Doin’ Thangs

I’m in a creative mood, but I have no video camera or nothin’, so here’s a blog entry!

Things I have been up to recently:

Makin’ filmz:

Since I now have this blog and stuff I decided it was time to make some more material. First up, a quick short called “Bown Sucks”:

I’m quite proud of this one; I feel my skills have improved since Protest Song back in November (although the consistent lighting helped). Fun things about this movie included the film debut of my friend Ash, both as the guy who hands me the letter and as Bing’s stunt double:

It was also a good excuse to make people look like they have funny eyes.

Next week also signals the start of filming on my short movie for University (Bing and Tom are making some too, but they can tell you about them themselves). The theme is “character relationships”, and the plot involves a girl who’s moved to England from America starting up correspondance with a mysterious guy through post-it notes in a book at a bookstore. It’s a romantic comedy, which isn’t usually my thing, but luckily I got to completely rewrite the original screenplay from the ground up, adding fun dialogue and such.

The book that the characters horribly vandalise with their heartwarming notes is one of the PostSecret books, this thing where people draw little arty things with secrets in and send them to that guy and yeah it’s all there on the site. My idea for the ending credits is to get some of my friends to make their own versions of these and send them to me, in any kind of style. Here’s one my good friend Adam Bibilo made:

More on that as it progresses.

Lamenting the death of my Macbook charger:

Damned thing only lasted about two months before…well, that happened. Lesson to be learnt: Macbooks get hot and chargers aren’t good enough.

Luckily, about the same time that happened, every single problem with my PC magically disappeared all at once! So I’ve spent the last couple of days mixing up the @ and ” keys and wondering why I can’t see all my windows at once when I move the cursor to the top-left of the screen.

Being in love with the Criterion Collection:

I am a huge, huge movie geek, and the Criterion Collection are a movie geek’s wet dream. Usually their releases are the definitive edition of a movie; the absolute best image/sound quality, as well as all the extras they can cram into the sets. Since discovering them a few weeks ago, I began to amass a small collection. Then I remembered I have to eat and stuff so I stopped. For now. Here are some (but not all) of mine:

Not pictured: Dazed and Confused (which Bing needs to watch and give back before I slash him up) and Scenes From a Marriage.

Watching Big Love:

This show actually began to air in 2006, so I’m a little late to the party. Anyway, Big Love is a TV drama about a Mormon family who practice polygamy. Protagonist Bill (played by Bill Paxton, who was in Aliens and who is apparently not Bill Pullman, who was in Lost Highway) lives in a Utah suburb with his three wives, and the show is about the demands of the lifestyle as well as various business and family issues the characters face. The cast is pretty great too; aside from Paxton we have Amanda Seyfried (that girl from Mamma Mia, which is probably the worst film ever made, but she’s good in this so she gets kudos), Harry Dean Stanton, the actress who played Johnny Cash’s first wife in Walk The Line, and one of my favourite ever actresses, Chloe Sevigny.

So far it’s very good, with fantastic performances from all the cast and brilliant writing. At the moment it’s quite light-hearted at times but I’m told this changes as the series goes on. I’m looking forward to it.

Buying a lamp:

This just comes out of me being incredibly lazy; the light switch is on the opposite side of the room from the bed. Therefore, this will also be used for…

Reading Charlie Brooker:

Someone many of you, especially American readers, may not be familiar with. The blurb on the back of the book compares him to Jon Stewart, but in reality he’s much more downbeat and pessimistic. This is the third collection of his columns for The Guardian (Bing only just started reading the first one! That guy is waaaay behind). He spends most of his time satirising either television or British culture in general, usually being wickedly cruel and utterly hilarious. He also made a couple of TV shows, Screenwipe and Newswipe, both of which I can’t recommend enough. Luckily, amazing YouTuber xthemusic has uploaded every episode to his channel, with Brooker’s blessing. You should definitely check them out.

Not shaving:

Having a few weeks holiday off work has ended up with me having a neckbeard. Oops.

Now the future:

I’ve recently been scripting a new short series, 3-4 skits long, involving many of the skitcom crew. Without spoiling too much, it will have sunglasses and tasty phat beats. I’ll also be heading to the Thing at the end of this month with Bing and Tom, and while I won’t have any graphic novels or anything to sell, I’ll definitely be handing out Cakebomb cards and the like. You might even get to see me with a new beard, WHICH I KNOW YOU’LL ALL DEFINITELY BE LOOKING FORWARD TO

It rhymes with brown, not bone.

Welcome to my first ever blog on Cakebomb! OMG EXCITING.

For those who don’t know me, I’m Tom Bown, but usually just known by my last name. I make films with TomSka and Bing – in recent times I’ve co-written most of the skitcom episodes, including Standoffish, Bodyguard, and Spun, as well as writing TomSka vs. Christmas.

Disgusting singing penguin give you nightmares? You’re welcome.

I also made my own foray into skit directing with my terribly-lit slightly comedic short, Protest Song:

I go to university with Bing and Tom, doing the same course in the same year etc. In recent times I directed a documentary on a woman from Zimbabwe and was cameraman on a longer documentary about tattooing. I also did the narration for the latter, but you can just forget about that.

Next up is a 7-10 minute short film based around character relationships, which I’m directing and co-writing. I also do the Script & Screenwriting module, which in the future will involve me creating my own sitcom. But more on those later!

In the small amount of spare time I have left, I write for a film blog called Projectorheads. We’re pretty much united in our love for world cinema and other things people would call us pretentious for, which is cool. I guess if you had to say we had a goal it’s to make it easier for our readers to get into films that might be otherwise overwhelming. Maybe we’re succeeding!

That’s about all you need to get up to speed on the awesome guy all the ladies call THE BOWNING. Keep checking back for project updates, including something awesome I’m working on with Tom and Edd and Bing:

OH GOD SO ENIGMATIC