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Reading that headline, I realise I may have raised expectations rather. Er… no, I’ve not asked anyone to marry me. What I’m referring to was this afternoon’s State Visit to Studio by our Commissioning Editor, which is one of those events one dreads because It Could All Go Badly Wrong.

It didn’t. She loves the set, thinks our presenter Will is terrific (and she’s going to love Lynda, who’s playing Nan), had very few script notes – only one of which I took serious issue with – and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the stuff she saw shot. Even though we were cooped up at the back of set shooting fiddly little items that were the dullest things we’ve done so far.

So I’m a happy little producer/director. The Boss has seen where her money’s going, and appears genuinely delighted we’ve stretched it as far as we have.

On the other hand, it’s still all going rather more slowly than it needs to, at least to achieve what we set out to do. However, the boss seems happy that we’re doing the best we can, and while she’d obviously like to be kept informed she’s OK with the concept of us making compromises as necessary to get it done. It’s an experimental series, and I think she’s now grasped what it is we’re trying to do with it. Also, we think we know what we’re going to sort it all out; I’ve been rejigging, and tomorrow we should have a better idea if we’re right.

We’ve a week to pick up the pieces before we’re back in studio again, so overall I’m very happy. We’re having a blast shooting the thing, the unexpected pros and cons of making TV this way are fascinating, and hence we’re learning heaps. Rock on, basically.

Too knackered to say much, but so far filming is going pretty well. We’ve had all the usual worries, plus a few more (‘Do the pictures really look like that? They can’t, can they? Eek!’ followed – a day later – by ‘Ah, no, the video line out is just shitty, that’s all. It really looks like [cranks chroma] that.’ ‘Ooooooh purty!’), but we’ve cracked through some very fun stuff today. The plan, such as it was, is pretty much intact – but then, the plan calls for a ‘major format crisis’ at roughly 6pm tomorrow. I’d say we’re on schedule, but such things are never as bad if one makes prior arrangements.

So it’s looking good. It looks cheap, right enough, but nowhere near as cheap as it really is, prompting some very interesting discussions about why this isn’t as scarily long-term self-defeating as one might expect. Of which more anon.

The main thing is that it really is turning out to be a heap of fun. We all got tired late this afternoon (credit to Gavin for having the stamina of an ox and keeping his brain in gear when the rest of us had lapsed to autopilot), but somewhere in the middle there I was having an absolute blast. This lasted until I realised that some of what I’m doing isn’t going to cut together very smoothly, but hey – all the smart kids are cutting from static to moving shots these days, right?

Also, this blog received its first official recognition, in the form of a freebie bottle of wine from Stormhoek. On which definitely more, soon.

Balls. Risk assessment: I haven’t done the risk assessment for studio.

Arrggghhhh!

On Thursday, one of my workmates defrosted her freezer… with a pointy knife. Bang… hiss… dead freezer.

Friday, another of my workmates did exactly the same thing, though to be fair her partner was wielding the knife. Both these colleagues live in the same area of Glasgow – my neighbourhood, in fact. I recommend not stepping out for a few days, particularly if it’s sunny. That much CFC floating around can’t be a good thing.

I spent more time than I should have yesterday trying – and failing, wrong bit of Glasgow – to buy a Guardian. It was the last broadsheet, you see, and the last with that Garamond italic definite article which seems to have defined my typographic fancy for the last fifteen years.

Tomorrow’s edition will be in the continental ‘Berliner’ format – neither as large as a broadsheet nor as small as a tabloid, and a size the Graun’s been gunning for for years. Consequently, there’s a complete redesign. In the comfortable world of newspapers, this is A Big Thing. Risky, too.

Of course, this being the twenty-first century, they’re blogging the first edition today. It all reads a bit like a PR person’s dream of ‘you’re all doing marvelously,’ but credit to them for letting us in on the story.

Some comments on the new layout from type geeks; I’m in studio tomorrow, so will likely miss the general reaction. Boo!

