Bananas, booze and the XY Chromosome.

21.10.2011 / Uncategorized / No Comments

“How many?” asked Tom, as the door swung open in front of us.

He stood to my right. His party hat tipped off centre, a bag of beers in one hand and a packet of banana themed snacks clutched in the other.

Ryan, who was standing in the threshold opposite spoke with a defiant and commanding optimism, his broad shoulders subtly picked out by a solitary street lamp flickering behind us.

“None. But the night is still young, boys.”

The news hit heavily. Our heads sank and our chests deflated, with Tom glumly correcting the angle of his hat and then with a sigh, removing it completely. Ryan reached down and politely took the beers from us, shooting us a reassuring smile as we entered – however his sullen face and broken eyes spoke a harsher truth.

We entered. Inside the lounge were a dozen bottles of banana beer, held in the palms of a dozen boys, vacuous smiles were slathered across their faces, their eyebrows raised and their heads angled awkwardly towards the door where we were stood. The expressions of most dropped instantaneously.

All but Inigo’s. Who stood up with his arm jutting out for the mandatory handshake, he inhaled loudly as we approached.

“We have banana drinks, banana décor, banana themed music and… well, bananas!”

Inigo looked around proudly, his eye catching the cheap packaging of the sweets now clutched limply in Toms hands; “Banana sweets!” Inigo looked back up at us, his eyes displaying an almost unhealthy level of enthusiasm, however it was short lived, as he turned slowly and reluctantly back to the party.

“It doesn’t look promising, does it?” he muttered.

We surveyed the room, looking from face to face as it slowly became clear that no girls were going show up. Transforming our party, which was themed on the world’s favourite yellow fruit, from hilarity to just plain gay.

Our group soon dissolved into the hustle and bustle of the party, leaving me alone, sipping on a yellowy beverage and popping tiny banana sweets into my mouth, the bag now torn open and strewn across the table in disregard.

Above me hung the epic centrepiece of the occasion: a giant banana, inflated by the lungs of 10 men and tethered to the ceiling several feet from the floor. I pondered the aesthetics of this great beast for several moments, before Ryan silently arrived by my side, he too sipping his own banana drink.

We quietly watched the obese banana, observing how it swayed grotesquely amongst the rooms stench of sweat and testosterone.

Ryan spoke between sips, “You should kick it mate.”

I turned to him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the fruit.

”Yeah.”

He spoke again, quietly this time as if he were talking to himself.

“…You should kick that banana.”

10 minutes on and everyone in the house was on their feet, shattered bodies littered the corners of the room, where faceless drunkards clutched the base of the spines or the backs of their heads. Others screamed uncontrollably to urge on the designated ‘Kicker’, whilst the rest hitched up their skinny jeans and psyched themselves into a frenzy along the sidelines.

I observed, as Kicker after Kicker fell valiantly, all failing to make contact, all falling mere inches beneath their illustrious target.

Until eventually it was my turn to step up to the mark.

Wasting no time I ran at the banana, swinging my right leg back and flinging it with guesto skywards, my grounded leg skidded forwards, stretching my groin further than any man should ever endure, until the very tip of my toe licked the fat underbelly of the marvelous hanging fruit.

The banana bobbed gently and the room plunged headfirst into a momentary lapse of complete silence.

Things remained quiet for a few moments of total disbelief, until suddenly my surroundings exploded with exhilaration and furor, escalating to fever pitch within seconds. Clammy hands grabbed my legs and torso, lifting me upwards and hurling me higher again.

It was very emotional. But I remember screaming through what could well have been tears, “IAM THE KING!” As I broke down beneath an achievement that to anyone else, on any other night would have been entirely redundant. But right then, in that house, at that time, with my bunch of ‘Bananites’ beneath me, I was a god amongst men.

