Monday, May 31, 2021

"Colouring in my world" - creating words AND pictures

"And I dream of Michelangelo when I'm lying in my bed, I see god upon the ceiling, I see angels overhead..." - Counting Crows

I've talked a lot on this creative work blog in the past about writing for the screen but a little while ago, I had the amazing opportunity in the day job to not only write but also direct, shoot and edit a story that would be produced by ITV and feature as part of their digital children's strand called "Signed Stories". This was a great chance and culmination in working on Signed Stories as an editor and animator for a good few years, so felt the right time to take on the challenge. Here's a short preview of the finished story I made called: "Colour in the World" which I was proud to have completed towards ITV SignPost's contribution for World Mental Health Day:

I was also lucky enough to be interviewed about the creation of this story for the offical Signed Stories blog at the time and here's how that went too:

There are a lot of stories on the Signed Stories app but one of them has a very special background. ‘Colour in the World’ is the first homegrown story to appear on the app and it was written by ITV SignPost’s own Chris Allan! Looking through the eyes of a child, the story explores the issue of mental health and the importance of talking about how we feel. It is a reassuring story that reinforces the importance of talking about our feelings and emotions. Here’s what Chris had to say about it.

● How would you describe what ‘Colour in the World’ is about?
Chris: ‘Colour in the World’ is a story that looks at a father who experiences bouts of depression, but finds solace in drawing pictures for his son. The entire narrative is told through the eyes of the son, presenting a child’s view of mental health. It’s a simple story and I kept it that way by using stick figures for the illustrations. However, I still wanted to be able to effectively put across an important message, for adults and children alike.

● What was your inspiration to write it?
Chris: It was originally written for World Mental Health Day in October of 2018, and the aim was to portray a child’s perspective on mental health, with the addition of British Sign Language and subtitles. After researching mental health issues, I knew the central message I wanted to convey was the idea of simply talking about your worries, rather than bottling them up. I hoped that the impact of the story’s progression would be a strong and emotional one: from the child narrator worrying about his father but seeing his father’s drawings from the beginning, progressing through to the father and child, and mother too, all drawing together by the end. If you look at the colours used, most of the story is in grey tones, but more and more colour is introduced as the father begins to open up and feel better about life.

‘Colour in the World’ explores mental health and looks at the importance of discussing it with children. What are your thoughts on that?
Chris: It’s definitely important for children to see mental health issues represented in their media, but it can be challenging to present such a sensitive topic. I decided to look at mental health through a child’s eyes, seeing someone else experiencing it, because I thought that would be a good way for a child to understand the way others might feel. It’s a topic that does need discussing.

You were able to produce ‘Colour in the World’ entirely in-house. Can you give a brief description of what that was like?
Chris: I count it as a personal achievement to have been able to have creative control of this short form project from start to finish, from the writing, to the filming and animation and editing, and overall production of it. I was also lucky enough to be able to call on other creative colleagues to lend their talents to the story, from setting up camera to providing the voices and sign language! I filmed the drawing scenes in a small meeting room so the lighting could be controlled and the addition of sign language was filmed in our studio green screen. Some parts were trickier to work out - when three hands appear on screen, it took a lot of planning and rehearsing to make sure that it would work well on camera. The story wasn’t made specifically for the Signed Stories app - but I was really proud when the department director said that he’d like it to be added to the app.

● Colour in the World was nominated for an award. Can you tell us about that?
Chris: Earlier this year I entered the production into the Royal Television Society (North East & The Border) Awards 2019 and I was really happy to be nominated in the Short Form category!

● If you did another story for Signed Stories what would it be?
Chris: I think I’d quite like to look at the characters of Signed Stories! We have Dexter the Robot, two penguins, Gianni and Tony, plus many more! It would be good to do a story that explores and explains their characters and their worlds.
Share:

Thursday, January 07, 2021

WRITING: the Sequel -"Adventures in Podcasting" (Finding a Voice Part the Second!)

