:: gia’s blog ::

My son and I really enjoy beach-combing. We have spent hours at a time on beaches finding stones, shells, old pottery, worn glass… We have several carrier bags full of stuff we’ve found on beaches. One day, we’ll do something with it all.

One of our very favourite places to go is the beach along the Thames, so when my mother was here last week, we went on another expedition.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some more photos from our trip. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Brian did his talk. It was very well received. I was so happy for and proud of him.

Here are a few photos from the past few days.
Read the rest of this entry »

On first thought, I’d say that 2007 was fairly uneventful. My past few months have consisted of me being ill and feeling like I’ve done very little other than try and get healthy again… Then, when I properly think about it, I realise that the whole year has been MENTAL!

January

Me and Charlie Brooker

I was doing lots of stuff for Sunshine and Channel4.com, saw Ben Folds in concert, the Sunshine trailer was leaked by resourceful fans and I was interviewed for Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.

February

/Cat blog

MASSIVE Sunshine stuff, loads of Channel 4 stuff, went to LIFT where Brian spoke and my Screepwipe interview was broadcast.

Watch Video

March

Danny Boyle on the Sunshine set

I know the photo above wasn’t taken in March, but the month was so freakin’ mental I didn’t take any photos. I was doing 7 days a week, 18 hour days mainly for Sunshine- press and bloggers’ screenings, press interviews, cast and crew screening, Manchester screening, messageboards, emails, IMDB, generally mentalness. There was also Channel 4 stuff, a discussion I took part in at the ICA, went to Cambridge with Brian who spoke at their Science Festival… and I’ve also got ‘Milton Keynes’ in my diary on the 16th. I’ve got no memory of what that was about at all.

April

Danny Boyle, Cillian Murphy, Brian

Another insane month. Sunshine was released, screening and Q&A with Danny at the Ritzy cinema, trip to Russia for the premiere, the 28 Weeks Later premiere… and I bought some ‘Sunshine’ props and costumes. :)

May

Tiger in my face

My Sunshine props and costumes were delivered. :) Was starting to get properly frustrated with the Channel 4 stuff, was weaning off Sunshine, I went to the Arthur C. Clarke Awards nominations, did a Social Media Club photo walk with Lloyd, went to Anna and Julian’s wedding and started looking at secondary schools for my son.

June

Brian at the Star Wars exhibition

Trying to get back into life and recover generally from Sunshine insanity. Sunshine was at the IMAX, spoke at Music Tank, Daywatch screening, more secondary school stuff (including an entrance exam… yikes!)

July

Me at the Gormley exhibition

Secondary school interview (yikes!), started on the Sunshine DVD release, bit of Daywatch work, David Hoyle started Magazine again… my son was offered a place at a secondary school (yay!)

August

Brian, Mo, Benny Wong, Cliff Curtis

Sunshine DVD release, 28 Weeks Later DVD release, Daywatch, more David Hoyle at Magazine… QR Codes.

September

QR Codes

QR Codes for 28 Weeks Later, interviewed about QR on various tv and radio programmes, my son started at his new school, I was invited to talk to the Nuclear Industry Association, recorded the Nature podcast sponsor stings, went to more David Hoyle shows, saw Prince’s final aftershow gig, got properly ill.

October

CERN

Still ill. Started working on a project looking at the Ageing Population, went to CERN twice – the first time with Kevin Eldon and Simon Munnery, the second time with Quentin Wilson- took part in a Nuclear Industry Association roundtable discussion, met Arvind from Slingshot Studios.

November

David Hoyle

Lots of meetings, dinners and lunches. Ageing Project roundtable meeting and dinner… And, of course, the wonderful David Hoyle.

December

My father came to visit, I attended the Juno bloggers’/Twitterers’ screening, fell in LOVE with ‘Juno’ (you’ll be hearing more about this), started Twittering (finally), went to see the King Tut exhibition, attended the Nuclear Industry Association annual dinner, my son had his birthday, recorded a Digital Planet with Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson, more talks with Slingshot Studios, David Soul…then…

…today.

After all that, I really need to rest over the next few weeks. I feel like I’ve still not recovered from my illness properly and still need to catch up on all of the sleep I lost last spring with Sunshine… My next 10 days will consist of POWER RESTING. I won’t do any work (except for watching the pile of screeners I’ve got), I won’t worry about whether or not I’ll have any work in the new year… I will just relax in the most hardcore way…

Some new photos from CERN taken whilst doing the CERN Podcast. These are some lovely photos from the computer centre, mainly from the ‘computer graveyard’. Click for bigger versions at Flickr where you can see more photos.

Well, today Sunshine was released on DVD. I thought I’d take this chance to just share some of my Sunshine memories (well the ones which come with photographs which I can more or less make public) from the past two years…

During filming at 3 Mills Studios, I carried my ‘office’ with me to and from work every single day. I looked like a techy bag lady.

One of my very favourite things was wandering around the sets which weren’t being filmed on. Here’s me sitting in the social area of the Icarus II, where Capa sits when he’s told he’s got to make *the* decision.

