Where have I beeeen??

Dear readers,

Only my sincere apologies will do for the length of time I have been away from my keys. Since graduating (2:1, thank you very much) I've managed to get myself unemployed, relocated, employed, employed again, and again, and er, again. M and I are currently situated in Bristol, in a terraced two bedroom house with a garden and our little addition, Bobbi. Don't panic, he's our gorgeous, hilarious kitten.

I'm working, are your ready for this? Three/four days a week in Culpeper - a herbalist/aromatherapist shop in Bath selling oils and soaps and oh-so-natural products. I'm learning a lot and generally having a lovely time with three lovely ladies I work with.

In the meantime, I'm also still working at the Walrus and Carpenter, although it's still only one night a week and I'm not sure I want to keep it yet.

I'm modelling again for my nice old ladies, last week they had me dressed in pink red and orange against a red and pink background - groovy.

Oh, and I started a new job in Colston Hall last night, waitressing and bar work. It's lovely, hard work but so entirely different from the Walrus it made a pretty nice chance. Better pay too. Not that I don't like the Walrus, but this will be more convenient being in Bristol, and my old school friend has moved to Brizzle and is working there too!

Er... latest on our film stuff.

I filmed my cousin's half Muslim wedding last week - edit's going pretty well, although the ceremony was a little disappointing what with a stroppy toddler banging her feet against the wooden floor, and everyone standing up ruining my shot. But still, learning through trial and error and all that. Next time I might be able to charge for it.

So! That kind of sums it all up, from now I can write about the smaller things rather than trying to keep you all up to date all the time.

Until the next time,

Kat x

Ok. So where was I? There's been a huge gap in my posts I know, I'm sorry.
Recent news: I am about to hand in my final project! Exciting/Terrifying not sure which yet. I am also house hunting, currently unsuccessfully but we'll get there.

I feel this has all been a tiny bit too easy, I've not been having sleepless nights, hair falling out or anything.. I have contracted a strange stomach ache that seems to appear randomly and only go away when I go to bed, it lasted about 9 hours yesterday. Strange.

Aside from that everything seems to be going well, just got to tidy up the loose ends I suppose.

We have a new commission - Alan Ogg the Egg Man wants to meet up with us to discuss a promotional DVD of his egg incubators to send to schools in September, sweet work!

This was just a quicky, will post more next time. Must run - got to finish my degree don't you know!

Meh.

I've been putting off adding a new post. There doesn't seem a lot to report on. I'm nearly there - 27 days and I will have handed in my final deadline. I'm surprisingly calm, everything seems very under control. I'm onto my last drafts of my fiction and script, I've got one more critical commentary to do and just finish the films and tidy all the paper work up. Not that much really, to do in a month. Then it's my birthday and I'll be 22 and done.

M is freaking out - he's in the studios nearly every night at the moment polishing his songs and it's painful to watch him panic yet again. I think I'm more excited about him getting out than me - it's been such a struggle for him to get motivated enough to do some work, he just doesn't have any fire for it anymore. If he ever did. It would just be lovely for him not to come home stressed out and complaining about deadlines and tutors and beating himself up about not doing enough work all the time. But he doesn't do enough, and he knows it. It's just hard to not nag and look like the baddy.

We set up the final time lapse for Iain Haysom this afternoon and took him into the music labs to do the voice over for the films. It went incredibly smoothly - the man is a natural! He also loved the films and I think once the final polish goes on with the v/o and all the little extras we're going to add in it will all look beautiful and I'll be proud to hand a selection of the films in to Nic.

Bristol Festival of Ideas man invited M and I to the dinner after the prize giving next week - free supper! Always up for extra perks of a job! Which is the other film? Oh yes, the hateful teahouse film which really isn't so hateful except that its taken SO long to finish. M is writing the music for his 'writing for tv' module so that should be done soon.... So nearly there!

Then what?

New Plan, Plan B, C.. D.. where are we now?

New plan. There's no bloody way we're moving to London without jobs. That won't work. However, in theory we could stay in SW at the jobs we have part time, pick up a few more and continue with MiKat Productions until this shitty recession starts moving and there might perchance be some more 'career' jobs going. No one needs runners at the moment apparently. So, I've decided to chill-the-crap out and stop worrying. Everyone else I know is going off travelling, picking up other courses or when asked replies a simple 'ugh, dunno really.' Why should I be the only one having sleepless nights over a potential lost career move?

I shall remain happy and poor and maybe by being happy and poor eventually someone will realise I'm a nice hardworking person who isn't kicking up a fuss and want me to work for them. Maybe. Meanwhile, M and I have been half heartedly looking at houses in Bristol. We can get a 2 bedroom HOUSE for less than we're paying for the flat. Mental. Plus we could really do with an extra room if we're going to seriously look at freelancing to live on.

Some very nice news, over the Easter weekend M went home and spoke with his Dad, whom M is carrying out his legacy of sound editing. David told him that as he is planning to retire, he would happily send HALF his work to M in Bristol. For monies. David has been working all his life as a sound editor and has a heap of clients, recently his latest work includes Stevie Wonder's live DVD, The Killers and Girls Aloud. (Who can't sing, but we knew that.) Good eh?