"Across the great divide alone (wondering, open, afraid and...) Arrive in a life unknown..." - Semisonic

A good while ago now, I posted about a podcast habit I'd picked up, following on from an uncontrollable collecting pattern I'd grown into following one of my favourite movie franchises for most of my life... I'm talking of course (again!) about all things Indiana Jones... So far, on the airwaves of the podcast I've been lucky enough to be part of, I've actually been officially talking about the man with the whip and the hat for 4 years (but thinking about the franchise for so much longer!) But recently, this winter, I got the chance via a work newsletter to be asked to write about my hobby and talk a little more about this, let's face it, obsession of mine(!) And here's what I got the chance to write about it all...
The video editing work I've done in the day job has increasingly led me to an interest in audio editing and for the past four years, outside of work, I’ve ventured into the world of podcasting, writing and recording a monthly segment for an international podcast called The IndyCast. From its name you can possibly guess the subject matter – as a bit of a geeky film fan, I had listened to this global Indiana Jones podcast since 2008 when it first began.  What I had noted was, that although there was a variety of global voices on there from American to Australian, waxing lyrical about the man with the whip and the hat, there weren’t any British fans represented – and Britain was where the first three Indiana Jones movies were filmed (Elstree Studios to be precise, where ITV shoot The Chase and the BBC make Strictly).

I approached the podcast editor (actually called Ed!) who puts the whole show together from his home in Geelong, Australia, in late 2015. After sending in a demo based around the British side of the Indy franchise, I got the gig and in April 2016, my very first ‘IJ in the UK’ segment debuted “on air”. During that first year or so of learning to podcast, within my department at ITV, I undertook some valuable in-house voiceover training and got advice from colleagues who had done voice work for news and continuity in the past. This really helped improve on the early segments I had recorded.  (And it also helps that I’ve collected a growing audio library of movie soundbites and enjoy messing around with sound effects in my spare time!)

So far on the podcast I’ve tried to cover a range of distinctly different British themes within the Indiana Jones franchise. I’ve written tributes to cast and crew who have passed on, such as Douglas Slocombe, the legendary Indy Director of Photography who also worked on Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and The Italian Job (1969), and also Sir John Hurt who starred in the much-derided fourth film of the Indy series. (I actually have a real soft spot for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, not least for showing my childhood hero as he grows old, much like I’m growing older with the release of each film in the series!). I’ve also focused in on the various British characters in the movies (How many can you bring to mind?), as well as interviewing fellow Indy avids, such as a Globe Trekker series documentary producer who, as a young film fan in the late ‘80s broke into the set of Who Framed Roger Rabbit at Elstree with a friend. (They were subsequently invited to watch the filming of the third Indiana Jones movie at Tilbury Docks in 1988 as Steven Spielberg shot the fast-paced “Venice” boat chase set piece!)
On many an annual holiday too, I’ve found myself around the globe, quite coincidentally, in the vicinity of some site or link to the Indiana Jones movies. In 2003, it was while in Berlin, on a trip to see the historic 1936 Olympic Park when a guide mentioned that nearby, a mere few U-bahn stops away, was a small airport used as the architectural model for the Zeppelin port in the third film The Last Crusade. Fast-forward 14 years later, and being lucky enough to book a 40th birthday trip to the West Coast of America, I found myself standing in front of the actual building used as the exterior of the Zeppelin port in that movie - on “Treasure Island” (I kid ye not!) in the San Francisco Bay (It’s their City Administration Building, built in 1938).

