Complicated or What?

Well, having completed all the filming (except for Gareth making stained glass), I decided the time had come, the time that shall surely be, to draw up a DVD Menu - a moment I appreciate you had all been awaiting agog.

When one opens the DVD there will be a title and a jolly rush of images of windows, which leads into the mission statement and 3 buttons. With one of these you can skip the intro, the other 2 allow you to enter the catalogue raisonne or the film options.

Let us assume you want to look at the Cat Rais (of course you do). This is basically just like a book, and copiously illustrated, but you can either read it on screen or print it yourself from the PDF file. The window (as in computers, not glass) will show 8 buttons which lead to - Acknowledgements, Bibliography, Introduction (containing a brief history of stained glass, how glass is made and stained glass panels are made, and Brangwyn's involvement in general), Glossary of terms, Glass makers (details of the glass makers with whom FB worked), a printable index, a copy of this Blog, and Stained Glass Windows. This latter button leads to another window with 8 further buttons which give one the catalogue raisonne details for Small Works (small or shelved commissions), Tiffany (details of six panels), Bucklebury, Northampton, Manaton, Bruges, Dublin and Elveden.

If however you decided to investigate the Film Options you would be presented with a window with 6 buttons titled something like Main Film (this gives an overall history of all the windows together with interviews with experts and practitioners and parishioners and will be about 30-40 minutes long), Making Stained Glass (an educational film devoted to Gareth's work producing a stained glass panel from a design Brangwyn made for Tiffany in 1899 and also showing how stained glass is produced at English Antique Glass), Biography (a 10 minute film with commentary including shots of places FB lived and some of his works), Stained Glass Windows (eight 10-15 minute films providing more detailed descriptions of the windows, together with interviews with such luminaries as Brian Clarke, Peter Cormack, Martin Eidelberg, Martin Harrison and Patrick Reyntiens), Slide Show (eight slide shows containing 20-30 slides of each window or group of windows). The last button, Music, leads to yet another window with 2 buttons entitled Sound Tracks (of the Miscellany recording) and Interviews (with Mike Westbrook and Andrea Argent).

And if we still have the energy there may be an Easter Egg (which, for the uninitiated is a hidden file)!

So that's a fair bit of work for both of us and lots of complicated structural techy stuff for Charles. I feel absolutely exhausted just contemplating it. Sit down Libby, have a break.