The finished product

So here it is! The finished product!
We are rather proud and happy with how it turned out, and we hope everyone who views it will enjoy it!
We have had a lot of fun making this documentary, and it was really interesting to get into the life of Graham Beadle and the Grinning Demon store in a whole - it is not something we will soon forget.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Cm9BhKF8Y&list=UUZ0vGbsHCcRl-H6i_Kc8Vyw&index=3

You can view the video by clicking on the above link!

A big thanks to Graham Beadle and all those involved.
Check out The Grinning Demon/Graham's Facebook page if you want to know more about the shop and the future events they will be holding.
An actual Grinning Demon website goes live early February, so keep your eyes peeled, and you will see this documentary, and some other footage we recorded for Graham, on his upcoming website.

Thank you for watching

Sam and James

The finishing touches to the editing process

Yesterday we put the finishing touches to our documentary, by editing the sound, creating a commentary and placing the opening sequence at the start. One of the few minor issues that we encountered was making all the sound levels the same. Before editing the sound we found that we had to keep changing the volume on the computer, we changed the volume on many of our clips and this problem was dealt with easily. The next thing we had to do was create a commentary, we used the voice of Sam Creamer because we didn't want to use either of our voices  as neither of us believed that they suited the piece, however Sam Creamer was very helpful and we believe he did a good job narrating. The last thing we had to do was import the title sequence which was created by Sam Creamer, again we believe that he did a good job and it is a great title sequence.

Sam and James

Transcripts 3

Graham on Money Troubles:

Graham: The downside of being here is financially; it was probably one of the worst decisions of my life. I’d spend years working for people in the pub trade, and that meant I had a regular steady income, 4 weeks paid holiday, and I had bonuses on top, and accommodation was provided so I always had plenty of disposable income. I never really had to think throughout life about money: if I wanted something I bought it, if I wanted a holiday I went on it. In a way I was very irresponsible because I never put any money aside other than what we used to purchase the business.

Initially the first two years we opened the shop up, we made it a lot lighter and brighter and invited many customers that wouldn’t usually set foot in the place beforehand, so initially, trade went up, but I also had a second job, I was working as a bar manager, so I had a steady income from there, but because the shop was doing so well, I thought I didn’t need a second job any more and I can just live off this income, and at the time I could do that.

We still wanted to pay everyone back, so we carried on trading, effectively as bankrupt, so its not been ideal, the IVA’s said how much money that I can have per week, and then the money goes to pay back creditors that I’ve accumulated and the debts that we’ve accumulated, we’re a lot worse off making the decision to come here, we’re a year and a half away now, or 2 years from paying everyone back,  but then we’ll be alright again. So yeah, getting this shop was the day that changed my life, but financially, it was for the worse.

Interview with Graham's Wife - Jane:

Jane Interview: Originally he didn’t want it, he just mentioned it in passing, it was me, I pushed him and pushed him to get it, because I knew he’d love it. I thought it might stop him bringing loads of rubbish home, but it hasn’t. But no, it was me, I have to admit. I thought it would make him happy… it does make him happy.

It takes up so much time, that’s the trouble because it’s a 24hr job. You don’t get time to do anything else, you can’t take a holiday, and its just all encompassing. Especially when its quiet and there’s not much money about, but hopefully we’ll get over that and we’ll be back to it. Probably if I knew then what I knew now, we wouldn’t have taken it on but we’ll fight for it, it’ll be fine.

It’s hard to believe but it’s made him more geeky, because he was a bar manager before he took this, he’s always been a geek, he’d got this out of his system, but now card games, everything is about, so it’s made him really super obsessive I might say but that’s what he is deep down, not much I can do about it.

That is all we transcribed, they were the most important parts and we felt we didn't necessarily need to transcribe the other bits, as they were either too short or not relevant!

Sam and James

Editing the project: colour changing

One of the main issues we came across in the editing process is that because we used two different cameras to record footage, the two cameras recorded in different colours. The XD-CAM came out more blue whereas the handheld came out more yellow, and this is pretty clear in the editing process when you watch back the footage. To deal with this problem we used the colour corrector 3-way and brightness and contrast tools. We decided to change the colour of the XD-CAM footage as is looked more similar to the handheld than changing handheld colour to the same as the XD-CAM, just because when we tried to make the image more blue with the handheld footage it did not turn out right. Together we solved this by coming to a combined decision and overcame this problem.

