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Mentor Me: Jennifer the Production Assistant

Mentor Me: Jennifer the Production Assistant

This week’s mentor, Jennifer Njoku, is working as a production assistant at Warner Brothers. Her stories and tips are revealing and genuinely helpful for those of you who haven’t even got your foot in the door yet. Whether you want to be a production assistant or not, Jennifer shares some brilliant insights into why you need to be your own promoter. Great mentors not only tell us what to do, but…

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7 Story elements in 7 minutes: JoJo Rabbit

What a movie. WHAT a movie. Go and see this masterpiece. It builds up a little boys vision of the glorious hitler youth and documents it’s breakdown. Instead of portraying Hitler as bad from the get go- the film starts with a likeable Hitler. He’s funny. Yes, obviously we all hate the real Hitler, but the film bravely shows us how a boy could idealise him and then takes on the challenge of…

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7 Story Elements in 7 Minutes: Le Mans 66 (Or Ford v Ferrari)

7 Story Elements in 7 Minutes: Le Mans 66 (Or Ford v Ferrari)

Each week I post a breakdown of a new movie in 7 minutes. Either you’re a screenwriter or you’re just interested in how movies work! The movie I saw this week was Le Mans 66 (Or Ford v Ferrari, depending where you are in the world). A bit of a slow start and some scenes were acted out with bizarre British accents. Those same accents are disarmingly endearing though and ensured I cried buckets at…

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Mentor Me: Josephine

This week’s Mentor on Monday is novelist Josephine Greenland. A self-starter, she’s done it all: Poetry, short stories and novels. Her publisher Unbound helps her nature focused, mysterious and often slightly fantastical visions come to life. A “writer in exile” from homeland Sweden, Josephine shares her tips and lessons learned from the writing world.

1. How do you sit down and write?

When…

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A nostalgic look at childhood camping

Camping has always and will always be my fuck you to the business ran shit storm that is the world. Universities have become just another cash cow for Deans, and people are talking about running the NHS like a business. You can’t run a national healthcare system like a business- it ISN’T a business. In moments of rage induced clarity I can’t help but wonder what it would be like if we all just…

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I wore all my clothes to the airport and here’s what happened...

I wore all my clothes to the airport and here’s what happened…

Not heat exhaustion. But very nearly.

*if the video below has not loaded please be assured it is being looked into by te technical team of me myself and google*

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I thought for this blog post, I would do it in video form. Why? Because there’s so much to say and no one would believe me if I just SAID I did it. Though that is what this format of communication is based on…

I did decide…

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A Poem: When The Horses Come

When the horses come, white and brave I’ll stay here watching you,

Unless they sweep me up on their journey home,

Mountains passing,

Sea’s crashing

Horses amassing- hundred and thousands of tight, sinewing muscles under black fur pumping and a couple of whites.

Away, away hurtling down a spiky dune path, where the green sticks are battling,

on and on,

Thud,

Thud

Galloping, galloping

Until…

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Should I Visit.... Boulders Beach

Should I Visit…. Boulders Beach

Boulders Beach, the home of the penguins. Just outside of Cape Town nestled on the coast is a penguin colony. They dip in and out of the sandy rocks that look like they have been dropped by a landscape designer.

[Image Description: A girl in a red bikini sits on a rock, surrounded by African Penguins. It is sunny and there is a blue sky.]

A sea of black and white burbles and chirrup- they honk…

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Making Friends whilst you're Living Abroad

Making Friends whilst you’re Living Abroad

I’ve lived abroad twice this year- hectic. Cape Town for three months from January until April, and now Dubai for a month. Sorry skin, hello tan. Part of moving abroad is that you don’t know anyone there. It’s the thrill of getting to meet new people and form new connections, which is the stuff of life. There’s probably a quote somewhere along the lines of you can have a group of friends, but…

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Should I go... to Sofitel Spa, Dubai

Should I go… to Sofitel Spa, Dubai

Sofitel spa was the opening gift from my friend when I arrived in Dubai. When I arrived I wasn’t fully sold on the city’s glamour. I refused to be suckered in by the clean cream blocks of stone that furnished nearly every road, or the palm trees that swayed, some with their leaves still bound in nets from the distributor, alongside the waters edge.

But Sofitel spa shoehorned me into Dubai’s rich…

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Authentically South African

I’m sat in a small, green painted restaurant that sits just opposite Table Mountain. The mountain slopes up towards the yellowing, pinky sky, and I’m thanking the owner in my head, who’s winding a handle on a long stick connected to the outside roof, to pull up the canopy umbrella back so that we can all get a better view. Everyone else is eating though, and it seems to be just me watching the…

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Bourne's Swan Lake

Bourne’s Swan Lake

The elegance of his production was found mostly in the transformation of his cast. After the show I waited outside the stage door and met all the young men who played the swans, and found trouble recognising them without their black face paint. Though they all had shaved heads. Each of them donned an Urban Outfitters shearling jacket, or a pair of edgy hoop earrings. None of them carried with…

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Gameshow Death

So I just had a dream where I was in a gameshow that resembled Love Island, but participating were people my age, and big groups, like on Britain’s Got Talent. We were all in this house: I had just gotten some new pet rats, there were people from my childhood and my high school- one of whom was a bitch in real life and a bitch in the dream, and also my twin, her friends etc etc etc. I got through…

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Uber's are worse than black cabs

Uber’s are worse than black cabs

Bold statement. Definitely. Black cabs are avoided in the street as the plague was avoided, I assume, by the villagers of rural, NHS-less England. In fact, I would say I avoid black cabs to the point that I even forget they are cabs. They’re just menacing presences that prowl waiting for a sucker to jump, drunkenly in. However I don’t drink, so not only did I jump in, but I jumped in sober.

But I…

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Seeing without eyes

Have you ever been lucky enough to see without eyes?

I was introduced to the phenomena at Sensibility Festival. What’s maddening is that we can all do it ourselves anyway without realising.

Sensibility Festival was was catered entirely to the needs of mute, deaf blind people. As a volunteer steward I worked with the curators for two days, and was privy to the experience of having my eyes finally…

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Yoghurt instead of Death

Yoghurt instead of Death

We’ve forgotten what’s important, as we follow blogs from people who tell us what they had for breakfast (sorry to the person who knows I follow them and recently blogged about yoghurt for brekkie). It’s just not the stuff of dreams, or existential thinking. What makes us human is our sometimes annoying, but very human ability to philosophise and reflect. When everyone and their Instagram-using…

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Nighttime....Day time!

Nighttime….Day time!

When you walk up the stairs and it’s pitch black, because its ten past one in the morning and you left all the lights off upstairs when you went down to make toast, the world has a different perspective. The darkness has it’s own fifth dimension, that is transformed into regular old 4d when something is lit. Or a phone’s torch is turned on, seeing as we don’t live in the Victorian era anymore.

Wh…