The “travels with Indy” haven’t ended there – all in the name of podcast research, I once persuaded my wife to join me to hunt down the only statue in the world of the fictional big-screen archaeologist in small-town America – San Anselmo, Marin County, to be precise (see my first photo). It’s sited in a tiny municipal green space called “Imagination Park” (I promise I’m not making these names up) and it’s there because it’s the hometown of George Lucas the franchise creator. We even managed to find the iconic “government steps” from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark which Indy descends in Washington – although, the steps are actually in San Francisco – inside the majestic Beaux-Arts style City Hall building, built in 1905. 
Being part of The IndyCast I’ve made some worldwide friends too. When I mentioned on air that we were visiting Seattle, another contributor to the podcast invited us to lunch at his offices at the games company Oculus, and we recorded a segment together in their plush recording studios – a far cry from my humble home “studio” setup (see my second photo).  I’ve also guested on other segments of the podcast, chatting to hosts in such far flung places as Florida and Austria.  And… because of the podcast, in 2018, I appeared as a “Midnight Mastermind” on OJ Borg’s BBC Radio 2 show, posing and answering questions on the franchise, after one of the producers got in touch having seen me tweet about Indiana Jones.

So far, I’ve produced 35 segments of ‘IJ in the UK’ and still have lots of ideas of where to take it in the future too.  Once free travel is permitted again, I’ll go on the road with a small podcast mascot that was made by a local artist to me in the North East (again, see the second photo!) and make trips to Herbert Johnson hatters in London and also Wested Leather in Kent – both of whom provided costume pieces for the original Indiana Jones movies.  Next year as well, I’ve been asked to do a talk about my podcasting hobby for a local charity.  And I’ve even been in contact with a regular cast member from one of ITV’s soaps who appeared in the second Indy film Temple of Doom, to set up an interview of his memories on set. (Can you guess who it is? A clue: he’s the long-running head of a well-loved family in Emmerdale)
Very recently, a fifth film was announced by Disney for release in 2022 with Harrison Ford reprising his iconic role (aged 78 - fantastic!). It’s to be helmed by the visionary director James Mangold of Walk the Line, Logan, and Ford v Ferrari fame. Rumours are that they’ll be bringing production to Pinewood next spring. So on my 2021 podcast wish list too are scoops from the set! (If anyone reading this has any connections at Pinewood, feel free to email me: christopher.allan@itv.com )

Ultimately, for me, the Indy films have always been an important starting point to access the real history behind the fictional tales they’re telling. The franchise has inspired me to go off and read more into the background of the Ark of the Covenant and even the mystery of Crystal Skulls! And of course, they’ve led to true life adventures in podcasting and red-line trails across the globe, with a growing list of contacts in each country, befitting my childhood big-screen hero who I like to imagine might tip his fedora to me with a wink and a smile.


Share:

Thursday, December 29, 2016

A good way to round-up the year: with a creative success!

A real year of living creatively!
# "When I'm deep inside of me, don't be too concerned... I won't ask for nothin' while I'm gone..." - Billy Joel

For the last couple of years here on the blog I’ve begun to journal about my efforts to move towards becoming a video editor in my day job and this month thanks to a recognised course with an exam at the end of it, happily, I’ve managed to take a larger leap towards that goal.

For a little while because I’ve been mainly carrying out editing jobs at work using Adobe Creative Suite, I’d been eyeing up an Adobe Associate course here in the UK, and considered various course providers around the country.  Negotiating with my employer it was finally settled on making the trip to Manchester for a week-long expert course in using Adobe Premiere Pro.

Share:

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

"If Adventure Makes a Sound..." ("Finding a Voice": Part-the-First!)

# “Have you seen me lately? I was out on the radio starting to change” - Counting Crows


Have you ever listened to a podcast? “Audio scribbling” is something I’ve dabbled with over the past few years here and there but for the past decade or so I’ve been listening to various podcasts – some put together by fans of films franchises like Star Wars and others made by established authors who often use the sound waves to give advice about stepping into the writing world.

Share:

Monday, October 31, 2016

VERY Spooky tales - FEAR of a blank page... (part 2!)

An exclusive tale from C.G.Allan's forthcoming first collection of short fiction...