Oh, and I have an 'informal interview' tomorrow with Suited and Booted for some runner work over 10 days next month. They're a community based production company in Bath currently working on an NHS Stop Smoking campaign. Not quite sure how I would fit it in with all this uni work but let's worry about that if it comes to it.


Things are picking up, we did the micro-biology film with Iain Haysom last week, nice and smoothly it went too. Will log hopefully tomorrow if I can get into the lab... got a commission with a guy to film the 'Bristol Festival of Ideas' Literary Prize (http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/?p=276) Me and a camera plus a free supper! Nice.

All is well at the moment, only a few weeks left to cram all my uni work in, and horrifically it feels suspiciously like I've burnt myself out... 3 years of hard slogging and my final push just won't come. I know I need to get down and write, I know I could do really well, but things just keep cropping up and procrastination has turned into denial. It's horrible, I need to escape. Maybe I'll just take my laptop somewhere where I can't do anything but write, no food, no tea, no filmaking, no editing, no nothing.

Job Hunting part 2 (This could turn into a saga)

I didn't get the job at BDA either. A 'recruitment freeze' she called it. Joan Dunlop's email sounded genuinely sorry, they're not hiring any more runners at the moment.
On the plus side (there always has to be a plus side) this means I won't be packing up M and the gorgeous flat and moving to London right this second. I can breathe a little and concentrate on uni while still applying for jobs left right and centre. It also means I might be able to spend the summer doing random jobs as well as maybe some more MiKat stuff and going for runner jobs on small shoots, usually I can't go for them 'cos I don't have enough time. Maybe maybe.

Filled in an application for Talk Back Thames today, emailed a distant relative who works for BBD London and last week phoned a ga-zillion production companies offering myself to them. Fun. Still, no responses yet, but I will phone them next week and be all, like, 'didja get my cv like?' -sigh-

Started my Swap My Mum script today for Writing for TV.. it's taken me ages to get started because you're made to do treatment after treatment, scene-by-scenes, step-by-steps until you're so sick of your own idea that you can't even be arsed to write the damn thing. So I decided that as I will be handing in all the garb, I'd start the script where my scene-by-scene leaves off, make it a bit more interesting. So I'm starting half way through and just pretending that the first half is pure genuis. That the characters are already well formed and likable. That the plot as worked up til now and audiences are literally gasping for the next installment of Swap My Mum. Meanwhile it's actually coming out a little bit er.. tame. I'm hoping it gets better.

Job Hunting

SO. I didn't get the job with the BBC. They sent an email saying like, no thanks but like, thanks anyway, yeah?

So I'm back on the hunt and I've phoned loads of companies in London and Bristol 'cos now I'm really confused with where I want to end up and actually I think I'd be happy anywhere as long as I'm earning over £10k and I'm with M and I'm safe.

Meanwhile I'm going to attempt to put my stuff up somewhere without it getting nicked. Ie my scripts from years gone by, my showreel etc. I'll see if I can do it on here.

Meanwhile if anyone hears of a nice Runner job in Bath, Bristol, Brighton or London LET ME KNOW.

Chars.

The BBC interview

So yesterday was my BBC interview at White City in London. Had to be there for 1pm, and decided to go back to Mum's on Tuesday night so I wouldn't be doing crazy expensive travelling like I did last week, and she could come to London and go shopping while I went in.

I was so nervous I thought I was going to sick up on my shoes.

Walking into the White City main building with 'British Broadcasting Corporation' in 10 ft letter on the building was pretty awesome. The inside is exactly as you would expect it to be, all glass and shiny floors and colourful chairs. The receptionist man wasn't very friendly but everyone else was. There were 8 of us being interviewed, over 3000 people applied and they were interviewing 140 to get about 40 jobs. So we were pretty good getting to this stage, they said.

The other potentials were all kind of like me, we all got on really well and I wasn't over or under dressed - I needn't have panicked so much.
We were taken into a small conference room with 4 assessors in each corner just sort of.. watching us. We were given a task we had to read through alone for 15 minutes and then discuss for 45. The task was to decide out of a load of holidays which 3 we would choose and which order for a new BBC 3 travel program taking into consideration economic climate, price and how it would look for a pilot. It was really fun and we did the task in the time without anyone getting upset or anything.
Then we had to go in for an interview, two on one, where they just asked some really simple questions like 'why do you want to be a runner?' and 'what challenges would you face and how would you deal with them?' stuff like that. I think it went ok, I just tried to make sure they knew how enthusiastic I was and that I would start as soon as I could and could do everything they wanted me to. That kind of crap.
Lastly was a written excersise where we had to come up with a TV programme and decide what time it would be on, audience and channel etc. Well, as I'm doing a Writing for TV module I kind of already had that covered and wrote down my 'Swap My Mum' comedy drama idea. Was that cheating? I guess not.. but I was uber prepared for it without meaning to be.

All in all, I think I did pretty well, I can't have done any more than I did so even if I don't get it at least I got an interview and had a crack at it.

Fingers crossed.