Stephen Beckett

Clearly nothing has happened around here for a while, rest assured though that I have been doing lots of exciting things.

New design, postings and projects coming soon.

As promised, here are a few photos from my month at Edinburgh with the improvised comedy show Interrobang…

Throughout August I’m performing at the Edinburgh Festival with Bristol University’s Improvised sketch troupe ‘Interrobang‽‘ (an interrobang is an antiquated punctuation symbol that conjoins an exclamation and question mark – “Why are the spoons on fire‽”).

The show consists of an hour of ‘long form’ improvised comedy. This is different from improv you may have seen on, for example, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as instead of performing a number of smaller games/scenes we improvise an entire hour-long play based on audience suggestion. At the start of the show audience members are asked for a question that they want answering, so far we’ve had questions ranging from “Where is the internet?” to “What actually sank the titanic?” Turns out the internet is inside Ben’s (one of the interrobang troupe) tummy, and the Titanic was sunk by a stray missile launched by a pair of confused militia penguins, who knew?

If you happen to be in Edinburgh the show is on every evening (except Sundays) until the 28th of August at 10.10pm in theSpaces on the Mile @ The Radisson. The show is going well with great audiences and great performances, so definitely drop in if you fancy the improv experience.

More to follow soon about the festival at large & some photos.

So I’m back from Lovebox now and am cracking on with the website overhaul for ORH Ltd., a company I do computery/websitey consultancy work for occasionally.

I’d just like to quickly share a couple of the highlights of the festival and some of the content we produced over the course of the week. If you’re not familiar with Lovebox, then check out their website or the short promo video produced by In House. The focus of the commission was to capture the behind the scenes festival prep. and then once the festival started, show the general good times and variety of excitements on offer, here are a few of my favourites:

Interview with Josh & Jessie Fleming, founders of the Do LaB artistic installation project:

A brief compilation of some of the work that goes in to the festival setup:

There’s loads more videos up on the LoveboxTV Youtube channel. We also filmed a few interviews for the music magazine NME, you can see the exclusive backstage interviews with Hercules & Love Affair, Chromeo and main stage headliner Peaches on NME.com. And finally, I’ve added a few more photos of the festival over at flickr!

Wow, long post – in summary though, Lovebox is amazing! Woo lovebox! Woo!

This week I’m at Lovebox festival filming on behalf of In House Media, the student run production company that I’m part of in Bristol. Until Friday, when the festival kicks off, we’re filming the set up and ‘building’ stage of the event. It’s interesting to see the festival come together, and how huge and impressive structures can simply appear in a matter of days thanks to the powers of scaffolding. Once the festival gets going we’ll have full-on backstage access so we’ll be talking with artists, chatting to punters and generally filming some awesome stage-side footage.

You can follow the video updates we’re making over the next week on the Lovebox YouTube channel, there’s already 3 up there, and more will be appearing each day.

Here are a few pics from the last couple of days of set-up:

Here’s a short compilation of people using the LoopFrogs application at Glastonbury. I also wrote a brief article about the application for the Bristol University Computer Science website. Lastly, there’s a new post on the official village screen blog about the various applications at this year’s festival, including LoopFrogs.

While I’m on the topic of LoopFrogs I’d like to thank all the people who contributed content to the project, namely  Emily Thomson for her fantastical pen powers, and also to those who made loops – Owen Barratt, Henry Edmonds, Emily Friend, Dan Newton, Thomas Figg, Corinna Jane Crabtree and Ben Vardy thank you!

Here’s a few more photos of people using the Frogs at Glastonbury. It’s gone down really well, especially with the kids, who have the least inhibitions and don’t mind letting loose and dancing with the frogs. We’ve also seen a small band form behind the frogs, a ‘troupe of bees‘ and general enjoyment of the RAVE (!!!) mode. I’m in the process of sifting through the various bits of footage I took, so there should be a video appearing in the next week or so, but in the meantime…

This year I was given the opportunity to design and develop an interactive game/application for the Cultural Olympiad / BBC Big Screen project at Glastonbury festival. The idea I’ve gone with is called Loop Frogs, the basic premise being users can dance with frogs in order to make them sing a series of loops and create unique sound environments.

After ironing out a few kinks, the frogs are now up and running, and will be making an appearance on the big village screens at several points over the next few days. Other than that, I’m generally enjoying what is undoubtedly the biggest and bestest festival in the world, it’s 30 degrees, the frogs are dancing and life is good!

Below are a few photos of the frogs in action, plus epic photographic coverage of prince charlie’s visit and the huge world cup crowd…

There’s nothing here right now. This is good though.