"The Thirst for Knowledge"
by C.G.Allan

MY life has always been filled with questions. Most of them begin with "Why" and end with "me", but about three hours ago I was faced with a new, more profound question which has forced me to try to forget my own problems for the present moment at least.
  It was 7pm again and I had become thirsty as I always did at 7pm.
 In setting this down now I hope to help myself remember, for the thirst makes me forget things quickly.
  Typically, my pockets were empty. When my pockets became light like that I always visited those who had been my friends before.

Share:

Friday, September 30, 2016

Fear of "the Blank Page"?

# “I'm just staring at the ceiling, staring back at me…” # - Counting Crows

...illusive and always just lingering on the horizon...
There is a myth, that stretches back into the far reaches of time itself, into the annals of decades gone by, a legend so ingrained in our psyche that as writers, perhaps more so than the average person you pass on the street, it takes hold of our very core and teases us with its own existence.  It’s not a tangible thing, most myths aren’t, but its power still has a hold on us with every authorly breath we take… And what is this fantastical phantasm of which I speak (and have been treading water, to skirt around it, properly procrastinating, for this first post paragraph) …? It is of course, the myth of WRITERS’ BLOCK!

Share:

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

"Isn't Life A Dream?"

I must be looking for something, something sacred I lost... But the river is wide and it's too hard to cross... # - Billy Joel

Setting aside that larger metaphysical question that I’ve decided to title this post with (even though it’s a brilliant starting point for a story: are we actually existing within someone else’s dream or nightmare, even...?), the title words here actually refer to a new outdoor hobby I’ve taken up this year – rowing.

Share:

Friday, July 29, 2016

The time has come, my friends, to talk of ALL these things... (10 years of the Writing Blog!)

# "I wish it was last September, so we could lose ourselves in crowds everyday..." - Ben Folds

C.G.Allan circa 2006!
2006 was a very good year… It was also a very different one too – and a vastly varied world to that of 2016.  There was no instagram, Twitter was only just getting going and a younger scribbler C.G.Allan was only a year out of graduating from an MA in Creative Writing and was busy tinkering with his first novel which he’d started on that course and was wondering how to take his writing to the “next level”…

It was also around that time that an old school friend and fellow amateur scribbler (and still best friend, I might add) suggested I get “one of those blog things” and I began to read a little about what exactly an “online journal” was.  It was around early 2006 too that I realised I wanted to create a website for my various first attempts at creative writing - partly to make a record of these for posterity but also to create a base for any readers I might be lucky enough to gain, and potential literary agents, to come to, to find out about my scribbles.

Share:

Thursday, June 30, 2016

"Unfinished Tales" and other "Talking Titles"...

# “I am the entertainer, I bring to you my songs.  I'd like to spend a day or two, but I can't stay that long…” # - Billy Joel

As a writer or just as a reader, I love the idea of ‘lost’ or unfinished tales of an author I’m particularly fond of.  A little while ago I bought a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Narrative of John Smith which was billed as a “lost tale” of his and published by the British Library (another place with ‘lost books’ I just have to visit if I’m ever in London) and whenever a new Bernard Cornwell book is released, I enjoy hunting out the “sampler” chapters that Waterstones here in the UK releases as teasers to the main book.

As to my own “sough-after” tales, way back in 2008, I posted here on the blog about a disastrous event that befell me when I mislaid a notebook of stories I’d been working on throughout that year.  And to this day, almost ten years later, I still have nightmares where I awake in a panic, wondering just where that pocketbook now resides…

Share:

Monday, May 30, 2016

That "difficult" second novel...

# "Birds fall from the window ledge above mine, then they flap their wings at the last second..." # - Cake

For a long time now, while I've been in the throws of drafting and redrafting my first adventure novel, I've been thinking about, talking about and even begun writing the first 7 chapters or so of a second, probably more ambitious novel.

Share:

Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Creative Day Job...

# “Who writes the pages of our life… in black and white?” – Adam Duritz

For a little while now, ever since moving more into the video editing, post-production side of things in my day job, (and had some minor success and praise) I’ve been meaning to start to build myself a creative “show reel”...