Since I’m getting into this whole ‘camera phone’ thing tonight: here’s a snap of the studio last Monday. On the right of frame you can see the first flattage for the set, that went in even before John had finished drawing up the rest of the floorplan. The tables are strewn with props, stock and prototypes, and at the back you can see some of the students from Glasgow Met who are helping us out as part of a hastily-arranged industrial placement module for their second-year HND course (the idea went from first phone call to them sitting cutting card for us in something like a week – credit to the course tutor for leaping at the idea rather than not bothering). On the left, in the orange jumper, is crack props-wrangler Joni, who’s been doing her best schoolteacher impression and badgering the students all week.

So, there you go – the Scrap It! studio. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the glamorous world of television.

Apologies, by the way, for the unexpectedly monster size of the images. Ecto assures me they’ll be 144Kb, but then uploads a pointlessly 750Kb version anyway. Curious.

Physics. That’s what I read at university: physics. My final year project was on the quantum measurement problem, and I was a damned good experimentalist too, though admittedly I was a crappy theoretician. Nevertheless, I sincerely doubt that my late tutor would have expected me to be, eleven years later, making things like this distinctly cutesy crab. On a Saturday. Professionally. As in: I get paid to do this shit.

It’s a fun job. Not, perhaps, quite as much fun as you might reasonably expect – hey, I was in the office for 11 hours on a Saturday – but still… it beats working for a living.

I’m particularly proud of the crab, incidentally. I don’t make that many props any more so I’m rather out of practice, and anyway I’ve never been good at cute characters. Yet somehow this little fella came together, and he only took about 15 minutes. He needs a couple of tweaks and a lick of paint, but he’s basically there.

In the background is the first picture of our fabulous set to be published anywhere, ever ever ever. You wouldn’t believe for how little money it’s been lashed together, John Gorman (the designer) having done a startlingly good job, with the construction boys throwing themselves into the spirit of the show by scrounging bits lying around the workshop. I was wandering around it with one of the cameras last night, looking at angles, and it’s going to be a dream to shoot. Assuming we can light it, that is – but that’s Monday’s problem.

One of the clever things: there’s a weird forced-perspective/wonky angles thing going on, which means the upstage shelves are much smaller than you’d expect. The back corners are, however, rather lovely to shoot in… except that there’s no room for the cameras. But lo! There is, since the cameras we’re using are dinky little ones. The whole set is about 15% smaller than it would have been with ‘proper’ cameras, which is part of how it came in on budget.

Monday is technically our first day in studio, though I’m choosing to call it a ‘Tech Day’ since I think it’s going to be a bit of a shambles. Tuesday, then, is when we kick off proper. Wish us luck!

Since the test is pretty much rained off, at least today; Stick Cricket. Flash game: scarily addictive.

[updates: Whenever I play, Trescothick goes for a duck. Funny, that. Plus: why is Flash performance so utterly rubbish on Mac OS X?]

John ‘Daring Fireball’ Gruber loses it over the iTunes 5 interface, in the most hilarious manner. ‘Most hilarious,’ that is, so long as you’re a hardcore Mac user who’s been keeping up with the genuinely absurd number of different window styles that seem to make up the OS X interface these days.

For the record: I hate the pointy corners, but still love the frameless look.

Just in case anyone’s worried that Apple have left themselves nowhere to go with the bizarrely-named ‘iPod nano‘ – they’ve still pico, femto and atto, at least. Though personally, I’d like to see an ‘iPod yotta,’ just for the hell of it. It’d be the Disaster Area of personal audio.

Incidentally, Apple claims to be selling 1.8 million tunes/day over the iTunes Music Store. I make that something like 6 terabytes/day. Woah.

Oh, and the quality of the H264 stream of The Steve’s presentation today is stunning, at least over 2M/bit ADSL. Well worth tuning into for a spectacularly awkward iChat with Madonna, and the new iTunes 5, which looks uncannily like NetNewsWire.