The rest of the night soon became a blur, drinks flowed and bananas were devoured, their skins tossed into the sweaty melee like shit confetti. Frequent pile-ons occurred throughout the night, reaching greater and more impressive heights. The biggest of which, I half expected its massive pressure to turn the unfortunate sole at the bottom into crude oil.

And from there, things just got more and more out of hand, valuable items were smashed and fighting broke out until the enviable Arm Wrestle League (AWL) was formed to see off the night.

Undoubtedly, it was a very gay party. But it was one of the best I’d been to and I know most of my friends there felt the same. But as remarkable as that party was, it wasn’t half as remarkable as what dawned on us the following day.

None of the above would have happened if girls had actually turned up.

This isn’t because girls are boring, but because to a guy we are hardwired to think that the possibility of sex is always more important than having a good time. So in the presence of girls, we all become immaculate show dogs, sitting quietly and practicing such things as clean humor, hygiene, manners and ‘listening’.

But left to our own devices, we are entirely different beings.

And this makes me curious, because with all this hoop jumping and pandering to the needs of others, do you really know your other half?

Or do you just know the person you want them to be?

Is Advertising Dead?

09.05.2011 / Uncategorized / No Comments

I’ve been in love with advertising ever since I was a grubby schoolboy.

Back then I was already a bit of a weirdo, I wore baggy, battered clothes that were too big for me and had long chimpanzee arms that hung down to my knees like elastic bands. I sported goofy teeth and skinny legs, my hair was out of control and I liked nothing more than to play Basketball – of which I was always good enough to waste time playing in the school team, but never quite good enough to actually stand out. I guess in ways you could label me as ‘cool’, but only with it spelt in lowercase letters – and never with a K.

I lacked direction, although my first push forwards in life soon began at 13 when my dad offered me one of his greatest pearls of wisdom.

He said: “products have never been sold according to their worth, but rather on what people are willing to pay for them.”

I remember he said this as he looked down at my feet despondently, as on them were a pair of extortionately priced Nike trainers that for no reason at all I felt it was appropriate to buy.

But I soon figured it out.

Ultimately, Advertising is designed to make us pay more and has almost no limits in its capacity to do so; it can take an unknown business and propel it into an award winning, multi-billion dollar global entity, with nothing more than some dry ice, a pair of snazzy orange shorts and a sledgehammer – or in some cases, make wide eyed teenagers pay ever so dearly for some shitty shiny shoes.

So now I’m 15, my teeth are fixed, my clothes fit and my expensive trainers have since wasted away into the cheap tat that they inevitably were. I’m skint and hormonal and to add to it I’m also broke. I now feel cheated as even after buying these shoes I’m still as unpopular, unfulfilled, stupid and sluggish as I’ve always been – Nike lied to me and I’m sure Don Draper is topping up his whisky glass at my expense.

Advertisers are just schemers, but in the very best of ways – and I know a Copywriter who’s got it down to a tee. I remember one of her earlier briefs was to ‘increase sales of bread’ – which at first seems bloody boring, but her idea wasn’t to target the big bakeries or even supermarkets, but instead to covertly promote Club Sandwiches.

I asked “why?” And she just said, “Well if everybody eats club sandwiches, bread sales go up by 50%.”

That’s what I love about advertising, it’s the Shangri-La of innovate and intelligent ideas, the epicentre of creativity and the home of the most charismatic and out-of-the-box thinking individuals alive. However it’s only after so much appraisal, that we have to inevitably deal with that perpetual racket ringing in our ears.

On a closer look you can see a smartly dressed tenor with a bulging belly and bulging eyes, he sports a twizled moustache and chortles a hearty song:

“Goooo compare!”

Good God. I swear that sweaty, fat prick is the fucking antithesis of advertising and the centre of endless psychological turmoil. I actually wince when it comes on TV and the wide eyed, broken hearted teenager with silver shoes dies a little inside of me – no longer in awe of a once beautiful art.

And it gets worse!