This is no mean feat, cramming what amounts to be several hours of full-length videos into a condensed “sizzle” of around 3 to 5 minutes… It’s still early days though, and for now, I’ve been gathering the material together, and thought it might be useful if only for my own “archiving” purposes to post up some clips here on the blog of how creative I’ve been getting in my day job of late.
Share:

Thursday, March 31, 2016

In tribute of a lost globetrotter...

# If you’re going to San Francisco, you’re going to meet some gentle people there…” # - Scott McKenzie

Since I was young there’s been many figures in my family who’ve stood out and been influential on how my own personal universe has been shaped.  I’ve talked about an unforgettable uncle on my dad’s side before called John but like every family I’ve had other people growing up who’ve not necessarily been blood-related but who we’ve still thought of a close friends.  

Unfortunately this year, we’ve lost one such family friend who I actually thought of as an uncle and who my brother kind of looked on as a grandfather figure since our grandparents died when we were both quite young.


Share:

Monday, February 29, 2016

"The SHORT short version"! (the 2016 Writing PREVIEW!)


# "Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there with open arms and open eyes, yeah... Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there, I'll be there..." # - Incubus

Once you get into a life of writing and start to read around your subject or listen out for sage advice from ‘those who are in the know’, you begin to hear things like “there’s only 7 stories in the whole entire world that just get told over and over again” or “you can’t write a lot until you read a lot” – now, I don’t necessarily hold to these particular beliefs about writing – they feel too prescriptive and “rule-like” for my yearnings.  But there is one particular novel notion in the field of creative writing that I am beginning to subscribe to and that’s the idea of “the power of the number three”.  It kind of comes down to the old odd numbers versus even numbers, but in nature random patterns of 3 do look better than a pair of things standing side by side…

Share:

Sunday, January 31, 2016

"12 Months Revisiting Childhood Dreams!" (the 2015 Writing REVIEW!)

# "Tell us all a story about how it used to be... Make it up and write it down, just like history" # - Paul Simon

At the beginning of each year when I face down the new scribble year to come, I try to reflect on the previous 12 months of my writing – the highs, the lows and generally just celebrate the fact that I’m still alive and kicking as an amateur author(!) So here we go with the rundown of the last year in my writing life…
Share:

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Look to the horizon and... choose... wisely...

# "I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her..." # - Counting Crows

I thought I’d end the year that was 2015 with a short post, reflecting on an aspect of my writing life that’s been on my mind a lot recently - and for me personally, it’s a biggie…

Share:

Monday, November 30, 2015

Scribble thoughts for Autumn...

# "You wanna be a writer, but you don't know how or when? Find a quiet place and use a humble pen" - Paul Simon

When I first got into writing, I thought I should surround myself with the tools of the trade - I bought myself an old typewriter (which I never used!) and had a few fountain pens (one was even inscribed with my name!) and ink cartridges (that inevitably leaked).  Of course non of them made me any more productive on the scribbling front - I can't actually remember the last time I used a pen to write out in long-hand a chapter or new story (mostly, being a product of the latter-20th century, I write using my keyboard).

Funnily enough though recently, I've stumbled across a collection of "special" pens and pencils which I've collected over the years either as gifts or keepsakes and they reminded me of the need for a humble scribbler to sometimes get back to the basics of writing...
Share:

Saturday, October 31, 2015

The Building Blocks of My Early Imaginings...

# "I wanna move you, I wanna move you around..." # - Anya Marina

When I was about 7 years old, I remember being given a peculiarly-small Christmas present to open.  I probably left it to last to unwrap because of its size amongst the plastic toy soldiers and Action Force figures (as well as the Star Wars vehicles) that sat alongside them under our Christmas tree.  But it turned out that the old adage of big surprises coming in small packages was right, because that particular present ended up being my favourite that Yuletide (and for pretty much the whole of the year after).  AND... it was this tiny bundle of mini-figures that introduced me to the wide world of "Lego"...
Share: