"Clients have been treating me too well" say my Jeans

Biting my nails continues to be the curse it’s been for years. It must have started when I was younger and feeling anxious. My good friend One Man and his Dog recently sent me this video. The explanation for this guy’s horrible rituals are that he feels anxious a lot. I can remember saying good night to people like Freddy Kruger, Alfonso Bonso and maybe Chuckie. How sick is that. I also used to raise my eyebrows an awful lot. Sometimes I still do that but it’s more that I am trying to focus my eyes and find it helps. I also had a phase of doing the sick thing of turning a light on and off a couple of times. This was when I was about 12 I would say. I remember thinking when I was doing it that I would just force myself to stop doing it and prove nothing happened. I stopped nothing happened and that was the end of that. It’s good I wasn’t aware of the anxious causing element as maybe that would have made me get more twisted or something. Being an only child I dealt with it myself so all in all it’s good. I was just reminded of that time in my life this morning so let’s just leave it there and don’t hold a grudge. Wouldn’t it be nice if I had of had the same problem but with making money, helping the aged or making great videos. Who knows what would have been the result.

The New Age Slacker : Indie, Female, Pajamas

Another resolution was to make a new 60 minute documentary. The good news is that this looks like it could be happening this summer. It will come in 4 individual parts which when played together will flow seamlessly and make a good film. That’s the plan anyway. I’ll keep you posted. It’s that time of year when I begin sorting out taxes etc. I’ve been relying on filmmaking for one full year come the end of June. It’s interesting to see what I have earned and what have been the costs. When I began a year ago I was in that place where I was trying to do everything for little money rather than try and get one well paid job. I think it has held me in good stead but when I was thinking about all I had done and what the end figure was it really wasn’t great. Especially after costs. Suddenly that pay cheque from the deli-counter in Centra doesn’t seem so bad. Actually yeah…yeah it does.

I wanted to get a video on Pitchfork. There are still 6 months to go so who knows but I actually feel a little ashamed that that was one of my resolutions. I don’t really even go to that site anymore. They slagged of some album that I loved. I can’t remember which one it was. I’ll try and remember and link the review here. Anyway I realised that we weren’t on the same page. They also started reviewing a lot of stuff that I just didn’t give a shit about. I don’t really know any sites other than 24bit that I look forward to checking out. The main one is Summer Time in Hell. What my resolution should have been was to get a video on Promo News. A specialist music video website. I achieved that with the Cast of Cheers video. That was a pleasant achievement. They carry a lot of videos I don’t really like but they respect how the videos were made and usually there is a good interview with the people who made it. In a lovely twist my friend and former flat mate Matt Green also got a video on Promo News on exactly the same day. They appeared beside each other on the site. It was really cool to see that. Matt once gave me a body slam onto a sofa in our flat and it broke. It also put a small hole in the wall. Whenever we lost our entire deposit, it was a flat of 6, there was a little tension as to Matt and I being the main cause of that. To their credit the other gents who lived in the flat adopted the ideas that we were all in it together and so they let their deposits go. In fact we all got a cheque for about £0.75 back. My plan was to tear mine and send it back and ask for another one. I didn’t get that done. Probably too baked in those days.

In short news I re-edited the Kowalski Get Back video. To cut a long story short Tom had to go to work by the time we came to filming the end of the video. Thus film something quickly. The heavy “rocking” bit was done. It just suffered over time and dated pretty quickly. So I went back and changed it and tried to make it all a lot tigher. The original ending where the camera tracks back was ok. It was just a case of making it fit. Especially difficult as the Heavy bit which had the same aesthetic was taken out. Therefore it was removed as well. I think it’s much better now as do the band so thats all that matters really. Unfortunately because Youtube is rubbish it wont let you replace a video file without losing views, comments etc. So the poorer more commonly watched original version is on youtube and the new updated better version is on vimeo. Below is a behind the scenes shot from the Get Back test shoot . Just for ratings.

Just for ratings

In some sad news you may recall I did a job in Oslo a while back. I wrote a short story about it here. Why I did that job I dont know. Promises were made and broken before I even got on a plane. I was stupid doing it. Anyway I did the job and the guy has done a runner. He isn’t paying me. He isn’t replying to anything. He sin’t paying the artist who I was filming. He is the most unprofessional man I have ever met. A complete disgrace to the music / film industry. If he had even responded to one of the many phone calls, text messages, skype attemps, google chats, emails, tweets, facebook messages and explained that things had got out of hand with his finances or he was having a breakdown then we could have worked something out. Instead he has done absolutely nothing. The label is called Electropix. And if you ever take one thing away from this site it should be that you shouldn’t get involved with them unless everything is paid upfront. If it turns out that something horrible has happened then I will re -word this and apologise. Anyway I am now being forced to go to a small claims court. Just in time for summer. Brilliant.

Congratulations from Babysweet HQ to Daughter who signed to 4AD. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Daughter ar each stage of their career so far. The first EP era we filmed them supporting MATA at St Stephens Church. The 2nd EP era we filmed them headlining a show at St. Giles in the Field Church. And then earlier this year we filmed them at their biggest ever headlining show at the Islington Assembly Hall. Beautiful hill up which they have climbed. If an album comes out this year I expect them to do pretty well. In fact this year will hopefully see a few eagerly anticipated album releases from bands connected by various branches to the babysweet tree, Two Door, Kowalski, Daughter, Cast of Cheers.

In positive news my dear friend came to stay with Hannah and I for a long weekend. It was lovely seeing him and so I will leave you with a photo of him in a record shop. If you can guess what Vinyl he is buying then I will send you a prize. Take Care.

Guess the record and WIN a prize

16 VCR x 16 Television

About 1 month ago I got a call from the gang of The Cast of Cheers.  I had about three days to submit a proposal. I was sent  a sound cloud link almost immediately and I got listening as I waited for the overground. On previous videos I had listened to the song in question consistently until they had lost all meaning and relevance. I decided never to do that again. I remember Don Draper talking about advertising in an episode of Mad Men. He said something along the lines of thinking about the project for an hour and then just move on to something else. An idea would come he said. I know a TV show isn’t the best place for advice and I don’t even know if I like Don but his suggestion is fairly easy to follow. I listened to the song twice and then started to think about something else.

I wish I could remember what inspired my idea but I can’t. I was sitting at my computer about a month before being asked to send in this treatment and an idea about televisions and VCR’s came into my head. I wrote down a very basic outline that read like this :

Week beginning January 30th – February 5th

TV VIDEO CONCEPT – A block of TV’s fill the screen, each with a VHS player. The band appear across three TV’s each so maybe 9 Tv’s in total. All the footage is recorded earlier and played back on the VHS player. When they walk they move across the TV’s.

So that was idea as written in my diary. It then stayed there for a month or two and I remembered it when thinking of what to make for the Animals video. It would do. I thought it was a pretty original and cool idea but I was also feeling lazy and so if the band didn’t go for it then I would enjoy the next couple of weeks off. I met the management and discussed the feasibility of getting 20 televisions and VCR’s which is the amount I wanted at the time. They passed the idea onto the band and they band went for it. A friend of mine suggested getting a gentleman called Dan Matthews on board to produce the video. I had never had a producer before. In the past I have done everything myself purely because there was no other option. At this point in time I can safely say that when dealing with a decent budget I would never consider not using a producer or more specifically Dan again. He took so much weight of my head and let me think about the video. It was actually an enjoyable experience. I was calm and able to prepare as he organised a team and drove all over London getting what we needed to make this video a reality. As much as I love the majority of videos I have made in the past I think it’s clear to see that not having a producer on board for them probably caused the end product to suffer to a certain degree. I think the Animals video is the best and most enjoyable video I have made and it is clearly because of having a team and especially a producer on board who was passionate and interested in the idea. There was only 1 or 2 evenings of waking up in the middle of the night out of breath. There was a severe lack of sleep in places when trying to get stuff ready but all the time when things seemed to be falling apart there was an excitement about what we were trying to do.

Quiff or Scruff?

