to the lack if a rooftop this film had to undergo a change too.

“Brydges Place” is the name of the thinnest alleyway in London. It’s also the setting and the name for the film that was once called “The Woman on the Roof”. Why the name change and no roof? Sadly the company who managed the rooftop that I wished to film on had to cancel on me at the last minute, due to lack of manpower within their organisation. Like most films I’ve worked on, a bailout plan had to be worked on at the last minute. The bailout plan revolved around shooting in various locations in Westminster with a cut down version of the original “The Woman on the Roof” script.

It’s interesting to see how this University film has changed around the current situations in my life. When I was in love with a man in New York, I wanted to create a drama tackling the low key homopobia that can be found in some parts of the city. When I was going through a breakdown and looking for an escape, the film changed into “The Woman on the Roof” a film about someone coming to peace and terms with everything. In some sort of weird way this film is still dedicated to the person who it was intended to be made for, it’s just now circumstances have changed and we’re all moving on with our lives.

My flash player, for reasons unknown to me, doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. Should you wish to see “Brydges Place”, please click on the image to be redirected to my online portfolio, CHRISLEYDON.TV, where you can watch it in a nice high quality working flash player.

Chris Leydon.

Escape, we all need one. We all need to get away from the slum of day to day life. We all need to feel free and clear our head. We all need a clear vision. Where can you go for this relief? That’s your choice.

What is such a dark or deep intro for a post doing on my blog, you may wonder. Don’t worry, I haven’t become some sort of manic depressive. The paragraph above is a quick teaser synopsis of the idea behind my latest film project. What’s happened to Project New York? This has. This, for the time being, is Project New York.

For various reasons, business and personal, the film that I was planning to film in New York had been put on hold. This doesn’t mean that the project has been cancelled, I still plan to make it one day, the story is very close to my heart. However, my film module requires me to man a film this semester so I had to brain storm a new idea. The working title for the film is “The Woman on the Roof”.

“The Woman on the Roof” revolves around a young woman who has recently been raped. She goes to the top of the roof several weeks later, to relive the entire event, looking for some sort of escape. It’s not necessarily the film that I set out to make, or wanted to make, but nevertheless it is now the film that I am making. Maybe it has to do with the mood that I was in when I wrote the script. I was going through an emotional time and needed a release, I guess this film is my roof. I’ve channelled all of my hurt feelings into this project, I just hope that it pays off.

Location hunting for this film has been relatively easy, getting in touch with said locations though has been much harder than expected. As it stands I currently have one location out of three; with a week to go before shooting this is perhaps not a great thing. For this location, however, I am having to hire a policeman to be on set at all times. Apparently you can’t fake the scene of a rape on the streets of London, without a police officer present. I have no idea how much this will cost me, but let’s see.

If all goes to plan, shooting will all be done in one day. These “let’s shoot it all in one day” plans tend never to work, I hope that this one bucks the trend. This is the only window that I have to shoot it, due to equipment and University rehearsal schedules, so I really hope that it all manages to come together.

Chris Leydon.

This is a post of two halves. I originally started to write this post back in September, a month later and I am finishing it. A lot can change in a month, as one shall find out.

September 27th, 2008.

That was a hectic past few weeks. Since my last blog post I’ve become a part-time intern for BTPodShow, filmed a pilot of Ask Dr Nick and moved back into Uni (amongst other things).

I thought that my time as the BTPodShow intern had come to an end but it seems that my contract will be extended. It should allow me to do less hours and work from wherever suits me. This is fantastic news! I really enjoyed my time as being part of the London team and I’m very happy with the possibility of continuing it.

BTPodShow & Mevio are re-branding themselves and re-entering the online entertainment market to take the field by storm. The companies have swung their attention to focus on creating high quality online video content in a typical channel form. The format change reflects the brand’s new competitors “YouTube” and “Revision3“.

October 19th, 2008.

Mevio’s “Channels” offer their users a way to watch online content they love, in a format that combines old and new media. The video above provides the best explanation of Mevio’s Channels, but I shall attempt to describe them now. Like classic media, you can watch the channel from start to beginning; but like new media you can jump in an out of the channel wherever you want to. Each channel has its own theme and host, who provide insightful links in between shows. All of this, combined with the fantastic content on offer, places Mevio as one of the best places to watch online content via the web.

