My First On-Screen Telly Credit

Last week I celebrated my first credit on the small screen and I got a tad excited about it. When you work on a film, credits are given out left right and centre to everyone and their parents (my dad will actually be credited for the latest film I worked on for lending me half of the tools from his garden shed) however it's a bit more difficult to get your name featured at the end of a television programme. Due to the time is money issue, the credits have to be very minimal so that schedulers have more time to fit in adverts and viewers don't get bored and switch over to a different channel. They can't credit every single person who has ever worked on a show just because it would take forever. This means that the people at the bottom rung of the ladder rarely get credited, especially if you're only working on a show for a couple of days. 

So there I was, settling myself down to marvel at my amazing tea bag sewing skills on last weeks episode of Heston's Fantastical Foods and to reminisce about how yummy those giant biscuits were, fully expecting that to be the extent of the excitement for the evening. I was not expecting my name to be in the credits and I wasn't even looking out for it but luckily the flatmate was keeping a beady eye out and spotted my very own name scrolling up the screen. Due to the wonders of modern technology we rewound it and paused it to marvel at the two little words: Fiona McLean suspended in mid air and to take photos. It was a highly exciting moment of my life, so much so that I set up a timeline event on Facebook in its honour, went on about it quite a bit on Twitter and told everybody I knew (sorry guys) and just to milk it that tiny bit more you've just been reading a blog post about it....after all, it's not every day you get your first television credit and I want to savour this moment before I get blasé about my many TV credits in the hopeful future. 

The Great British Bunt Off

Sadly, alas, the Great British Bake Off is over for another year and it has filled a void in my heart where lots of bunting used to be. In fact every single job I've been on this year (bar Dickinson's Real Deal) has involved me putting up and taking down bunting in some way and what with the Jubilee and the Olympics, the whole country has been covered in little triangular flags and I personally love it.

I am well aware that the bunting that has been used to decorate public places and shops won't last for much longer, winter is drawing in and soon 2013 will be upon us, a new year with less things to celebrate as a nation and I fear that next year will be severely lacking in the bunting department. I worked out some time ago that I couldn't bear to not have it in my life and after visiting my dad complete with hire car I saw my opportunity to reclaim my sewing machine and take it back up to Manchester with me so I could start making my own.

It has been years since I used my sewing machine, firstly it's very rare that I get a chance to go down to my dad's without taking the train and after trying to lug my knitting machine up with me on public transport a few years ago (Birmingham New Street was a particular nightmare and I was racing against the clock to get home before Doctor Who started) I wasn't prepared to go through the same stress and muscle work out again. Secondly I had decided years ago that the tension on my sewing machine was buggered and instead of getting it fixed I let it gather dust for a decade in the corner of my room.

After introducing my sewing machine to my little flat for the very first time and discovering that it worked perfectly fine (thus meaning I didn't have to find someone to repair it for me after all), I started trawling through fabric shops. A day later I ended up with this...bunting that can be enjoyed the whole year round and a good way to break up horrible characterless white walls. I'm already thinking of setting up a Folksy account and dedicating all my spare time to making tonnes of the stuff to sell online because soon there will be no more room for bunting in my flat and I'll still want to make more, probably to the point where I will no doubt trip over it and break my neck...a bit like those crazy cat ladies before they eventually get taken to homes and their animals are carted away by the RSPCA.

Mystery Package

When I got back up to Manchester from my travels and all the undelivered items of post that were too big to fit through the letter box whilst I was away had been collected from the collection office, I was very excited to find a package addressed to me that I was pretty sure wasn't something I had ordered online. On opening said mystery package I discovered an original work of art that my flatmate owned up to having commissioned for me by a little artist called Lloyd Jones. From what I can gather, the conversation went something along the lines of (and I may be paraphrasing slightly): "my flatmate likes Doctor Who and Neighbours and Newsround and Blue Peter and kids TV in general...well actually most TV in general. She also has a strange obsession with test cards. Please paint her something amazing" and this is what he came up with....pretty awesome huh!

Your Hire Car Is Due a Service

I hired a car to pootle around in for the duration of the job I've just finished on. I hired it from Europcar and picked it up from the Salford depot then drove down to Gloucestershire which is where my dad lives and commuted to various parts of Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and The Forest of Dean on a daily basis with very little phone coverage.

