We Won! Gav won the concept competition with some very tasty/tasteful ‘chocolate crucifixion nails’ out of dark chocolate dipped pretzel sticks, a chocolate button and silver spray. I tried to make ‘hot cross bums’. They didn’t look quite as bum like as I’d hoped but they won the taste competition. My personal favourite entry though was the NSFW ‘The Holy Reserection’ by Wooders.
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Museum of Victorian Science
Over the new year we took a family break to the Yorkshire Moors near Whitby. By extreme good luck, we happen to be in the same village as Tony Swift and his marvellous Museum of Victorian Science! During our private 2 hour lecture, Tony took us through all the wonders of cathode ray tubes, radiation, x-rays and all sorts of things that create massive bolts of electricity. All the equipment was vintage and in perfect working order. A true master collector and knowledge fountain of all things SCIENCE!
Harry Potter Tour Preview
Well aren’t we the lucky ones? We managed to find ourselves invited to a personal preview tour of the Harry Potter exhibit at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, London, about a month before it opens to the public. Our excellent tour guide was Craig Hanna, Chief Creative Officer of Thinkwell, the amazing guys and gals behind the attraction (also home to our pal Dave). They’re in soft open mode at the moment, which means they’re running the whole thing for preview guests to help test everything and make sure nobody dies before the real audiences turn up.
The experience isn’t quite what you’d expect judging by how the Harry Potter world has been re-created over the pond in Orlando. Here it’s a slightly more mature approach, and rather than telling the story as if all the magic is real, they are telling you the real story of how the films are made. So rather than entering the real Hogwarts, you explore the actual Hogwarts film sets and the rest of the Harry Potter world.
The place is full of genuinely amazing props and sets, the likes of which you really don’t see so much in films now-a-days. Anybody with a just a passing interest of the craft of film making would be wide eyed at the good old forced perspective corridors, extremely detailed machines and literally piles of animatronic monsters.
The big thing that makes this place special though is the stories of how these people, and especially the kids, have grown up and pretty much lived at the studio for over 10 years making the films – you get a real feel for the passion and pride that goes into the production coming out of such a close knit (and rather large) film making family.
The whole thing is just huge, we can’t mention it all here, but the highlights have to be the Grand Hall in all it’s glory, the stunningly huge Hogwarts model used in all the films, and of course the Butter Beer, which is not of this world, but we’re very glad it’s paying us a visit. Go book yourself some tickets.
One really nice touch is in the very last room of the tour. The room is stuffed from floor to ceiling of wand boxes. Every box carries the name of every single person that worked on the 8 films. There’s no order, no heirachy, they’re all smashed together in one big family. There’s a guy in there with a memory like Rainman who can point out any name you wish… with his wand.
… and Thanks again to Craig from Thinkwell for the tour. What a dude.
More photos here.
Gun Club GoPro 2 test
We got a new toy, a GoPro HD 2! We just happened to be going to our gun club the day it arrived, and it just happened to be empty, so we could muck about with our new toy, and shoot guns, good times.
We actually swapped our old Contour+ camera in for this one. We were never that happy with the quality of the Contour, and the good people at DogCam Sport agreed to swap it out for a GoPro and refund us the difference. Good dog!
Darth Fader
We take a lot of photos, bordering on too many, and the process of grading them all after we’ve come back from a holiday takes literally months. We use Adobe Lightroom, which is a great bit of software, but the interface it a bit fiddly. The answer it seems is with a plug-in called Paddy (there’s one for Mac called Knobroom if you’re that way inclined), that lets you assign any command a midi controller can send to pretty much any of Lightroom’s plentiful functions.
So we got ourselves a Behringer BCF2000 from ebay, installed the plug-in, a few hours of factory resetting and swearing at things later… TA DA! It works! It’s motorised so all the little faders jump to whatever settings you’ve set for a photo… a bit like the Force – and you’ve got to admit, he does look more than a bit like something you’d find swinging around Darth Vader’s neck.
Pet or Meat? by Tim Hunkin
Just over a year ago we went to visit Tim Hunkin, a lovely chap who builds amazing machines to display in his arcade, The Under the Pier Show, on Southworld Pier. After a behind the scenes tour of the pier, we went back to his workshop for a cup of tea and a special preview of his new machine: Pet or Meat? We shot this video then, but decided to keep it secret until the machine is on display. Well guess what? It went on display months ago!
The World Revolves Around Gavin
When you stumble over one of these in a deserted playground somewhere in Wales, it’s rude not to have a go.
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:
Mark Cline
Mark Cline is awesome. We visited him a few years ago, when we were filming our (as yet unedited) documentury about roadside attractions, and when we found ourselves driving across the States again we had to call in and see what he’s up to. Mark runs 4 attractions in Virginia: Foam Henge (yes, life size, yes, made of foam), Professor Cline’s Monster Museum (a walk through horror maze with performances thrown in), Dinosaur Kingdom (massive dinosaurs fighting civil war soldiers in the forest) and now Hunt Big Foot with a Red Neck (new this year!). Mark built all of the attractions and, I’ll say it again, he is awesome.
Northlandz
A few week’s ago we visited Northlandz the World’s largest model railway, in New Jersey – we tried and failed to visit it a few years ago on our first trip across the states (tip: It’s closed on Tuesdays).
So we knew it was going to be big, but honestly, we didn’t expect it to be anywhere near as big as this, it is genuinely awesome. I wowed out loud at least 3 times. After about 15 minutes wandering through it, taking many photos, I noticed a sign saying “you’re only 2% through Northlandz” and they weren’t joking. Bruce Williams Zaccagnino started building it in 1972 in the basement of his house and finished it in 1996. It’s got 8 miles of track, 4,000 buildings, half a million trees and of course over 100 trains. It uses enough timber in it’s supporting structure to build 42 large houses, that people could later purchase at real states sites like https://www.williampitt.com/search/real-estate-sales/greenwich-ct/.
Dad built us a train set in the loft when we were kids – Dad needs to up his game.