Dan got depressed and I picked him up. I got depressed and Dan picked me up. The day before the shoot I was in a real panic and asked Dan if he could see the feasibility in hiring 16 cameras and cancelling the 1st days shoot. Thank God that didn’t happen. What a weird thing the mind is. Dan had mentioned he would be able to get some people on board to help out. One of the people he got on board was Daniel “Muller” Perry. This man was a technical hero. If there is one thing I don’t enjoy it is technical things. I have the sort of sad mentality of shutting my eyes and hoping for the best when it comes to leads and things. I didn’t used to be like that. I used to experiment about with VCRs etc when making wrestling videos and would be excited. I guess when I started taking it more seriously then the idea of failure and the stuff not working scared me into not even trying it and throwing something at it and hoping for the best. Any way, I went down to the location on the night before the shoot after making all of the VHS tapes. It was in good nick but nowhere near what the end result would be. Muller was sawing through wooden planks so quickly I could feel the heat coming of the blade. He was putting serious effort in. It was inspiring. When he didn’t think something was safe he would say. When all the TV’s where on the planks I had a feeling of vertigo. I know that is an unusual situation to experience that feeling in nut thats what I felt.  I was sure the wood was about to break and all the tv’s would come crashing down. Pathetically I stood with my arm under the top plank. If it broke then I couldn’t have stopped it. Muller explained about how the planks usually had fat builders walking across them and eventually my mind turned to other things.

The VCR Goblins

A piece of equipment we got for the chorus shots was known as a “brick”. It was a splitter that would send one image across all of our Tv’s. It was incredibly complicated in terms of of operation. Dan got all the leads and Muller sat with it for hours. At one point we thought we had it sorted but all of the tv’s were showing the image in Black and White. At that point due to time restraint etc everyone thought we should maybe just settle for it. It looked cool. Muller spoke to the guy who owned the brick. In fact before this colour issue we actually had problems getting it to work at all. Muller being a genius worked out that the machine was not wired correctly and he actually did the opposite of what he was meant to do and got the image. He told us the exact cable he needed. He explained how easy it would be to get one. He got it. It worked. We praised him. I could write about everyone involved with the project but it would take a long time explaining how good they all were. Matt was given the cursed job of making 16 tapes that all had footage of Amps on them. The idea being that the band would play in front of lots of Tv’s that all showed footage of Amplifiers. This job was very time consuming. It seems something like this always happens on babysweet shoots. For Cashier No9 we had spent the previous night and day making loads of masks of each band member. It went on late into the night. They were never used. The Amp footage was never used either.

My dear lady Hannah used to work in media. She worked for RTE in dublin. She was fantastic at her job. So fantastic that she got a job of Travel Co-ordinator on a Natalie Portman movie. In truth the job was far too large for one person. And even more difficult for someone who had never done the role. She decided she didn’t enjoy it and quit that job. It was amazing seeing her on the set of this video. She took on the task of labeling and organising all the Tv’s and their relevant VCR’s. She talked everyone through what tapes had to be used where. What Tv’s they were looking after and what VCR’s to press when. I was behind the camera and didn’t have any VCR’s to look after. I didn’t even really know how it was all working. All I could see was an idea I had becoming reality and everyone on the crew being immense. Here is a list of all the crew on the shoot. Everyone did more than their title probably suggests :

Producer : Dan Matthews

Technical Manager : Daniel “Muller” Perry

Stage Managers : Daniel Perry and Hannah Vincent

DOP Assistants : Eliot Bushnell and Jason Hawthorne

Production Assistant : Eliot Bushnell

Stage Assistant : Matt Livingstone

Runners : Ken Plas and Hannah Charles

The greatest crew of chancers ever assembled

The shoot was split into two days with a gap in the middle. The first day was spent filming footage that would later be transferred onto the VHS tapes. The next day was a day spent making the tapes and getting the location ready. The second day of filming is where you see everything shot in the video. That day went on until about 4am. The camera used for the shoot was the Canon C300. The videos concept wasn’t ever going to show the cameras full capabilities but one of the major benefits I felt was how it handled the wires and bits of equipment hanging under the televisions and thin wires along the floor. When shooting on the 7D, which nearly everything on this site has used, I sometimes find that when there are thin wires, railings or guitar strings the image can’t deal with them and the said objects seem to move and change colour. The C300 eliminated this straight away.Another big perk of the camera is the colour detail it captures. The Animals music video was shot in Cine 2 mide and I was so happy with the colours and clarity of the image that the entire video is basically ungraded. The only shots that have a slight grade are the tv guitar and and “behind the scenes” sections. Everything else appears as shot on camera. The fact no grade was required made editing very smooth and efficient.

Canon C300

It also tied in nicely with the whole concept of the video which was to make a seemingly technically flawed format such as VHS work for us. I have no doubt there are people skilled in After Effects and other programs that could probably make this video with a piece of blue paper and a video camera and in essence faked this idea without using one VCR. It was my intention however to film everything in reality so that there was basically nothing to do in the edit other than order the shots. It is also an area of the whole project that I am very proud off. People Dan or myself had spoken to had discussed how difficult using VHS would be and how we would be better doing something else. Using DVD’s at least. But we stuck with the idea, except for that idiotic 16 camera alternative moment.I think we pulled it off. There was a point where Dan was concerned about whether we could make this project work as intended. I explained my thoughts on it. I don’t consider myself a very good director. I am improving with each project but I have a million times more to learn than I have learnt so far. What I think I am good at is presenting an idea. My idea was based around this 16 VCR x 16 television concept. What I did was film the idea. That’s it. Nothing fancy. If the idea is good and you can show it then the video should be good.

The realised vision

Moments later we bought a "poke" of chips

If only every day could be closed with such an event. On the work front I have just been chiseling away with edits ranging from people you wouldn’t be interested in to the mighty Two Door Cinema Club. It’s been great working with those guys again. They are such gentlemen. I also had the pleasure of working with Paul from Maximo Park the other day. It was a real simple shoot which you will see further down the line I am sure. Since we last spoke I’ve had the horrible experience of a client seemingly doing a runner on me. I did the work and despite the payment date being pushed back 3 times I was confident of receiving my due at the start of this month. Since the final date was missed neither Skype, Telephone, Email, Google Chat or Texting has been privileged to a response. It is a difficult situation to be in as the amount due is reasonably significant in terms of my accounts. I’m undecided as to what the next stage should be. A positive is that I have all the footage so none of it can be accessed without talking to me. It’s of little comfort quite frankly. The artists involved are also owed money they have been promised and neither has heard from the person in question. Unprofessional. “THIS IS NO FUCKING PROFESSIONAL” seems fit.

My friend Ben

In other news that casts a downer on all things babysweet, a piece of work I did on an artist who has gone on to phenomenal commercial success from seemingly out of nowhere seems like it wont see the light of day. The work was completed before Christmas and I got paid for my time. These guys are professional but with so many other things going on with them it is likely the boat has sailed and the film will have to be locked away until I’m in my forties and having a mid-life crisis. It’s a shame. I liked it a lot. It was in a similar vain to the David Clements Promotional Footage but a little more commercial and with better planning. It was filmed in a venue I had shot in quite often and I was delighted as I managed to film in a way which made the venue seem fresh when compared to other shoots I have done in there. If it comes out it will go up but it seems to be in Davy Jones Locker.

A bonus payment from the Clements shoot

I just completed a video treatment on Sunday and sent it off. I met the management involved in the project yesterday and they were digging the idea. It’s going to be passed on to the band and if they prefer it to the many other options they have then i’ll write about it. I woke up in the middle of the night with a breathless sensation. That hadn’t happened since the Cashier No9 pre-production days. It was around then I took up swimming. I was hammering out 40 lengths in a little over 40 minutes after regular visits. I haven’t been in close to two months. The thought of it is incredibly unappealing but I think I am going to hit the pool right after I finish this. I’m trying to plan my time carefully as I was informed yesterday that the flat I live in is in fact up for sale. Short notice. I was also told that there is a viewing today. It’s always incredibly awkward when there are viewings. I think the value of the place has gone up by £20,000 since we moved in. I guess that is the sort of sway Babysweet holds in the property market. The thought of moving again isn’t pleasant. Hannah told me that it will be the 10th time in as many years that she will have moved. Fuck that. If we could get a mortgage then we would buy a place but as I am freelance I need three years of accounts to show my income. I got my first year done earlier this year and owe the government £22.50. Bling Bling.

In other news I went to see a band called Monument Valley the other day with my friend. He was good. It was in a venue called the slaughtered lamb. I’m not sure how the venue would suit a full band but for him and his electric guitar it was superb. No stage. Very laid back. Great sound.

a beautiful woman

I was checking how some of my previous work was doing on Youtube the other day. Most of the stuff that goes on Youtube is through the clients account and so I only see what anyone else would see in terms of views, feedback etc. I was checking out the Oh Pity video and there are a couple of “negative-susans” on the comments board. “Great song, shame about the vid” and  ”This video could have been so much better”. Usually I wouldn’t feel too disgruntled about these things but it’s pissing me off this weather. It’s just depressing. Of course it could have better. No one is doubting that. I don’t believe I can make a better video for a song than anyone on the planet. If he means the idea could have been executed better then he should have had that idea and developed it. For the former comment I really want to enquire as to what her top 3 music videos of all time are. I have resisted the urge and I think it’s better for that. These things can get nasty. It’s just the bad side of putting things online or releasing anything. People slag it off and then it has a negative effect on your psyche until you are used to it and decide you couldn’t give a fuck.

