Today I went to visit Brendan Lonergan at his creature workshop in Park Royal. He is working on the zombies for his short film, that he is directing in September, and an umbilical cord for a dream sequence in a feature film directed by Julian Doyle. (It’s a small world as Julian was one of my tutors when I was learning about filmmaking at Panico)

I brought my nephew with me, as he on his summer holidays, so I couldn’t stay long. But we did get to discuss the creature effects that I wanted for my feature. I need a vampire for my feature now, so we talked about fangs. Should they be large fangs or discreet ones. With the large fangs they look cool, but you can’t talk with them in your mouth. The discreet ones let you punctuate your words. I decide discreet ones are needed as we need to understand what the vampire is saying. Also it keeps the costs down.

I think I was a welcome distraction for Brendan, as he been working hard trying to get the umbilical cord ready for the beginning of August. We stayed for an hour at the Workshop and then went to the pub for lunch. We were chatting about films and friends. The conversation then lead to the TV license fee. (The pub was next door to one of the BBC’s offices) In this day of subscription TV and advertising, should we pay the license fee? I have to say that I don’t watch BBC 1 and I don’t listen to their radio station, so why should I pay for them. I think that if you don’t want to pay the license fee, that you shouldn’t. There should be another system in place, as the BBC programming is terrible at the moment.

Also, the BBC doesn’t do much for newcomers to the industry. There used to be apprenticeships for directors and technicians. (Ridley Scott trained under the BBC) That’s gone. They used to have short film festivals. That’s gone too - there is a website. They seemed to be more interested in reality TV and paid call-ins, instead of training the future of British TV and Film. Which to me is such a shame.

Anyway, my visit with Brendan went quickly and I will be coming back later in the year to get my actors fitted for fangs.