marginally inspiring quote of the day by
Perfectionism: A salutary tale
He wrote a textbook for Cambridge University Press and discovered after publication that it contained an error. His editors didn’t mind — they said the error was small, the book was great and selling well, and that correction slips could be sent out. But Petryshyn minded very much. He minded that his mistake would be enshrined in print and feared that it would turn him into a laughing stock in an academic community that prizes precision above all else.
He descended into paranoia and depression, a spiral whose whirling ended on May 6, 1996, when Petryshyn clubbed his wife to death with a claw hammer.
Petryshyn was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity, and kept in hospital. It was, said his long-standing colleague, the noted mathematician Felix Browder, “as if his perfectionism drove him to insanity”.
Ephemera
'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then you don't understand the situation.'
David York
Although it doesn't feel like a very specific diagnosis (bit up, bit down, bit up...) it has made my brain's shenanigans a bit clearer.
It's very frustrating being on a rollercoaster where the good days can be amazing but they never last long enough to see something through. Then the circuitbreaker goes and it's back into the tunnel again.
If you've made it this far into the website then I can drop the selfpromotion. I have some frustrating brain issues which are always getting in the way of videomaking. The most recent diagnosis is bipolar II.
Plane Stupid outside Newham Town Hall. The Council supports the extension of the runway at City Airport, despite the hell of increased air traffic for East London residents.
(I’m on the left, practicing for the fallback career).
Favourite TV Series
Classic political comedy. I got obsessed enough to create some mediocre fan art for the immortal Malcolm Tucker. For some reason the feature film 'In The Loop' didn't reach the same heights of genius. Loads of great lines, but it lacked an emotional dimension. Starting to sound like a prat.
Beautifully scripted series about a goldrush town, wooden sheriff aside. Particularly memorable anaesthetic-less gall stone removal scene.
What more can be said? The most brilliant drama series EVER made. Got a bit of a crush on Snoop.
Peepshow for women: bitterly depressing comedy. Cancelling the third series was a crime: BBC Three should be shot.
Guilty viewing: cheesy, sound-in-space, mildly fascist. Starbuck is worryingly appealing.
More cheese, and a ridiculously well-behaved serial killer, but he's just so watchable.
Getting On
Why weren't more episodes of this Peter Capaldi hospital comedy produced. The wobbly verite camera technique is looking a little tired (modern image stabilisation can cope quite easily even with cerebral palsied camera operators).
The Maria Bamford Show (video link)
Brilliant use of a real-life breakdown to make a wonderful web series. Classic 'We're Not Afraid of the Dark' musical number sung from under the duvet.
Not wildly funny, but sweet characters.
Seinfeld
Curb your enthusiasm
Spaced
The Mighty Boosh
Blackadder
Faulty Towers
Yes Minister
Peepshow
30 Rock
The Office
South Park
Flight of the Conchords
Favourite Films
My Dad let us watch this at a young age and it burnt itself into my memory. Got a bit obsessed with it as a teenager and had a tradition for years of playing the opening credit sequence and the final scene at the start & end of every school holiday.
I found out later that the brilliant, disjointed end scene was a budgeting screw up: the production ran out of money and Peckinpah was in despair over losing his final spectacular battle scene.
The production crew cobbled together some burning tires and an abandoned train, and created something far more interesting than just another sfx spectacle.
Cross Of Iron opening title sequence
The Green Ray
The Piano Teacher
Uzak
Freddy Got Fingered
Why does no-one I know realise the comic
awesomeness and deeply moving young man's
journey in this film?
Winter Light
Now that's a bodycount.
Daisies
A Winter's Tale
Take that, patriarchy. We used to eat in the
actual cafe, although the crack in the pavement
has gone.
Anatomy Of A Murder
The Lady Vanishes
A Matter Of Life And Death
The Ploughman's Lunch
Fuck me, what an ending.
Me and my brothers were left speechless at this
ending. Dad quickly reassured us the British
would have wiped the Turks out in that scene.
Don't think that was quite the point.
There's Something About Mary
Klaustastic
Solaris
The Draughtsman's Contract
Culloden
The Conformist
Got this out of the library because I didn't know
Ingrid Bergman had directed a film. Swedish is
so the best language for miserable characters.
Once wrote a really embarrassing gushy letter to
Ingmar, hope he never received it.
Scenes From A Marriage
Ran
[Spoiler alert] Don't really like Fellini films for
some reason (soggy?) but this is amazing. The
best switch-around ending ever, would have
been so easy to leave it tragically on the cliff
edge, rather than Cabiria rejoining the party &
smiling.
Bloody Sunday
The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner
October
Pather Panchali
Aliens
There's no nonembarrassing way to say this:
watching the rabbit pinned down by the cat
scene, aged 8, was my first sexual experience.
It's taken years of lapo-feline therapy to regain
an interest in humans.
Easy Rider
Homicide
The Third Man
Terminator
Thanks for the years of nightmares. I actually
sleep-attacked a friend during one of them.
The Abyss
Down By Law
Opening night
Die Hard
Rambo
How genius was this film? Deeply critical of
Spanish catholic oppression but Franco's
censors didn't realise until it was out in the world
winning festival awards.
The Night Porter
Citizen Kane
The only way to see this pre-torrent was by
booking a screening at the BFI archive. Went
into the screening room and they dumped a pile
of film cans in front of the steenbeck. Old school.
Winstanley
It Happened Here
Ryan Gosling is literally god.
Cria Cuevros
Boudu Saved From Drowning
La Grande Illusion
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Borat
Withnail And I
Audition
Battle In Heaven
Adaptation
Saw this brilliance on a stood-up nondate. Felt
great afterwards. PS avoid the excuse, 'I forgot'.
Your Aunt died; your legs were crushed in an
accident; humour me.
Consumer-zombies. Never equalled.
'I like to start the month with a postman'.
Came out spinning. This film gave me so much
cred since I was the only person at school who
saw it before it was banned.
Jaws
When The Cat's Away
MP have made it so hard to take any period
film seriously.
Full Metal Jacket
A Short Film About Love
A Short Film About Killing
Got a little bit obsessed with this film in not a
healthy way.
La cage aux Folles
Man with a Movie Camera
Clockwork Orange (1st half)
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Thin Blue Line
First film to really blow me away. Showed me
there are other human beings out there outside
of my uncomfortable head.
Once Were Warriors
Stand By Me
State of Siege
Knife in the Water
Blair Witch Project
Half Nelson
Assault on Precinct 13 (original)
Now that's a shoot-out.
M
La Signe du Lion
Stalker (the ending)
Ordinary People
'Shoot straight,you bastards'.
Macbeth (Polanski version)
The Wild Bunch
What the hell is wrong with that country? Despite
best effort to hold it together had to have a cry
when the woman returns to her house and looks
for her furniture.
The Wicker Man (director's cut)
So much better than the original release.
Lighting still crap.
Watched this about 300 times as a teenager.
The Killer
The Vanishing (original)
Le Boucher
Wish more people would stop trying to make
video look like film. It's electronic and shit, work
with it.
Pixote
Eraserhead
Richard Attenborough gives a magnificent ham-
performance.
84 Charlie Mopic (in memory mainly)
Mindwalk
Midnight Cowboy
Kranti (original)
Hindi anticolonial musical. Check out the Gay
Oppressor: a frilly shirted Englishman singing
with his boot literally on a suffering Indian.
Watched the whole thing not realising there was
an English subtitle option on the bootleg DVD..
I'm sure the dialogue was awesome.
Truly Madly Deeply
Rocky
The Long Good Friday
Very upsetting irradiated infant anal bleeding
scene. Let's really try not to have a nuclear war
this century.
Irreversible
La Collectioneuse
Saturday Night Fever
How to scare the shit out of the 80's generation.
Interesting to compare to the big budget US
equivalent, The Day After. Their snazzy effects
have dated much more than our cheapo
masterpience.
A Fish Called Wanda
Bad Day at Black Rock
Tailspin
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Ghosts
Elvira Madigan
The Silence
King of Comedy
Blew me away as a child. Church services were
never the same again.
I wanted to be a terrorist after watching this.
After the rehearsal
Raging Bull
Eagle vs Shark
'You not gonna shit right for a week!' Genius film
hiding behind a bland title.
Trading Places
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Iraq For Sale
American Werewolf in london
Don't watch this, just buy your daily food &
pretend it hasn't gone through a horrendous
industial processing system.
4 months 3 weeks & 2 days
The Ceremony
Lars And The Real Girl
Two Hours from London
Greedy corporate royalty fuckers buried this
brilliant student film for 30 years over music
copyright issues. Welcome to Pirate karma.
Only film I've seen that shifts effortlessly
from documentary to studio style and back
again.
Grave of the Fireflies
God I hate our gender.