There were similar things said about the Get Back video on a shite Northern Irish blog where everyone moans and is horrible towards each other. I must admit I take some pleasure in it from seeing how thick and bitter some people are. I read a thread where Stu Bell of General Fiasco fame was trying to sell an electric guitar. He was basically labelled a thief, liar and all round bastard. It has to be read to be believed. Obviously he had done nothing wrong but his reputation being shat on by some complete moron. Anyway, Get Back came out and one or two little pairs of shitty underpants started asking sarcastic questions and comparing the video that cost, £250.00 to a video that cost over £10,000. The said people then went on and made some of the shitest music videos I have seen come from Northern Ireland and I bit my tongue. I think the people possibly removed the comments after they started making videos themselves. I feel the need to apologise for this semi-rant which is a shame as this is my site after all. I’m sorry. It has just gotten to me today. Maybe stress is getting to me. People have a right to dislike something. That’s not the frustrating thing. It’s when you can’t learn from the criticism because it has no depth or thought behind it that it becomes frustrating and detrimental.

Let’s leave this here with a link to Glen Hansard telling a quite frankly ridiculous story about how he met Van Morrison. It is well worth a listen. Here.

They were both really going for it. They were eating each others faces without piercing each others flesh. I was staring with Elsa and we couldn’t work out what their arms were doing. Where they getting each other off in the middle of this bar? Is this how things were done in Oslo? I had heard stories of two lesbians doing this in a club in Belfast. The bouncers all stood around watching and smiling. I heard about two gentleman showing love for each other in a bar in London. They were asked to leave which led to a boycott of the pub. Same sex couples then arranged to go back one afternoon and start kissing. A kissing protest kind of thing. This however was so incredibly aggressive. At one point the woman tried to stop. The guy wasn’t so keen. The woman got back into it before they both stopped and then just sat looking at the floor.

Elsa decided it was time to leave. She was the singer who was sampled by the DJ that was performing in the club tonight. It was 2am. I had been up since 7am and in between I had been carrying a sack of heavy film equipment all over the Norwegian capital. I was staying with Calixte. He was releasing music by DJ Earl through his label, Electropix. Elsa left and I sat and waited for the night to come to an end. At around 3:27am with one eye closed I asked a bar man when this night was going to end. “After this track” he said just as the lights came on and people began to gather their shit. I sat on a sofa and waited as Calixte was congratulated on a great party and Earl was praised for a great mix. Two young Swedish men sat down beside me to finish their drinks. They asked me something and I explained I couldn’t speak Swedish and that I was sorry. This alienated one of the gentlemen as he couldn’t speak English. His drunk friend couldn’t give fuck. He began telling me about problems in Sweden and how a Television persona referred to a mixed race celebrity as a “Cafe-Latte”. He felt that Political correctness had gone too far. He expressed his love of free speech in the West and blamed high levels of crime on immigration. He repeated to me that he wasn’t a racist and then he coherently spat about his dislike for Muslims.

Within half an hour we were in a kebab shop. Earl, the DJ, and Calixte wanted to get something to eat. Since they ordered, I ordered. I got a falafel wrap. I was incredibly angry with the way it was prepared. The idiot filled up the pitta with all the salad and then added the spicy sauce. I hadn’t seen the falafel be added and assumed he had forgotten until he then set the three pieces of falafel on top of the sauce. Perhaps I should mention that when we entered the shop Calixte asked me what I would like. I said,

“Calixte, I will have a falafel wrap.”

Calixte replied,

“That sounds good. I will get one as well.”

He took the liberty of ordering the same for Earl and so requested three falafel wraps. The man behind the counter then said,

“You know falafel is a vegetarian option?”.

Was it a statement? Was it a question? What a complete dickhead. It reminded me of a job I used to have. Every fortnight there would be a buffet in the office and I would help serve it. The first time I did it I came home and cried. From then on I would dress up as a chef every fortnight in order to feel like it was a theatre production and it wasn’t real. There was always a vegetarian option and being a human that detests assumption I would always ask “Would you like the meat lasagne or the vegetarian lasagne?”. The clients would then smirk or sometimes laugh and reply with something like “None of that vegetarian rubbish. Give me some real food”. The said client would then turn to his (it was never a female that made such statements) side and look at his co-worker who would have a look of complete disbelief that I had even asked. He would then look at me even though it wasn’t his turn and say, “Meat.” On another occasion I was walking through Liverpool Street station in London at around midnight. I was hungry and went over to a baguette shop. I couldn’t decide between an Italian baguette which consisted of mozzarella, tomato and pesto or a BBQ chicken option.

“What would you recommend sir?” I enquired. “Are you a vegetarian?”, “No”. “Then go for meat”. I threw my money on the ground and left the station. At this point  in the kebab shop I wanted to throw the meal on the floor and scream. I have tried to work out what could possibly be the benefit of putting the falafel on top of the sauce rather than the sauce over the falafel. I was incredibly angry.

We sat down at a small table and began eating our kebabs. Earl ate his in a traditional fashion. Calixte despite being half asleep ate his with a great deal of dignity and elegance. I ate mine like a pig. I wasn’t hungry but I was so upset with what I was doing that I tried to eat my kebab as fast as possible. It is an undesirable trait of mine. I like to think I got it from my Grandfather. Sometimes he would cut into a pie and it would be solid blue. My loving Grandmother didn’t believe in “Best Before” or “Out of Date” nonsense. Being a man of dignity and respect my Grandfather ate the pie and thanked his wife who he adored and from whose death he never quite recovered. Maybe that’s not a great comparison after all.

It started to snow very gently outside the kebab shop. It was around -3 degrees and the whole city was covered in snow. It was the deepest snow I had ever been in. Around shin height. I said to Calixte that we should go as it was 4:30am and I had to get up in three hours. He had begun to fall asleep and said, “It’s snowing outside man. Let’s just chill for half an hour.” He fell asleep and I sat looking at the table in front of me thinking that no matter what, I would not sleep until I was on the plane home.

At around 4:55am we arrived at the train station. Hoping for a cigarette but out of money we looked up at the train timetable as an alternative. The next train wasn’t until 6:17am. “Why don’t we get a bus?” I asked. “Buses are strange” was the reply. “Let’s just sit and wait it out”. It was a strange situation. There were no buses leaving for anywhere for an hour or two and yet the station was open. It was a kind of shopping centre / train station with pockets of people all around the place intoxicated in varying degrees and on different substances. We went over to the seating area which had around 20 seats per line and about 6 lines. Each row of twenty sat opposite another row of twenty. I sat on the same side as Calixte and Earl lay across three seats opposite us.

As I was sat down in the plastic chair, supplied by the Norwegian government for passing time, I was entering an unusual frame of mind. I was exhausted but the concept of sleeping had left me. My intentions were to stare at the floor for ninety minutes and clear my mind. I had heard stories of Van Morrison having out of body experiences. I had even heard about Liam Gallagher having them. I wouldn’t call this scenario an out of body experience but I started to sense that I was acting in a film. A one shot, ninety minute, avant-garde film based in this seating area in a Norwegian train station. I have therefore decided that it is not totally inappropriate to detail the next part of this story in script form.

Int. Oslo Train Station. Early Morning

I sat down. Calixte was asleep whilst in the process of copying my action. Earl sat opposite me and lay down across three chairs.  There was the obligatory passed out gentleman sleeping across a row of chairs on the other side of the sitting area. He was snoring like an Ox.

SFX : A gentle snore that raises and lowers as the story dictates

This noise would continue until we left the area 90 minutes later. He wouldn’t move. It was the same rate and melody throughout my time in his company. Two Norwegian girls sat a few seats up on my left. They were both completely drunk and had been crying. One lay on the others lap and didn’t participate at all until the end when she sat up. Her friend, who she was lying on, possibly had a learning difficulty. In the distance some lady, who was physically fit and between 20 and 30, was holding her mobile phone to her ear but on speaker as some ringtone along the lines of “Crazy Frog” was playing. She used her other arm to hold a can of Blackthorn cider as she performed for people. She was fully clothed and not being outrageous but she was turning to people, bending over a little while shaking her ass. She would thrust her hips forward towards people as well. Her style of performance was strange. She was fully aware of what she was doing and who was watching yet she offered no recognition to their gaze. At this point two fellows came over and sat in the sitting area. One went straight for the Norwegian girl with the friend on her lap.