My Sunshine husbands were/are Damien…

…and Phil

They did the videos, I did the website. We sat next to each other, ate lunch with each other, made each other copious amounts of coffee, hung out together, stalked Danny together… the whole thing.

My actual husband was on-set regularly, too.

In between the moment Danny shouted ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a wrap’ in December 2005 and the start of the post-production phase, there was the wrap party at which Benny Wong DJed.

The post-production phase went on and on and I didn’t see a single frame of the film until September 2006 – it started with a completely different character doing the voice over and was, in my memory, fairly different from the final film. Danny finished post in December 2006 and a couple days later was the first time the trailer was shown. This is Andrew Macdonald, on his Crackberry, in the screening room waiting to watch the trailer shown on a cinema screen for the first time.

Andrew is just the loveliest person in the world. I love him lots and lots and lots. And lots. He very kindly invited me to Moscow to the ‘Sunshine’ premiere. Here’s the two of us in Red Sq.

The Moscow Sunshine Boys…

Andrew, me, Brian and Danny all tarted up for the premiere.

Brian, Danny and Cillian (well, his back) ready to walk on stage.

And on stage…

I, of course, made a point of making sure my son met as many ‘Sunshine’ people as he could. He got Alex’s autograph though Andrew said he’d only sign a cheque… He also had a great time on set with Troy Garity (who was absolutely lovely with him)…

He got to meet Chris Evans…

…Cliff Curtis…

…Benedict Wong…

…and was a honorary Sunshine Boy for a day.

So now I’m finished with Sunshine… there’s not really anything left to do (whether or not LA will hire me for *their* DVD release remains to be seen…), so for the next wee bit I’m working on ’28 Weeks Later’… so you might want to get used to these.

OK. So… We’ve renamed our little cat after one of the characters in Sunshine (it’s spoilerish, so hover for name), cos he’s always in your face.

I’m wearing an Icarus II uniform jacket.

And judging by my eye, I’m turning into a freakin’ infected (nasty and spoilerish).

Total DNA Dork.

… of my son.

OK. So, I’ll explain the technique I used to take infrared photos with my mobile phone camera.

First, you need to check and see if your camera is sensitive to Infrared light. An easy way to check this is to point a remote control at your camera and press one of the buttons. If you see a light, your phone is sensitive to IR (to test whether your SLR is IR-sensitive you will have to take a photo).

Then, you need to get two bits of exposed and developed film. Look through your old negatives for completely black bits. If you can’t find any, do what I did and go to your local Snappy Snaps, buy a 24 exposure roll of 35mm film, pull it out of the canister, then wind it back in, hand it over to the mildly bemused person behind the counter and ask for it to be developed, but not printed.

You then cover up the lens with *two* bits of black negative. This blocks out pretty much all visible light yet will let through infrared light. When you take a photo it will come out fairly red.

You need to open this in Photoshop (or some other photo software) and simply auto adjust the levels.

Then go into the channel mixer and swap the red and blue channels- ie in the red channel make ‘red’ 0% and ‘blue’ 100%, in the blue channel make ‘blue’ 0% and ‘red’ 100%.

Then, if you want to intensify the colours, duplicate the layers and in your ‘layers’ window go to the dropdown menu which reads ‘Normal’ and change it to ‘Multiply’.

You can then go into Image>Adjustments>Levels and under the top window take the righthand triangle (the white one) and drag it left to a point at which you think the photo looks best. Et voila! An amazing-looking infrared photo from your mobile phone!

These past few days I’ve started taking some photos which have particularly excited me… with my mobile phone camera. Yep.

I’ve found out how to take… wait for it…. infrared photos with my Sony Ericsson mobile phone. It’s seriously cool. They do need a bit of Photoshop tarting (adjusting levels and contrast etc) as a mobile phone camera is really very point and shoot, but you have to admit the results are pretty amazing.

Normal photo:

Infrared photo untouched:

After adjusting the levels, colour channels and contrast:

More IR pics from Clapham Common:

Scary, evil, haunted-eyed child (ie my son in IR):

I’ll explain how to do it another day…

I know some of you just visit my blog for the cat stuff (*ahem*lloyd*ahem*). It’s been sorely lacking lately and I’m sorry.

I’ve been sitting on my bed doing some work. Tiger is curled up on my lap and Rocky is sitting up next to me just staring…

Tiger…

Rocky…

Awwwwww….

It’s just so fucking cute.

There was licking.

Rocky seems to be taking to unclehood rather well. We’ve had a couple days of growling and hissing, but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Today, Rocky woke up very curious and not particularly threatened by Tiger. He’s been making the ‘mmrrrrrp!!’ chirping sound that cats do with both their owners and kittens…

Tiger’s been sleeping so Rocky’s been taking the opportunity to start grooming him. A very good sign.

I’ve got a new baby.

He climbs loads more than Rocky did. This one is definitely part monkey. Rocky is part dog. He seems to really like to climb up you, sit on your shoulder and then kind of lean on your face and lick your nose…