CHRISLEYDON.COM

It’s coming up to a month since I last wrote up a post and placed it here, but so much has happened in that time and I’m here to tell you about it now.

As you may recall from my previous post, myself and Keyone Productions, as a favour for my father, filmed a High School graduation video in Gloucester. The school was Bishops’ College and the shoot went fairly well, not the best work we’ve ever done, but it will suffice; because of the work that we did on the Graduation video, we’ve now been asked back and commissioned to shoot two promotional videos for the school. I suppose you could see the Graduation video as the trial period, the thirty days are over… do you want to purchase the full package?

The first video will be shot in the beginning of July and centres around a Year 6 induction course. It’s a three day shoot with, what should be, some very interesting material. The second video is due for production in the next academic year, starting in September, and shall be a promotional video focusing on a typical day for a class in the school. Basic stuff, but if done in the right way there should be a fantastic result.

Those are the two things that I shall talk about today, I shall save the other stories for another time.

Chris Leydon.

I’ve been quiet as of late, mainly because I’m doing very uninteresting things. I’m currently working on finishing off a Graduation video for my father, but that’s pretty much all of the possible excitement that I seem to have.

The previous statement, I suppose, could be called a lie because I’m also working on several other ideas and projects that I have. I say several, I actually mean three. One I’ve already discussed, but the other two not so much.

Keyone Productions is about to go under a rebrand; not an extreme one, we’re not doing a PodShow, but a reinvention. Before hand we’ve been all about having fun and making short lived projects. Whilst this is all well and good, it doesn’t pay the bills. As a business we’re starting to move towards short serial internet based content, in which advertising can be sold. We’re going to monetize off of the fantastic stuff that we create. I personally don’t believe in charging for internet content; one it’s not a profitable business venture and two, I personally don’t like paying for my entertainment.

With that in mind, myself and various others are finalising the details for two new Keyone ventures. Both of them will be online video shows, that will be offered through a podcasting medium. One will be made solely by Keyone Productions, whilst the other shall be a joint production with another creative digital media organisation. I can’t say more than that at this current moment in time, but all shall be revealed soon.

Chris Leydon.

So its been two weeks at least since I last made an appearance. Last time we had contact I was coming up with script ideas, wondering whether to sign the new BTPodShow contract and working on my final assignments.

Well I’m pleased to say that I did indeed sign that new BTPodShow contract, which means that The Podzone is guarenteed for at least another two years. I’ve also been working a bit more on script concepts and I’ve finished University for the year.

Finished, completely finished until September, you have no idea how good it feels to say that. Ahead of me I’ve got one long summer of work, making money and enjoying myself.

In the meantime however, I’ve discovered that my web design skills are so fantastic that the new Keyone Productions site, only works on about 90% of the worlds browsers. Yep, it doesn’t work with IE… oops. My day today will be spent correcting that mistake. I’ve started to learn CSS and I’m hoping to implement what I’ve learnt into the redesign.

Tomorrow, as a favour to my father, myself and Nick shall be headed to Bishops College (Gloucester) to film their Year 11 graduation. It should be fun as we’ll have a multicam set up and various other bits of over kill. We know that a job such as this doesn’t require all of the trims that we’re putting in to it; but I’ve got to do something to keep me amused until September.

Chris Leydon.

So the story that’s quite important for me today, as it affects me directly, is the news that PodShow (Podcasting pioneering company extraordinaire) is changing its name. What to? I hear you ask… MEVIO.

Yep, they’ve dropped the “Pod” from their name and the “Show” too, but that’s besides the point. There are rumours that MEVIO will be a video network, this has a slight truth to it. From what I can gather MEVIO will be more video orientated in nature but will still support and have audio shows.

This would be the point where I say that myself and The Podzone will still stick by MEVIO no matter what, and I’m sure I will, however I’ve just realised that my contract with PodShow UK expired 2 weeks ago. That’s a bit of a bummer, still here’s hoping that it gets renewed, I haven’t heard anything to say otherwise.

Chris Leydon.

Weekly posts it seems to be, at least that’s the feeling that I’m getting from the amount of posts on here.

Fairly busy week.My Internet & HTML Technology assignment deadline and exam were this week. the exam was incredibly easy, I scored 97% which let’s face it isn’t bad going really; the assignment as perhaps the trickier task of the two.

The assignment was to create a website based around the streaming technologies that the BBC use on their websites. I had to create the website from scratch using a WYSIWYG, if you know me, or have seen my work, you know that I’m fairly capable at this kind of thing. The hardest thing about this assignment was simply the content; the BBC don’t REALLY use that many different streaming technologies, at least not that many up to date ones. They still use Real Video and Windows Media for their news reports, as an example, instead of Flash.