They started speaking.

Drunk 2

“Why have you been crying? I seen you crying.”

His friend started talking to Earl. Earlier Earl had explained to me that due to the area he grew up in he was always aware of who was around him and any potential trouble. The gentleman who we will call “Drunk 1″ was saying to him that if he lay across three seats then he would be thrown out by security. He was saying it so quickly though and in such a long winded way that Earl had no idea what he meant. Still in a phase of contemplation I just listened and looked at the ground. Eventually I threw a look to Earl which he returned. I literally bit my lip as the cloud lifted over me and I accepted my role in whatever was going to develop in this new environment. Seeing me vibrate with inhaled laughter “Drunk 1″ turned his attention to me.

Drunk 1

“Where are you from?”

I replied in the strongest Northern Irish accent I could muster,

Me

“Nnnn Iiii……Northern Ireland”.

He actually seemed a little scared or thats how I interpreted it. He looked at the ground for a while. The snoring picked up and I heard “Drunk 2″ ask the Norwegen girl out for a cigarette. She preceded to tell her comatose friend, who may as well have been an alien, that she would be right back. “Drunk 1″ asked me for a cigarette. I told him I didn’t smoke. He came right over into my face and told me where he was from and how he was about “one love” and peace. I was prepared for a smack in the face and felt as if it would have no effect on me and that then I would have no fear in hitting the gentleman. He then joined up with Drunk 2 and the Norwegian girl who maybe had a problem and they went outside. I had a horrible image of a disgusting threesome. For the record, I have never found myself in a fight. I don’t know how or why that is the case. I punched a friend once and the connection was so bad i think he fell on the ground as a gesture.

Snoring reached an unhealthy peak. Earl sat up again and looked around. Calixte neck kept rocking as he continued to sleep. Like one of those dogs in the back of a car. The movements your neck goes through in that scenario is pretty dangerous. I am sure people have started to nod of on the way home before and actually broken their neck.

While those 3 where doing God-knows-what a small plump gentleman from Pakistan came in and gently threw himself into a chair opposite the comatose girl. He was wearing a tie, a hat and had a smile on his face. The three drunk lovers re-entered just in time for him to watch. Instantly I was enjoying the entry of this new character into the seating area. He is one of those older men who are totally comfortable and relaxed. I got the impression that even if someone gave him a beating he would be having a laugh and saying something funny moment after. Albeit with a horrendously swollen eye and ripped shirt.

The lovers sat down in the same place each of them sat before. The Pakistani man eyes lit up when he saw the women. He began asking me to look at the women. Drunk 1 was basically finished with his cameo and was just waiting for Drunk 2. The drunk in question had his arm around the back of the Norwegian woman. Her friend was’t welcomed back onto her lap and was now resting her head on a plastic chair. The girl turned to the drunk that was trying his luck and said,

Norwegian Girl

“I like you but not in that way….You understand…Are you alright with that?…I like you but not like that….please take your arm off me.”

Drunk 2 surprisingly then stood up and walked off. ”What about their friendship?” I thought.

Drunk 1 fucked off with him. I was so happy with how this was all going. The morons were gone and had been replaced by a pleasantly drunk and plump Pakistani man. As I looked at this new character a horrible noise began creeping closer and closer towards my ear. It started to form some kind of beat and then a can of blackthorn came into my vision.

Pakistani Man

“Jesus Christ”

He said it with much pleasure and plenty of sexual undertone. It was the dancing lady, still with her phone to her ear. She bent over and thrust her ass back and forth opposite me.

Pakistani Man

“Oh Jesus Christ”

I took a quick glance then looked at the floor.

Pakistani Man

“Look at her man. Jesus Christ…”

The man was speaking to me but the direction of his gaze was never in doubt.

Pakistani Man

“The Female body is a blessing from God”.

I started laughing loudly at how absurd the whole situation was. Calixte woke up, Earl removed the hood that was covering face, took note and then returned to his previous position. Calixte was chuckling and basically back to sleep before even attempting it. My laughter blanked out the ringtone as the lady straightened up and began watching herself in the reflection of a glass door as she shook her ass

Pakistani Man

“Look at yourself…you like that….Yeah….Jesus”

As he watched he finally unlocked his hands that had sit so nicely interlinked on his lap. He now leant forward with one hand one his knee and looked at her.

Pakistani Man

“You like looking at yourself”. ”Look at her man”.

He directed towards me.

Me

“I’m married”

I lied.

Pakistani Man

“Your married? Once a man marries he is wasted.Your not married man? How long have you been married?”

Me

“3 years”

Pakistani Man

“If you had said 1 year I believe you. 1 year is fun but if you married 3 years I would see it in your face. Your not married man.”

He turned his attention back to the dancer,

Pakistani Man

“Jesus Christ girl.”

The girl stopped and sat down beside the Pakistani gentleman as she looked at her phone. The ringtone was finally gone. Maybe that is what she was trying to fix?

Pakistani Gentleman

When was the last time you had sex?

The lady seemed oblivious to the question and the man but his smile didn’t pause for a moment.

Pakistani Gentleman

When was the last time you had sex? Dont be embarrassed. This is a modern society. You are a modern woman. You know what I am saying.

The drunk Norwegian woman looked at me and asked how long I was married. When I kept up the lie she said that she was happy for me. Although I had said it to a few different people in her company she still didn’t know where I was from. I dropped the Northern and just said Ireland. She still looked at me as if I had two heads. Maybe there really was something wrong with her or maybe my accent was the problem. “Beside England” I clarified. She smiled and it seemed true that not all people look better when they smile. That is very harsh. Anyway she told me how she would like to like to live in England for a year just to see what it was like. I started to feel depressed as I thought that she never would leave Norway. What do I know about it though?

Thinking back now my memory of what happened next seems to have faded. I don’t how long past before Calixte woke from his slumber, Earl pulled back his hood and we decided to go to the platform and wait for the train in the hope it would arrive early. Before that happened the Pakistani Man asked me what I was holding. I checked what he was referring to and told him it was a tripod. He asked to see it. This man was responsible for taking me from a dark place to a contented and lighter place so I obliged and took it over to him. I pulled the legs out and replied that it was a tripod. He asked the Drunk Norwegian to wake her alien friend pose for a photograph. I’ll be honest and admit I felt uncomfortable. What the hell did this guy want with a photograph of slightly wrong drunk girl and her alien friend who hadn’t opened her eyes for hours. Bizarrely the alien was woken up and Pakistani man started looking in his bag. He pulled out a tiny digital camera. He started trying to balance it on the tripod which required a clip even bigger than his camera. I was smiling at how silly the mans attempt was. He then looked at me with a knowing smile and laughed. He moved on his chair and revealed that he had his own tripod. We both laughed. My two allies where ready to go and walked to the platform.

I picked up my bags and started to follow them. As I was leaving I decided then man needed to know the truth. I told him that I wasn’t married and that he was right. He smiled and what ever he was saying was blanked out by his simultaneous laughter. He tried to stop me and say something else but the moment had gone and I left and caught up with the other guys out on the platform. It was freezing and the train wasn’t there. We couldn’t have been on the platform anymore than 90 seconds when we decided to go back to the seating area. Eveyone of that characters had vanished. Not one of them remained. The snoring sound track had gone. The whole station seemed to accept it was a new day and shops started opening. We sat for five minutes, heard the train coming in and walked back down the steps. As we approached the platform the Pakistani Man was chatting to a worker from the station. They were standing close together. The Lady had her back to us and it wasn’t until we had nearly passed her that I noticed she was talking to the man of the evening. He was smiling and had his tripod in his hand.

We got on the train. It left. My blinks become longer and more heavy. I drifted off and dreamt of arriving home to my girlfriend.

I use it under the babysweet moniker and do updates about all that kind of thing but then also fire out messages about wrestling or whatever else is going on. I don’t know if that alienates people or is a good thing. On facebook for instance I have a personal account and a babysweet account. I therefore get all the crap out through the former and post videos and updates through the latter. With those things being so prominent in peoples online interaction I dont seem to give a thought to updating this site even though it is actually built for the promotion of babysweet itself. The thing is that I love this website with all my heart. There are times when I had asked Dom to change it and build it with a different program. I was going for something that was more “professional”. He would then give outlines and I would say things that made it resemble it’s current state a little more and then I realised that this site is what it is and I love it. It isn’t really like any other video websites I have seen. It isn’t flashy at all but then it isn’t a piece of shit. I would describe this site as a perfect accomplice to babysweet and the whole idea of babysweet itself.

