Period Dramas

July 15, 2013March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

Latimer: “Argh…” I blink, staring bleary eyed at a person I know, but can’t remember. The obsession fire has dulled my senses.

“Are you okay?” they ask, raising a dubious eyebrow. They kick at my leg, forcing me to scramble up onto my feet.

“That is…” I wave my hands at them, my fingers threading the air. I start to remember who they are. “I think truly… pray some tea!”

“Oh jezz, it’s happened again hasn’t it!” She shakes her head and sighs.

“Ridley my old friend, pray some tea… I feel very ill!”

“I’ll make you the tea, but really you need to let go of all those BBC period dramas – you have to let go Latimer!”

“……”

This all started with my kindle.

Yes, my kindle… and some 10 pride and prejudice variations that I have amassed like a hoarder, over the last few months.

It was inevitable that I’d get an urge to watch the actual Pride and Prejudice TV adaptions. I sat down and watched the 2005 movie – and it resulted in this comic thing…because my love for P&P overflowed!!

And, one thing led to another, before I knew what I was doing, I was putting the Colin Firth P&P DVD into my laptop (note: yes, it is a truth universally acknowledged that all women are born with a copy of this series :)).

Ah, no you won't... it's why we love you so! — Ah, no you won’t… it’s why we love you!

I think if I tried to express in words, how much I love this series it would just come out as; “Ohhh Mr Darcy” and you’d know what I meant!

I’ve come to the conclusion that, to me, Mr Darcy is the ultimate man of any series – I think he might be the perfect literary man and the romance with Elizabeth and him; ah, it’s the most well done and most loved in my heart of hearts.

I sashayed back into Austen, thinking; “Pride and Prejudice, that was fun, I shall be off again now…” but no – I ended up finding the 2009 BBC adaption of Emma – well more like it found me, as if it knew… “Hello there, would you like to watch me?” (and this started a massive chain reaction of drama watching!)

The only Emma adaption I’ve ever seen was the movie, and I did like it, but didn’t love it. This 2009 BBC series was really good though – and Johnny Lee Miller (Mr Knightley) was lovely 🙂

When the series was over, I thought, “more! I want more!”. Yes, by this point on the obsession scale I am almost lost to coherent thought, like a kid hopped up on sugar. My high led me to the North and South BBC series (based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell)…

Oh my god… this was brilliant!

Brilliant… Richard Armitage (Mr Thornton)… haha, how could I not love it (I can’t help but focus on the men, I mean they are a central theme to these period dramas!)! I don’t want to say anything much about this one – you should just go watch it, blissfully unaware of anything that will happen, it’s just so good.

And after that the journey went ever on an on –

Little Dorrit (BBC series – very good, recommend this as much for the mystery as the romance! The father and uncle are so sweet, and pitiful and silly… my heart bled for them, really did)

Mansfield Park (ITV movie – my main thought, Fanny is a very unfortunate name, very unfortunate!)

Northanger Abby (ITV movie – It’s a bit of an odd Austen story – but the ending was very sweet… – just look, Henry’s a lovely Austen man!!)

Sense and Sensibility (2008 BBC series – I’m not a fan of Sense and Sensibility but this was a very nicely done series)

I started to think, that the country life of a period drama was a very sweet one – with all these ladies of leisure, painting, reading, drinking copious amounts of tea and walking to the ‘parsonage’ down glorious sunny country lanes.

I started to admire it all, thinking it looked blissful. Then (as if to test me) the power went in our house (because a relay station exploded, or something!) leaving me standing around for two hours admiring the calm and peace of the warm sunny evening, reading from my kindle.

Then, I got bored and ran around screaming; “where is the power! Where is it! I want power! I want tea!”

When it finally came back, I did a little dance and song about, “power” and how it’s awesome.

So much for my dreamy wistful side – still, it’s so much fun to be lost in period dramas – truly; I highly recommend it 🙂

Any suggestions are more than welcome (I’m running out of dramas! Is Downton Abbey any good?!)!

Get Animated!