This Welsh operatic moron has since released a chart topping debut album and sky rocketed the offending businesses profits by millions, GoCompare keeps on churning out this rubbish, turning their crappy advertising into gold coins and then raking in the profits.

It’s clear to see advertising now rests on getting hits, no matter how you do it. It’s about ham fistedly putting a website, phone number or even an idea in your head, and keeping it there.

The advertising industry is trading in its razor sharp rhetoric and silver tongue for floppy shoes and a kazoo. My head is awash with jingles, phone numbers and slogans and my brain spinning to the tune of “We buy any car!!….DOT COM!”

And it’s a real shame, because insurance sales are at an all time high and yet club sandwiches an all time low.

 

 

The Black Numbers

01.04.2011 / Uncategorized / 3 Comments

Never has there been a less professional phrase than: ‘Winging it!’

I heard it a lot whilst at University and it was always the calling card of an idiot. It’s a practice that I stay well away from, as the idea of standing on set with dozens of eyes on me and no idea what I’m doing is more terrifying than any spider, bat, ghost or Star Wars prequel.

Although when I found myself on the phone with Sarah Jones – a renowned choreographer, with an invitation to film her latest performance in less then 12 hours time, it wasn’t long before I found myself with the blacked listed term resting on the tip of my tongue.

“Well we’ll have to go to the studio and sort of … wing it I suppose?”

For those who have an interest in contemporary dance, the piece was inspired by mathematics and how it is possible to simplify mathematical equations into its most basic elements. The performance is repeated 3 times, each time with a further stage of regression until the movement grinds to an altogether halt.

When deciding how best to capture this, I quickly recognized that within mathematics I’ve always seen two half’s.

Numbers one is the clean-cut scientific half – where definitive problems have definite answers. It’s a world of consistency where everything is straight and true and uniform.

Rivalling this is its a second half, a place where everything collides fantastically in a vacuum of unknown and undiscovered chaos. It’s a world of clockwork universes, fragmented numbers and infinity; everything is back to front, and upside down in a tremendously tangled ball of string that seems impossible to decipher. Within Mathematics and even Science as a whole we know a great deal, but there is still so much we can’t even begin to understand – with huge wastelands of incomprehensible gibberish and yawning chasms where human understanding simply stops.

It was my intention to draw a divide between these two Worlds and then to balance ‘The Black Numbers’ carefully on this line, tittering between chaos and order. I aimed to do this by firstly laying down visuals of a skeleton – a sort of metaphor for the coldness of mathematics and then accompanying that with a combination of a piano melody and a simple, clean pallet used in a colour grade.

And then this is where things get kind of interesting.

To represent mathematics chaotic side and its defiance of rules, I looked into a very conceptual and temperamental method of film treatment called ‘Scratch Film’. A technique of directly marking 16mm leader with inks and paint and then getting it processed.

The result is a real mess. But from it, it’s possible to extract something raw, unbridled and beautifully random.

There’s no denying that dance has always been an extremely abstract medium of art, so to shoot something that fuses that energy within film was great fun and a real challenge.

In the hands of the Vicious

25.03.2011 / Uncategorized / No Comments

If you were to close your eyes right now and upon opening them be transported into my head – more specifically to where I was this morning at 11am – you’d be forgiven for being a little bit shaken up.

So I’m in Shelthorpe and in front of me is the unfamiliar back of an all too familiar face, it’s Steve Barrett a world leading Global Master Trainer and Olympic fitness coach. He’s getting old now, but to label him as a “has been” would be unfair as although physically he may be past it, his mind is very much still alive and now works primarily in the development of sports equipment.

Currently, in his right hand is a new piece of kit aimed at children. It’s called a “Throw-All”, which to be put bluntly is just a more dangerous version of a Nerf Ball with a pointier end and an added handle at is tail for extra “oomph.”

Steve is certainly an eccentric, he throws his hands into the air flamboyantly and shouts “Are you ready!!?” – the kids respond with a blood lust – “YEESS!”

