Tag: frankie ward

Focus.

Looking at my blog posts for the past few days I feel like I’ve been a bit unfocused with this.

The joy of blogging is it’s your own free space, but at the same time you can use it for a particular purpose. Currently my purpose seems to be just type up everything I’m working on. I guess its kind of eclectic.

As I’m busy with three drama practicals (for assessment in december) and a couple of assessed essays I’ve had to clear my diary out in terms of reviews and getting out and about and ‘meeting creatives.’

I was on twitter when I discovered Ed Walker’s blog. Being a student who dabbles in journalism I found his site really interesting and left a couple of comments. It was his blog that also made me rethink my own. I want to continue writing for Gigbeth but I also know that right now I’ve got to sort my degree out. Being ill in various grades of seriousness for three weeks has set me back a bit. It turns out I had a kidney and a chest infection at the same time so I’m still doing delightful tests for the doctors to make sure all the nastiness is gone.

As Gigbeth was my music focused blog, this was more about everything else. I may keep it general. Currently it seems to focus on Burnfm, other people’s music, my own music, youtube, internet zombie movie and a bit of drama (degree). I am starting to pick up on other people’s websites as well, which I quite enjoy doing so I may continue.

If I achieve my ultimate year old objective of Station Manager of Burnfm on the 2nd December I believe this blog will focus more on radio, but I’ll address that idea if and when I come to it.

If you have an opinion, then I welcome it. This isn’t youtube so I doubt I’ll get “Your fat, give up already” comments!

Frank. x

I went out…

I went to see a student production of the play Art which people went crazy for a few years back when in was playing the West End.

I have no idea why.

The joke wore thin after 5 minutes….

 

However myself and friends went out afterwards and were amazing by the Yardbird. There were some amazing breakdancers there. I’m so there every third friday of the month from now on…

 

Perhaps I was scared of the camera
Perhaps I was scared of the camera

You are cordially invited…

Today there was a letter to me stuffed in my mailbox. It was my 4Talent awards invite! I’m very much looking forward to seeing Iain Woods again, especially after I missed his set at Gigbeth. What I really would like to do however, is do vox pop interviews on the red carpet so on my to do list is emailing the organisers. It’s like festivals- I won’t feel right unless I’m working. It’s not like I won!

Yesterday saw the screening of Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie on BBC Three. In my opinion the documentary did not show the full extent of the project. I guess its main focus was Bryony, aka Paperlilies and therefore it was never going to show much of the other contributors however I felt it took the mickey out of members of the forum with constant talk of ‘flame wars’ and the like. Rather than ask the members of the forum about arguments and such, Hat Trick instead spoke to some bloke from The Sun! Comments from the forum were read in silly accents and don’t even get me started on the voiceover guy….

I, thankfully, was spared ridicule, but at the end of the film a few people were thanked in the credits…about five people. Many people from the forums as well as myself and the other actors made films and allowed ourselves to be filmed for the documentary. We signed release forums, filmed video blogs to deadlines and took up time to help Hat Trick get a bigger picture (that they chose, in the final documentary) to ignore. I felt that certainly more people deserved credit than was given. At the end of the film also there is the impression that the film will carry on being made. Currently on the forums it seems this is not the case, hence my ‘public facebook status disappointment.’

Basically everyone I met on set, particularly Bryony, were lovely and it seems a shame that things won’t be the same now.

Frank.

Surfin’ USA

Hey,

Popped to hospital yesterday and it turns out my illness from three weeks ago was a chest infection and it has now spread to my kidneys. But its okay as I now have antibiotics! I couldn’t get any yesterday as there wasn’t a pharmacy open near me and walking about 50 yards would cause me to retch. Hmmm.

ANYWAY after that pleasant explanation of what must seem like lazyness/obsessive moaning…

I checked out Nylon magazine‘s site this morning as I wanted to see examples of Peaches Geldof’s work (yes I clearly am obsessing here!) and checked out their blog which directed me to this interesting site. 

300 Colours is a project which involves the artist who I believe to be called Alex, writing different sorts of love letters to various people such as friends, family, lovers, strangers and anybody. It’s visually great. The main page is filled with small coloured squares. The colours show who the letters were written too and also provide a kind of colour code…

Well I found it cool!

Frank.

Sian the superstar and halloween eve…

One of my best friends, Sian, was in a play last night. Along with a few members of UoB charity drama society Infinity, she helped put on and star in a performance of John Godber’s Shakers, a multi rolling one-act play about four hard working cocktail waitresses. It was a high energy, well directed show and I enjoyed it immensely. They even set it in Beorma Bar (upstairs bar in the Birmingham Guild of Students) which meant we could feel more ‘there’. The proceeds from Infinity throughout the year will go to Banardos Birmingham.

The day before I casually got the train down to london and a couple of tubes in a not so casual dress (well not too over the top but very pink and in my opinion, very cute) to see the edited footage and vlogs for Internet Zombie Movie. Unlike everyone else there I didn’t have any guests, my sister and eternally busy boyfriend couldn’t make it and I didn’t ask anyone from Birmingham (ridiculous cost of train fare.)

