A three-job sound recording day yesterday, and a very interesting one. A long day shooting at the local NHS hospital, where we interviewed the inventors of the artificial pancreas, which monitors blood sugar and dispenses insulin for diabetics.

Also filmed in an intensive care unit, which is always strange, as you're aware that there are very distressed relatives of seriously injured people there, and you feel a bit bad about going on with your business while they're having such a horrible time. We've had someone's heart fail and the crash cart come racing in while we were filming two beds up on one occasion.

After that full day, I was off to one of the colleges to record a Cambridge Uni guest lecture by Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC.

I found Mark Thompson's address refreshing free of media and business jargon, and, reassuringly, he seems keen to make fewer higher budget, high quality programmes, rather than try to continue with the same number at lower budgets. Having seen what happens when the professional crew are replaced with graduates with a camcorder, I'm relieved. That's no way to differentiate the Beeb from the commercial competition, so that everyone pays the license fee happily.

Then back home after 12.5 hours of work to edit a Danish radio ad before bedtime! Not sure how great my jingle-writing was by that point, but it needed doing that night, so..!

It was a fifteen hour day by the time I was done. I've done longer, but usually on one job, so it's been much less manic than rebuilding equipment for the next task and travelling between locations and clients… Still, if I can keep that up five days a week, my bank manager will be very happy. But nobody wants that.

Just finishing the pickup shoot from a feature I’ve been working on in February and March. Lovely to see everyone again, but it means missing out on a shoot I’d have loved to make...

BBC Worldwide have put another fun little promo video my way: the launch of Something Special magazine, which accompanies a CBeebies show that my daughter loved between one and two years old. It features Justin Fletcher, the benevolent godfather of CBeebies, who does a Lee Evans-esque clown character called Mr Tumble.

Their launch event was yesterday, just when I was shooting pickups for the feature, so I had to send a cameraman along with my camera, and today I’ve been editing a short promo from the resulting footage. Would have loved to go in person, as Mr Tumble would be the only performer I’ve worked with who my daughter would actually have heard of. A missed opportunity for genuine street cred with Cambridge toddlers. Bugger.

At least Alice watched the short promo edit once I’d finished it, and said “now can I watch a long one, daddy?”. Which I think is a good review; you should always leave ‘em wanting more. Unfortunately, as I’m off to finish the feature pickup shoot, I’m having to be kindly bailed out by my partner in Logical Media, who’ll finish editing the longer Mr Tumble epic...

Did a really nice day’s directing for BBC Magazines today, shooting an intro video for the iPad edition of BBC Good Food Magazine with a cameraman friend of mine.

It’ll be available in the new year. It’s the first iPad magazine I’ve seen in detail, and it looks great. And I’m a sucker for these sort of gadgets anyway...

I do hope that tablets like the iPad enable the magazine and newspaper industries to survive in the future. A journo friend was explaining to me recently that if, as a freelance writer who isn’t Charlie Brooker or some other celeb, you earn 25p a word, then there simply isn’t time for investigative journalism with proper research if you want to pay the mortgage. So you get Wikipedia-researched “comment” columns, recycled Reuters/AP items, or press releases.

If iPad papers put circulations back up, maybe there’ll be a bit more money around for quality writing, instead of some magazines just printing celeb press releases and stills as if they were stories.

It means we have to be willing to pay properly for papers again, though. We all ditched print papers because we could read the news for free on the websites, and when papers charge for their website, we just go elsewhere. I hope iPad/tablet magazines are attractive, convenient and cool enough that we’ll pay proper money for them, and they can pay journos to write the good quality stuff they’d like to, if only they could afford to.

Interesting morning’s work with a cameraman friend today - albeit starting at a slightly inhumane 4.45am. We were shooting a promo as part of a sustainability initiative; a photoshoot with giant wine and champagne corks, and wine expert Jilly Goolden at Speakers’ Corner.

The screengrab above is where my colleague’s cheekily got me in shot to make this interview by a wine magazine look like a TV interview.

We did our interview afterwards, with me scrabbling together some questions after eavesdropping on the previous questions and scanning the press release... Fortunately, interviewees who’re professional broadcasters do all the work for you in PR situations.

After some transferring of stuff, I'm underway with a working computer, and sending Apple back a laptop with the network name "Carl's Buggered MacBook". Enjoy.



So it's been out with the EX1 again to shoot some customers of a bank that didn't do any naughty investing, and is thus fine. Nice testimonials on the roof of the bank's building in central London, with a view that was representatively varied between scenic and scaffolding.

More lectures, too - the editor of "Nature" magazine, with some very interesting perspectives on frictions between scientists' interests, the "story" and the truth, as reflected in the media. Also a talk on the way in which universities select students - admissions are not the same as when I went to uni, and I'd not really thought through how you sort from thousands of applicants who've all got four As at A level...

I've signed up for a low-budget feature in the summer, as it's shooting on my doorstep, and the director and writer seem really nice... as I get older and grumpier, money becomes less important than working with nice people and getting home in time to read bedtime stories from time to time.

Meeting with the Last B&B FX guys today - more fun evolving, though as the FX budget is zero, people are generously working on it in free moments, which, being bright and interesting chaps, they have in short supply.

Out and about filming this week, starting in quite a nice hotel in exotic Coventry, then off to enjoy a Premier Lodge in Newbury (this week's corridor of doom above).

Finished up in the Gherkin again, with a spectacular view of London, recording a really interesting meeting about food production (bear with me, it's fascinating) between important folks from the government, NHS, horticultural industry, business and property sectors, supermarkets...

I was shocked at the research on how people actually shop, and how we split our interests in organic, fair trade or locally produced food in a totally illogical way. We're all idiots, statistically speaking. And we leave 40% of all salad produced to be chucked out by supermarkets, and then chuck another 40% of the remainder away ourselves. We're idiots. It's sobering.

Most people wander around the supermarket without even a list, let alone a menu to shop for, falling for every promotional tactic they use. We buy stuff based on pack price, not on price per 100g or whatever. We're idiots. I mean, we don't all do every one of these things wrong, of course, but I worry about the carbon/food miles of a fresh chicken, but don't think about the origin of the tinned or processed stuff. And I still buy "healthy eating" chocolate muffins or whatever. What's wrong with me? Healthy chocolate? Am I thick?

Sounds as though there's some hope of models that we idiot consumers can't break, though, such as M&S's co-op model with dairy farmers, and if more of that can be made to work, we might be able to get our food from supermarkets, but without bleeding the suppliers dry.

Anyway, more enforced education for me, which means a good week's work. Now to finish writing the scripts for some training films I'm directing next week! And at the end of next week, something interesting's coming up...

Not knowing anyone rich who's likely to get married soon, I'm unlikely to get invited to an event at the top of the Gherkin in London in the near future.

Consequently it was very interesting to be recording a lunch meeting in which luminaries of the property world discussed the economic recovery (and how one might go about getting such a thing) in a private dining room at the top of the Gherkin today. What a view. It does give you pause to see a thunderstorm coming, though, as you think, however irrationally, "I'm at roughly the same height as those lightning-filled clouds, and I'm in a big metal thing."