From September last year until January this year, I spent nearly 5 months editing then on-lining the 100K Drop.
A daytime game show for Channel 4.
When this finished I had a 6 week hiatus but instead of maudlin, I wrote a to-do list for the year and spent the next few weeks planing to complete everything on it. This is how my year has gone so far.
Apply for a Job at the Farm Manchester
The industry papers and social media reported that The Farm, the biggest post production company in the country, were planning to open a Manchester branch. I set about applying for a job that didn’t yet exist, Senior Online editor. I met with a CV doctor who made sense of my career on paper and tapped up my old acquaintance Aidan Farrell for an “In” for me to send it too alongside my covering letter. In July I met with the managers of The Farm Manchester to be interviewed for the position.
This Friday outside my edit suite at Dock10, leaving drinks were held for the lucky candidate. It wasn’t me 🙁
Two Cups of Tea
My good friend and mercurial talent Chris Heath had created the successful podcast Two Cups of Tea where he interviews elderly people about their interesting lives. I wanted to go along and film him in action but before I could ask him, he asked me 🙂
We cut what we both though was a wonderful taster tape and with an infinite supply of elderly people who have lived interesting lives, we both thought it would be nailed on to be a daytime ratings smash.
It’s been touted to all the usual suspects but so far it remains un-commissioned 🙁
Spinning with Rainy
A friend of a friend runs a craft magazine and we connected to make a pilot about “Spinning” to pitch to the craft channel. It was made for zero money as a proof of concept and we were both very happy with the results. Rainy then pitched it to the craft channel.
They rejected it and took time out to comment on the editing which they described as “amateur” 🙁
Sailing
In 2017 at Netley, me and my daughter Lilly came 20th in the Miracle Dinghy National sailing championships. In an effort to improve, we decided to attend as many Open events as possible, winning the travelers trophy for the 2nd year running.
This year at Bala we came 21st 🙁
Delph
I am the Vice commodore of Delph Sailing club in Bolton.
In July I organised a Try Sailing event to attract new members. I promoted it heavily on Facebook and in the local area and the event was a sell-out.
In just over 3 hours, we took out nearly 70 people for a sail, a rate of 1 person every 3 minutes according to a club statistician. It felt like a tremendous success and we ran out of memberships forms such was the enthusiasm of our guests.
The only person to join was the father of an existing member 🙁
Trouble Brewing
2017 saw the inaugural Bolton Film Festival. Being local I submitted my film “James Brown, Nessie Hunter” in the North West Documentary category. It was rejected on copyright violations but the judges held it in such high regard that I was invited as a guest to the closing night.
Buoyed by this experience I set off to make a highly personal film about Bolton which would contain music specially recorded for the film in order to avoid the humiliation of a repeated copyright violation strike. 9 months of hard slog later, I submitted it.
It’s been rejected by the judging jury for the 2018 festival 🙁
#Pantsdown4equality – This is an addendum as it wasn’t on my list but..
My son Thomas, alongside thousands of others, requires a changing bed and a hoist to facilitate his changing needs.
I have become a vociferous campaigner for these facilities and when Sarah Brisdion persuaded the Bath Store on Oxford Street to host a day of campaigning I managed to blag some free train tickets from Martin Green so that I could get involved and film it.
Many campaigners didn’t like the tone of my film and refused to get behind and promote it. I am now a bit of a pariah on the campaigning scene 🙁
Post script – The 100K Drop
The viewers loved the 100K Drop and Channel 4 have commissioned a new series to be made 🙂
I’ve not been asked back to edit it 🙁
I am currently having second thought about doing my piano exam…