We are so excited to finally announce August 26th 2016 as the debut for Ollie and Emma – The Webseries. This has been such a huge endeavor and its still not over! Tom and Cheri would like to thank all our loyal Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram followers…keep liking and share with your friends!! Ollie and […]
Please check out the first Ollie and Emma webseries trailer! So excited to begin sharing this story I have been working on with Cheri Jacobs for over two years now.
The story to me is all about starting a conversation across divides, something that has to happen for everyone’s sake. This can happen when we are inclusive, and everyone can join the fun.
So click below and enjoy! Look for our show on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and WordPress to find out about this upcoming release!
One of the things that’s been the most exciting about the creation of this webseries, along with being so happy to see what we’ve been working on for so long finally come to life, is how the momentum of it is still going! Lots of friendships were made on set and on our own social […]
via Ollie and Emma – Chek TV feature! — Ollie and Emma – The Series
Good size for mug 🙂
That was my first time using the quick photo feature. Right now I’ve got, well a decent supply of coffee and a 300 page notebook and a bass which is pretty well perfect. I have considered bringing a coffee maker in here too but as Cece is also in here I’m not sure her feelings on me brewing in here at 6am. I could sneak in a Bodum perhaps.
Today we have the Emma and Mandy table read which I’m very excited to get into. With the main shoot for the demo/pilot coming up it will be great to start working one on one with the cast again. With recent events of course things have not been easy. Wolf was not only a great cast member and someone who got our dream and our idea straight away but he was also my Cece’s beloved cousin. We will be doing a tribute to him in the Ollie and Emma WordPress site early next week when we have time to focus on it properly.
I’ve also been working on a new blog story idea that comes from my own background of working in Victoria and living in James Bay where all the big hotels are situated. It’s called Closer to Heaven and it’s a romance set here in working class Victoria, BC. Our city is perfect for that, which I know any local anywhere would say but we are set on the ocean and one of Victoria’s quirks is, thinking of my mention of James Bay, the number of little mini towns within Greater Victoria and how, as I mentioned, the very rich and others can not only live close by but even right next door. This also leads to all kinds of exchanges and therfore story possibilities.
Cookeilidh is also starting up our festival season which is looking to be really busy! After such a supportive crowd at The Highland Games our next show is June 7th at World Ocean Day in Sidney, right down by the water. Moving here almost 30 years ago now from the Mainland to Saanichton it’s great to play only a few blocks away from where I got my first bass!
If you haven’t yet, follow the band on Facebook!
Victoria Highland Games!
Created by TomPogson.com
Cook Street Village...Home of Pic a Flic Video
“Here we come…”
British Comedy and the even broader subject of British culture started for me with the Monkeeys. And it was a long fun journey since then.
I do have some heritage from the U.K. so that probably helps but it basically started from growing up with the Monkeeys on television which I would try to never miss (along with the usual collection of Saturday morning cartoons where I would use the TV Guide to map my morning from 7 am to noon like Faramir reviewing a map of Mordor.)
I was especially a fan of Davey to the point where I was playing Tambourine at church and incorporating as best I could the dance that also became known as the “Axl Shuffle” of Axl Rose. Almost wonder if he’s a British Comedy fan? He was mentioned in Depeche Mode 101 where not only was he slammed with a fan exclaiming “guns and posers” but he went to the premier with Dave Gahan trying to distract him when the cheeky line appeared on film. Anyways. ..
The next stage in my britishizing was when I accidentally turned on public television and came across someone who looked and sounded much like Davey Jones minus the red suit and tambourine. It was Hywel Bennett and the show was Shelley.
Shelley and Mrs. H.
It wasn’t Davey. He didn’t do Daydream Believer. There wasn’t a decent tambourine in sight. But it made me laugh. And most importantly…it made me curious.
Shelley was smart, fast talking and talked about things I’d never heard of. There were obagines, the foreign office and the dhss, and Chinese take-aways whatever that was. Naturally these were all the British equivalent to talking about eggplant, welfare and ordering Chinese food and picking it up. But for me at eleven it was this whole new world where people talked different about mysterious probably cool grown up things I had no idea about.
The next step was a classic. I watched a number of Fawlty Towers episodes in a row with my Dad and Grandfather. Well. Enough said there.
