Interview taken from www.londons-burning.co.uk
A MAC IS JUST FOR ME
Surfing with Sam Callis 19th July 2002
SAM Callis, 28, has starred as Adam Benjamin in London's Burning for the past two years. An exciting new eight-part series of the hit show has just begun on ITV 1 (Sunday, 9pm). Before joining the series, Sam did a lot of classical theatre, and recently appeared in the TV film Trance and in BBC's Holby City.
He says he's loving the show. "The cast is great - and this new series is very slick with terrific storylines and lots of humour."
Here Sam, who lives in London with his girlfriend Osmin, tells YVONNE SWANN about his computer and his second career as a writer.
MY COMPUTER
Six months ago, I bought a Mac G4, which lives in my study at home. My girlfriend uses it sometimes, but she prefers her laptop. She is actually a computer programmer, but she hasn't specialised in Macs so she doesn't get involved in any glitches. A bit ironic, isn't it?
I've had a laptop in the past, but rather than get another I knew that I could get a table-top computer ten times more powerful for the same price. I needed the power, because I had so much I wanted to do on it professionally.
WHAT I USE IT FOR
I do lots of film editing on my computer, you see. I am writing a TV series with a friend. It's a sci-fi comedy drama, and we are hopefully close to selling the series.
The idea is quite strange, so in order to show how the story would gel, we invested a few thousand pounds and made a 20-minute promo video. Actors Pauline Collins and John Alderton were among those who brought our idea to life on the video.
We filmed it on normal video and then transferred it to a mini-DVD and put it in the Mac to digitalise and edit on screen. That is brilliant. Once you've edited and assembled all the footage, you then transfer it back to a proper DVD and have a tape ready to send out to the TV companies. A friend who had a DVD package did that for us.
The good thing about DVD is that we were able to incorporate all sorts of extras. We want to have a lot of animation in the series, so we were able to give examples of that. Technology is great. My co-writer lives near Barcelona. We visit each other to work on the series, and then email ideas and edited work to each other via the net. Distance no longer matters thanks to the net.
THE NET
I use the net for research when I'm writing. I am working on an idea for a film at the moment and I am researching it now on the internet, looking at medieval history.
It is quite good, but until I join Broadband, which makes every move instant, it can take time to download the stuff. That can be frustrating.
How well it works depends on which search engine you use. I like Ask Jeeves and Google.com, but you have to be specific about what you are looking for, otherwise you have totrawl through a lot of irrelevant dross. Maybe there is a technique I haven't yet mastered.
Anyway, I often prefer to go to the library and lose myself in research books, but the net is still a very useful tool. And I love writing on my computer.
The computer is definitely part of my life now, and it never used to be, you see. Before I bought one I was always saying, 'Why write on that? What's wrong with pen and paper?' But as soon as I got one, I was hooked.
SHOPPING
I buy flights over the net through Go and easyJet. As I go to Spain every couple of months, it's much cheaper. But that's the only shopping I've done online. I'd rather go out and interact with people than stay closeted with the machine.
I look at the weather sites because I surf in North Devon. Certain places, such as Croyde Bay, have webcams so you can actually see the beach live and check the waves! That's brilliant, and new. People will always be coming up with new ways of using the net. And I'm all for it.
Surfing with Sam Callis 19th July 2002
SAM Callis, 28, has starred as Adam Benjamin in London's Burning for the past two years. An exciting new eight-part series of the hit show has just begun on ITV 1 (Sunday, 9pm). Before joining the series, Sam did a lot of classical theatre, and recently appeared in the TV film Trance and in BBC's Holby City.
He says he's loving the show. "The cast is great - and this new series is very slick with terrific storylines and lots of humour."
Here Sam, who lives in London with his girlfriend Osmin, tells YVONNE SWANN about his computer and his second career as a writer.
MY COMPUTER
Six months ago, I bought a Mac G4, which lives in my study at home. My girlfriend uses it sometimes, but she prefers her laptop. She is actually a computer programmer, but she hasn't specialised in Macs so she doesn't get involved in any glitches. A bit ironic, isn't it?
I've had a laptop in the past, but rather than get another I knew that I could get a table-top computer ten times more powerful for the same price. I needed the power, because I had so much I wanted to do on it professionally.
WHAT I USE IT FOR
I do lots of film editing on my computer, you see. I am writing a TV series with a friend. It's a sci-fi comedy drama, and we are hopefully close to selling the series.
The idea is quite strange, so in order to show how the story would gel, we invested a few thousand pounds and made a 20-minute promo video. Actors Pauline Collins and John Alderton were among those who brought our idea to life on the video.
We filmed it on normal video and then transferred it to a mini-DVD and put it in the Mac to digitalise and edit on screen. That is brilliant. Once you've edited and assembled all the footage, you then transfer it back to a proper DVD and have a tape ready to send out to the TV companies. A friend who had a DVD package did that for us.
The good thing about DVD is that we were able to incorporate all sorts of extras. We want to have a lot of animation in the series, so we were able to give examples of that. Technology is great. My co-writer lives near Barcelona. We visit each other to work on the series, and then email ideas and edited work to each other via the net. Distance no longer matters thanks to the net.
THE NET
I use the net for research when I'm writing. I am working on an idea for a film at the moment and I am researching it now on the internet, looking at medieval history.
It is quite good, but until I join Broadband, which makes every move instant, it can take time to download the stuff. That can be frustrating.
How well it works depends on which search engine you use. I like Ask Jeeves and Google.com, but you have to be specific about what you are looking for, otherwise you have totrawl through a lot of irrelevant dross. Maybe there is a technique I haven't yet mastered.
Anyway, I often prefer to go to the library and lose myself in research books, but the net is still a very useful tool. And I love writing on my computer.
The computer is definitely part of my life now, and it never used to be, you see. Before I bought one I was always saying, 'Why write on that? What's wrong with pen and paper?' But as soon as I got one, I was hooked.
SHOPPING
I buy flights over the net through Go and easyJet. As I go to Spain every couple of months, it's much cheaper. But that's the only shopping I've done online. I'd rather go out and interact with people than stay closeted with the machine.
I look at the weather sites because I surf in North Devon. Certain places, such as Croyde Bay, have webcams so you can actually see the beach live and check the waves! That's brilliant, and new. People will always be coming up with new ways of using the net. And I'm all for it.