What I mean by that is the other designs I may have had in mind have now been used everywhere and they look great. But it is almost expected that your site will look like that. Sites like the Cargo Collective ones. They look great. They are slick and professional. It’s remarkable how much Vincent Moon has influenced the world of video hosting in fact. I’m not a V-Moon addict but that man was ahead of the game and should be a millionaire but I don’t know if he is or isn’t. I doubt it. Anyway this site has remained loyal to me and in fact in 3 0r 4 years the current state is only the 2nd design. There was another one that lasted about 4 months until the buzz of  having any kind of website wore-off.

This website can be as professional or unprofessional as you want it to be. It can be “lo-fi” or it could be time efficient. It could be friendly or it could be immature. It really doesn’t matter and who cares what it is? It has everything you need. If it’s someone looking for me to have a job then they can basically see the most up to date video that I am happy with on the homepage. If it is someone who is interested in babysweet as a brand then they can look at all the other stuff such as the the very beginnings as babysweet tv, which I wish was at the bottom of the videos page rather than top, the records section which has been promising an EP for 2 years, the essays section, the contact section which I don’t often look at as I usually ask Dom to update it in a rage when I am angry about money. There is a mailing list. I love that. I think I sent one mailing list out that said “test by babysweet”. I don’t know if anyone ever got it. That was 3 years ago. I haven’t sent one out since. I’m not totally sure how it works and I dont mind, anyone who likes stuff like that would get updates on facebook or twitter. I battle technology every day. I have been saying I will learn after-effects for 2 years. That is a more serious thing and I really should as there is only so much I can do without it. So the simplicity of this site is my mistress. For instance I will let you in with a secret that only the inner circle of babysweet know. If you take any vimeo video and copy the code that follows it:

example: http://vimeo.com/10928435

If you then go to website and in the video section click on say David Clements Promotional Footage you will see this in the address bar : http://babysweetsessions.com/videos/?vid=36303844

If you then take the code that you copied from vimeo (10928435) and put it in place of the code that follows the David Clements video (36303844) and hit refresh then the video from vimeo will appear in place of David’s video. It’s magic. I think Dom asked me not to mention that in case of something but that may just be my imagination.

SO WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING IN FEBRUARY?

February has been a great month. I have been a busy gentleman. There will have been some stuff you have seen online but I have been busy doing other jobs as well. I have started a new music video project. I have shot a couple of things for it. It’s very laid back but very interesting visually. The only problem with it is that it will take a long time to shoot as I need about 50 different locations. I don’t know if there is time or not as the band are still waiting on the mix to be returned. I think the band and I are in agreement about delaying the video until it is ready anyway. Potentially it will be my best music video if the standard of what I have shot already hold up through out it.

I have just returned from Oslo, Norway. I finally had a dream fulfilled of getting a flight to place I have never been covered on the basis of filming a subject.

park in oslo

It was an honour to be asked to do it. It is for a growing electronic label based in Oslo called “Electropix“. It is a genre of music I am not familiar with and that provided an interesting perspective for me. There was lot’s of footage for the music video shot in Chicago earlier this year and my job was to shot footage in Oslo with the artists that could be cut with the Chicago stuff and turned into a video. It was a little tense at times as I hadn’t and still haven’t been able to see the Chicago footage. I saw one or two stills that we later learnt were actually taken by somebody else. I arrived in Oslo on the Friday evening and met Calixte who runs the label and one of the artists who appears in the video. We went for dinner in a lovely restaurant and chatted. It was quite surreal but very natural. Calixte then went away and Elsa, the artist, and I went back to her place after spending 200 krone on 6 beers, a packet of haribo and a kind of Rolo rip-off brand. We talked through video ideas and tried to work out if I was directing this video, what we were actually trying to do and what we needed. Calixte joined us later and put a blanket of calmness around us before he and I headed to the gorgeous Drammen to sleep.

Where i laid my head.

This was my first time in Scandinavia. The house was what I imagined. It was so warm in the house. Not in an over whelming way.In a blissful way. The snow was the deepest on which I had stood. It was nice.

The house in Drammen

We got up early in the morning. Calixte made me breakfast and then we ran with my equipment to get a train. I wanted to vomit my omelete up but I held it together. We arrived to the opera house where we were shooting about 20 minutes late. I went up to the roof and started sourcing where the angle should be. Calixte said he would be back in 15 minutes and an hour and a bit later he returned, found the artist who had been really cool and was still there and we got started. About 2 hours behind schedule on the tightest video deadline I had ever shot on. Once we got filming it went really quickly. The ideas are very simple. The delay actually proved a great benefit visually as the sun came at just the right time and bounced off the lens. We got a coffee inside and I attempted to order in Norwegian. I ignored the “What?” I was greeted with by the lady at the till, asked in some kind of Norwegian for two coffees to take away, “What would you like?” was the reply and then I said “Two coffees to take away please.”

The rest of the shoot that day went well. Then there was a gig that evening featuring one of the other musicians doing a show. I filmed a bit of that and was a tired lamb. The show finished at around 3:30 am. Calixte, the DJ and I left the venue at around 4:00. We walked to the train station it was closed. We went to a Kebab shop got some dinner. People started falling asleep and it started snowing. Calixte said we would chill for 30 minutes as he started nodding off and the snow kept falling. At around 5:00 am we walked to the station where there wasn’t a train leaving for blissful Drammen until 6:15 am. We sat down and the next 90 minutes could have been a wonderful one take, avant-garde film masterpiece. It went in roughly this order.

INTRO

We sat down. Calixte started sleeping. The DJ sat opposite me and lay down. I was determined to stay awake as I was slightly worried about the film equipment and also didn’t see the point in sleeping as I had to leave Drammen at 8:45 am anyway. There was the obligatory gentleman sleeping across three chairs on the other side of the sitting area. He was snoring like an Ox. This noise would continue until we left the area 90 minutes late. He wouldn’t move. It was the same rate and with an occasional increase or decrease in volume when the script determined. Two Norwegian girls sat a few seats up on my left. They were both completely drunk and had been crying. One lay on the others lap and didn’t participate in the film until the end when she sat up. Her friend who she was lying on possibly had a learning difficulty. In the distance some lady who was in good physical condition and possibly late 20’s was holding her mobile phone to her ear but on speaker as some ringtone along the lines of “Crazy Frog” was playing. She used her other arm to hold a can of blackthorn cider as she performed for people. She was fully clothed and not being outrageous but she was turning to people, bending over a little a shaking her ass. She would thrust her hips forward towards people as well.

At this point two fellows came over and sat in the sitting area. One went straight for the Norwegian girl with the friend on her lap and they started speaking.

Drunk 2

“Why have you been crying? I seen you crying.”

His friend started talking to the DJ opposite me who had already explained to me that he was from a rough part of America so he always felt like he had to keep an eye out for trouble. The gentleman who we will call “Drunk 1″ was saying to him that if he lay across three seats then he would be thrown out by security. He was saying it so quickly though and in a long winded way that the DJ had no idea what he meant. I was so angry with tiredness that I just listened and looked at the ground. Eventually I threw a look to the DJ and had to bite my lip as the cloud lifted over me and I nearly erupted with laughter at this scene in “the film”. This part carried on for a little while longer. The man asked where I was from. I said in the strongest Northern Irish accent I could muster,

Me

“Nnnn Iiii……Northern Ireland”.

He actually seemed a little scarred or thats how I interpreted it. He looked at the ground for a while. The snoring picked up and I heard Drunk 2 ask the Norwegen girl out for a cigarette. She preceded to tell her comatose allie on her lap that she would be right back. Drunk 1 asked me for a cigarette. I told him I didn’t smoke. He came right over into my face and told me where he was from and how we was about one love and peace. I was prepared for a smack in the face and felt as if it would have no effect on me and that then I would no fear in hitting the gentleman. He then joined up with Drunk 2 and the Norwegian girl who maybe had a problem and they went outside. I had a horrible image of a disgusting threesome.

Snoring reached an unhealthy peak. The DJ sat up again and looked around. Calixte neck kept rocking as he continued to sleep.

Interlude for toilet break.

Part 2

While those 3 where doing God-knows-what a small plump gentleman from Pakistan came in and gently threw himself into a chair opposite the comatose girl. He was wearing a tie, a hat and had a smile on his face. The three drunk lovers came back. They sat down in the same place from which they left. The Pakistani man eyes lit up when he saw the women. He began asking me to look at the women. Drunk 2 had his arm around the back of the Norwegian woman as her friend lay just on the seats beside her. I heard him mutter something and she said

Norwegian Girl

“I like you but not in that way….You understand…Are you alright with that?…I like you but not like that….please take your arm off me.”