They’re getting excited now, “How farrr can you throw?” Steve’s question is addressed with a mishmash of roaring responses, I can only make out a few but the general consensus is an overwhelming “fucking miles!”

“Now on my count I want you to chuck your Throw-All as far as you can!”

The kids do so. Suddenly I look up to see 30 plastic missiles eclipse the Sun, their silhouettes arcing gracefully across the morning sky and then raining down like fallen arrows a mere 20 metres behind me..

“Now! This time guys I want you to aim for the camerrrra man!”

I paused. There are two of us on camera, so I look up from my eye piece and find Steve smiling back at me. His eyes twinkle and sharpen and his malicious cackle is soon drowned out by pre-adolescent howls of ecstasy.

Shit! Steve’s clenched fist is raised above his head and after a few seconds of silence a solitary thumb juts out from the top. The noise of sweaty kids launching their Throw-Alls is almost deafening through my cameras headphones, whilst from the skies I was greeted by what was in my eyes an epic retelling of King Leonidas’ death at the end of ‘300’.

“MY QUEEEEEN!”

Boom! The first missile hit me square in the chest and brought me swiftly to my knees. The second sailed past my right ear with a ferocity that can only be equalled by an RPG, whilst the third I batted away with my trusty EX1. I tried to get to my feet, but then came the forth of which I can only really describe as a “fatal blow.”

It hit me right in the kisser, my head whipped back and amongst a cocktail of saliva, fragmented words and a mouthful of foam I went down like a bag full of shit. I rolled onto my back and gurgled like baby, the kids went ape shit and ran to pick up their weapons which pimpled the grass around my broken body. None of them asking how I was, only arguing between them about who actually hit me in the face. “I hit him in the face!” – “What? I hit him in the face” – “NOO! I did..I did!”

Amongst the ruckus I slowly got to my feet and my master parenting skills came into play immediately, “Don’t worry kids, you all hit me in the face.”

Those few moments pretty much set the tone for the remaining shoot, with things only easing when I plugged in a directionally sensitive mic, allowing me to listen into (and thwart) distant inter-child allegiances planning to - “hit me in the face again.”

It was actually a great morning and the humiliation of being beaten down by children paid well, although in the end I couldn’t help but wonder; how on Earth am I supposed to advertise these products when they are fundamentally child friendly WMD’s? Their mere existence and subsequent face-hitting perhaps inspiring the next Saddam or KGB.

They say that creative’s will eventually inherit the World and that with great power comes great responsibility – I never took those words seriously until today, where inadvertently I may well have inspired tomorrows Warlords with today’s commodities.

What have I done?

The First word of film.

03.02.2011 / Uncategorized / 3 Comments

The word Ladies and Gentlemen, is ‘Creativity’.

Creativity has always been a word of laziness, a word of ambiguity and a word only used for the lack of a better one. It’s everywhere, all the time and everybody wants it, yet nobody really knows what it is.

A good example of what I mean, came when a classroom full of media students, as well as myself, were invited to scrawl on the board one word that best describes themselves. Initially, I thought this was a great idea, so I stood up, clumsily made my way to the board and wrote out “Realist.” But after taking a step back to admire my semi-decipherable handwriting, I just couldn’t believe how many hands, big, small, podgy or hook grabbed the pen and lazily wrote “Creative.”

Personally, I can’t stand that word, as it has nothing to it.

Too many times I’ve listened to the overly eager fumble with their tongues when attempting to characterise a film, and go: “Wow… it’s so, erm, just so…” And then silence. This is a spectacular moment usually followed by several uncomfortable seconds, before the honourable speaker relaxes, and we hear the all too familiar word:

“Oh yes, it’s just so creative!”

Well yes, of course it’s creative. To describe a film as creative, is much like characterizing a ship as “wet” or a car as “wheely”. It just doesn’t need to be said.