Each channel, from my understanding, will have their own website. The Mevio channel with the most love and attention, at the moment, is TeXtra; which of course takes its name from the popular PodShow podcast of the same name. TeXtra is a combination of lots of high quality technology based show. New episodes of these shows are presented to you daily, by one of the enigmatic hosts. Check out the TeXtra channel over at www.mevio.com or www.textranetwork.com

Although this is a contradiction to one of my above statements, I am no longer the Mevio intern.  I received a message on Monday 13th October informing me that my services were no longer required. The Mevio finance department would not extend my contract. I’m not bitter about this fact, just slightly disappointed that I can no longer work with the fantastic team there. I loved my time as the BTPodShow Intern and I would love to work with everyone at BTPodShow and Mevio again; my offer will always stand.

Chris Leydon.

Over the past few months I’ve noticed that there are several breeds of blogger; those who blog about topics, those who blog for a living (and attempt to be journalists), and those who write about themselves. I seem to fall into the latter category, but then again what did you expect from a site called chrisleydon.com?

The last month has been very busy and productive for me. As you should be aware Keyone Productions has produced two videos for Bishops’ College in the past year; I received confirmation a few weeks ago that we’ve been commissioned to produce two/three further videos in the new academic year. This is fantastic news for a business as small as ours!

Whilst still on the topic of Keyone Productions, we’ve been approached by Mevio to continue to produce our video games show The Glitch. This time it would be in association with Mevio as part of their promotions campaign. If this goes ahead it would mean that Keyone Productions has two successful podcasts on the agreement, the other being The Podzone.

Moving onto the subject of Mevio and by UK default, BTPodShow, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve managed to gain an internship with them until September. I’m currently based in the UK, London, office for 30 hours a week. My roles involve, scouring the network for the best content we have, editing shows, monitoring stats, channel organising, spare hand and general bitch boy, or anything else they throw my way. I’m thoroughly enjoying it and will be rather sad when the time comes for me to leave. I’m proud and very glad that I’ve had the chance to be part of such a great team.

Chris Leydon.

So this week I’ve helped some year 11s at a school with their Graduation and Yearbook DVD, popped down to London, invested in a Skypephone and been detained under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

What was that last one? I was detained under the Terrorism Act 2000? Well yes it’s true. On Wednesday afternoon at about 12:09 PM (GMT) I was detained and searched under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 on suspicion of carrying items that might be harmful to the state. Of course I wasn’t, but they suspected that I was. Half an hour I spent outside of Paddington tube station, trying to get to Baker Street, answering pointless questions whilst the plod was assessing my status as a threat to the state. In the end I was let go with no charges held, but that’s not the point. I was stopped, harassed and mate late for doing bugger all. Section 44 of the Terrorism act of 2000 allows the police to stop ANY member of the public for anything they want, as long as they are “acting in a suspicious manner”.

No doubt that I’ll end up in a spot of bother for writing this article but the police weren’t just doing there job, they were victimising. In the half hour that I was there I was the only White British citizen that they stopped. Everyone else detained was of a different ethnicity; I guess I was the token white guy that they had to stop that day.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 is a way for the police to whatever the hell they feel like, you can be stopped for any reason and if you refuse you’re arrested for disobeying police orders and under suspicion of terrorism. You are stopped for going about your daily business, terrorist or not; I wouldn’t mind but how many people have they actually stopped from committing acts of Terrorism under this legislation? It was effective in 2005 and we still had the July 7th bombings, it didn’t stop that.

I clearly wasn’t doing anything wrong, had I refused being stopped and searched I would have been arrested. This is an invasion of my privacy. Some of you will ask that if I haven’t got anything to hide then why should I be worried? My answer to that is that I haven’t got anything to hide, so why abuse my rights? If you haven’t got anything to hide then how much do you earn a year? How old are you? Where do you live? Come on, tell me, you have nothing to hide and nothing to be worried about, you’re not doing anything wrong!

