Still Game...

Hilarious... But not the easiest piece of TV I've watched of late.
:|

DERKA DERKA! Scapey's TV-shoot diary... Pt.3 ( Continued )

r work on Ultimate Force - I have all the DVDs. I just wanted to say that - It's an honour to meet you."

She seemed to appreciate the sentiment ;)

So we repeated the exercise a few times - With Orev and I giving the celebs more and more time to react each time.
I said to the director at one point "The producer doesn't really seem to know what he wants - But you're the director, so what do YOU want to see?"
He told me "Just keep fighting until they hit you."

OK, cool.
Guess what?
They STILL sucked.
"Why did you stay up for so long?"

My response was to raise my arms out by my sides, and perform a graceful pirrouette - To illustrate the COMPLETE LACK OF PAINT on my body.
He barely suppressed a grin.

The final team in consisted of Celeb #5 - Steve Collins ( Who really should have been 4, but I cocked up my numbering system by mentioning him in passing earlier :p ) and another gentleman... Who decided to make sure that I was REALLY dead by shooting me in the bollocks.
As I lay face-down on the floor.
He shot me in the bollocks, from behind.

Ryan Dunn From Jackass shot me.
In the nuts.
From the rear.

How privileged do I feel, huh?

It has to be said, the pair of them were good - but the fact that most of our cover in the room was removed may well have had a little to do with the speed with which they took us down.
They'd have managed it anyway, but not quite so blindingly fast.

I'd be really interested to see how well they'd do - all of them - at the end of their training, in a PROPER game with us all playing to win.
Sadly, the idea was thrown out of the window... Mainly due to growing tensions between the celebs and the production team ( And the crew and the production team... And the F/X guys and the production team... etc etc. )

DERKA DERKA! Scapey's TV-shoot diary... Pt.3

And now it's time for the Killing House.

We moved downstairs at this point, and set up a larger room with various bits of cover, and a couple of "camera hides"... Jury-rigged desks with a hole cut in them so the camera crew can film without being seen ( Or shot ).
In the middle of the room was a desk and 2 chairs, and there was a sofa at the end. A filing cabinet and some Coke machines finished it off.

Orev and myself were told that we'd be sitting in the room, "Guarding our hostage", when a pair of celebs would come in for a rescue mission.

Now, we did this a few times and I can't remember who was in which team when.
I know that Nigel Benn was one of the hostages - I think he was first. Celeb #3 - Jason from Big Brother - was one of the rescue team and we were told "Give them a good 3 or 4 seconds before reacting.

Again - That would have been OK had they NOT been in the room before the thundie even hit the floor!
I still maintain that we DID give them an adequate amount of time before reacting. I guess we'll see.
Orev got a bit carried away here - "A few shots, then die" became a bloody great 10-round burst as fast as he could pull the trigger. This was amusing, as he lit Jason's arm right up.
Jason was our hostage for the next round, and he commented that it stung more than he expected - But was laughing about it.

Until later on, when he looked at his arm.
Seems he threw a complete hissy fit when he saw how bruised it was. Ranted raved, shouted and swore.
Or, as Steve Collins put it... "Dat dere cont Jason's croyin' loik a big gerl's blouse, so he is! Der fockin' pussy!"

Cue one annoyed director accusing us of reacting too fast, and telling us to slow down next time.
Sorry mate, I can't help it if they were shite!

Other amusing incidents here include me missing Nigel Benn's bollocks by a fraction - I saw the paintball fly between his legs and smack into the wall right behind him. He told me later that he felt it whizz past!

Orev all but melted, as Celeb # 4 - Heather Peace from London's Burning and Ultimate Force - came in to be the hostage.
It was adorable! He actually turned to her and said something along the lines of "I just have to say, I love you

"Seething Rage Corner"

Here's a question for you...

If you've just had surgery, and you need regular injections - and your THINK that your daughter is going to be coming down to give you them...

If your daughter doesn't turn up when you expect her, what do you do?

Do you phone her on her mobile and try to find out why she's not there?
Or do you call her fiancé at home and leave a message saying that you need these injections and can she come down ASAP?
Or do you phone your sisters, and have THEM come over and help you out again?


Or...
Do you phone the house a few times, but say "No, it's nothing important. No message. Just get her to phone me please?" to your daughter's fiancé?
Then when you DO speak to your daughter, do you try to make her feel guilty by whining at her that you really needed the injections and you got your neighbours to help and they messed it up and is it so much to ask for her to come down... Interjected with various pissy comments about how you never see your grandaughter anymore, and if you're too much trouble then your daughter might be as well not coming down then?

Clearly Option Number 4 is the one best suited to Kat's Mum right now.
And yeah, I'm fucking seething - As she spoke to me at LEAST four times over the past few days, and on each occasion I asked her if she wanted to leave a message and was told "No".

Since Kat's aunts had done the injection the weekend of the weddings, Kat thought that this was a permanent arrangement ( Given that they don't have the odd working hours that Kat has, and Kat doesn't have the CARS that they have, and all... )


It seems that such was not the case, but the Evil One would rather play the fucking martyr and try to make Kat look/feel bad than actually do the logical goddamn thing for once and make SURE we knew the situation.

Emotions Of The Week:
Loathing... Disgust... Contempt.

I WILL finish the TV shoot blog!

It just takes time is all - I need to have a good half hour or so to properly compose the entry. With no distractions. Difficult, around here.


Just a quick entry here to mention how much I love dreams that seem so real they scare you.
Last night, it would appear that I'd gone to bed thinking about Jurassic Park or something, since I found myself in the role of a spy or saboteur or similar attempting to escape park security.
This wasn't a theme park thoug h - This was an Evil Corporation who'd cloned dinosaurs for military sales.
So I'm running around all these buildings, messing with the control panels and opening / closing sliding roofs, avoiding snipers, avoiding Raptors and small T-Rexes when they get released.

Eventually, I was all but caught and I stood on the shore of the sea ( Big round bay, with a small entrance to the open ocean on the far, far side ) looking for some sort of escape tunnel back to ( I suppose ) the helipad.
It was blocked, so I swam for it.

Bad idea.
Luckily, my subconscious kicked in and stopped me dying in my dream - When the BLOODY GREAT ICTHYOSAUR appeared out of nowhere ( At first it just swam under me and grazed me with it's bumpy back... then I could see it diving deep and coming up fast! ) - by turning the whole thing into a video game.
I mentally "Pressed escape", then "Load"ed from an earlier point.

Not certain what happened next, but I least I wasn't fish-food!

DERKA DERKA! Scapey's TV-shoot diary... Pt. 2

Day One.

It seemed so simple and smooth at this point...

Orev, Snap and myself piled our food and clothing into Orev's car and headed North.
The directions we'd printed off seemed fine - Until, round about Pitlochry, we got to one of the last few directions:

"Turn Left".

After that, was "For (however many) miles - Arrive at your destination".
Umm - Huh?

As it turned out, the directions had just given up.
That last "Turn Left" was followed by a good few wee twisty windy roads. The "Unit" signs ( Put up by the TV company on a location shoot to direct the cast and crew ) started at pretty much the end of the school's driveway.
This was remedied after the celebs' first day off - We think that they got lost, as on OUR return journey the signs were right out to the motorway.

We got there in the end though - Pretty much on time.

Now up until this point, we were expecting to be using Airsoft gear.
It LOOKS better, and it's not as sore as paintball stuff.

The producer had called Dave the night before, and told him that paintball would be fine, as they wanted to see the hits on-camera.
Alarm bells started ringing at this point, as I know fine well that unless the target is wearing a colour that really contrasts with the paint you're not likely to see much unless you really look.
Given that the costume for the celebs seemed to consist of a black jumpsuit and mask/helmet, this didn't bode too well.

We had been asked to bring camouflage and black clothing.
THAT went out the window, too.

The directors, and at least one of the advisors, wanted us to wear camo. A few of us had flecktarn, both clothing and webbing.
No... The producer decided that dark green boiler suits would make for "more realistic terrorists, and make it obvious which side was which".

Rrriiight... I think I can see where this is all going.

So for the first shot segment, us baddies had to stand in a room each in an old dorm and "fire off one or two, but don't try to hit the celebs as they storm in".

The celebs were using thunderflashes to stun us.
Except they weren't. Rather than using ACTUAL thunderflashes that we WOULD react correctly to, they used Panda Cola bottles, painted green. And we were told to give them "a second or two of acting stunned" before reacting.

That attitude was the problem with the whole show.
The producers didn't know what they wanted.

If they wanted reality, it would have been easy to give it to them.
People DO react to real thunderflashes. It's a reflex. "BANG! / *Flinch*".
But when we're expected to react to a thrown juice bottle... And the celebs are coming through the door before it would even have gone off if it were real, then things begin to go tits-up.

If they wanted acting, then that would also have been doable - Had we had a chance to rehearse, and block what are essentially "fight scenes".

As it was, the whole thing was half-assed and done on the fly.

So we ran through the first exercise.
The first thing I heard was Orev shouting "HIT!"
Laughed at that - His Airsofting reflexes must have kicked in.

Then my door came in - And as directed, I fired off a few rounds in the general direction of the door before going down and playing dead.

Realised after that Celeb #1 - Lee Latchford Evans ( From "Steps" of "Crap pop band" fame. ) had shot the camera in the lens - and that I'd got him in the knee.
So much for trying to miss!

I also found out later that Orev had been in a darkened room, and Celeb #2 - Nigel Benn ( Of "Ex world heavyweight champion boxer" fame ) had pretty much bodyslammed Orev into the wall, and dragged him out into the corridor.

We also found out that not one of the celebs had ever been hit with a paintball before.

More on THAT relevant fact later...

DERKA DERKA! Scapey's TV-shoot diary... Pt. 1

Finally, I can post this. Been waiting ages, to see if we would be asked to sign any kind of N.D.A. before we got paid for it.
We didn't, so...

A few months back I got a message from a mate of mine, who also runs an airsoft/paintball site.
He'd been approached by a TV production company who were looking for locations, equipment and extras for a new "reality TV" show in which 6 celebrities would be trained in various combat techniques by some ex-military types.

Originally, it was to be shot between my FireFight site and one of Dave's sites.
This all fell through after they found an empty boarding school up by Loch Rannoch.
Dave was still asked to provide gear and extras though.

And so it was that a bunch of us weekend-warriors struck out for the middle of nowhere, armed only with some Dr Pepper and what the RAC website laughably calls "Directions"...