To put it differently, I had a very level-headed media tutor at my old college, who would almost always label every piece of work he saw as “arty-student-wank!” All lesson, he would sit muttering to himself with his head in his hands, tearing almost everything I handed him to pieces, and it was only after much handwringing and many tantrums that I can now see his ideal.

So here is my reasoning behind creativity, and why I think some ideas just seem to work.

For me, the best ideas are the ones that could just as easily end in disaster, the ideas that are just too reckless and too silly for others to bother trying. The sort of idea where someone prints every frame of a music video onto A4 paper, colours them in by hand, folds them into various shapes and then turns it all into a digital flipbook.

Unfortunately with this wacky thinking, in the end you may not profit from what you’ve created, but with a bit of luck you’ll hammer the thin end of wedge between the folds of the audiences mind, and then (hopefully) blow them away.

An idea needs to dangerous and not a “sure thing.” We want to see something that could spectacularly collapse in on itself at any moment. Just think, even the most dazzling gymnastics display would be 10 times more impressive if it were performed on a rickety bridge, or a self-portraiture bust far more outstanding when sculpted from the blood of its artist, rather than from stone.

Great ideas are, and always will be the product of a leap of faith.

The second thing you need is relevance; a great idea with absolutely no application to its subject is just a joke. Your idea and your subject should run and build as one, not diverge from, or worse, run against each other. Originally vs. Relevance, is a comprise that’s almost impossible to strike perfectly and I don’t claim to able do it myself, although I know a few people who come pretty bloody close.

Upon rereading all this, I can understand if you think I sound a bit belittling, but these are my two cents and the secret to much of my work.

(Also, it’s worth noting every idea I mentioned as an example has already been done!)

A New Site, a New Blog and a New Year!

08.01.2011 / Uncategorized / 12 Comments

Right so it’s 2011!

We’re way past the days of those awesome New Year “00” glasses, and gone also are our childish tendencies to wear them. So shed the dying skin of 2010, blow away the ruined remnants of your lost loves, and for goodness sake pat down that ghastly turkey n’ gravy pot-belly of yours. It’s time to get over that super-extendo hangover from New Years and to set alight the quivering mountain of half melted, left over Christmas chocolate that exists in the corner of the room.

Festivities are over. And I suspect many of my friends will be seeing 2011 as a welcoming to adulthood and an abolishment of ridiculous beliefs, a sort of “get-on-with-your-life” year. And I’m all for that. Discounting New Years Eve where I fell asleep curled up under a Christmas tree and the ass slapping, flash photography humiliation that ensued, I think I’ve turned my life around. And so what if I stupidly text one of my friends mums, wishing her an very friendly happy New Years, and so what if it took 4 days of laying low, dodging her phone calls and ignoring several of her messages, to finally “give her the slip.”

To put it another way, I was out in town last week and it wasn’t after many drinks before I overheard a good friend of mine, politely ask a barmaid for a “a pint of your number, please.” And as brilliant as that line was, it’s about time it ended.

As a student, I lived and worked amongst some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. I’ve never been so entertained. Never has such a colourful spectrum of raw imagination manifested itself within a living room and never has it so easily entertained all those who touched it. Pringles weren’t Pringes, they were tiny Frisbees, and settee pillows? Well, they’re the makings of a fort. Not enough money to go out? Dont worry, a mere bag of Haribo and a tennis ball could easily keep us entertained until the early hours of the morning. Imagination has always been paramount and it turned us into the kind of smart arsed guys, who would (out of pure laziness) turn up at a Harry Potter party dressed in normal clothing and claim to be “errr muggles?”

So what now? I’ve spent the last few months working Freelance, but as good as the money is I’ve learnt working from home simply isn’t working for me. Bristol seems like the obvious choice, well no, London seems like the obvious choice, but Bristol is just the right one. It’s like London’s baby, and as much as I do love London the only way you can really survive there is with either a lot of money or a lot of luck.