November 10, 2012March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

Latimer: We went to an event in the Science Gallery on Friday night (the Science Gallery is located in Trinity college). It was held by the PEGBAR Irish animators network. I was late… and word to the wise, DO NOT try and run on wet cobblestones (of which there are many in Trinity) – it doesn’t end well!

Ridley: While she was slipping and sliding her way to the event, I was already there waiting for her, with a name badge on and surrounded by very friendly strangers. Picture, crowds milling around with glasses of wine at the reception, everyone grinning, laughing and waving towards people who they hadn’t seen in ages, it was like one big reunion. I think the animation world, in Ireland anyway, is a small one. And then there was me, not even a proper hobbyist animator never mind a professional, trying to look like I belonged. I was doing the ‘I‘m texting lots of people and looking up important things on my phone, not desperate for anyone to talk to me, nope nope‘…in the corner! I was going for busy but still approachable look! It worked in the end, I randomly made a new friend who was also waiting around near me. It turned out he was a freelance animator, so I got to pepper him with questions and see some of his cool artwork. It was really great to get an insight into the job by someone ‘in the biz’ and to hear what he thought of it.

Latimer: I arrived for the talk, which started with a colourist from Marvel comics, Jordie Bellaire (she worked for DC and others, very lucky :)).

Marvelous Marvel 🙂

She was talking about the importance of colours and mood, and this can also be seen in movies. She was so enthusiastic and animated about her work; even when she wasn’t ‘working’, her mind was fixed on colours. She would watch movies and list out the colours in the scenes. It’s always really cool to see someone so inspired by what they do 🙂

Ridley: Really inspiring! She seemed like a really cool person too. Her talk opened my eyes to seeing films and images in a different way! Who knew the use of colour could have so much impact on a scene and on the feelings of the audience, really interesting!

Latimer: Then there was a talk from Nora Twomey, she is a director from the Irish animation studio, Cartoon Saloon. (Ridley: One of my favourite Irish studios! I love their work! I was dying to hear what she had to say!) She was showing some of the short films she had worked on and talking about getting them funded and the compromises you have to make with scenes and moments you have to leave out.

It made me think of when you’re writing and there are times you want to say more and show another scene, but in the end, the story is better off without it (no matter how in love with the moment you were!). It’s hard to cut them out, but it makes a tighter story in the end. (Ridley: Very true!)

There was this one film she showed; it really stuck with me, it was really atmospheric and drew me in. (Ridley: Creepy too…in a delightful way…is that possible, to be delightfully creepy? haha)

The studio also did some work for TG4 (that’s TG Ceathair, an all-Irish-speaking TV channel we have here in Ireland). The cartoon studio were asked to do some short animations to Irish songs, the series called Anam an Amhráin (Soul of the Song).

This song is about a young 9 year old girl who is in love with a shoemaker, wants to marry him and runs away from home to be with him! In the actual animation, they felt this was a bit too much, so instead they made her dream of the shoe maker when she slips on the hill! (Ridley: It’s an absolutely gorgeous song. This is Irish at it’s best and most beautiful.)

I got caught up with these and wanted to know what other songs had been animated… this is what I found…

This one is about a woman to wants to be Paddy’s wife and wishes his actual wife ill… her struggles are desperate but pretty funny! (Ridley: Haha, this is good, she even wishes a broken foot and hand on the wife!!)

This next one is about the Irish pirate queen Gráinne Mhaol, or Grace O’Malley… ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha ‘Bhaile’ is an interesting song, it started out originally about Bonnie Prince Charlie and was a Jacobite rebel song.. then later in the 1900s it became a rebel song about Grace O’Malley coming to Ireland with her warriors to free the land from English rule. In the video it seems mostly about Grace’s life.

All and all, pretty interesting, particularly because the event made me look for these videos :)!

Ridley: It was a great night, I loved seeing all the Irish language work that’s being done! Not to mention, we went for yummy Korean food afterwards, it was so tasty *happy sigh*.

So, what do you do without a laptop?

September 8, 2012March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

What does Latimer do without a laptop?

Latimer: I bet the saga of my kamikaze laptop has gotten old at this point! But this is just an insight into what I’ve been doing without one!