Sam and James

Transcripts 2

Graham on Business:

Graham: Over the last few years we’ve experienced quite a few problems with the shop. Initially, we had a great time, businesses out in the UK were booming and here was no different, we took over the shop and increased the trade almost 50%, but then unfortunately when the credit crunch hit everything kind of went “tits” for a while. We finished up struggling and everyone kind of changed the way they shopped, so one of the biggest problems we faced was competing with Amazon. We even got to the point where you have customers come into the shop, they’ll pick your brain for 20 minutes who will then in front of you get your phone out, quote a price on amazon and ask if you can match that, and you’re just like “errrrgh”, so its very difficult to contend with the buying power amazon has.

Because of this we rely on the fact we have a product knowledge we can offer to the customers, we have the services that we offer with the standing orders, and we have to make it so people have a brand loyalty, because otherwise there is no real reason why someone should shop here, ahead of shopping online.

One of the other problems we have is we have a really un-cooperative local council, you’ve got a white elephant out side in the form of the new high street development, this was going to bring an awful lot of customers according to them, but what its actually done is the complete opposite, it cost us over £12000 worth of trade in 10 weeks, at one stage we went 13 days without a customer whose name we didn’t know. It actually halved our trade and the only people coming in were regulars who come in, browse and buy stuff, or those with standing orders. It hasn’t increased trade at all. It looks nicer now its done, but that’s as far as it goes.

Graham on Delivery 2:

Graham: The comic industry is a bit of a weird entity, half my weeks trade is done in about 2 and a half hours on a Wednesday, this shelf here, this time yesterday was absolutely heaving. If you look at this list there were an awful lot of titles. From about 2 till 4 on a Wednesday I get invaded, my regulars descend upon the shop, and grab the stuff from the shelves. As soon as that’s happened I’ll then go and fill up this box, where the rest of the customers who have standing orders, tell me what they want on a weekly basis, I keep a record on the computer, and I take what they reserve off the shelf and put it in this box. I have a customer called Paul who has 7-8 titles a week, so I’d just get the list, go along the shelf and take out all the titles he needs, and they’d come in over the course of a couple of weeks, maybe every month and take what is theirs. So at the end of Saturday I might have 15-20 comics left. Ordering is done 3 months in advance, it’s a bit of a weird set up, we get a magazine every month called previews, tells me everything all different companies are producing over 3 months, and I basically have to predict what people will want. As well as comics this magazine has extras from the shop, like collectables. 

Transcripts

To make editing easier on us, we decided to transcript all of our interviews. You do not hear every word said on the documentary (though you get most of it) as we didn't have enough time from all of the interviews we had, we picked the best bits out.
We thought we would put up the transcripts so you may read them if you like:

Graham on Comic Bagging and Delivery:

Graham Interview: As much as I love this job some of the jobs are pretty laborious, got a lot of comics to bag and tag. I have a lot to do here, but it has to be done, because if they don’t get bagged they get knackered and these collectors are fussy individuals, if they’re knackered they don’t want them, so this is actually pretty key. I probably have to bag between 5 and 6 hundred comics a week, so sitting here doing this for 40 minutes is not the most fun in the world. There’s not much about this job I don’t like, so there’s nothing wrong with a few things that are set to try us. You have to watch out for air at the top, because what happens is as people rummage through the boxes, that air bashes on the top of the comic and therefore damages that comic

Graham on Aspergers and how he's changed:

Graham: One of the biggest changes for me, was that it wasn’t just a job change,  I changed my vocation in life. This has helped me change, now, I suffer from Asperger’s, and one of the things I don’t do, is I don’t have an empathy with other peoples emotions. So general interaction and day to day life was often problematic for me and my defence, my coping mechanism, was sort of copying as a strategy, I worked in pubs, so I would emulate other peoples behaviour. When you work in a pub you probably don’t encounter the nicest people in the world, so my whole life and other persona was based around snippets of other people, most of whom weren’t particularly pleasant and given a choice I wouldn’t give time of day to. Now, when I took over here I was with my partner for 3 years and we’d just had our 2^nd son, and because of the traits I’d taken on board I don’t think I was a particularly nice person as such. The one thing about being in the shop is I can just be who I am, because so many of the people that come in the shop are like minded or suffer from autistic spectral disorders or who will just take me as I am even if they don’t have similarities in myself. It just makes life easier, I’m more relaxed, I’m much happier when I come to work, when I leave work which therefore translates to much happier in my home life because if you’re happier with everything in life, its easier to float through and enjoy things. My kid would be the first to say my biggest change was coming here, obviously its kind of cool having a Dad who has a comic shop and I’m sure that gives me brownie points with friends at various points in time. I’d like to say the biggest change is its made me a better husband and father.