Come visit the stage.
‘Tis all the rage
to see ecstasy without feeling.
Your senses will be reeling
as the lights on the ceiling
reveal her kneeling.
The club will be dark.
She will play her part
to perfection.
You need not fear rejection
for she will never tire.
and your desire
Is her pleasure.
Take your leisure
and find romance.
Come see the robot dance
Secret Diary Of PorterGirl – The Making Of The Book Trailer
Many thanks to Lucy of Secret Diary Of Porter Girl for her wonderful guest post. Please do check out Lucy’s blog and her book.
Kevin
Since when did book trailers become a thing? I had not come across them until the release date of my book, Secret Diary Of PorterGirl, loomed ever nearer and people started making mutterings about one. I had previously dipped my toe into the world of moving pictures by making short sketches for the blog with my friend, actor Paul Butterworth. It wasn’t a process I particularly enjoyed, if I’m honest – especially if I was required to be on camera at any time.
But needs must and I gathered together my most trusted and experienced colleagues to scratch our heads about coming up with something suitable. We have previously made numerous music videos and the like, but this was unfamiliar territory. I would be surprised if some of the team had even read a book, you know. However, surrounding myself with the geniuses behind the shadowy and enigmatic Cambridge Underground Orchestra surely had to produce some kind of result. At the very least, the music would be epic.
I am no actress and in truth I would be more comfortable amidst a pit of rancid vipers than I am in front of a camera. But there seemed no avoiding it. The solution? To ensure I had as little screen time as I could get away with and leave all the heavy lifting to the man we know and love as Head Porter, Paul Butterworth. The added bonus was that his son Josh is a film student at Manchester Met Film School and could easily be bullied and bribed into helping us out. Add to the mix an attention-seeking musician or two, a nine year old lighting director and a bit of cross-dressing and all of a sudden we had a cast and crew.
Finding a set was thankfully no problem at all, thanks to the fabulous Templar Antiquities who are happily situated right across the road from our studio. Stuffed to the rafters with period furniture and fittings (not to mention some cool weapons and armour!) we had no problem recreating scenes from Old College past and present. The only down side to this location (if you can indeed call it a downside) is that the dashing American proprietor has an endless supply of very fine wine on site and this did eventually hamper proceedings somewhat. Particularly towards the end of the shoot, when a break-away group of renegade technical assistants (and maybe the Producer. Ahem) set up a small rave back in the studio. Still, there is a lot to be said for drinking fine wine from pewter goblets.
Paul was, as ever, the consummate professional throughout and lived and breathed the part of Head Porter from the moment he put on his bowler hat. In fact, the scene where he is giving our heroine a stern talking to was actually so very uncomfortable for me – such was the realism – that I vowed there and then to only write ‘nice’ scenes between them in future!
There was no avoiding me taking up the role of Deputy Head Porter, but you can also see me acting my socks off as a monk, along with the beautiful lady-friend of the Antiques Shop Owner. We had to be shot from behind, of course, as we look far too feminine from the front to be mediaeval monks. At least I would hope so. Nevertheless, I still see this as my defining moment on screen.
The now-iconic PorterGirl Theme was performed by the aforementioned Cambridge Underground Orchestra and is soon to be available on iTunes. It adds a certain gravitas to the whole production and I rather fear we would be quite lost without it.
I feel that the trailer is very much in keeping with the PorterGirl genre – a combination of expertise, raw talent and wine resulting in something that is just a little bit different to anything else, yet somehow comfortingly familiar. Now, as it is certain that there will be another book, it is also safe to assume that another book trailer will need to be tackled at some point.
So what have we learned from this endeavour?
Musicians are fun yet woefully inefficient crew members. Keep them away from the wine until the final scene.
Professional acting skills are worth their weight in gold.
We really need to find another Deputy Head Porter…
Links:
Book Trailer https://videos.files.wordpress.com/OXtxuKON/pg-trailor-1280x720_dvd.mp4
https://portergirl.wordpress.com/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Diary-PorterGirl-Everyday-Adventures/dp/1504944437
http://www.spotlight.com/3812-7830-2467
https://www.facebook.com/paulbutterworthactor/
http://m.imbd.com/name/nm0125348
@proactorpaul
I have dreamed poetry’s sound.
Something quite profound.
But when I awake
the muse does me forsake.
In the labyrinth of my brain
no doubt the words remain
But I have mislaid the golden thread
that ran through my sleeping head.
Sometimes I get them down
while the world sleeps all around.
But oft they float away
lost in the light of day.
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies
on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity”.
(Middlemarch Chapter XX, http://www.victorianlondon.org/etexts/eliot/middlemarch-0020.shtml).
Being blind
I sometimes find
myself wondering what women look like.
With little sight
it is impossible to tell
so why do I on this subject dwell?
I do perceive
that a voice may deceive.
Girlish tones
Can belong to old crones.
A scent draws me in
thoughts of skin
and sin.
“Would you like to touch my face?”
“This is not the place
my dear.
People are near.
Besides we have only just met.
I don’t even know your name yet”!
She lingers.
Thinking of sensitive fingers
Loss of sight
does not equal no delight …
Closing my curtain
I shut out the night
And the fireworks
Celebrating something
but precisely what
I am uncertain.
While beyond my drapes
The dark
patiently waits …
I have wandered long
battling strong
waves
that have dragged comrades to their graves.
Now on this island I could stay
for lotus takes the pain away.
Those who eat of the flower
lose many an hour
in sweet dream.
Penelope is far.
The star
shines above.
I see love
and peace.
My journeying could cease
here.
Yet I fear
the gods
who rob
men of peace.
No, my wanderings may not cease.
I must to my deck.
The island now a mere speck
on the skyline.
I must trust to the divine
who rule
we mortal fools.
I have long been intrigued by John Keat’s poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (“The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy”).
“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing”.
Is man’s destiny to slowly fade away?
to be lost in perpetual play?
The gosimer thin thread
in his head
breaks
and he takes
a step over the abyss
to wallow in bliss
where machines dream
and Alice is not who she seems.
The sun rises.
There are prizes
For the movers and shakers.
To be caught in a movie maker’s
dream,
a scene
from which there can be no escape.
As we roll with the never ending tape.
(The above was prompted by an article in yesterday’s Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/07/artificial-intelligence-homo-sapiens-split-handful-gods).
The fruit grows within easy reach.
How simple to take a peach
Or plum.
How delightfully does temptation come.
The juice turns to gall.
Better to let the fruit fall
or be gathered by other hands.
But desire commands
us to pick
and sip.
The devil’s tune seems sweet
and once our feet
begin to dance
We have no chance
To stop
but must waltz until we drop.
K Morris - Poet 