Two weeks into the job I received a voicemail message from a lady at Europcar asking me to phone her back regarding my hire car. Immediately I thought I'd got a speeding fine or possibly something worse (although I am a very careful driver). I thought this might be the end of my career as lots of jobs I apply for require a clean driving licence, so with a heavy feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach I phoned her back expecting the worst whilst dangling out of the bathroom window which was the only place that I could get the maximum of two bars of signal at our location. It turned out that I hadn't got a speeding fine or points on my licence at all, only the car was due a service and although I had only hired it for three and a half weeks, they decided to let me drive off with it, not bother to tell me about this and then expect me to drop it into one of their depots so that they could swap it over for a different car at my convenience. 

At the time I was leaving the house at six in the morning, driving for at least an hour, working 11 hours a day for six days a week with only Sundays to catch up on sleep and then driving home again with a nightly stop to the 24 hour Tesco or ASDA to pick up various food props for the following day's scenes. Most nights I didn't get home until after 10pm so unless the Europcar depots are open at midnight, there was no way I could have done it. Also my car was piled high full of rubbish, old call sheets and all of the props for the entire film in every nook and cranny I could find. I had been traipsing through fields and rivers, there were wet towels shoved in the boot, spades, forks and a particularly bristly doormat that had moulted all over the back seats. I was not willing to transfer all of that into another car and I was definitely not willing to give the car back in the state it was in before it had a chance to meet my vacuum cleaner and a bucket and sponge. 

I told the woman my situation although I chose not to tell her about the condition of the car at that particular point in time and I also told her that it might be possible to drop it off at the Gloucester depot sometime after the 8th October as I will have finished working by then (I was planning to keep the car and stay down there for a few more days to see people I don't normally get to see before making my way back up to Manchester). Monday 8th October came and I got a phone call at 9.30am from the same woman (bearing in mind this was the first time I had a chance to lie in for three whole weeks and I was still feeling a little bit delicate from the wrap party on Saturday night). I told her that I had finished my contract and that I had more of an opportunity to drop it in and get it swapped for a different vehicle, she then asked me if I was still planning to drop the car back off on Thursday to which I asked if it was ok to extend it for another day and drop it off on Friday. She told me that was absolutely fine and because I was returning it then I didn't need to bother getting it swapped over in the meantime because they'll just service it when I take it back to Salford on Friday...so after initially making such a big song and dance over how paramount it was to get it serviced right away and chasing me up for two weeks about it, I take it back a day later than originally agreed and they're perfectly fine about it. Brilliant...great...thanks for all the pointless phone calls!

IMDb Credits

For my next job I'm going to be the Set Dresser for a little indie feature film set in deepest darkest Hereforshire/The Forest of Dean. I am completely over the moon about it, it has such a lovely script and working on indie films is great fun. It also means that I get to spend some quality time with my family and hopefully get to see some of my old mates who are still knocking around in that part of the world (I grew up down there and they always moan that I don't go back to see them often enough).

I have worked on two other feature films in the past and one of the main things I was looking forward to was being credited on IMDb. Once you're on IMDb you feel like you're well on your way to making it this industry and your name will forever be carved on the world wide web on this most hallowed and respected website. The first feature film I worked on was called Rebels Without a Clue and that was back in 2008. When the director submitted everyone's details to IMDb somehow they linked my credit to a different Fiona McLean, a Fiona McLean who incidentally had been the Production Manager for the Visual Effects on films like Harry Potter and X Men! At the time I thought the mix up was rather cool and even though I had only just come out of uni and had the highly glamorous job as a clapper loader on a little indie film shot in the middle of winter on the Yorkshire moors, I was quite happy pretending that I also worked with the VFX team on a few Potter films on the side!

Two years later, my second indie feature cropped up, a dark comedy called In Me (which is not a porno just in case you were wondering). Again this was shot in the middle of winter, and this time I actually had quite large responsibilities in the form of Production Co-ordinator which basically meant I was the only person in the production office whilst everybody else was on set. I was doing everything from creating call sheets and keeping everyone up to date with the shooting schedule to organising extras and locations. Again my IMDb credit got tagged onto the other Fiona McLean's page and this time I wasn't so happy about it. It didn't really seem fair that this other person who just happens to share the same name as me was taking all the glory for my work so I decided to sort it out.

