Wednesday 21st September 2005

I’ve got a hot new tip for anyone who always seems to struggle to get enough done during the day. I've discovered that if you wake up at 5.30am and work solidly until 8pm without so much as a proper meal your output can be sensational.

If I was in charge of the World this would be my new rule, just to see how productive it’s possible for my lazy subjects to be. Has this ever been attempted? I’d be like Ming The Merciless I would.

Well a healthy 15 hours sat in front of the computer is precisely what happened today and so I’ve made great progress with the film. It’s really starting to take shape now.

The infuriating thing is that I’ve discovered all the footage that I spend DAYS logging and putting into the computer is in the wrong format. The film is shot in widescreen and the footage I've incorrectly put into the compuiter has been transfered in standard 4:3 (not widescreen for all of you not familiar with the interesting technical workings of television – are you all simple or something?).

At first, I flung my arms in the air and screamed at my stupidity, but I’m now looking at it more rationally. It’s not such a bad thing. The standard format all my footage is in at the moment is far easier for the computer to process, meaning I can piece the film together far quicker without having to wait for the computer to catch it’s breath.

This means I can put a complete version of the film together, make changes as I go along until happy, and then – with this rubbish non-widescreen version burnt onto a DVD – I can start again by collecting only the footage I know I’m going to use from the tapes in the proper widescreen format and piece it together quite quickly knowing accurately what goes where. Does that make any sense?

If you’re a fan of digital video, this is the best Blog in the World.

I hope loads of amateur film buffs don’t read only this one entry by pure chance and think ‘it’s someone just like me! With a daily on-line diary where perhaps a community of people just like me with flourish…’ and then visit for the next few days and realise it’s largely nonsense with virtually no discussion of digital video on any level, ever.

So Kate Moss, eh? This is a news story that refuses to go away for two reasons;
1. Nothing’s happening politically except for boring stuff like Iraq and the now irreversible onset of global warming and therefore the end of the world – neither of which are of any interest to anybody who watches ITV. We've not discussed ITV yet have we? We shall very soon.
2. Kate Moss goes out with Pete Docherty who used to be in The Libertines and therefore the story has extra showbiz kudos.

Other than that, it’s a complete non-event. The headline ‘Model Takes Cocaine’ is hardly going to shift any newspapers, but that’s all the story is. The inkies have taken to calling her Cocaine Kate now, which is just a rubbish playground insult.

Except the cocaine bit, I can’t remember chastising any of my fellow pupils for their hopeless addicting to cocaine when I was seven (but that’s probably because I went to a good school – God knows what seven year olds get up to these days… Ask the Daily Mail, they’ll know. All Labour’s fault too probably. Stupid Daily Mail, how I loathe thee…)

But still, it’s the same as poking her with a stick and calling her Smelly Kate. Of course she takes cocaine! She’s an international supermodel with a party lifestyle! She’s been taking cocaine since she was 17! Every day! Have you only just noticed?!

The best advice for Cocaine Kate, for CK as I now call her, came from a member of the Great British Public, stopped on the street by a news crew and asked to give her opinion on CK’s hopeless life.

“Well,� said the middle-aged, non-cocaine taking woman on her way to Argos “I think she should go to a rehab centre, and then just get back to modelling.�

Brilliant advice. Go to rehab, and then straight back to the clean-living world of international modelling.

If she’d said “Well, I think she should go to rehab, and then get a job in a greenhouse at the Eden Project in Cornwall….� That would have made sense. A change of lifestyle, a fresh start. But back to modelling?

It’s transpired today that several of the companies who CK has large contracts with are now dropping her. I do feel quite sorry for her if that’s the case, and I never feel any sympathy for any celebrity in crisis, because they’re not dropping her because she takes cocaine, they WANT her to take cocaine – keeps her trim. They’re also not dropping her because of all the adverse publicity – that’s just the same as positive publicity – it makes CK an even more recognisable brand. No, they’re dropping her because rubbish tabloid journalists are ringing them up and asking if they’re going to drop her and they can’t really say ‘Are you mad? Show me a model who’s not a drug addict’ because that would then get their company in trouble in these PC times.

So poor KC must be sat there thinking (or probably taking incessantly because of all the cocaine) that an enormous injustice has been dished out here and it has.

Still, it’ll improve sales of her autobiography as soon as she gets around to having someone write it for her so it’s not all bad.

Added to that, all she has to worry about is drug addiction and a definitely suicidal loser boyfriend, not spending ten days uploading digital video onto a computer in the wrong format. Then she’d know how cruel life can really be.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit