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.

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.

Had some trouble with a faulty MacBook Pro that arrived last week, but I've managed to work around the lack of a reliable laptop for backing up rushes from the EX1, getting through a shoot in Bath that also involved 9 hours of driving on a Bank Holiday Friday... My ankles hurt after that.

So this week we headed to Bologna for a film about bilingual education. Very encouraging to meet some teenagers from a non-privileged background who've decided to double their schoolwork for the cosmopolitan benefits of being properly bilingual with specialist vocabulary for their subjects.

Bologna's very pretty - a nice city centre with duomo and lovely piazzas, and San Luca, a church overlooking the city from the hills. We cabbed it up to there to shoot some panoramas, and then walked four miles or so back to town down the steep hill road, which has an entirely covered walkway for pedestrians with 600-odd lovely old arches, little shrines, frescoes and everything. Scenic, and full of locals out for a run.

The school we filmed at was named after Galvani (who invented galvanising, and, I learned, started out trying to reanimate frogs with electricity...). Also learned that the reason English lasagne falls rather short of its original model - Bologna's native dish (as opposed to spaghetti bolognese, which the locals think is English, though they might give you tagliatelle with ragu) - is we don't cook it with an extra layer of pasta over the bechamel to stop it going rock-hard, then throw that layer away. Had some lovely food :)

Seems we just got back in time, as Bologna's about to be closed by volcano ash again. What happened to the government while we were away, though? Registered so Jo could proxy vote for me, but poor Nick actually lost seats. That's what happens if you went to Robinson; don't get your hopes up.

4 hours after returning from Italy, I was piled back into my car for a night shoot in a Rochester warehouse. The short, "Three", was all done in one night, and it was nice to meet the amusing and charming folks on it, even if I was so tired after 26 hours awake that my repartee wouldn't have been up to much.



After recording a very interesting lecture by Sir Ian Wilmut - who cloned Dolly the sheep - this week, I found myself trapped in the building by a big crowd (plus security) awaiting the next speaker, Richard Dawkins. Stayed to watch, as I'm a fan of his books (if not his rather pompous, public-school tone, though he can't help his breeding any more than the Galapagos tortoises, I suppose). Slightly dry overview of excellent "Greatest Show On Earth" (audiobook version read by him & wife Lalla Ward - this being Cambridge, someone asked him if he'd only married her cos she was a Dr Who companion...)

So we're not shooting in Bologna this week, for some mysterious and under-reported-on-telly reason. But I don't feel like I can moan, really, as we all know some stranded people who're being caused much more trouble. Volcanoes, eh? And some of the papers seem to have decided that we're saying "volcanologist" instead of "vulcanologist" these days. Hm.

What I did get to do this week was spend a couple of days shooting in our local maternity hospital again, and there's nothing to cheer you up like very small babies. Even the little ones in incubators don't distress me these days, knowing how most will have completely normal lives, are visited regularly by parents, and generally have it much better than their equivalents in El Salvador. Very nice to catch up with the director from the previous shoots again, too.

This corridor of doom comes to you from the Four Seasons in Starnberg, which is actually a long way from being doomy. Maybe the least doomy hotel we've ever been put up in on a job, in fact. There's an espresso machine in each room, and the bathroom has a glass wall so you can enjoy the view from your room window when you're in the bath.

We spent a very pleasant day in a very posh international school, interviewing and shooting GVs. It was built around an old schloss in the Bavarian forest, and under 6 inches of snow, it all looked very idyllic. It's very different from my low-tech schooling; each student had a Macbook, and the teachers would scribble on a spreadsheet using the smartboard, then seamlessly email the exercise to the class's school email accounts for homework. All the scheduling was shared in a software package, and there was talk of online results for exams as well as marks for essays etc. I always thought OHPs were lame and primitive, but when I left high school, computers were still limited to around 10 PCs for the whole school, in the Computer Room. Now posh schools appear to have a better realised IT infrastructure than some internet companies I've worked at in the past...



Despite the snow closing the airport in the morning, we managed to cab it into the city to shoot some cheesy views of Marienplatz, and have some proper German kaffee und kuchen to relax. I fitted in a nice Wiener schnitzel, too, and a currywurst made with Bavarian white sausage. And had a German lager with a massive head. So overall, I feel like I crammed in an authentic Bavarian experience despite only being there for one night. Hard work, but we always appreciate the change of scenery enough to more than make up for the travel and long hours.



Finishing off the NHS film for the rest of the week, which is coming together nicely. Should be ready for the approvals and tweaks phase next week, hopefully. Hoping to get out and about with my new DSLR over the weekend, and just bought a new bit of equipment for upcoming projects, too, so I've got lots of new stuff to learn, and that's always fun.

The CUP job has continued to be very interesting - on Thursday we visited the British Antarctic Survey to interview a cartographer, and learned a lot about the bases, ships and planes owned by the British on the only continent without permanent human inhabitants.

Friday was a busy one, filming a local sculptor in the morning, and CUP's own chef in the afternoon. Tony Hillier's sculptures, apart from populating local schools, are very publicly visible from the main road. His front garden is a small forest of metal sculptures with a very strong style, and his house contains ceramics and paintings with similar exaggerated features and strong silhouettes. We watched Tony and his apprentice Jane cutting and welding, and heard about his idea of how art fits into a community - he doesn't sell any of his work; it's all donated free.



This morning, at half past eight, I stood at the top of the Gog Magog hills (the only thing that would appear different on a topographical map of Cambridge) watching a running club sprinting up the hill as part of their marathon training. It's not for me, I conclude. The poor interviewee sat, muscles cramping, in the freezing cold after his run, and talked for over an hour until his teeth chattered. All in the can, though, and hopefully it'll make a nice DVD to go with the upcoming book.

Another nicely varied week (starting with m'colleague Ray winning the Oscar for the sound on Hurt Locker - not sure he's got room for that and the BAFTA on his cistern :)

After a busy afternoon running around the local hospital's Intensive Care Unit, filming for our NHS job, I went to the Cambridge Union Society's debating chamber again to record a lecture by Joe Rospars, who ran all the online part of Barack Obama's election campaign. He was very West Wing, as you might expect, and it was heartening to hear that his company only takes on left-of-centre causes (in the UK they're working on the anti-BNP "Hope Not Hate" campaign). He showed lots of great mini-documentaries they made for Obama's web campaign - very supporter-focussed, rather than candidate centred.

Tuesday was the start of a week shooting for Cambridge University Press with some lovely people from a production company up north, who I've done a couple of jobs for in the past. It's a micro-documentary per day - Tuesday was about a barrister specialising in International Law who writes books and lectures at Cambridge about the United Nations. Very educational.

Today, by contrast, we interviewed a husband and wife team who run a hairdresser's in Cambridge. Lots of fun, and I'm only sorry I missed being the one to get a posh wet shave for the camera. The rest of the week's very varied too - off to the British Antarctic Survey in the morning!

Just got back from an incredibly busy short shoot in Rotterdam. Two of us ran round a school, interviewing students and teachers, then got a cab into town and tried to grab general shots of all the main tourist attractions (Erasmus Bridge, Hotel New York, SS Rotterdam, some old boats in the harbour, the Euromast...) all in a day. Very hard work lugging all the gear around and trying to keep our brains going, but nice, interesting people to talk to.

Flying from London City to Rotterdam means a small, propellor plane. Not keen, but as it wasn't too bumpy, and took under an hour, I'm not complaining - because of the time difference, we left the Netherlands at 18.40 and got into London at 18.30. That's efficient.

Rotterdam looked nice, anyway. Would drop in on the way past if I'm in the area again - I was surprised at the number of nice, old buildings, as the city centre was extensively remodelled by the Luftwaffe during the war. The modern stuff's good too, though there was rather a lot of neon near our hotel.

The rest of the week's been filming in the hospital, mostly. It's been fun sharing the writing for this NHS video, too. One learns a lot about the behind-the-scenes stuff; mostly it's very reassuring.

This week's Gates Scholars' lecture was by Professor Joshua Silver, inventor of some interesting eyewear - a pair of plastic glasses with two syringes on the arms, allowing you to feed a silicon-based liquid into the lenses using little control wheels, thus altering their strength in dioptres. The idea is that in developing countries, where they might have a handful of trained optometrists for millions of population, people can preform their own eye test by feeding the liquid into the glasses until each eye sees clearly, then cut the syringes off and have their own "prescription" specs.

The thing that strikes you about the Union Society in Cambridge - and I'd not been there since playing in the cellar with my band 20 years ago - is how the debating chamber, where the lecture was held, is a miniature House of Commons... obviously that's what the Society trains people for, but it feels oddly anachronistic anyway.

In other news, the subject matter of much of the last year's filming for the NHS has started to hit the papers - the cancer research side is in the local press, and the diabetes research has been published in the Lancet and featured by the BBC.

A very interesting day in Westminster today, listening to MPs, assorted Lords & Baronesses, and assessment people discussing A levels. To hugely oversimplify, seems they probably are easier these days, and maybe the increased participation in higher education justifies that.

Unsurprisingly, teaching for the test, rather than for a broad subject knowledge, is the worse problem. That's the reason grumpy old people like me think graduates all seem a bit slow these days; we're not discussing the specific things that were on their syllabus.

Interestingly, there was data demonstrating how all subjects aren't equal - headlines are that A level Chemistry's hardest, and Media Studies is easiest. Is that a bad thing, though, if Universities and employers took it into account?

The year is picking up again in the second half of January, after a slow start unpacking boxes in the new house.

There's been some more shooting for the NHS, and I recorded a very interesting lecture from Rupert Isaacson for the university. Rupert has written a book and made a documentary both called "The Horse Boy", about his autistic son, Rowan, and his adventures which resulted in a huge reduction in the negative aspects of his autism. Chatting to him afterwards, and comparing his experience to my comparatively minor, everyday experiences of what it's like when your child is in distress, I can only imagine how miserable life must often have been before they discovered Rowan's connection with horses.

Interestingly, the film also features contributions from Simon Baron Cohen (Ali G's cousin, thanks Tom W.), a Cambridge academic expert on autism, who I recorded lecturing at last year's Alumni Weekend, and found very interesting then.

Subterraneans played a gig at the 12 Bar on Denmark Street last night - not sure I played all the right notes in the right order, but people came up and said nice things afterwards, and the door did OK, so who's to complain? We made our first new recordings of the year a week or so ago, too. Hopefully there'll actually be a new record (figuratively speaking, these days, of course) soon. And, as always, it's nice to hang out with the boys; went out for a nice meal in Chinatown between soundcheck and gig.

Amid the mad scramble to finish everything before the weekend this week, I had the pleasure of seeing Andy from Bruizer again, on a nice, straightforward little job for the NHS at the Duxford conference centre. Needless to say, had to dive out and take a picture of some planes even though I suspect that's not strictly allowed...

Busily trying to shoot the training videos I wrote last week at the moment. Finished a loooong shoot day in Cambridge, and I'm being sent to Coventry again tomorrow with m'colleague Neill to finish the "live-action" shoot. Bits of animation and screen-shots yet to grab.

It was also the screening of Wasted, the teen drugs and alcohol awareness film I did some work on earlier this year, this week at Cambridge's Arts Picturehouse. Pete had done a great job cutting it, and the kids in the cast and youth workers were all justifiably proud of themselves.

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...

Another edifying day at work today: a day of Tennyson readings at the Cambridge University English faculty building. The first reader of the morning was my Shakespeare supervisor when I was at college, and I'm currently enjoying a DJ doing "scratch Tennyson" - good in a KLF Chill Out way.
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Update: Just finished at 6.30pm - have been mixing with about four 5 minute breaks since 10am! A good day's work.

Just finished shooting a part-time project for yoof drugs and alcohol awareness for my friend Pete. As with most worthy sources of funding, money's been a bit tight and so it's largely been the two of us plus brilliant youth workers, and the cast of teenagers.

I'm periodically reminded that stuff that seems like common sense to adults (punctuality, remembering your costume, not breaking your arm etc) is still untested theory for teens. I'm also reminded that you'll do some real and uninhibited acting, and risk looking a pillock, more readily when you're young. This is because, despite your self-consciousness, you think you're probably a genius. So some performances that would be hard to get from amateur adult actors. I think it'll be quite surprising.
The most dramatic bit so far has been shooting a car crash, aided by the real emergency services instead of some thesps dressed as rozzers. The ambulance crew, police and two fire and rescue crews were incredibly patient with the inevitable glacial pace of filming, and were actually pretty good at their lines! The Rescue Vehicle actually got called on a proper job halfway through, but we'd shot it arriving, so no problem.

Unlike filming an operation, which made me feel that I'd hate being in the anaesthetist's room beforehand etc, this was an oddly reassuring experience. Watching the crews cutting the actors out of a turned-over car, I was surprised by how slick, careful and compassionate they were.

Bloodythirsty, though. As the scene was at the end of the story, it had only definitely been decided in workshopping the script that the protagonist would survive, and that someone else should be killed in the accident. The emergency services chaps persuaded everyone that there should be lots of fatalities... I've seen a rough cut, though, and it looks great.
Looking forward to the premiere with the kids attending; hope they'll be chuffed at how good Pete's made them look.

Hugely enjoying a job recording lectures at the Cambridge Alumni weekend - autism, hadron colliders and stem cells so far. Have now been to more lectures today than I did during 3 years at Cambridge. Seriously.

A very short notice directing job this week, making a ten minute case study film for the national Community Languages Show, about kids at a Birmingham school who are taking exams in their parents' native languages. What effect does it have for a child raised in England to have their knowledge of Urdu recognised with a qualification?

Fascinating shoot; the teachers at the school we filmed at were generous with their time, and the kids fought their shyness to say some very upfront and interesting things. I'm off to edit it pronto now...