I Step Out For One Moment And The Whole Place Goes To Pot...

Well, it's been an exciting 10 days. Exciting in the secondary meaning of "Lord, less of that, please?". It started off with a catastrophic flight to London that involved staying for 10 hours longer than intended in Newark Airport: thank you, Continental Airlines, I shall not be flying with you again. I touch down and immerse myself into the dual chaos of putting together the big live action music video shoot and dealing with Charlie and my upcoming homelessness. Then to find out we were being given less money than we thought for said shoot. So after telling all my crew that, "don't worry, you'll get a half decent day rate/budget on this one, finally" I then have to be like, "well, actually, no you won't." Fun times!

Also, my mother emails to say her eldest half sister (a generally amazing and go-getting pioneer female aviatrix) has passed away after an auto accident two weeks ago where she was badly injured, and her second eldest half-sister (my beloved aunt Jackie) has just gone into hospital. And I am 4,000 miles away from being able to comfort her.

Compound that with a rather disgruntled email from a label boss who I count as a friend - I am toiling away on an video for a band on his label who are also close friends, basically doing a £10k animated clip on a tenth of that budget. It was threatening to be late, and a few strong words were e-sent in my direction. You know, one of those "step away from the computer and just don't respond" kind of emails. Sigh. Sometimes one feels like one walks on water for small labels to get something done, and then they're all, "can you nip across the lake and fetch me a sandwich?".

I really do enjoy low-budget work; it allows me to experiment on riskier ideas. If I feel the band and the label have their sh*t together, and I have a concept I want to explore, I'll happily write on a super-cheap vid. Just... you know, give me plenty of time to make the video, give me my independence, and treat me nicely (this sounds snobby, but I am doing you a favour by nearly killing myself for your measly £300-1,000 video, and if you want it overnight you can give me a real amount of money). Then we'll get along just fine.

(On this subject, how interested are all of you in a band/label oriented guide to how to cost, commission and release a music video? Because I see the same schoolboy errors made all the time by small labels, and a little education could make everyone in this process a lot f*cking happier, that's for sure - and give you a better video that is seen by more people.)

All in all, I'm managing to rise above, but man.

Meanwhile, around my other work, I toil away painting 12 frames (1 second) of "Mess It Up" per day. It'll be out sometime after Christmas at this rate. (It looks ace, though.)