In the end I used a theme that I created for v.4.0 of the Keyone Productions website and customised it to fit my needs. If you want to take a look at the finished site, head on over to www.chrisleydon.com/bbc - I’m quite happy with my work.

I have one more assignment and one more exam left before I finish Uni for the year, the exam is on the 28th of April and the assignment needs to be in by the 2nd of June. My final assignment is for Audio Processing; I have to create an original piece of music and then write a report on the process, pretty much the same thing as last time - apart from this time we’re using Reason instead of Cubase.

I’ve taken this weekend off from working; I know that this isn’t a good plan but I feel as though I deserve it. Next week I’ll be working on Reason and the technical report. If I have some spare time I might even pop around once again, write a post and give you an update.

Chris Leydon.

What a busy week I’ve had, a busier one still is about to happen.

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

Right, that’s it, no more time off for me. New resolution, keep up the blog; after all I have paid for the damn thing, so I may as well use it.

Some work has indeed been done around here, there is a new blog theme, courtesy of wpdesigner.com - I may be a good designer, but programming a WordPress theme is one thing that I can’t do; not yet anyway.

The main page of CHRISLEYDON.COM is also due for some freshening up soon, but that I shall do myself. In the meantime I am solemnly swearing to keep this blog updated, regularly.

Those of you who had read my previous blog over at http://chrisleydon-theblog.blogspot.com may recall that I’d started to post up film reviews after I’d seen a film for the first time. I’ve decided to start this habit up again, as can be seen by the review of “Bridge to Terabithia” below.

My University life is going swimmingly. I’ve now confirmed a place to live next year (which is always helpful), I’ve received my results for my first semester’s work (2-1s all around!) and I’m getting stuck in to all of the work in this busy semester.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh it really has been a long time since I was last year, in fact it’s a new year completely since my last post. I guess that this really shows commitment to posting.

So much has taken place in the last two months, so much in fact that I’m now going to take up precious minutes of your life telling you what’s been going on.

I’m now in my second semester at Staffs and the work is steadily increasing. I’ve had to hit “panic mode” several times this week, just so that I can get it all done in time.

You may remember that for my Audio Processing module I had to record a radio play and master it in Cubase. Well I’m very pleased to say that I have indeed finished this task and I’ve added it to this post for you to download. - UPDATE: WordPress is being a pain in the arse and won’t let me upload it, go figure…

The second term of the Film Tech module has proved most interesting. If you would care to think back a few months you might recall a little film I was working on called “A Crash Course In Polite Conversation”. That’s now over and done with and so it’s time to start work on a new project… Project Elements.

Project Elements comprises of two films, a documentary and a drama (based on the research that the documentary uncovers) both based on the key elements of our modern society. Find out more information at www.project-elements.com

There is more that I need to talk about but I need to organise train times for tomorrow and write an essay.

Chris Leydon.

Over the past few days I’ve started to feel regretful as I have been neglecting my blog for the past few weeks. However as we start to enter a new month and come towards the end of this year, I feel that it is pretty apt that I rekindle the old fire once again.

As you might have seen  in my previous post, I’ve been focusing a lot more on my studies, which is a good thing, but it shouldn’t dominate the rest of my life. With only less than two weeks left at Uni, my first term here is drawing to an end. Nevertheless the work still has to be done. By Friday afternoon I need to have a finished script, production script and a proposal. This shouldn’t be too hard, but it will be challenging.

I’ve started to dabble in Podcast imaging once again. This is a service that is offered by myself, where people pay me to create jingles, IDs, stingers etc for their show. The most recent show I’ve “imaged” for is the Chris Edwards Podcast. I’m going to put a link to a sound montage at the bottom of this post.

If you’d like me to create some idents for your show please drop me an email and I’ll get back to you.

It’s getting late now and I’m feeling rather tired so I’m heading to bed.

Chris Leydon.

God I’m happy, for today marks the end of torture that was the creation of my 3 minute film for Film Production Technology.

It’s been 12 weeks in the making and now it’s finally done, finished, finito; and trust me, it’s a good feeling to have. All of the ups and downs that I’ve had over the past few months working on this project can finally be laid to rest.

So without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present, for your pleasure, “A Crash Course In Polite Conversation”. The video is a short film highlighting the effect of modern technology on human interaction.

I’d love to know what you think of it,

Chris Leydon.

A Crash Course In Polite Conversation