Chris Leydon

My week started off fairly simply, well I suppose it actually wasn’t. If truth be told last weekend we played a few pranks on our neighbours upstairs, they weren’t best pleased with this and so they retaliated by playing mind games, unbeknown to me, all through Monday. By the end of Monday, after my Film Tech lectures, I was incredibly mentally unstable and under the impression that I was going to be chucked out of Uni. This was not true. In the end our mental game playing neighbours came downstairs to our flat and told us all about the ruse; we weren’t best pleased.

Tuesday was a really good day for me. My first lecture was cancelled, but for the first time since I’ve been at Staffs I finally understood my Audio Processing lecture. It was a fantastic feeling and I’m really proud with myself.

Digital Image Production on Wednesday was as boring as ever but we’ve started on our first term project so I expect there will be some excitement soon. The rest of the day, however, was spent in intimate meetings with my Film Tech partner fiddling about with storyboards and pre-visualisation for our short three minute film. Everything went smoothly and I do believe that we have a really sweet project going on.

On Thursday, after waking up a tad late for Scriptwriting, I boarded a train with my trusty Mac and headed to London, to stay with my family over the weekend, for a party on the Saturday.

The London trip has really been a highlight of my week. I often visit London and so the attraction of going to the capital is usually lost on me, however this time I was attracted by the prospect of meeting up with some family members who I hadn’t seen for a few months, as well as attending the Leopard launch.

Friday was interesting. To begin with I helped out my uncle with installing a new bathroom (despite the fact that he is a sound technician) and then headed towards Oxford street for a bit of shopping.

Of course Friday was the launch day for the infamous operating system Mac OS X 10.5, otherwise known as Leopard. To celebrate this I donned my geek hat and headed to Apple Store UK Number one, the biggest Apple store in the world, situated on Regents Street. I joined the que for the launch at 5 pm, the store was due to open its doors as 6 pm (BST), but already there was a que going halfway around the city block. By 6 pm the que had elongated itself and had ended up looping around the block twice. I’m guessing that it’s pretty obvious that there are a few Apple geeks in London.

I must say that I met some fantastic people whilst waiting for Leopard, and when the time came we were very happy to have our special edition Leopard T-shirts and our hands on the most advanced operating system in the world. For those sad people who are interested in seeing some very blurred photos of the UK launch (they don’t allow cameras in store), I’ve included a link to my Picasa album at the end of this post.

Saturday evening saw me getting rather drunk at a party in the Bushy part of London. The party was for my cousin’s husbands 30th birthday and it turned out to be a rather fantastic evening (again photo’s included after post). I spent most of the evening talking complete bollocks and getting rather pissed with my favourite band of all time, Seeing Scarlet.

And now I’m on a train on my way back to Stafford, some week, and it only gets better from here on in.

Chris Leydon. 

Leopard UK Launch

Last weekend I was kidnapped by my parents and taken back home for a few days, they were only supposed to pop up here with a receipt so that I could change my digibox. Going home was rather fun and it gave me time to think back over al that’s happened over the past few weeks that I’ve actually been at University for. It also gave me the chance to meet up with the fabulous Mr Cooper and record a few more Podzones.

This weeks lectures haven’t been that interesting. Film Technology, however, was quite fun. We were allowed to start experimenting with the Cannon XL1s and we were set a task where we had to create three independent shots and frame them correctly.

In Digital Image Production we were introduced to Photoshop and taught the basics. Needless to say that I was one of the few in this class who left early as we had, had a bit of experience in Photoshop. I did stay for the actual lecture and demonstration but when it came to replicating the demonstration I buggered off.

Audio Production, once again, seems to be a waste of time. I wont go into another anti-Audio Production rant but pretty much the same thing happened again as it has done for the past few weeks.

The Keyone Productions website has been down for most of the week as I’ve been redesigning and reprogramming it. I must say that it is indeed starting to look very good, especially with the new Flash players that I’ve installed. No longer do we need to rely on Google Video.

I’m extremely pleased about the news of Leopard, otherwise known as Mac OS X 10.5, which is basically Apple’s new advanced operating system. It comes out on Friday and I’m hoping to be able to pick one up at the launch party in London’s Regents Street. I’ll take a few photos of the event and post them up on my blog after I’m finished. I know it’s a rather geeky thing to be doing, but who cares?

Chris Leydon.