Talent helps, but it doesn’t really put a roof over your head and food in the fridge, besides with the sheer amount of people in London, there’ll always be someone better at what you do then you are. I want out of Leicester and if someone wants to go to Bristol with me then I say do it! I have an embarrassingly large DVD collection, and I can cook eggs in ways that you simply wouldn’t believe.

I expect a lot of you must be sitting in a similar position as I was a month ago. Not really knowing what to do and not really wanting to make a decision. But it’s worth reminiscing over the famous words of Chuck Palahniuk, one of the 21st century’s most prolific novelists, and the guy who penned ‘Fight Club’:

“Sometimes, it’s not important which way you jump… just that you jump.”

So make a decision.

And no matter what the consequence, never regret the choice you made.

Boredom: The Mother of Creativity?

02.01.2011 / Uncategorized / No Comments

My whole life I’ve followed the philosophy, “boring people are bored.”

It’s a philosophy that easily offends and doesn’t speak for everyone, but I believe in it and it’s from this understanding of boredom that I like to think I’ve never really been that bored.

As a student it’s easy to keep yourself entertained, I loved University life and it was for this reason that I stayed in my student house until the very last day of tenancy. I remember my final night as a student was spent in my garden, throwing kitchen knives at an empty cardboard box, and competing with a particularly brilliant girl, whose knife throwing skills which even though that of a beginner vastly overshadowed mine. It was great, but short lived and I had to go home.

After I left Lincoln to keep busy and avoid boredom, I smuggled a few pieces of Uni equipment home and took on any side project, collaboration or paid piece of work I could find, but eventually, I begrudgingly gave all the equipment back. Then came my obsession with the piano where I played for hours on end everyday, but it wasn’t long before my nails became brittle and the webbings between my fingers wafer thin. Soon came fresher’s week where I toured England with a few friends of mine, sleeping on various floors with various hangovers like some sort of sad pseudo-alcoholic who just couldn’t hand in his student card. And then when I finally came home again, I had nothing. I had no equipment, no money, no romance, almost all my friends had gone back to Uni, and for the first time in my life I found myself sinking into the dull depths of uselessness.

Today I finally rationalized this feeling as something that explains a lot of my most recent emotions. For instance, there are a couple of people in my life who I miss on an almost unremitting level. There’s no point in disguising who, as predominantly they are a couple of girls who I became involved with during my three years at University. And I do miss them. I miss their character and the drama, I miss what they taught me and the depths of their knowledge. And this may be surprising for a guy to say, but I miss their conversation above all. They changed me forever, but strangely have little involvement in my life anymore. I’m still not entirely sure why, it’s probably something to do with my ego, but what I miss more then anything is the purpose they gave my life every day I woke up.

Purposelessness has always been my biggest fear, and looking back at the last two months of my life, this fear explains it all: dozens of train tickets to visit friends, hours of phone calls, a bunch of new projects with dozens of fully fledged but fully abandoned scripts. Several “brilliant” ideas have buzzed through my head, quickly devised and then destroyed quicker still, and then of course there’s the pining for the both recent and old, but equally dead relationships that saw an end to my student life.

I’m not bored I’m just too comfortable. I want the feeling of danger back in my life. I love the feeling of stress and pressure and heat. I especially love it when at 2 am a very pale Mark Hills bursts into my room, and blurts out some mumbo-jumbo sentence describing how we have 10,000 words to write in 48 hours. I miss having a structured life, I miss working to deadlines, I miss running to lectures with no shoes on and I miss eating a bowl of cereal whilst on that run.

I miss discovering that whilst peeing it’s possible to go from a standing, to a seated position with no interuptions, leaks or splillages. I miss telling my male friends, and seeing the excitement spread across their faces as they scuttle off to the toilet to try from themselves.

I don’t miss the subsequent clean-up operations, but I miss student life.

My means of keeping myself busy are now slowly being whittled away.

I’m endlessly treading water to keep my brain awake and now my feet are tired. But I know this is something we all go though and that it’s only temporary.