Special Edition!

Art Notes

Another of my favourite, very early pages. Any pen would do the job. Green ink. This was probably one of those big chunky novelty biros with buttons to select different colours!

Nope - not a space-age torpedo (with teddy bears)

I lived in a small - tiny - village in Ireland in 1977 (what a culture shock that was!) in which many people including a best friend aka John S. didn't even have telephones. The local newspaper shop was the front kitchen of a cottage. When they weren't eating dinner the table was up under the front window with all the magazines, papers and comics spread out on it. There was a biscuit tin to the side with the money in it. Strange times indeed. Anyhow, if you needed a studio pen or something - or even a proper pencil it wasn't as if you could nip down the road to the stationery shop. To be honest though, I didn't know any better. Ballpoint pens were just the business!

I LOVE this page, really brings me back.

Film Notes

Another scene that never happened! Oh well, my mind was a muddle of all sorts back then. Tell you what though, it's not a bad device to use for heightening the tension for when the droids escape in their life-pod.

Hitchcock would certainly approve of my 9 year old approach! He said that you can very effectively place in the viewer's mind the idea that something dreadful might or even will happen. Then the tension builds and builds - the possibility made more tangible by the viewer's having seen it happen already - in this case harmlessly, to an empty pod.

He said he made a terrible mistake once for which he never forgave himself. It was the film 1936 film Sabotage. There was a bomb being carried on a bus -unknowingly - by a child. He built the tension so meticulously for about a minute - the audience is waiting for it to go off - and what did he do? "I let the bomb go orf. You see, once the bomb goes orf you've given the audience a release - from the tension. I killed it." Or words to that effect.

Hitchcock eh? Bloody useless.

On Monday: Not sure yet - Luke at Anchorhead?

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