Save Our NHS


 
A drastic reform bill concerning the NHS was being pushed through parliament that a lot of the UK felt very strongly against. So we decided to put our heads together and come up with some way in which we could help stop this bill going through. The idea conceived by the smartest member of our group (well done Chris) was to create a different kind of on-line petition. Rather than simply collect thousands of signatures and hand them in to 10 Downing St, we wanted to empower people to get their own MP’s to speak on their behalf in parliament. If you write a letter to your MP, they have to act.

 

 
The idea was simple, sign up to the petition and we send every MP of every constituent individual petitions signed by their own constituents. The idea was a run away success with over 40,000 signatures covering every constituency of the UK. We introduced a little bit of a competitive edge by publicly ranking all the constituencies. We had people campaigning the site for us when they saw their area was in the top 10 rank. A little healthy competition never hurt anybody.
SaveOurNHS.org

 

Appetite for Distraction – The Book

Hurray! We made a book of some (well, quite a lot) of our photos from our road trips across the states. It’s a bit of a precursor to the documentary film we’re still editing so we’ve given it the same name.

 

 

If you like it, you can go see the whole thing on Blurb’s site, and if you *really* like it, you can buy it from them as well.

Roswell, New Mexico

O man, we totally visited Roswell, New Mexico. It was never one of those ‘I MUST GO THERE ONE DAY OR I WILL DIE WITH A SAD FACE’ kinda places, it just happened to be on the way between New York and California, so we popped in. And boy were we glad we did, it’s silly, and a bit serious/mental, and then silly again. Here’s some things:

 

First thing we did was Alien Zone, Areas 51 – a place with about 20 alien scenes that you’re encouraged to climb about and take silly photos.. SOLD.

 

Then we thought we should get the ‘real’ facts and checked out the International UFO Museum and Research Centre just up the road, it was closing for the night so we ran about and took photos instead of actually doing any reading or learning (we’re on holiday, why would we want to do a thing like that?).

 

And the next day we had to go and see what all the adverts we kept seeing around town for the Roswell Space Walk were all about, they boasted a Paisley-Horvak TVG9000 (no, me neither), how can you refuse? Luckily it was silly, quite silly.

 

We organised a tour with some random dude of the ACTUAL HANGER where an alien may or may not have had it’s bit’s cut out by sinister looking military types. We got to the car park next to the hanger and looked for a car with a large inflatable alien tied to roof (as arranged) but our tour was a no show, damn it, the truth is still out there.

 

Here’s many more photos of our time in Roswell:

AMARC Aircraft Boneyard

 

You like aircraft right? You like lots or aircraft right? Then you’ll LOVE the aircraft boneyard we visited in Tucson, Arizona. You can get a coach tour around this massive military facility (we shot the video above through the coach window) and hear everything there is to know about the 4,400 or so planes, helicopters and missiles they have parked up there (most of which are ready to have their protective white coats stripped of and start flying and shooting things again), or like us, you can ignore most of what’s being said and take lots of photos:

 

To get an idea of the size of the place, check it out from God’s eye view:

View Larger Map

 

If you’re planning on taking a visit, pre-book your tour with the PIMA Air & Space Museum.

Across America in 15 minutes

 

What does it look like to sit in the front of a car and drive across America in 15 minutes? A bit like this I guess.

 

This is a 3,920 mile road trip that takes in New York, New Jersey (via the Northlandz, world’s biggest model railway), Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia (Mark Cline, one of life’s winners), Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California (quick Disneyland stop ‘natch) and Nevada (they have guns there).

 

It all started with a surprise sound track on a mysterious CD found in the hire car we picked up in New York, without this I don’t think the Boob would have survived (yes the Boob did all 3,920 miles of driving, what a trooper):

 

 

We’ve got more videos to come from the trip, and photos… so many photos, I’m not sure the Internet is big enough, we might need a new one.

Skype on your TV

Skype asked us to do a little promo film for the snazzy new feature that allows you to video call people straight from your TV. We decided to have a bit of fun with the type of things people might do with a giant Skype screen sat in their living room. Using a 360 degree set we created 2 rooms from the opposite sides of the world. We changed the lights from one scene to the next and had our actors run around like mad changing outfits and dragging on props. It’s a bit abstract, and you can see the camera track and crew (look really close in the TV’s camera view) but that’s all intentional. If it’s not real, we didn’t want it to pretend to be anything other than what it was, a promo.

 


Spooky Shitters 2010

We’ve haunted the toilets at Poke again, we might have gone too dark this time. Apparently most of the girls have to use toilets on another floor… women eh?

 

 

This year we’ve experimented a bit and tried some new tricks, each of the 3 toilets we’ve haunted is possessed by the ghost of a different family member, the Nursery is haunted by ‘baby’ and in this one we’re using chromadepth 3D glasses with UV lit fluorescent paint to make the whole room appear to be in weird ass 3D, you really need to see it in the flesh. It’s a trick that’s pretty old hat in American haunts but we’d not seen it before over here (thanks to Dave for showing us that).
Voodoo dolly

 

Mother’s room uses projection mapping to make it appear that the door is haunted. Take a seat and watch as the door opens again and again to reveal some bad things happening just outside the door, and sometimes in the door itself.
Skelvin

 

And Father’s room, well Father isn’t a very nice man at all. Look out for a cameo role in this room played by the latex face mask we had made for our film All The Time in The World.
Stabbed wall

 

More photos here.