The work itself was amazing. Directors Tim Keeling and Pete Curran and of course, project originator Bryony Matthewman stood up to introduce the film and following a couple of video ‘Hi we couldn’t be there’ clips (including the lovely October Road Film boys) The film started. 

The film we saw was brilliantly begun with clips of different vlogs contrasting with each other and building up tension. All the vlogs were unscripted and filmed by IZM contributors from around the world. A low synth pedal note accompanied these and just worked beneath the surface, building up tension. The film then cut to the footage we filmed in Shoreditch which was awesome. I couldn’t help laughing at some of the memories though…..swinging haha!

Hat Trick, the company making a BBC Three documentary about the film wanted to film us entering the cinema with everyone clapping but I felt a bit silly as I felt I hadn’t done that much! I’ve been fairly active on the forums however I felt like my image being used might give people the wrong idea, or cause irritation. However I think the actor who played Ethan, Joseph Ripley had his head in front of mine in the shot anyway so I think I’ll just be a flash of pink anyway. 

Frank.

u r a little fat…

I’m on my way to 80 subscribers on my you tube channel which is a bit of a daymaker. I posted one of my original songs in response to a video of Diana Vickers of the X Factor (who is seriously popular on youtube it seems!) and am getting more hits than ever on one of my original songs.

I can take negative criticism. Some people are on youtube just for the purpose of spreading the hate however today I recieved a comment on my new video in the made over Burnfm studio. It was someone Greek. They said ‘you are a little fat.’ …I was a bit taken aback by this. Fat? You could only see my face and a little bit of my shoulders in the video…including a hint of collarbone. Perhaps I have a fat chin, but I am not fat, and even if I was, my video was nothing to do with weight or appearance.

This is what I don’t understand about youtube. Some of the people are utter fools, and some are lovely. Why try and knock someone’s confidence however? I’ve also been called irritating ‘because I talk too much and really need to find something I can be good at in life’ and ‘nothing special.’ This however, is usually from people with far less subscribers than myself! haha!

I did a loserish thing…

…I googled myself!

I’m always googling artists so when I googled the person I’m interviewing today my gigbeth blog came up! So I googled myself and this site is on the bottom of the first page…If you look at the second there’s also Gigbeth and CIB. I feel recognised! ok…so it’s not anyone writing about me, but it means people can find my work…and my facebook!

 

ugh still feel ill….

 

Frank.

Hot and Cold

I have felt absolutely rotten for the past couple of days.

Tomorrow I have an important interview so I hope I’ll feel a bit more on form! My house has no hot water or heating at the moment so when I am cold I am really cold. I’ve shaken so hard today my leg went pop! (Ouch!) Right now I’m all hot and all over the place but hopefully it will calm soon.

Burnfm.com has been going well so far. I’m going to have a meeting with my mainstream team now they’ve experienced being on air and have a feel for radio. This will hopefully lead to correlation within shows, with linking features, competitions etc.. I want to get it settled into routine before my essays/practical exams kick in so I can focus on work and not worry!

I really want to make a video for Gigbeth’s Sugarhill Gang Competiton but right now don’t feel so great, perhaps I’ll hip hop out in my pj’s!

Nature Boy, Open Mics, Burning hot and Laura Marling

I wrote a song with my friend Fuzz on sunday. I was teaching her to play Ukulele and as she learnt four chords I wrote a song using them and a story about a boy she exploited for the sake of art! Well not exploited exactly…but the picture she used him for got her artwork displayed in the Ikon gallery so clearly it was a love story worth singing about! I’ve done a simple keyboard version as you can see on the second video below. When I’m concentrating on playing my instruments my accent descends into Kate Nash territory however, apologies in advance.

I played this song at an open mic night yesterday with my boyfriend Chris. We also played Disappointed in Me and I performed ‘You Don’t Like Love’ on the guitar (it was originally on the uke) and we finished with Chris’ song Optimist which I sang backing vocals on. This is him playing the song in his room. When I first met him at an open mic I performed before him and as I sat on the stool I said “Well you’re all a bit optimistic aren’t you?” which made him decide to play it in his set, saying “Someone mentioned the name of this song earlier so I thought I’d play it!
I was hooked, so here it is… (at the top of the blog.)

Burnfm.com is now up and running! We’re in the first week of broadcast so not pushing too much marketing wise at the moment but listeners would of course be welcomed with open arms! I’m currently on air from 10-12 on monday mornings and during the same time slot on wednesdays. We’ve found a tech supremo who is going to develop our website, hoorah! Tonight I’ve got a meeting for Rhubarb. It’s important that I sort out my position within the community radio station as Burnfm+Uni is quite time consuming!

Finally I sorted out questions for my Culture Deluxe interview with Laura Marling. Unfortunately it’s an email interview which, despite saving on long transcribing, is hard to get right as I can’t pursue a subject or develop an answer. However, it’s been my dream to interview Laura for a while now so I’m still rather happy!

Frank.