Millennialise The Way We Televise!

There's one great thing about all of this talk about the much-desired Millennial workforce and that is, that I am one!

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Born in 1992, I am supposedly among the 30% of millennials who declare themselves to have no religion. We have on average, the highest number of Facebook friends and send a median of 50 texts a day. We are selfie-taking, sexting, self-promoting and self-sufficient bright young things - we are human version 2.0... and everybody wants us - or so they say.

I LOVE working in Television, as it means that all of my Millennialist skills are called upon every day in a fast-moving and content-hungry industry that stimulates and satisfies me.

The bad thing, is that TV can't help but wrap itself into a hedgehog shaped ball when someone mentions Netflix or the word 'multi-platform'. For most production companies, that just means 'Dorothy throw in a twitter hashtag and be done with it', but it's wayyyy more than that! We Millennials are not only hungry to absorb information, we're hungry to create it. And we do both of those things, tens, sometimes hundreds of times a day. We text, we snapchat, we blog, we vlog, we gram and regram, we Facebook, we tweet and we retweet. Youtube, news updates, TV in the form of video, image, text and live events...the list goes on! I thrive on being thrown into a new job every few months, exploring new places and busying my evenings with a variety of activities to stimulate my body and mind. To some it sounds exhausting, but to me - I live for it. And this seemingly chaotic and exhausting under-web lifestyle informs every aspect of a Millennial's daily existence!

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We are home-grown content-creators and although this might scare longer-serving TV professionals, who schedule boardroom meetings to brainstorm Bake-Off, the synapses of ultra-social Millennials are firing on all cannons as they build their brand and their content, wherever, whenever, and 10 times at once. Millennials and their closest genetic descendants Centennials, no longer enjoy television in the traditional way. TV to us is a World Wide Web of giving and receiving, of content-absorbing and content-creating. It exists in the moments between our chaotic social engagements, during the glimpses at the Metro news in between our tube stops, and the breaths in between the sips of my caramel frapp.

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We're heading in the right direction, but is it fast enough? On Demand services should now be the norm. We want everything we've ever seen before, and every bit of new content available in a central location - and we want it at a time that suits us, not the schedulers. So digitising archives needs to happen NOW, the development of storage solutions for HUGE amounts of content needs to happen NOW. The hiring of Millennials - needs to happen NOW.

We ourselves are a diverse brand, and we push that brand every single day on social media. We champion individuality, don't like to be defined by traditional terms or binary social systems and naturally immerse ourselves in the world around us both physically and mentally. We absorb, we ideate, we create. It's in our nature. We're adaptable, tolerant of change and welcoming of difference, and we want TV to be too. We're ready and waiting to be asked!

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Netflix has proven that new and exciting platforms CAN still be 'thunk-up' and we don't need the confidence of a grammatically correct blurb to make it successful (no seriously, Netflix blurbs are awful) - but it's about originality and adaptability - it's about Millennialism. Netflix might be ahead of the game, but there's plenty more to come. We need platforms, we need infrastructure, we need ideas. We need a new auto-updating World Wide Web of Television, with machine learning capabilities and an inter-disciplinary collaborative remit. The multi-talented and multi-tasking Millennials are waiting to immerse themselves in rich cultural experiences and the time has come to work WITH them and deliver the best they've ever had.

So whether you are media professionals, mathematicians, retail reps or stay-at-home parents - the time has come to Millennialise the way we televise!


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Bear's Den

There's not a lot I can say about these guys other than I absolutely love them. Whilst working at the O2 Arena I heard them warm-up for Mumford & Sons and fell in love with their harmonies. Ever since I've been waiting for the chance to see them again and finally, the day came.

Support act Alex Vargas melted me with his incredible voice - bought his CD as soon as I'd heard his first track. What a talent, can't wait to see where he goes next. He was followed by 'Rukhsana Merrise' who I wasn't convinced by if I'm honest. Her voice sounded a little nasally and I wasn't entirely sure of her lyrics, mainly as there was no diction. But then, I was there for Bear's Den, so it passed the time whilst I was waiting I guess.


And then it came, the music slowly built,

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the audience filtered closer to the stage

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the lights got brighter

and then BOOM -

BEAR'S DEN.

The boys kept true to their spirit, performing a mix of tracks from their first EP 'Islands' and ending on a cover. They stuck to their folky roots and treated us to two acoustic performances, during which - the bar was closed - which shows just how unequivocal their magic is. The first used just a single mic onstage. For the second 'Bad Blood', the boys came out into the crowd and surrounded themselves with their fans - calming the entire of Shepherd's Bush Empire to silence after a stunning crowd participation with 'the clap (no not that kind) and a rendition of 'Agape'. The set even included some epic base distortion 'Sahara' and some sensational horns 'Think of England' and 'Elysium'.

It was impressive to see such a gathering of fans who really knew the music. It always feels great as a fan when you book tickets to a see a band that none of your friends have heard of and you turn up and are surrounded by other people like you, who can sing along to the lyrics with you. The strength of that was obvious in the boy's home-coming gig from their European tour. Even BBC Radio1's Greg James and one of my favourite actors Kris Marshall turned out to see them play - although I didn't want to be that kid that drew attention to them.

Their confidence in their own music and the vibe you get as a fan is just incredible. They are down to earth, charismatic, original, authentic chaps with a love for beautiful music and good lighting design. I can't wait to see where they go next and I think it's pretty safe to say, I'll go there too! Bring on the next album boys!

Find out more about 'Bear's Den' and their magical music here: http://www.bearsdenmusic.co.uk/store/

The Nerdy Nether

Hello one and all, I’m finally making an entrance into my partner’s blog! Hurraay! I'll be making an appearance now and again to ask the questions that don't get asked, and to help debate the concepts within the content we experience. 

Recently we went and saw the play ‘The Nether', which I highly recommend for reasons my girlfriend will explain: http://watchinabitotheatrenstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-nether-at-duke-of-yorks-theatre.html

So, here's what I have to say: (SPOILER ALERT)

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The story was incredibly engaging and really shined a light onto what many perceive as the ‘future of the internet’. So let us begin by explaining what the Nether roughly translates too. It is a sort of augmented reality similar to the world of the matrix but still has an internet feel to it. People ‘login’ which seems to completely render their bodies unconscious whilst their minds are engaged. We didn’t get to explore ‘the nether’ in its entirety as it focused entirely on one particular server, ‘The Hideaway’. Regardless of the plot this is quite interesting, where rather than servers hosting the simple web pages like we know, they now host worlds, created and coded by us. The play touched on the reality of senses and how things have advanced so much that we can seemingly trick our senses into believing that ‘the nether’ worlds are real.

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Most people would instantly jump at the Matrix having coined this particular style of ‘the internet’ but I would have to disagree strongly. Anime films such as Ghost in the Shell (fantastic by the way) made 5 years earlier already touched on this. Many 80’s Sci-fi already included this notion of a virtual world in which we could visit as we pleased. It all sounds like something from our distant future, but actually it isn’t. Look up virtual reality gear such as the Oculus Rift or Project Morpheus by Sony and you can see that we are already heading in that direction. The main contender with it is Microsoft’s newly announced HoloLens which is an actual functioning Augmented Reality headset. This means that put the large headgear on and prepare to see holograms fit perfectly in the surroundings. The idea of an internet we can physically partake in is still far away but at least we can see the horizon. An internet like ‘the Nether’ doesn’t seem so distant now does it?

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But is something like this good? The point of the play was to highlight the potential way ‘the Nether’ could be abused but at the same time questioned our morality. I used to be part of online literature forum which included role-playing and for this reason, the production really resounded with me. What is reality? It’s what you see in front of you, it’s what engages your mind body and senses. Yet what if we were able to create a universe that was far more amazing than the one we were born in and we spent all our time there? If our mind, which houses all of our emotions, memory and feelings; if that could be tricked into this ‘2^nd reality’, then couldn’t we argue that it is a reality? Most would disagree, most would say that Earth our planet and our universe which we can see everyday is reality. I would argue that it isn’t and that the term ‘reality’ is something subjective. When I was on those forums I completely dedicated myself to the worlds on there. Yes I knew that I was on a computer typing words to strangers far away but my imagination was what broke down the barriers. If you’re presented a world of your imagination with no perceivable barriers then who is to say that you aren’t occupying a different reality?

The Oxford dictionary’s definition of reality is ‘the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.’ So if we have a world made in a computer does it actually exist? Yes. Why? Because instead of atoms creating the world, it is now code (which technically is still made up of atoms just in a different way than we perceive). So any world made in ‘the Nether’ ‘technically’ is a reality. It is just up to you on far of a reality you define it. Reality is the state of things as they exist and the best example I could give you is this. If I took a child who was from the 1% of wealth in this world and took them to where the worst of the 99% lived. Their reality will have changed. Ignorance would have protected them from the horrors of poverty, disease and corruption. They would now know of those things and how they would choose to act on them would be up to them. But in the end their reality has ‘grown’ or ‘changed’.

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What makes ‘The Nether’ so interesting, is that rather than focusing on some magic world filled with elves and dragons (a memorable quote from the script is ‘have you fucked an elf before?’) it focuses on ‘the Hideaway’ a place which is similar to online forum role-play but with a darker twist. It focuses on paedophilia without resorting to graphic imagery. In ‘the Hideaway’ people get to choose from a selection of avatars and may either be adults or if lucky to be chosen, one of the cast of children who gets abused in this world. Naturally it’s wrong for this content to exist as a reality in the ‘real-world’ but here it’s all managed, used and created by adults. No actual child steps foot in the world, rather old men choose to be the children being molested. This then throws more questions into the mix. If I were to create a Netherworld, and the idea of freedom of speech exists (or in this case; creation), who is to say that the ‘creation’ should be messed with, regardless of its contents? If I adhere to ‘the Nether’ rules, surely no matter how depraving the content is, it’s still legal? It is a reality I chose to create and as such, most of us in today’s society would agree it shouldn’t be tampered with. No one should have a right to determine our dreams and imagination - But I’m being hypocritical. I hate and disagree with child molestation and paedophilla as much as the next person and would obviously want it removed from ‘reality’. But if there was a place where no ‘real’ child existed and only the images were there, that meant that the acts no longer happened in THIS reality, in THIS society, is that wrong to remove? Does it not act as a way for these people to express themselves without harming anyone?

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Here lies the conundrum, the main character who hates the whole idea of ‘The Nether’ ends up falling in love with one of the children (who is an actually a really old physics professor) loves the child, has sex with her (who is actually a him) captivated by the beauty and the freedom of ‘the hideaway’. The creator of the Hideaway ‘Papa’ states that because he has ‘the nether’ to escape to, he has never physically molested a child. He almost did and to prevent it from happening again he created ‘the Hideaway’.  Yet the main character continues on her path of taking the ‘Hideaway’ down.  This could all be construed as me saying that even imagery of paedophilia is acceptable. Which is not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that for you to question reality and imagine a world in which ‘the Nether’ exists, to imagine a place where you could PHYSICALLY be a part of YOUR imagination, even if it‘s an imagination we don’t agree with, do we have the right to destroy that, to impose our will on others? If this reality has things you don’t agree with but means that in the “physical earth world” those practices will stop happening, is it okay to destroy this ‘nether’ reality and therefore force it back upon the real-world? I can’t tell you the answer since the world is not black or white and ‘the nether’ shows us just how blurred the lines and definitions of reality and morality really can be.

But I can tell you that I stand fast behind the argument that the ‘Nether worlds’ are in fact, realities and that, makes it hard for me to stomach the idea of destroying them. I’m glad to have found a play that explores just this, making us question our every moral, delve into our own definitions of reality and ultimately explore what will inevitably be, our future.

For a review of the production itself, head over here: http://watchinabitotheatrenstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-nether-at-duke-of-yorks-theatre.html

'Tree' by Daniel Kitson

'Tree', written by Daniel Kitson in August 2013, is a masterpiece of quips and laughs, playing at full capacity to an audience in the round. It is dynamic both in terms of character and in a physical sense, that being (in the style of Kitson himself) - there's a f**k-off massive tree in the middle of a theatre.

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The production is a play for two people and the story is as follows:
Man walks underneath tree for picnic
'Why you up a tree?'
'Let's not get there straight away, why you here?'
'Let's not get there straight away'

And so the two engage in a barter of small talk that, at times became a little predictable but that, slowly but surely reveals the two men's 'real' reasons for being there.

Kitson's character is an oddball, a man that raises up cups of tea in a plastic bucket rather than leave his leafy dwelling. We gradually find out the background of this illusive bearded bard as a landlord of the house his tree stands outside of. He has instead chosen to live in the tree for 'just over nine years' and manages to survive by ordering groceries to the house below, receiving t-shirts from a guy called Robbie, 'pissin' in a bottle and shittin' in a bag'.

Of course, Key's character has no intention of believing this man first time, as a civil rights lawyer he's convinced he can work out the truth. And so, he tells of how he came to be at this particular spot. He met a girl, she suggested a picnic, he came... only he came '50mins early... not 10mins late', because the clocks went back and he hadn't 'clocked on' (sorry).

And so the narrative continues, a back-and-forth of questions and answers, appreciation of smiles that look like it's wearer has had a stroke, and of shared adoration for megaphones and blowtorches.

But it's not all as meaningless as it sounds, at around the 75minute mark it takes an unexpected turn. Those who seemed to be two innocent men with civil liberty at heart and who decide quite quickly that everyone should be addressed as 'mate', transform within seconds before our very eyes. Key's character receives a phone call, from his wife and daughter, whom he told he was working late. And so the dream date with a girl immediately becomes a stab in the heart of everything we've been led to believe. And it doesn't stop there.

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As Kitson's character works out what's going on he has a change of heart, perhaps he'll tell Key the 'truth':
'It's not true'
'What isn't'
'Me living in a tree'
'I don't believe you, why else would you be sitting in a tree'
'I'm a tree surgeon, I'm waiting'
'For what?'
'Woodchipper'

And so, the tree turns on its roots and now we have a dilemma. What is the truth of this illusive magical man in a tree? Could THIS in fact be true, that he's wearing a council t-shirt because he works for the council, not because a man called Robbie gave it to him. Or could this be his very own way of making a point about commitment.

Who knows, but it's awfully odd that he'd be waiting in a tree that late in the evening, don't you think?


A brilliantly written piece that saved the best bit 'til last and as it was being filmed, we even got a second chance to watch Key's character catch a grape his mouth! A night that really left us dwelling in the stairwells of the Old Vic to argue our case for which story was really true - and whether we could have got the grape in first time ;)