Trip to Paris
2nd-5th March

Finally I shall get round to telling you about my trip to Paris last week.

Considering that my only previous experiece of Paris was one day of rain 8 years ago, with my parents and then being denied the opportunity to go up the Eiffel Tower...also then being denied a trip to the Dali Museum that I so wanted to go to, last weeks trip was a vast improvement!

I did make it to the Dali museum which was pretty ace, I sat and drank tea in THE cafe that Amelie "worked" in, I walked down Avenue Montagne and happened to accidentally end up in THE Dior shop (breathtaking!), drank alot of red wine and most importantly went and visited THE Moulin Rouge!

Ok so I didn't make it up the Eiffel tower, but i did stand underneath it and probably wasted a whole roll of film on it too.

But the Moulin Rouge did give me the opportunity to have a good starting point for my documentary. I can't say i was blown over by the experience and by far it wasn't the most thrilling part of my stay in Paris. The weather was overcast , it was rather windy and as you would expect there were alot of tourists....myself included. The Moulin Rouge itself has an entrance area open to the public, which has a display of lenticular images showing off various dancers and cabaret shows. This is accompanied by a year by year history of the moulin rouge, which if you have the time and patience...you will walk round and read. Me...I had a video camera and took the lazy approach of filming the info boards with a view to reading them when I offload my footage.

Having had a gander at all i could (without paying a fortune to see a show), I went and stood outside the Moulin Rouge across the street to get some stills and some footage. Following the success of "Fit Nosh" and my first attempt at presenting...I decided to take on my presenter roll once again. I thrust the camera into poor Andy (significant other)'s hands and stood in the middle of the street talking crap at the camera. This is when it dawned on me that I actually hadn't planned what i was going to say, and having only just visited the place briefly, I didn't really know that much about it.

So after a few takes of me muttering on about the "home of burlesque", we packed up the camera and headed to the gift shop so I could buy a nice little book that would help me out.

Whether or not the footage I got will make it into the final documentary, i do not know. Unfortunately i was not really in a position to go back and re shoot as we were staying with friends who were very kindly trying to show us around the city. There really was alot to fit into 4 days.

Despite all this I am very glad i went and if anything i guess this can count as research.

Since going to the Moulin Rouge I have done alot of thinking and have realised that my goals and focus for this documentary may have altered slightly and that i should be putting my all into the areas closer to home. The Moulin Rouge will deffinaely get a mention in my Doc, but for now my focus is with the society and the upcomming show "Rule Brittania". I think originally I may have been aiming to pack a little bit too much into something which will only be about 10-15 mins in length.