Don't park there!

I finally got my revenge on all those bastards who park or leave their cars in the parking bays/areas we have paid for and cordened off for filming purposes.

It is the bain of my life when I have paid for a road closed, or 10 parking bays to find that some bastard the night before has dumped their car and buggered off for the day.

Today, down by the docks in the beautiful Trinity Buoy Wharf; the site manager had a toy (which I wish I had in my kit! lol) which solved the problem of the car parked in our area. He just fork-lift trucked it out of the way.

Take that errant parker! When I say don't park there, then DON'T PARK THERE! lol

Low Loading

Had a great day the other day on the front of a low loader, which we got in for some driving scenes.

Had to work a route out where the truck could drive in a perpetual loop so the actors could say there dialogue over and over, and the camera could be moved to catch a different point of view without losing continuity in the background. Needless to say, I now know the roads of Hemel Hempstead rather well now lol

Loads of fun! :)

Liquid Mars and Rainbow Clouds

A (fairly) nice and straight forward week so far. One of the joys of being in the same location for so long is that I dont have to worry about getting the trucks in and out on a morning and evening, so can just have a more caretaker role, which involves sitting and watching, with occasional shouting bursts lol, like the poor grip who just chucked an apple core outside right in front of me. I pointed him towards the bin ;)

When does Mars act like a liquid? Although liquids freeze and evaporate quickly into the thin atmosphere of Mars, persistent winds may make large sand dunes appear to flow and even drip like a liquid. Visible on the above image right are two flat top mesas in southern Mars, where the season is changing from Spring to Summer. A light dome topped hill is also visible on the far left of the image. As winds blow from right to left, flowing sand on and around the hills leaves picturesque streaks. The dark arc-shaped droplets of fine sand are called barchans, and are the interplanetary cousins of similar Earth-based sand forms. Barchans can move intact downwind and can even appear to pass through each other. Over the past few weeks, winds on southern Mars have been kicking up dust and are being watched to see if they escalate into another of Mars' famous planet-scale sand storms.


Why would clouds appear to be different colors? The reason here is that ice crystals in distant cirrus clouds are acting like little floating prisms. Sometimes known as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc lies parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds are present. Furthermore, the numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are quite unusual to see. This circumhorizon display was photographed through a polarized lens above Dublin, Ohio last week.

Huff Houses

We just spent 3 days filming in a Huff House. These are beautiful houses that are shipped over from Germany and constructed in just 3 weeks.

It was a beautiful place and a pleasure to film in. The perfect place for James Callis to be a flash git rich business man in lol.

There has been some quality acting going on with James, Tim Spall, and Rhona Mitra all bouncing brilliantly off each other. Ad libs and all sorts going on :)

My bloody unit is getting bigger and bigger, with 3 trucks all over 40 feet, plus 5 others over 30 feet. I managed to get them all in an Premier Inn car park. Got a few locations in central London coming up. Not looking forward to parking this lot in Golders Green and Elephant & Castle.

But end of first week and all is good. Sleep in tomorrow!

City scapes

I spent last Friday working in London, doing locations for a photoshoot for National Express. Fantastically for me, they wanted me to find the prime locations to take photos of Canary Wharf and The Gherkin (30 St Marys Axe) in London. As I love skyscrappers it was a fantastic chance to visit some of the most impressive buildings in London, none of which I had visited before.

London really does have some cool buildings. One of these days I will get to visit New York or some of the other cities in the world.

Skyscrappers rock! lol

Modern working

One of the locations I have to find for the BBC Learning Zone programme is an ultra modern environment that one of the modern readings of the classic poems can be done in.


To that end I have been scouting around Leeds and come across Bridgewater Place, Leeds tallest (currently) building. A very new building, it was only occupied by its tenants in 2007.It is a very modern building with all sorts of futuristic touches about it. Within it live GHB Hair, Eversheds Lawyers, and Ernst & Young accountants, all of whom agreed to let me come in and photograph their places to maybe film there.

Visiting such a building and work places really shows how far the corporate environment has moved on since I worked in various 1970's concrete buildings working for the Government. The de



These offices are state-of-the-art, with modern thinking on open plan work spaces, and hot-desking driving the design of lay-out. Talking to people in Ernst & Young and Eversheds, all of who were very reluctant to start working open-plan and hot desking, they absolutely love it; and things like teamwork and communication have all improved.


Meeting rooms are mini works of art, and architectural flourishes are everywhere. All in all they all seem very cool places to work. So a lot of thought has gone into the design of these places, and it seems to be working. Either that, or its a lot of arty-farty nonsense! lol

1st: GHD Hair, 2nd: Ernst & Young, 3rd: Eversheds

And we're off again

I have just landed my first feature film as Location Manager!

It is another Bollywood film, and came around from my involvement with the previous one Showman. The Line Producer Umran is the brother of someone I worked with on Showman, called Danni who was the bodyguard of Govinda when he was on the shoot.

They originally wanted Sue Bellarby, the Location Manager of Showman who was my boss, but she is already doing 2 Bollywoods back to back in Newcastle lol. So Danni said, what about Martin?

Its a small production with only 15 crew, so they are going to give me my first shot at the big job lol

I has some rather interesting stuff for me to find, including a hospital with operating theatre, a courtroom, a prison cell and an airport! lol. Another day at the park.

Oh, and thats by 15th October! When start shooting then.

Wish me luck. I'll be firing on all cylinders for the next few weeks!

Location Management

I find myself moving towards working in Location Management. I got the heads-up about a course being run at the National Film & Television School on the subject, so applied to go and attended.

The course was run by an industry professional, in this case a 29 year old woman called Sarah. Who at her tender years, runs her own production company making music videos and was the location manager of amongst others - Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, and Guy Richie and Shane Meadows next films - Rocknrolla and Sams Town.

I learnt some excellent things, and met (hopefully) some more useful contacts based in London. Gonna have to be prepared to travel, I reckon.

But I feel enthused again. There's some stuff out there! I've just got to go find it!

Soon...............................