BiNS, mildly offensive since 2002
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I spent this Sunday morning freezing cold and being threatened with arrest, and no it wasn’t another early morning kick-off down the Blues. I was being filmed for 21 Stories - the film about the Rotunda being made by Nic Gaunt - holding a placard (you can see it above) while all around me people got on with their Christmas shopping.
I wasn’t called upon to act as such (which is a good job, my thespian skills are a little broad to say the least), but to walk up and down New St and stand still so Nic could film some slow shutter-speed stuff. It was, what we call in the trade, a long shot - which meant that I was standing about 100m or more from the camera. This meant I spent a lot of the time fending off comments from passers-by “who said it was” “it is” or more bizarrely “they are”. It also meant that every time (three in the space of half an hour) one of our boys-in-luminous-yellow trotted up to me I had to explain: that it was a film, that the camera was down the road a bit, that we had permission from Film Birmingham, and that they’d just spoilt the shot. Eventually I was told “you’d better move on, you can be arrested, that sign is mildly offensive “.
‘Mildly offensive’? I hope you know BiNS and my good self well enough to realise that being mildly anything isn’t in my nature. ‘Mildly offensive’? How can a positive statement, almost prudishly self-censored, be even mildly offensive? I’m also at a loss as to exactly which law I would have been breaking.
Apart from that it was a lot of fun, and we had a good chat and a pint (in the Bull Ring Tavern) afterwards. I’m really looking forward to seeing the results - and those of when I did my “talking head” bit the other week - but more importantly the whole project - go check out some of the pictures and thoughts on the site and even contribute your own story.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 11:18 pm by bounder and is filed under BiNS, culture, showbiz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Help improve our tagging - add some appropriate tags to this post:Tags for this article: 21 Stories , film , Film Birmingham , Rotunda
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on 10 January 2008 at 6:51 pm Joe wrote:
Hope Becky/Nic had the permission letter with them! They do come in handy sometimes, you wouldn’t believe the amount of bored security guards / over-zealous Community Support Officers that pester productions.
Glad to see the sign is within the maximum dimensions permitted in section 42/b, paragraph 18, line 3 of the Highway Code (updated version)…
Joe, Film Birmingham
on 8 February 2008 at 11:16 am Christopher Bate wrote:
Hey, stumbled across this place whilst trying to find out how to go about asking for permission to film. It’s been hard for our production so far with various councils dicking us about. Wolverhampton was one of them….
But Wolves isn’t that bad on the whole. It’s worth living around there just for the Light House. Sadly, I couldn’t make the short film weekend.
Keep up the good work and all that jazz,
Chris
christopherdbate@gmail.com
on 15 May 2008 at 12:18 pm Rotunavision | Birmingham: It’s Not Shit wrote:
[...] Nic Gaunt’s film 21 Stories gets its premiere next Thursday at the Electric (see newrotuna.co.uk for more details). I’m goign to go, so look out for my thoughts afterwards. [...]