Well, first off time’s ticking by… the clock is running down, getting closer and closer to ‘MLR-day’ haha. We’ve been busy editing our book and what not. Editing using Ridley’s lovely laptop (I’m getting envious now! she’ll wake up one day and it’ll be gone, a Latimer shaped hole in her wall… me running across the green outside her house, screaming ‘my precious!’!!).

I’m due to get my new replacement soon (two weeks or so). So I’m getting jittery.

My old hard-drive has gone completely mental and is shutting down the IT guy’s laptops… it’s gone kamikaze, it’s dying and it’s going to take everyone with it! Every time I get an update, it’s like the situation is getting more and more hopeless…

Moving on from all that nastiness…

I’ve been unwinding in the meantime, doing some artwork… this is an insight into Latimer’s chillax time!

I decided to make my brother a birthday card (ha, and his birthday was in July! God… you see this is what happens when I have a laptop, other things fall by the wayside… yes, that includes the birthdays of loved ones!!).

He lives in Australia, so about all he’s going to get off me is a card, so I figured it better show I put some effort into it!! He’s a massive comic book fan, specifically batman, so I made him a Batman inspired card.

I edited and redrew some chibi’s I found (a Hermonie chibi, a Batman Chibi and a Catwoman chibi) and put them together to form a ‘Latimer’ card. I also finally used the other Japanese art-stuff I bought… cutting mat, cutting knife and Deleter high-lighter paint and brush. So, without a laptop to distract me, I had a chance to use the stuff..

20120902_001850 — The magical box where I keep my copic markers. It’s a biscuit box (from Bruges in Belgium). It’s a little creepy with that girls face on it!!

The idea is magical, Potter me, transforming my brother and his wife into Batman and Catwoman, so they can fight crime in Australia (haha)!

20120902_002123 — Putting the cover together

20120902_143756 — Brother and wife inside the card… and crazy me!!

It was fun putting it together… a job done you could say!! I gave myself a tick on my list of ‘outdated things that may never get done’… that’s a long list let me tell you… people get things off me years later, confused they go ‘what’s this for?!’ I will smile, ‘your birthday… last year…I’ll get you something next year for your birthday this year!!’.

Randomly, at the weekend, I also got it into my head that I would like to make a stop-motion model of myself and Ridley (after watching the making of Paranorman character ‘Norman’).

There’s more to it than I thought.. haha (stupid me of course there is!), rigs and stuff that are expensive… and to do it properly would take a lot of skill and time. Maybe in the future I’ll have a go, but for now, I settled for drawing what I would like the stop-motion model me and Ridley to look like… (maybe one day someone will make them for us!! I would go to Laika and say, ‘build us! build us!’)

20120908_110613 — Latimer and Ridley… as stop motion models!!

It’s random I know, but these are the things I think about! Things I get into my head. What would stop-motion me and Ridley look like? Can I make them? They would look great in the office… haha.

While I was doing all of this, I was listening to the Tell em Steve-Dave podcasts (staring Bryan Johnston, Walt Flanagan, Brian Quinn, Ming Chen and sometimes Mike Zapcic and the great, Sunday Jeff, who only works on sundays 🙂 ).

I love them! They are friends of the director and writer Kevin Smith (of Jay and Silent Bob- he’s Bob). The podcasts are part of the fantastic Smodcast network. Which since I’ve found it, I’m fascinated by it (I get obsessed very quickly)!! I love how Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier have built this empire; a new empire for a new age, the age of podcasting! It’s such a brilliant idea, but I love his thoughts on it.

Kevin is like, these are conversations I can have with all my friends, I can listen back to them, I can have them forever. It’s such a brilliant idea; and Kevin Smith is actually a very cool interesting guy (as are all his friends!).

I never realised this was all going on, I love finding new corridors in the hotel of life.

This video was made by an Irish fan of the Tell em Steve-Dave boys (and they were so in awe of it; so amazed and happy that someone would have made it for them for no reason other than he was a fan). He animated it all based on a conversation the guys had about Walt delivering comics to a guy that couldn’t come to the shop (Jay and Bob’s Secret Stash on Broad St, Red Bank, NJ- Walt is the manager and runs the shop which is owned by Kevin Smith).