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This documentary will make you think. A lot. About how far we’ve come in the last decade and about where we’re headed. You’ll start to wonder what you did before the Internet took over our lives and you’ll pontificate about life before ‘reality shows’. Even sitting on the toilet requires the presence of your precious iPhone. We’re now so consumed by social media that it’s actually quite difficult to spend your waking day alone and connected to nothing.

Or is it?

We Live in Public is a filth-ridden monstrosity of a rollercoaster ride for Josh Harris, collected together from thousands of hours of footage recorded over the last decade. Well, what did you expect? It concerns the Internet. This creation alone has spurned a new wave of everything – absolutely anything you desire can be found there. Plus a whole heap of things you definitely would have been happier without knowing. Harris came up with a few ideas about where he thought the Internet should take us and Ondi Timoner’s documentary does well to serve as not only a biography for Harris’ professional and personal life, but an introduction into the growth of the World Wide Web itself.

Read more of the We Live in Public review over at Zath

When you get invited to an event to play games and talk about the history, development and future of games, you turn up. The other day, I was lucky enough to meet and hang out with some of London’s games bloggers/writers, not to mention Adam Griffin from Dell UK and Michael O’Dell of Team-Dignitas. The purpose of the event? Well, Dell will soon be releasing some new hardware – the Alienware M11x – and aside from that they’re seriously looking into 3D gaming options for hardcore gamers. Discussion, gaming, pontificating, and a little bit of furious ‘let’s just agree to disagree’ ensued.

Read more of Delicious 3D Gaming Discussions With Dell’s Alienware over at Zath

The Twitter sourcing is going quite well for my film shoot, if I do say so myself. After the interwebs told me where to look to locate a ship nearby, I sent some emails and made some calls. Pretty standard stuff for a producer. But, then the very next day I received an email response from none other than the lovely people at the Golden Hinde telling me they were thrilled to help me with my project! If I told you I jumped for joy, it’d be an understatement. I was almost shouting and running around the office with my colleagues wondering what on earth I was up to. After informing them of my fortune they were also beaming with delight.

Isn’t she a beauty? Here’s a little bit of history to get you going too:

“The original Golden Hinde became famous as the flagship of Sir Francis Drake during his voyage around the world. The journey took three years, with the Golden Hinde being the only ship to complete the voyage. Drake left Plymouth in 1577, the aim of the voyage was for Drake and his men to be the first Englishmen to circumnavigate the globe.”

Yes, the ship is a replica, but it’s the closest thing to a pirate ship I’m going to be handed to use for a shoot. And, quite frankly, I didn’t even think this was going to happen without forking out an arm and a leg for it. The arm I need; the leg might help make the pirate shoot a little more authentic.

After I secured the ship, I put the project well and truly underway and sent out all the initial production emails to all the cast and crew for finalising shoot days in February. This thing’s moving a lot faster than I thought it would be.

One of the other superb things Twitter helped me with was the sound/music for the production. The very lovely and very gifted Jónas Haraldsson tweeted in my general direction and offered his services as musician/sound man. Here’s some of his stuff to get you going once more And if that wasn’t enough – his girlfriend, Laura Viero, wants a piece of the action too. Given she’s been so amazing and already has film work under her belt, I had no choice but to write her in a few lines.

Am now looking for costumes and piratey themed props, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m a little bit chuffed to (perhaps?) be making the first Twitter crowdsourced film. Do you know of any other short films that have been put together and sourced solely by using social media/networking tools? I’ve done some research and found a few, but let me know of any you’ve come across, it’d be good to see them.

Thanks!

Some of you may have heard me utter a few things here and there about a new short film project I am working on with the wonderfully talented cameraman and editor Gavin Free. I would prefer not to say too much about it in case it gets held up (which is unfortunately the norm for independent projects), but I am definitely very excited about it. I’ve not only managed to somehow persuade Gavin to give me some of his time, but I’ve also managed to rope in another awesome and very talented friend; who shall, for now, remain nameless. You’d think they like working with me or something. Sheesh

I’m also quite excited to give a mention to the awesome Adam Cohen, who I’m very much looking forward to working with for the first time. He’s trained in all things circus and is a jolly nice fellow, so the shoot days should be a great laugh. I also have two other volunteers, both of whom offered their services to help after I simply tweeted that I was working on a new project. They will most likely help with all things behind the camera. I’m toying with making a cameo appearance myself, but haven’t really decided yet. To be honest, even if I decide not to, I have no shortage of actresses who’d love to snap up the part.

Earlier today, I tweeted about needing to find a sailing/pirate ship. And, through the sheer power of Twitter, I was able to locate and find one. A little later on, I managed to find another. And then another. Whether or not I actually manage to get to use any of these ships is irrelevant. I wanted to highlight how powerful Twitter is to find what you’re looking for. It’s been a pretty invaluable tool for me to locate the things I’m after for this project and I’m pretty lucky to have such amazing friends (and useful strangers) who’ll listen and respond to my ramblings.

And, because of this pretty fun social-networking tool, I’ve decided to keep this project to Twitter-related people only. I’m going to see how much I can crowdsource and find the things I will inevitably be looking for by simply tweeting for it.

So, there you have it. The only clue you’re getting on the new project is that picture of the Golden Hinde. Watch this space for more!