Drunk 2 surprisingly then stood up and walked off. ”What about their friendship?” I thought.

Drunk 1 fucked off with him and I was really happy about that. Suddenly some horrible noise began getting louder and louder. It started to form some beat and then a can of blackthorn came into my vision.

Pakistani Man

“Jesus Christ”

He said it with much pleasure and sexual undertones. It was the dancing lady, still with her phone to her ear.

Pakistani Man

“Oh Jesus Christ”

He uttered again as she bent over and thrust her ass back and forth opposite me. I looked at the floor.

Pakistani Man

“Look at her man. Jesus Christ…”

The man said in my direction.

Pakistani Man

“The Female body is a blessing from God”.

I started laughing loudly at how absurd the whole situation was. Calixte and the DJ woke up. Calixte was chuckling and trying to get back to sleep. I began roaring with laughter as the lady straightened up and began shaking her ass as she looked at her reflection.

Pakistani Man

“Look at yourself…you like that….Yeah….Oh Jesus”

The Pakistani man said as his filled with joy.

Pakistani Man

“You like looking at yourself”. ”Look at her man”.

He directed towards me.

Me

“I’m married”

I lied.

Pakistani Man

“Your married? Once a man marries he is wasted.Your not married? How long have you been married?”

Me

“3 years”

I replied.

Pakistani Man

“If you had said 1 year I would have believed you. 1 year is fun but if you had been married 3 years I would see it in your face. Your not married man.”

He turned his attention back to the dancer,

Pakistani Man

“Jesus Christ girl.”

The girl stopped and sat down beside the Pakistani gentleman as she looked at her phone.

Pakistani Gentleman

When was the last time you had sex?

The lady didnt seem to notice the question or respond and I started laughing.

Pakistani Gentleman

When was the last time you had sex? Dont be embarrassed. This is a modern society. You are a modern woman. You know what I am saying.

The drunk Norwegian woman looked at me and asked how long I was married. When I kept up the lie she said that was good for me and she was happy for me. She couldn’t understand where I was from so I dropped the Northern and just said Ireland. I then said beside England and she told me how she would like to like to live in England for a year just to see what it was like. I started to feel depressed as I thought that she never would leave Norway. What do I know about it. Maybe she would. But I will leave the story there for now and maybe continue the rest of it in the Essay section a little later.

I was going to mention other projects I was working on but the story above got more detailed. All will be revealed. I’m sure you wont be able to sleep with excitement. You love this website too.

a street in scandinavia

]]> http://babysweetsessions.com/2012/02/19/why-i-love-this-website-and-a-film-that-happened-to-me-in-oslo/feed/ 0 http://babysweetsessions.com/2012/01/11/two-thousand-and-twelve-months-ahead/ http://babysweetsessions.com/2012/01/11/two-thousand-and-twelve-months-ahead/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:47:04 +0000 gregg http://babysweetsessions.com/?p=487 My choice of title for these blogs is still poor since the turn of the new year. They are not funny nor informative as I am not a comedian or an Informer. This year has started as well as any year I can remember and as of writing I am only eight days in. I spent christmas and new year back home in Northern Ireland. Before the trip I was in severe need of a break. It came just at the right time. My break back home consisted however of getting battered every day for 8 or 10 days and so by early January I was more than ready to return to London town for a quieter life. My first step was to go back to the swimming pool. I started going to the swimming pool around the time of making the Cashier N09 video. I was getting myself into such a stress in the pre production that going to the pool and sitting underwater felt like the only way I could clear my mind and not be worrying about the project. After Xmas I went and could barely do 10 lengths of the 25m pool in one go. I battled on, got to 30 and then left. Two days later I had to force myself out to go again and I managed 30 without a break. I could really feel the benefit of not smoking for one week. I then went to the casino with my dear friend and began smoking.

Money made from the traditional casino game, "Roulette". If you add all the numbers on a Roulette table together you get 666.

What has made this start to the year good is the fresh sense of optimism I have. 2011 was a good year for me as a low scale filmmaker. It is sometimes hard to rate progress while in the middle of the cycle but despite whatever made being good or not I have been able to pay the rent doing it. I have also felt a rebirth of love for film. Music has always been my number one passion. It explains why I film so music music, I’m a shit musician. I would buy music magazines and subscribe to Loud and Quiet (Very cheap. Good Quality. Free Vinyl. £20 for a year). When I have bought film-magazines in the past like Sight and Sound or Film Ireland I have been bored and fallen asleep, sometime whilst floating on a giant zebra. I looked at them for opportunity rather than interest. Two days ago I had a craving to buy my girlfriend a subscription to Little White Lies film magazine. Basically the Xmas presents I got her were bought when I was in a haze and weren’t very cool. I then thought how a subscription to a magazine would be a class gift. I also think a voucher for the Wii Virtual Store would be class. £30 to spend on old school games. A dream. As I had been bored in the past with film magazines I bought this months issue before subscribing. It is all about the film Shame, the newest film by Steve McQueen. I was impressed that I remembered his name and even more impressed that I was interested in reading about his new film. One point I found really inspiring was that his other film, Hunger, was released 4 years ago. That seems like ages to me because I am an idiot.

The man has been crafting a piece of Art that will be in the world for the rest of time. 4 years is nothing. A lesson for the new year. It definitely helps that the magazine is the best designed magazine I have ever felt. The shape, texture, layout and style is flawless. I tried to use a self-checkout to pay for it but I couldn’t find the bar-code. That was because the barcode is incorporated to the magazine so well that you don’t even notice it. I remember my friend telling me that the gentleman who designed Kowalski’s Take Care, Take Flight EP had a stressful moment of clarity as he forgot there was a barcode going on the disc and if he had remembered he would have designed the EP slightly differently. No one want’s a barcode on their artwork but LWL did it and I am smitten. I also couldn’t tell what film the issue was about despite it saying on the cover. Again, it is so well designed I didn’t even notice. This new found romance for the magazine is one part of my life which is gelling with other parts and giving me an interest in making a short film. That’s the real challenge for myself. Make a decent short film. Get into Directing in that way. Directing live stuff like concerts etc is so different. When you do that you capture a subject that you have no control over. In the short film area it is all about what you see. Very scary.

DOT-AH

The new live video above is the companion piece to the live video from last month of Daughter performing Love at St. Giles in the Fields Church. I think the video of “Youth” is the better one of the two and it’s maybe my favourite live video I have shot. Elena, singer, looks iconic to me in the “soundcheck” footage. Some people hate the film-burn look. I can understand why. I thought it worked for this. I hope to work with Daughter again. The second EP wasn’t as instant for me as the first but the performance of Love I filmed really got me into it and helped me understand the whole EP. I was with Hannah in Topshop getting her some late Xmas gifts with the casino winnings and the demo of “Run” came on. It was great. It feels like a big secret that is going to be revealed in 2012.

An attempt at making new year resolutions below!

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

- Make a short film

- Stop biting my finger nails

- Remember Actors and Directors names

- Stop eating white bread

- Begin a feature length documentary

- Get a video on Pitchfork

I got this Coma Cinema T-Shirt for Xmas. 1st Day it got covered in Guinness and a hole burnt in it.

If any of Y’all go on Twitter ye can follow babysweet ramblings courtesy of @mrbabysweet

is it the sea? is it the sky?

I made 4 music videos. That is the most I have ever made in a year. In terms of improvement I think they were the best I have made but if I had made 10 videos this year then maybe I would be much better at it. The most successful video was the Cashier No9 video for Oh Pity. It was my first music video to get played on MTV2 (Rocks!) or whatever it is known as these days. It was always a goal of mine to do that so now I need a new music video goal for 2012. Maybe get it on again or get a video on Pitchfork. I feel Pitchfork is actually a little down the toilet. Or maybe my taste is. We don’t agree on a lot, 24bit is a much more “part of the family” website. I would love to get back on to 24bit but Pitchfork is the sort of Hidden Treasure and the exposure would be magnificent.

Besides Casher No9 I also made videos for Kowalski, Grand Forever and Gathered Ghosts. The Kowalski video was definitely the toughest edit I had. I thought the whole project was a disaster and going to need to be re-shot entirely. We didn’t even have a plan for the video. I can’t remember one thing we really spoke about besides getting the “Morph” suits. It turned out well though. The first video of the year for Gathered Ghosts was my favourite at the time. It was just a marvellous situation. An amazing label, an amazing band, an amazing song, an amazing actor in an amazing city. I thought that video would have caused more of a stir online but it wasn’t to be. The Grand Forever had little presence online despite getting a premier on Fake DIY. It took 30minutes to make and was my favourite at the time. I still love it but I have watched it back only once or twice since it went online. I wanted to keep it special or didn’t want to catch myself out as a Conman.