Local Hero
Superbad
The Class
Sicko
Really hard to track down this film. Ended up
watching a shitty VHS copy in the BFI archive.
Best birthday present ever from my best friend.
Not quite brilliant enough to qualify for the list but
something containing Paddy Considine has to be
on here.
Actress goes through the nightmare postwar
Polish prison system. Imagine living in a country
that detains and interrogates people indefinitely
without revealing what evidence they...oh wait.
Nanoblog
(Not in any way consistent or regular).
August
. Hunt the pixel: there's a green pixel somewhere on the site that will hyperlink you to a phemetastic realm (actually just my personal script stuff).
. Just noticed youtube is gearing up for 3D. Like HD it's taken a long time to become practical, but consumer-level 3D video production is definitely the next big thing. If they can combine it with this cool multicamera immersive gadget then we might be on the cusp of a whole new way of looking at real.. oh wait that's VR, wasn't that due on the shelves 20 years ago?
. Getting used to my 1st HD solid state memory camcorder. It's bliss to be finally free of sluggish tape and creaky cassette motors. The camcorder is Inconspicuously consumery in documentary settings (unlike my old PD-150), has fantastic image stabilisation (practically steadicam if you're careful) and it's one of the 1st mini-camcorders to have 1080p.
The main drawback is the lack of a viewfinder (I made the mistake of thinking I could do without it). I'm not an enormous fan of 1080p after all, the result is just pseudo-filmy blurred motion instead of the electric clarity of interlaced video.
Why do we always try and recreate the image style of the past. One day people will probably spend millions trying to recreate the romance of the web 1.0 compressed video look.
. I really really need instrumental soundtracks to get the audience through the tedious bits on these videos.
. Mobile video is the greatest observational tool ever. I recently needed some shots inside a museum: the grumpy guard knew I was filming, but had no power to stop someone from wandering around with their mobile phone out. Plus those great close-ups you can get while listening to your phone right next to someone.
. Do many videomakers suffer from hititis? (an obsession with (lack of) youtube hits).
contact jamie@pheme.org
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblion of little minds.
Company
-
(Campaign Against
Criminalising Communities)
Various organisations,
including The Tricycle
Theatre, The Roundhouse,
Dawson Films Ltd,
Avid Technology Inc
& BBCi
Tellex Monitors
(Press Association)
Various agencies, including
City People & Pathfinders
Various production
companies in Vancouver
& Copenhagen
Dansk Bladdistribution A/S
(Copenhagen)
The Centre for Policy
Studies Ltd
First Telecom Plc
Job Title
Freelance video
producer
Freelance video tutor
Administration Officer
Administrative Assistant
Researcher
Freelance video tutor /cameraperson / editor
News Monitor
Administrative Asst
Production Assistant /
Assistant Director
Retail Order Processor
Office Assistant
Customer Service
Operator
Elizabeth Lynch
Education Director
The Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road
London NW6 7JR
Paleo-CV: prevideo employment history:
(Integrity disclaimer: pasted from an old CV so possibly not quite 99% accurate).
Duties
Production of video clips & short films.
Assisting with new educational video
business start-up, researching funding
opportunities, preparing proposals &
budgets, marketing educational
programmes to educational /
community organisations.
Reception, switchboard, assisting the
Head of Finance, staff scheduling,
organising trustee meetings, supervising the mail-room.
Reception, member services, campaign
research, video coverage of conference.
Media research, legislation monitoring,
speech at a human rights conference in
Berlin.
Running film workshops with youth
groups, mentoring first-time filmmakers
making promotional films, short dramas /
docs.
Summarising TV & radio current affairs
programmes.
Various assignments, including archiving,
data entry & mail-room duties.
Administration, recruitment, set
management & cast supervision.
Logging & preparation of retail
magazine order returns.
Reception, correspondence, filing, petty
cash, purchase orders & arranging
forum meetings.
Handling customer accounts &
enquiries.
Date
Nov - present
July - Nov 2005
Jan - June 2005
Sept - Dec 2004
(Part time)
(Part time)
2000 - 2004
1999 - 2000
(Part time)
1997 - 1998
(Part time)
1995 - 1996
(Part time)
References:
(not current)
Gillian Christie
(not current)
Creative Education Officer
Tricycle Theatre & Cinema
269 Kilburn High Road
London NW6 7JR
Pheme is the Goddess of communication, rumour and reputation. ie the internet. In Greek mythology she was said to live in a house with 1000 windows so she could hear all that was being said in the world.