Discworld board game unboxed, Fades failure and lots of missing staff this week
Holiday season may be over for the kids, but it’s kicked right in again here at SFX Towers, which may as well be renamed Tumbleweed Towers (which certainly has a nice alliteration vibe going on). Rich is off in Canada, Kirky is roadtripping around the West Coast of the States, Jordan’s having a staycation and Rob is finally getting the chance to really enjoy his new home. Probably by gardening.
So no, we’re nowhere near deadline, as you may have worked out.
But we just can’t stop these guys working. Even though they’re supposed to be off work, on Monday Rob still attended the press launch for The Fades (which he enjoyed immensely and may have scared him just a little but, but he wouldn’t admit that). He was supposed to come back with lots of video interviews in arms… but there was a bit of a technical hitch, as you’ll see from the video clip of Tom Ellis.
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Jordan can’t seem to shake the work ethic, either. He’s been sending in features for Nick and still making sure that Tweets Of The Week goes live. We also know from his very active Twitter feed at the weekend that his Star Wars The Complete Saga Blu-ray box-set must have arrived.
Dave B is not on holiday yet, but it’s only a matter of hours. He’s preparing for a well-earned break that starts tomorrow as well, which will be especially welcome after the week of wall-to-wall meetings he’s had. He was also seen smashing an SD card with a very large hammer, after being told by the IT department that the reason our Flip Cam kept breaking down was because the card was a fake – not a top quality specimen we thought we’d bought at all, but cheap’n’cheerful knock-off with a counterfeit sticker. We’ve been had!
Dave G was another member of the team impressed with The Fades , but he didn’t see it at the swanky press launch. He had to make do with the BBC’s pixel-o-vision preview service, but still loved it, afterwards mumbling something about “that was great – would be even better if only they could find a way to bump off the comedy sidekick geek”. When somebody asked if his problem with the character was because he reminded him of himself, he left the office grumbling, “I’m no frakking geek.”
The latest in our merry-go-round of work experiencers is Helen Wilson, who drew the short straw and came here on a week when a) she didn’t get to meet half the team, and b) because we’re so short-staffed has spent most of the time transcribing everybody else’s interviews. But she’s very quick, so we’re not complaining. She also helped us out with our first ever “Unboxing” video. Well, when you have an item as enticing as the Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Board Game delivered, you may as well make the opening an occasion. And well impressed we were too (“Wooden playing pieces!” cooed Adrian, “Not yer usual plastic tat!”) though it still seems odd that the makers didn’t go down the obvious route of making the board disc-shaped.
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Nick would like to point out that he was behind the camera for this, but by the way he's banging on about "fluid camerawork", "smooth, Steadicam-style movement" and "judicious use of whip-pans" you'd think he'd just directed Jaws.
After finally putting his foot on the throat of Zombies: The Ultimate Guide , Ian is back concentrating on the reviews section, and feeling just a little bit swamped. Y’see, thanks to Halloween and Christmas looming October’s the busiest month of the year for DVD releases; there are over 60 titles we could be reviewing, and only 20-odd review slots to go around. He also made the mistake of counting how many books he received over the last month, and tallied it up to 94. So if you’re wondering why the self-published book you sent in didn't get reviewed, that’ll be why...
And if a) you’ve been reading From The SFX Office for a while, and b) you heard the news about new Kate Bush album coming out, you can guess for yourself how Nick’s been this week.
Apart from filling up the next exciting issue of SFX with ads, Ade is locked in secret SFX Weekender talks right now! Ohhhhhhh if only you guys could be a fly on the wall… Eeeeek!
Last but not least, John has been designing the cover for SFX #215, which involves some images taken at an exclusive-to -SFX photoshoot – but he’s not allowed to say who or what yet.
Random quote of the week: “There’s a bizarre parallel between BBC Breakfast and Harrison Ford films.”
Whose T-shirt? (Last week’s answer: it was Nick Setchfield’s very subtle Raiders Of The Lost Ark T-shirt)
Click on the image if you feel the desperate need to see the very mildly NSFW version…