Photo of the Year?

I only ever judge the progress of Babysweet by looking at the Short Films section and seeing how much it has grown. I look at and think it hasn’t really grown this year. there were four music videos, a couple of corporate jobs and Cornelia’s single Launch. The Single Launch is one of my best pieces of work in terms of photography. There is also a Gotye mini-documentary that is done but not allowed online until January that I feel is strong. It’s going to change anything or make any money or bring any popularity but it’s just a really basic mini-documentary that I don’t mind watching. There are also a couple of Daughter performances I shot very recently that I am quite proud of. They should be online maybe before Xmas. I think I have made them quite interesting. It a tough call with live performances. The amount of live videos going online is large. It’s hard not to get bored of some of them. That then translates to filming them I find. You would look at a shot and think “I don’t want to film that” or know that you could film it in a way that would go down well but you can’t bring yourself to do it. That’s why I enjoyed the Daughter / Gotye videos as I made an effort to try and make it different to other live stuff I have done.

I live in a Music Video Asylum

So besides Videos and Live Performances the only documentary I have made was “A Musician and a Scene” which is going online a couple of hours after this is written. You can read about it here. I was hoping for bigger things from this film. Festivals, Late Night TV etc. Applying to festivals is a full time job in itself though and I just haven’t got round to it. Although there may not have been stuff appearing up here for a month or two at a time I have been working on other things. That has been the real “win” of this year. I now make my living from Directing and Editing. Surely that is the biggest success I could have hoped for this year. I am allowed to improve and develop and pay the rent all in one. I have been doing it full time since June and looking over that period it is great. Sometimes I moan about it but I am just being a dick then. What more could I want?

In trying to find another picture i couldn’t find one where i looked decent.

Of the Top of My Head Favourites of 2011

Albums

The Peoples Key by Bright Eyes

Let England Shake by PJ Harvery

Blue Suicide by Coma Cinema

Video of 2011

The Leopard by We Cut Corners (Dir: Eoghan Kidney)

This video just stood out to me as clever and magnificent. No fucking around. Just got the job done.

FM Belfast: Underwear (Dir: DANIELS)

This video was out in April 2010 but I only saw it this year. It’s perfect.

End Of the Top of My Head Favourites of 2011

Theres too much you can write about that stuff and I can’t be arsed. Top Irish stuff I liked is the Wonder Villains Zola Ep and I like The Jepettos “Goldrush” free single. It’s not that I am all about the quiet poppy single it’s just that they are most prominent in my head at the moment. The find of the year was Coma Cinema. Pretty slow on the up take considering it was the 3rd album released by them before I caught on. They are the best band I have heard since I first got a Bright Eyes addiction in 2004. The beauty of how i found them was through Vimeo. There is a video guru making a name for himself called Tyler T Williams. I came across a couple of his videos and just watched and re-watched them. Then the music seeped in, I went to the website and haven’t looked away since. The music is all free to download. It’s completely free and legally so. I don’t know how the main Gent survives by giving his music away and sometimes there are a few tweets that would suggest he is close to death. If you check out his blog then you get links to all these other killer bands that have music on bandcamp for free. The latest one I have found are called Happy Trendy. They are great and free. Check them out.

Nothing really to report. Just felt like writing something before beginning an edit on a opera. I have one week to get something in. Hmmmm. So at the start of this month I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Northern Irish Music Awards. It was held in the Ulster Hall and had a decent line up with performances from General Fiasco, Cashier No9, Japanese Popstars, ASIWYFA and The Stiff Little Fingers. I was up for Video of the Year which was an honour. It was for my most recent Kowalski video. In the end we lost out to Cashier No9’s video for “Lost at Sea”. A deserved winner.  Kowalski and Cashier made up however and are currently on a UK tour together.

Kowalski and Cashier No9 Tour Winter 2011

In even more exciting news Kowalski are now being played on Radio 1. We all know it can be a grim Radio station but it’s the biggest in the UK and airtime is pretty much impossible for a relatively unknown band but theys is ons its.  Here is some details from Kowalski keyboard / axe man / One Man and his Dog:

Even if you don’t get a chance to tune in,
If you like our song, It would be a real help if anyone could text in 81199 to tell Fearne how amazing the track is! 

The twitter handle is @fearnecotton or add @BBCR1

It would really help us out if we can create a buzz around the track whilst it’s on the playlist this week.

Monday: Fearne Cotton (10am-12.45pm)
Tuesday: Scott Mills (4-7pm)
Wednesday: Dev – early b’fast (4-6.30am)
Thursday; Greg James (1-4pm)
Saturday: Huw Stephens (1-4pm)
Sunday: Edith Bowman (7-10am)
Nick Grimshaw and Annie Mac (10pm-midnight)

I checked out how Oh Pity was getting on in the world of Youtube and it’s been watched about 8,000 times in three weeks. I think that is decent. You can read an interview about the making of the video here. I have a couple more ideas for videos and although I would love to make another one before the end of the year I think it’s best to just sit it out and recharge. Editing it dominating at the moment. This feels like a kind of end of year write up. It’s not. The Irish Music Television Awards are happening at some point this month. I have entered numerous things but am yet to hear back. Last year I had the pleasure of having 3 nominations. I was surprised at the work selected but honoured all the same. Fingers crossed for this year. Hopefully I can bring some gold home.

Forgot to add. The highlight of the trip for me was meeting the Indie-Icon-Beauties, The Wonder Villains. Check out the love in the frame. I am trying to get Lou photoshopped out.

Wonderful

My good friend MiddleBit Patterson is someone you should check out. His animations are ultra-cool and funny. A very talented man. He made a music video recently for FREE. Put hours of work in and dedicated himself to it. The label and artist had asked him to do this. Commissioned but without any money. Once it was made the results were fantastic. Then the label decided not to put the single out and said the video had to come down. Totally depressing. Watch it here while you can.

I get a lot of emails at this site and one of the hot topics is about the retro-indie-vintage-icon The Posterboy. The Posterboy basically is now a man. He is dealing with serious business on a daily basis. I still call him once a month for advice but in order for closure. There have been two alternate endings drawn up for you. Choose which you prefer and think about that when you think about him.

Traditional Ending A

Alternative Ending B

A lot of things have happened in the two months since we last spoke. Firstly I was contacted by the gorgeous Bella Union Records. I was on a train from Manchester to London and in a tizzle. I found an email that I hadn’t responded to and immediately thought back to a job I was once offered to edit a Stereophonics Documentary. I’m not the biggest fan of Kelly Jones and co but at the time I was working for £5.97 an hour in a place where I had tea thrown at me, heard every day about the art of watering plants that always died and every other Wednesday dressed up as a Chef. It was on St.Patricks night and in a rage I smashed my phone. I then didn’t get home for 17 hours or so and thus didn’t get to check my emails. The job was gone. They needed an instant response. That job flew by and I wept on my girlfriends shoulder.

So I was getting my hanky ready and a beer opened as I wrote back to the management, expecting the boat to have sailed. Luckily however it was still in the dock (no more analogy) and I was asked to send a treatment in for “Oh Pity” by Cashier No9. This was beautiful. My beloved and I had been listening to “The Death of Fun” on near constant rotation. It was one of my first targets as a young lad to be asked by a label to make a music video. That and get a video / film on a CD release. Anyway, I had two days to get a treatment over. I kept the treatment really basic as I find it quite difficult to write coherently at times as anyone who has read the essay section of this site will confirm. They didn’t fancy the first idea. They didn’t hate it. It just didn’t do anything for them. It didn’t do too much for me probably. Here is what I was thinking. Next I moved onto some one shot concepts. With those I knew they were half hearted and the band didn’t go for them either. I started waking up in the middle of the night.

Calm Egg Gregg

Is it true that at some point’s I actually wanted to become ill to get out of doing the video and become an Estate Agent? I will leave that to VH1 Behind the Music. I started to ask the band if they had an enormous banner to play in front or a Cashier No9 flag. They got back to me with a video of them playing a festival in front of a screen. You can see it here. They used the word “projection” and it instantly took me back to Halloween 2010 when I took the photo below.

The seed grew from this. T'was like Inception lick.