Eventually I started watching for the two back to back Britcoms that would be on the station from Seattle from 10 to 11 pm (I didn’t use a VCR because that would be wrong. The record feature is meant for…meant for…uh…nevermind…)
These included the classic but new to me…ok…deep breath…Butterflies, Red Dwarf, Never the Twain, The Manor Born, Yes Minister, Yes Prime Minister, Good Neighbours, Monty Python (naturally), Are You Being Served, Blackadder, Mr. Bean (eventually though that came to us first via CBC), and more Fawlty Towers.
With the mixture of YouTube and the British Section of Pic a Flic pictured above I discovered an army more of titles which would be silly to start listing and discovered the world behind many of the shows like Only Fools and Horses (huge in the U.K. but strangely lesser known here) The Young Ones (born of the comedy club beginnings of The Comic Strip Presents…its name taken from its proximity to a strip club) which like many comedy projects began as two person acts such as Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders, and Rik and Abe. One of my most favored movies “The Tall Guy” with Jeff Goldblum is based on the partnership of Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis. It also featured “Must be Love” by Madness.
Which brings me to my strange equal fascination with British Music. Beyond one of my favorite first bands having a British singer (Davey) and the next being Queen I have no idea. I do know that in the case of bands like Embrace and Elvis Costello I would like their music first and then find out they were from the United Kingdom afterwards.
I would like to go there someday but I almost wonder if the mystery is more intact we me over here. To me they’re still that cool, strange place of Factory Records (New Order), Mute (Depeche), Black Books, Adam and Joe, and (saving the best for last) these three gentlemen who turned the idea I had of writing a sitcom myself into a huge, huge obsession with the idea.
Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington
Cheers,
Tom
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Sort of a good time to catch up as we are at the start of March. It’s my birthday month (ok that’s self indulgence, I apologize) but sitting on a bus with more posters it’s kind of less imposing though.
I don’t really get concerned about my age most of the time. My main inspirations created their best work past 30 so it doesn’t even phase me.
March is St Patrick’s month and that means I get to do lots of shows with Cookeilidh (presently out in James Bay with posters. ..trying to get to each of Victoria’s micro communities. And there is a whole lot of those. A friend and I were discussing that. It’s one of the cool things about our city and the diversity that’s been here since the Gold Rush but perhaps that’s why travelling across town feels so epic. It’s like you’re going through six towns before you get to where you’re going.
Ollie and Emma is still very much active too with setting up everything with our awesome new executive producer Less Bland Productions and Cheri and I are working not only on that but on creating other pitches that we could also use in the future. Our next skit is slated to be one featuring our two fun surreal elders played by Fred Samuel and Wolf Rick Patterson and we will soon be starting the table reads and rehearsal for that. I get a lot of questions about when do I sleep…i use a memo app so far. Maybe one day I’ll have a secretary with a memo app. We’ll have matching memo apps. That would be amazing.
Oh yeah, and when I have time I’ve been playing around with a little blog story. I’ll try to keep it pretty regularly posted at least until the story is done. I’m typing this on a phone and sometimes the auto suggestions are far more interesting than what I write. I have got to meet that guy someday. Anyways the new blog is at…
https://journalbymax.wordpress.com/
Have to cut this a little short as I’ll miss my stop.
Cheers,
Tom
Posted from WordPress for Android
Hey everyone! Been a really busy week and right now I am up ridiculously early (got up at 3:30)…doing things that sort of qualify as work, but yeah it’s mostly puttering. I can sleep later. I’ll get to it. More coffee!
This time of year is not only the gift buying but so many projects are going full tilt. When I’m not working Cheri and I writing the first season of Ollie and Emma, getting ready for promo shoots and then of course you fit in being a returning student at Uvic which is in those exam things and the band http://www.Cookeilidh.com is getting geared up for Chrismas, including a show at the Mary Winspear center that I am totally stoked about being that I grew up on the Peninsula!
Here’s a recent photo from the Ollie and Emma shoots before I just go off on a tangent about defining “growing up on a peninsula”. Yeah, that’s probably for the best…
http://ollieandemma.wordpress.com
Cast shoot for Ollie and Emma at Cinevic
Tom's Creativity Blog 