Because it all has to be verified by the IMDb staff, it's not just a simple case of creating an account and making your own profile on there. I had to write a long pleading message on the IMDb help desk explaining that the Fiona McLean they are adding my credits to is actually a completely different person and could they please set up a different page and transfer my two credits over. Then I waited for over two months before I realised that they only transferred one of my credits over, it looked very sad and lonely just sat there all on its own. I sent them another message asking if they could transfer my other credit onto my brand spanking new page and they got back to me asking if I could wait another month before asking them to do it again because it takes time for these things to happen so it's probably in the process of being transferred over as per my original request. So after patiently waiting for a whole month expecting to magically have two credits up on my page waiting for me one day and it not happening, I got onto them for the third time asking very nicely if they could transfer my last credit over. Eventually it happened and even though this had been going on for four months (plus the three years they were up on the other Fiona McLean's profile) I was quite excited to have a little section of IMDb that I could call my own.

So now that little hiccup is all sorted and I finally have my very own IMDb page (I'm Fiona McLean II which I like to think makes me sound quite regal and important...ha!) hopefully everything will go smoothly when this latest film gets added. However I have a sneaky suspicion that the same thing will happen again and I'm going to have to wait another two months before IMDb sorts it out. We shall see...

No Sticky Back Plastic Required

When I'm not working I like to busy myself with little projects. The last time this happened I ended up with a fully authentic Tracy Island that Anthea Turner would be more than proud of. This wonderful piece of artwork has made a welcome feature in three different homes now...I've moved around quite a bit in the last few years.

When I moved into my current flat I was faced with the problem of having a couple of recycling bins outside but nowhere to store my recyclable goods in the flat before braving the great outdoors. I then decided to make my own recycling box using a box that I had lying about after moving so many times. I thought I would keep the theme and use the Blue Peter ship* because I like to be a bit different from the norm and I didn't want to use the bog standard recycling logo because everyone's got a recycling box with the little arrow triangle thingy right? Plus I never sent off anything to get a green Blue Peter badge as a child so I like to think I'm making up for it now. This is the finished result and you can have a look at my Instructables tutorial for a step-by-step guide should you so wish to make your own.

*I would like to point out that I'm not actually scarily obsessed with Blue Peter contrary to all the evidence stacked against this statement. Yes I may have two badges, a Tracy Island, a hand knitted jumper with the ship on, a tattoo, and now a recycling box using the logo but I honestly just like the show because it represents British Children's programming at it's finest and most iconic. I'm also a great fan of good television branding which is why my flat is also covered in test card related things and tardises (or is the plural of tardis, tardi?)

Songs That Get Stuck in Your Head

There are certain songs that no matter how hard we try, they refuse to leave our brains until all our friends have disowned us due to our constant [and in my case terrible] renditions of said songs. At the moment there are three songs in particular that my brain has been playing on repeat and they all happen to have a Cbeebies connection.

Children's programmes, by their very nature, need to have a very strong appeal to their audiences so that they will love them to death, grow up into self respecting members of society and have many drunken nostalgic conversations about the programmes they watched as a child. Those particular conversations will go something along the lines of:

Person A: Wasn't Barney that annoying purple dinosuar?
Person B: Well yes but there was also a cartoon Old English Sheepdog called Barney who had a mouse that lived on top of his head
Person A: I think I vaguely remember it...nowhere near as good as The Poddington Peas though
Person B: OH MY GOD YES, The Poddington Peas was the best kid's programme ever!
Person A and B start singing in unison: Down at the bottom of the garden among the birds and the bees...etc etc.

Music is an integral part of what makes a television programme immortal. Even when the programme has been dead and buried for decades and nobody can remember the character's names or any of the plot lines it doesn't really matter as long as people can still sing the theme tune.

Bearing all of this in mind it's not surprising that if you watch as much of the Cbeebies channel as I do, it shouldn't really come as a surprise when some of the songs get stuck in your head for quite some time. Personally I find that when this happens the best way to rectify the situation is by sharing the offending songs with everyone around, after all a problem shared is an extra problem that somebody else has to deal with on top of all their problems.

So on this bright and sunny day, the gift I give to you is a list of these three songs complete with links and videos because I'm nice like that...enjoy!

Cbeebies Lunchtime Song
Sung by the delightful Andy Day, he asks "WHAT'S ON YOUR PLATE?" This song is guaranteed to get me excited about food every time I hear it.
Listen to it here 

Small Potatoes Theme
Once I have become suitably excited for food and decide to chow down on a spud for lunch  I inevitably get this song stuck in my head...


Time for an Adventure
By far the most annoying song to ever get stuck in my head, I'm not particularly fond of Baby Jake as a programme yet for some reason, every now and then this song decides to imbed itself into my mind for days on end. 
Listen to it if you think you're hard enough