New series of Grand Designs

[ProDave]

Just a heads up, a new series of Grand Designs starts on channel 4 at 9PM tonight.

[Lesgrandepotato]

I think I’m just about ready to re-engage with that post build!

[K78]

Scares the life out of me. 

[Guest Alphonsox]

Hackneyed, cliched, predictable.

 

Build your own grand designs program  (tick one or more from each category ) :- 

The client - (Rich, architect, designer, a friend of Kevin)

The site - (Gifted by the family, a green field site but subject to P55, "A city site we bought for £1million  but sooo much potential",  A listed ruin)

The design - ( Gifted or ungifted architect - probably the client, Expensive European kit house, an architect who's friends with Kevin, Crap)

The finance - (Always lacking to provide some form of tension)

The human bit - (someone is always either delusional, pregnant, divorcing, dying, made redundant, foreign)

The cliff hanger - (Will they complete before they -  run out of money, run out of patience , run out of interesting things to say on TV)

The reveal - (Its all OK because - Mummy gave them the money, It wasn't as bad as Kevin made out, Everyone else lost Interest)

 

Zero to do with selfbuild IMHO

[ToughButterCup]

Ay Ya dwahling, it was all rather left-field for me  : one did suffer so.... 

[Declan52]

6 minutes ago, Alphonsox said:

Hackneyed, cliched, predictable.

 

Build your own grand designs program  (tick one or more from each category ) :- 

The client - (Rich, architect, designer, a friend of Kevin)

The site - (Gifted by the family, a green field site but subject to P55, "A city site we bought for £1million  but sooo much potential",  A listed ruin)

The design - ( Gifted or ungifted architect - probably the client, Expensive European kit house, an architect who's friends with Kevin, Crap)

The finance - (Always lacking to provide some form of tension)

The human bit - (someone is always either delusional, pregnant, divorcing, dying, made redundant, foreign)

The cliff hanger - (Will they complete before they -  run out of money, run out of patience , run out of interesting things to say on TV)

The reveal - (Its all OK because - Mummy gave them the money, It wasn't as bad as Kevin made out, Everyone else lost Interest)

 

Zero to do with selfbuild IMHO

Don't forget that despite a £9m build cost with 3 different architects being used as the clients have more money than sense they still manage to somehow complete a house that wouldn't pass building regs as the stairs have no handrails, no level access or any number of other defects.

[ToughButterCup]

10 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

[...]

the clients have more money than sense they still manage to somehow complete a house that wouldn't pass building regs as the stairs have no handrails, no level access or any number of other defects.

 

How the *king Hell do they manage to get away with  that all the goddam time.....

Debbie has stopped bothering to shuuuuush me when I shout at the TV  

[HerbJ]

Watched Grand Designs on catch up last night - the Castle Folly.

 

This Folly was sold to the couple rebuilding it by  a local farmer, whose partner is a good friend of ours,  who was persuaded to buy it years ago by an his ex-wife but then did nothing much  to look after it.  He received a rude awakening a few years ago when English Heritage sent him a bill for £70 -80,000 for stabilising the structure, to prevent it collapsing. He was very pleased to sell it!

 

Anyway,  our friends , were invited to view the renovation after the grand unveiling. They reported the couple were put under  lot of pressure to get it finished by the production company, who then  removed all their furniture and dressed it for the big finish. Apparently our friends chatted to the new owners and the wife told them it was a nightmare to live there with two small children and those stairs..

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by HerbJ

[newhome]

People I know were on Grand Designs. They built this:

 

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/features/homes-gardens-and-interiors/grand-designs-home-goes-on-124705/

 

I wouldn’t choose to live in a house with this design with 4 dogs though (as they had) although I guess many town houses are similar in layout. 

 

It’s been up for sale for ages but now looks to be under offer after being reduced. 

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-54518733.html

 

 

 

[Pocster]

I thought about going on grand design .

But you don’t get paid and Kevin Mccloud coming back and saying “It’s been 15 years and he’s still not finished “ would cause me to place a hammer in his irritating cranium .

[Declan52]

32 minutes ago, pocster said:

I thought about going on grand design .

But you don’t get paid and Kevin Mccloud coming back and saying “It’s been 15 years and he’s still not finished “ would cause me to place a hammer in his irritating cranium .

But  the camera would pan round for the scenic shot and you are standing back all proud as punch in your birthday suit with one foot on your ground windows giving it the full Kay's catalogue pose. I reckon that would be a grand designs first.

[Pocster]

3 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

But  the camera would pan round for the scenic shot and you are standing back all proud as punch in your birthday suit with one foot on your ground windows giving it the full Kay's catalogue pose. I reckon that would be a grand designs first.

Do you know ; as I read your post I visualised it in great detail .....

[Lesgrandepotato]

4 minutes ago, pocster said:

Do you know ; as I read your post I visualised it in great detail .....