[If you'd like to get involved in any future projects send me an email and I'll keep you in mind ]

Who’s to say whether Arthur Conan Doyle’s much loved, now revamped, super-sleuth would have been appreciated by the great man himself. What I can say, though, is that after watching the film you’ll easily feel a funny tingling sensation which you can’t really work out is good or bad. Guy Ritchie was handed several million dollars to toy with – and play with it he did. This production combines a whole heap of tomfoolery, bare-knuckle fighting and CGI that leaves you pondering.

The story is as basic as you can get; there’s a threat against Parliament and Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) have to put a stop to it. That’s it, I promise you. Going into any more detail than that would somehow be assuring you that the story is actually any good. It isn’t. But, once you see past that, you can actually let the little holes in the plot go over your head just enough to have a grin plastered on your face for the entirety of Holmes’ half-naked rollercoaster ride around Victorian London.

Read more over at Zath

…get repeatedly sexually molested tonight and it freaked me out. Not because I didn’t know what to do (this was blatantly obvious), but because I started to think about the kind of creep that does that to a lady – and it made me angry and quite upset.

So often us ladies are taught to take care of ourselves when we’re out and make sure someone is spotting you or can accompany you home (or at least part of the way). We get told to hang out in groups or, for the more self-assured among us, to attend self-defence classes to teach that indescribable moron never to lay a finger upon your precious skin again. As I sat there on the Tube, on the way home, I wondered what had happened to this girl to get so completely inebriated that she could no longer walk without support. A seemingly gentleman accompanied her onto the train and she jokingly smiled and chuckled as she tried to grab onto a pole and failed three or four times before being pushed forward so she could grab onto it and lower herself in the seat next to me. She did what I thought was the equivalent of passing out on her boyfriend’s shoulder, with him positioning her body around him and away from me (we were sat in a row from left to right, with the man being the farthest away from me), to fall asleep and be escorted home after a fun night out.

What followed was far from joyful as the clock was almost hitting midnight. I’m not going to go into specific details about the ‘gross misconduct’ that occurred right before me, but I can tell you I was scared. Not for me, but for her. The man repeatedly made attempts to grope her in all sorts of places a lady should not be touched should she not want to be. This, quite rightly so, would then awake her from her near-paralytic slumber only to push him off; to tell him not to touch her. This continued back-and-forth for quite some time before she got up once more and asked to be taken to Highbury and Islington. Suffice to say, we were headed Westbound towards North West London and she was not being taken off the train to catch a train going in the opposite direction. She then passed out, once again.

The gentleman continued his nonsense of taking advantage whilst she was asleep on him and I weighed up my options:

a) Tell him to stop and leave her alone/pull the alarm/get violent.

- Problem one; the man was also very drunk and two-three times my size. He could have got aggressive at me, or worse – her.

- Problem two; there was one other guy in our part of the carriage, who’d decided much early on to keep his head down and out of this situation. I was on my own for this one.

b) Report him to staff/police.

- Problem one; how/when/where do I have the opportunity to do this without him noticing?

- Problem two; will police arrive in time before he takes her somewhere else?

c) Do nothing and ignore it.

- Given how absolutely furious this situation made me, I would have regretted this decision and it would have weighed on my conscience forever.

Coincidentally, he decides to get off at my stop after making a hullabaloo out of not knowing where they were the stop before. He quite forcefully picks her up and drags her off the train and I see this as my chance. I exit from a different door of the train, closer to the exit of the platform knowing it would take them a lot longer to get down the stairs since he has to pretty much carry her. I ran down the stairs and luckily there was a TFL worker behind the glass for me to motion to. I banged on the glass, got his attention, pointed out what had happened and that he needs to do something. He hurriedly began watching his monitors and said he’d take care of it. I’m sorry to say that I  don’t know the result of my complaint. The couple moved quite quickly onto the other platform up some stairs and that was the last I saw of them in the monitor, with the TFL man in the know.

I’m not sure if I should have done something sooner or if I should have stood up to him. Nobody really knows the consequences and it’s not everyday things like this happen. My mind just went into overdrive, just knowing her safety was my priority, whether I liked it or not. They could have been a couple for all I know. Or, he could have been a rapist and have drugged her.

All I can say is; don’t be afraid to say something if your instinct and common sense tells you something isn’t right. I just hope I did the right thing and that the girl is okay.

Given how much I really didn’t like the last year or so of my life, for various reasons I’ll only share with you in person, I’m now anxious to get myself back on track. The new year, new friends I’ll inevitably make, the new experiences I’ll have and the already existing brilliantly supportive and smart people that have stuck by me all go towards making 2010 a happier time for me. It’s not all been doom and gloom, but for those that have had to endure (with me) the trials and tribulations that have shown themselves in the past 15 or so months know that it hasn’t been easy.

It seems quite easy to just give up and continue to spiral into nothingness since that’s been my run of luck in recent times. So, the fear sets in. Can I get what I’m after? How do I plan ahead when the short term isn’t working? What’s it going to be like this time next year given two years ago life was amazing? Truth is, you just don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.

So many ideas, wishes and wants make it hard for one person to achieve all of that, especially after such a long run of muck. But, I really don’t have much choice but to stay hopeful – especially with so many wonderfully generous and patient friends who have made this time an awesome one to be in, despite the misery.

Thank you, friends.