At that time I remember thinking that would be a really cool video. I think I may have drunkenly even spoken to the band, Grand Forever, about trying it out for one of their songs. When I had this idea I was pretty sure the band where going to go for it as it was eerie and I felt it fitted the song well lick.. I was really excited by it which was interesting. Usually I give my idea in the first few hours. I always thought that you either had the idea straight away or didn’t. Im a spoon. I spent ages thinking about this idea. then when it came it was written in two minutes and sent off. The band went for it and all was happy and tap dancing began. I’ll not bore you with details over trying to find a location and a suitable projector. Needless to say it was hard being based in London and unable to go home to check out locations or actually do any tests with the idea. In fact it was big stress. At the same time though it mean’t the idea couldn’t get out of hand and that it had to remain simple and in it’s most basic form. Blah…blah….blah….I flew home for the shoot.

On meeting the Studio Manager of our location, Media Zoo, I was told that all green screen stuff had to be shot first. This threw me off. Is it OCD or something I don’t know but when I make a shot list it is usually not the most efficient structure but more one where I know I will feel good if “that” shot works. I wanted to start by filming the shots that would be projected the next day. There wasn’t even mean’t to be any green screen but it was felt that at 4:50 or so the video may need a kicker for certain places. The first days shoot was actually a little chaotic. We didn’t get as much shot as I hoped. Once the ball finally got rolling and a bit of momentum started, I interrupted proceedings by screaming an emotional and fully visible “Fuck”. When checking how much space I had left on my card, I formatted the card and deleted everything. Danny from the band asked, “Are you a good guy?” I said, “I think so”. He then calmly said, “It will be all right then. Nothing to worry about”. A complete Indie Icon called Lewis Wilkinson was on board and sat down with Kowalski’s own Paddy Conn whilst on the blower to Shannon “Bang Bang” McClean and between them they salvaged all of the footage.  At this point it’s worth saying how magic the crew where. I had never worked with a crew of more than two in anything babysweet related, save “Tatters and Beard”, and on this project I expected two pairs of helping hands.

I am very laid back when it comes to filming as you can see. Me. Don't give a fuck.

Instead, I got guys who helped in a way I couldn’t have fathomed. All the Kowalski chaps, except for Lou who was moving house for the 8th time in Bangor, where up to help. They along with Media Zoo Pete sorted the lighting, built / pushed the track, sorted the music and let me moan and be depressing for 48 hours. Paddy introduced me to Lewis who I mentioned earlier. He took me and a couple of others to his work on the weekend and let us use an enormous printer to get really high quality masks of the band made. It was sick. His boss came to the location. If spotted we were out and Lewis was maybe sacked. We were walking up a corridor and in the distance the boss was wandering about. We snuck into a changing room and waited for the all clear. It was like Mission Impossible on the N64, which I still think is one of the greatest games ever despite what people say. Up the Bond. We had a crew cutting out the mask and gluing them until about 10:30 the night before the shoot.

A sofa of models

At one point I thought my cigarette had been covered in glue and thought I was about to have a heart attack. We had make up people who gently caressed the already stunning faces of the Cashier boys. I started to really enjoy the shoot when we did a solo green screen take of Phil. We had brought a rug in, purely to protect the floor, and I thought it looked ace. The green screen stuff is kind of like Gonzo or something. A TV show. I like that. I like doing really basic things that are almost inappropriate for a music video.

Every Man and Womans Dream

We finished a little early and probably a little deflated the first day. I went home and got some of the stuff ready to be projected the next day. The projector was delivered at 12 on the 2nd day and that is when things really picked up. It was the original idea and was really the maker or breaker of everything in the universe. I had started to doubt the idea and so had only got Danny’s stuff ready to test with the projector. As soon as it was hooked up it was amazing. An imaginary cloud I had in my mind was lifted. It looked just how I had wanted it, better even. It was sick. Blah…blah….blah….we filmed everyone as the projection. Then Phil, who was at this (wait till the chorus!!!), got a smoke machine in and we did some stuff. I then got a six-inch subway, haggled for free double cheese as they had no peppered cheese and got a cab home with One Man and his Dog as the funniest taxi driver in Belfast drove us home. His accent was that of an angels. The funniest thing about the whole video is that James disappeared and went and slept in the Van for two hours.

There are things that bug me after watching it 50-100 times but I’m Northern Irish so that is expected. “Disappointment  fills my veins”. I hope you think it’s decent.

In other Gossip. The outrageously good “Foreign Box” EP by one of the greatest bands on the planet at the moment “Gathered Ghosts” is out. Talk about Indie, there are 50 copies of the cassette. It comes with a download and some of the most beautiful artwork I have had the pleasure of feeling. If you miss out on a tape  you can download it but listening to it on tape is even better. The sound bends in places and it just works wonders. Whoever mastered it is a hero in my big important book. There are 20 copies being left in record shops all over the place and if you find them you get it for free. For those of you who are rich you can buy one from here for £4.00. Be quick.  You can also see that lil’ video we shot for one of the tracks here. It hasn’t been viewed many times. Makes me blue.

Only 50 copies!

In between all that I got my first editing job for TV. It was for one of the wonderful 4play programmes. A mini-documentary about Slow Club. I have never had anything I’ve worked on show on TV except for this Kowalski video which was shot back in 2007. I went for a meeting to discuss the project and as I was being shown stuff on the producers Mac Book Air my sub-concious decided it was going to well. Suddenly I poured my Latte all over her computer. Oh Lord aka Oh Boy. After much red tape, legal fights and psychiatry sessions I got the job. It was shown last week and you can watch it here.

The view from my window

This feels like quite a long post so I am off. Maybe shooting a video at the end of this month and a couple of live things. The next video is going to be quite pretentious and extremely laid back. I’m away to swim.

All the best,

Babysweet

” A musician and a scene ” is the beginning of something special for babysweet. I think I can feel it. There’s just something about this whole thing that feels right to me. I’m getting something from it and I don’t know what it is. You know that lyric “it’s like walking a long desert mile spending one minute in this town”? Well it’s nothing to do with that but thats by a band called Spider Bags and their debut album will make you ill. “lay down with the wrong woman and you may as well lay down everything”! I could keep throwing those lyrics out but just go listen to it on spotify.

Anyway. “A musician and a scene”. I filmed this back in April at the suggestion of an “Indie beyond his own comprehension” bloke called Richard. The film is only 15 minutes long. I’ll tell you that for free. Am I over egging by making a trailer for it and not only that but editing another trailer to release in a months or so time?

"The Dynamic Dynamo" Mr. Si Cranstoun

The reason I am trailering it, if you will, is because this baby isn’t going online for a long time. I feel this should be shown at a festival. I mean for the love of the great saints this should get into at least one festival. Ideally a festival where people know why they are going into a certain room. Not like the time we had our Two Door film shown in some excuse for a film festival. That was hard to take. Fannys. Don’t know if that’s directed at myself, the festival organiser or the people who watched it and left it. It’s a very strong word. But in this age and time we sometimes need strong words. Anyway, this is going to be touted out to some festivals. No doubt they will want it on a DVD and then I shall refuse as I can’t do that and am getting fed up with hating the quality. It’s my on fault. I find it easier to get better quality online than on a dvd. It’s laughable if your not me. I adore emailing links for applications.

The film takes place at Hemsby 2011

This blog was meant to give fans of Si an insight into the film. As let’s make no mistake about it, Si Cranstoun is Indie huge. The Dynamo promo has over 70,000 views. Huge. I am at a level where that still matters to me. It says a lot about my progress. I’ve come on leaps and bounds. Figure that out gangsta. Si took me to a festival. People adored him. He said to me “It’s funny / hard, because at these festivals I am somebody. When I go home I’m just Si Cranstoun”. Indie.

some people are born to jive

So the plan is that this film will enter some festivals. Get a minuscule bit of interest from somewhere and then I will get a bit of funding to go off and make the hour long feature film that this scene, musician and characters deserve. Or, it gets turned into a reality Tv Show. Or I just go and make the documentary myself.

i love this man. i love him. you will.

Some folk who’s opinion I respect and hold dear have been toying with my beliefs recently. At the level I am and stage I am at and age I am, should I make the music video idea I have for the band that aren’t really going to promote it, that will use it but in a totally unambitious way but for whom the concept originally came and for which their song fits perfectly. Or should I use it for the other band, who’s song I don’t like as much but still like, who sound doesn’t fit the concept as perfectly but still fits it and who will put in far more effort promoting it, will have more money to spend on it, will have it shown to people who are more likely to hire me for a future job and who arguably would be more appreciative. It’s an interesting debate.

But to finish on a less pretentious note, a lady from the film spoken about above, who entered into the hemsby beauty pageant contest. There is something about her movement which you can see briefly in the trailer that does something to me. Obviously she is my second love and doesn’t touch the lonely hunter. But I think we should all appreciate this woman style and beauty.

Hemsby beauty pageant had some lovely people in it