 

‘... I know two magic tricks, elephant and windmill....’ 

[recoveringbuilder]

That’s what gets me they always get pregnant midway, do you think it’s a ploy on the wife’s part to try and get it finished quicker?!

[ProDave]

8 minutes ago, Christine Walker said:

That’s what gets me they always get pregnant midway, do you think it’s a ploy on the wife’s part to try and get it finished quicker?!

Are women that devious?

[newhome]

9 minutes ago, Christine Walker said:

That’s what gets me they always get pregnant midway, do you think it’s a ploy on the wife’s part to try and get it finished quicker?!

 

Must be all that cosying up in a cold caravan. Thank God I had a rental flat ?. 

 

 

[Ferdinand]

3 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Are women that devious?

 

Talk about silly questions ....

 

(Disclaimer: I have not assumed any particular answer)

[newhome]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Are women that devious?

 

I think we all know the answer to that ?

[jack]

We know someone with contacts into the Grand Designs production office and we were asked if we wanted to apply. My wife would have done it, but I have no interest in appearing on television under any circumstances, let alone stressful ones! 

[newhome]

1 minute ago, jack said:

My wife would have done it,

 

That was clearly her devious side coming out then . She either would have ended up pregnant or you would have finished by now so as not to lose face! 

[Jeremy Harris]

45 minutes ago, jack said:

We know someone with contacts into the Grand Designs production office and we were asked if we wanted to apply. My wife would have done it, but I have no interest in appearing on television under any circumstances, let alone stressful ones! 

 

I was emailed by a researcher working for Boundless Productions within a week of us getting planning permission.  Not sure how they got hold of my email address, but I do know that the majority of the people working for production companies are freelance.  Around 80% of the people working on Scrapheap were freelancers, and most of them kept some form of "little black book" of useful contacts. 

 

I worked for four or five different production companies and each time it was one of the junior researchers who contacted me, from information that he/she had acquired from some other production.  For example, having worked for BBC online on an aviation related series (which came via knowing Douglas Adams, who must have told his friend Richard Creasey, who was then a BBC producer, as well as having a famous author father, John Creasey), I was contacted out of the blue by RDF Media to advise on an aviation-related international production (which ended up with another friend, Bill Brooks, in a starring role).  The next thing I knew I was contacted by another RDF researcher (also a freelancer) to give more advice, then eventually ended up on camera in production (something my wife absolutely hated - she still gets really embarrassed whenever a channel runs a repeat and her colleagues ask if it was me in the show).

 

Doing TV stuff is a mix of massive amounts of boredom, loads of frustration when the arty-farty types deliberately screw things up to create tension and a little bit of fun.  Forget making any money - it has to be one of the hardest and least well-paid jobs I know.  The only real positive is that the food is usually great, and there's loads of it, available all the time your around on set.

 

I was semi-interested in doing GD, but SWMBO absolutely hates Kevin McCloud, and put her foot down, very firmly, so there was no way our build was going to be on the show.  Unsurprisingly, we were then contacted by two other self-build related TV production companies, who must have heard of our build via the jungle drums.  We may well end up on an unrelated media production, though, everyone will just have to wait and see what happens.  I can say, if it comes off, it may well involve someone I've worked with before (and not as far back as the original Poldark series, or the Onedin Line...).

 

Finally, you have to accept the way that you're not in control of how you're portrayed.  Scrapheap isn't scripted or rehearsed at all, it's shot live with masses of post-prod to bring something like 30 hours of audio and maybe 200 hours of video into a 45 minute show.

 

If you want to see how bloody awful editing can be, here's a classic  intro bit that's nothing like me at all:

 

 

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, newhome said:

 

I think we all know the answer to that ?

yes but we dare not speak it.

[ProDave]

@JSHarris the thing that always struck me about Scrapheap, was they would drag the engine out of some wreck, stick it on the contraption they were making, and it would always work.

 

Were the engines tested or were they advised in advance which ones were good? Did it ever happen that after all the work they actually found the salvaged engine was a dud?

[Bitpipe]

1 hour ago, jack said:

We know someone with contacts into the Grand Designs production office and we were asked if we wanted to apply. My wife would have done it, but I have no interest in appearing on television under any circumstances, let alone stressful ones! 

 

Shame, you could have worn a set of groucho fake glasses / nose / moustache all the way through the filming to maintain your anonymity.

 

 

[newhome]

18 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Finally, you have to accept the way that you're not in control of how you're portrayed. 

 

I’ve done TV (and film) stuff with my dogs (in a previous life), everything from the Welsh language soap opera Pobol y Cwm, TV adverts, and My Life So Far (filmed in Scotland). Lots of divas, lots of standing around being bored to death, lots of retakes especially with the adverts where that 30 seconds has to be completely perfect, but luckily the dogs didn’t give a sh1t about any of that so no diva tantrums on their part ?.