Guy Fawkes Night

I loved the view from our flat when we first moved to Glasgow. That winter (2010) was particularly beautiful. Then, for a little while, I hated it. In the distance I could see the building I worked in and I'd know that, after a miserable cycle, I'd be over there, sitting at a desk in a job I hated. Whenever I looked out, that's all I'd think about.

Now that I work from home, I love the view again. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Campsies. If I want to (and don't have a mountain of work to wade through), I can pick a place and go there. My old workplace no longer taunts me, seeing it makes me smile. I even cycle my old commute when I need some exercise - it's a really nice route.

Tonight is the 5th of November and the air is filled with fireworks. While the above video isn't the most spectacular in the world (my camera isn't great in the dark), it sums up fairly well the pops, bangs, fizzes and whizzes that've peppered the 2 or 3 miles between my window and my old desk.

Happy Guy Fawkes Night.

Paris

At the end of September we went to Paris for a week. It was a belated honeymoon of sorts (technically honeymoon pt.2 as we took a wee trip to Jersey immediately after the wedding to relax). While there, I shot some little clips with my point-&-shoot and edited them together into a video.

It was the best.

Hair of The Dog - Available as a Free Download

Today, Jonnie Common has announced that Hair of The Dog is now available for free download from his website. The album, a reinterpretation of Master of None (best record of 2011 in my opinion) features remixes by Geese, Dems, Found, Ben Butler & Mousepad, OnTheFly, River of Slime, GRNR, A La Fu, Miaoux Miaoux and The Japanese War Effort and is most definitely worth a listen - it's free for Christ's sake.

For those, like myself, who are a little, um, wet behind the ears when it comes to electronic music, I'd recommend checking out GRNR's brilliant remix of Bed Bugs as a good starting point - a real treat of a track with a great rap(?) by Jonnie and an all-trumpeting, all-squelching climax.

Visit jonniecommon.com for more information and to download the full album. The original tracks can be heard on Master of None which, for the millionth time, I really recommend.

To celebrate the now-freeness of Hair of The Dog, I put together the little video at the top of this post using footage from the launch gig (an art/installation/music collaboration between Jonnie, Zero Waste Design and myself) at Mono here in Glasgow last November.

Footage from the night was scarce - we were super busy setting everything up and whenever we did remember to shoot something, my wee Nikon's video mode kinda struggled with the low light and our shaky hands. I was pleasantly surprised to get anything useable at all.

Kid Canaveral Music Video

Above is my debut as a music video director for the single You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night by the very fine Kid Canaveral. It was animated, filmed and edited by myself with some help from Alex and Fergi - particularly in the dancing kitchen scene.

I've posted about this clip before on my old blog but, happily, I have new reason to post it here. I have just recieved news that it will be featured in the BBC Music Video Festival 2011 and will be shown at The Forum in the centre of Norwich, from the 19th of September to the 1st of October - on bloomin' giant screens no less.

'Chuffed' doesn't explain the half of it. Having an animated film shown by the BBC is one of those things you dream about. Yeah, it's rough around the edges. Yeah, it was made with sellotape and fishing lines in our messy wee flat. Yeah, I don't really know how to work a camera. You know what? I don't care! We had the most fun ever staying up until 5am making the video and I'm still very proud of it.

Filmmaking is something I'm growing increasingly fond of these days, in part due to being a complete novice and knowing it's ok to make mistakes. I'm always looking to find time to knock together a new video and if anyone wants to work on any projects, get in touch. You'd make my day.

For more info on the Kid Canaveral video, I did an interview about it a while back which you can read here. You can also watch and subscribe to whatever other nonsense I make on my YouTube channel. Big Thanks to Johnny at Fence and Kate Canaveral in particular for all their help with this project.

Kid Canaveral: You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night


Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a thing that may, or may not, be appropriate. A while ago, I was asked by the fantastic Kid Canaveral if I would like to make a music video for their song 'You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night'. Of course I did! After a few delays, setbacks and general slowness (on my part), I finally asked for a deadline and got to work. The above video is the result. For a better viewing experience, click here to watch it on YouTube properly (clicking up the resolution / video size goes a long way).

For me, video and animation is a funny thing - I don't really know what I'm doing. The ins-and-outs of cameras, shutter speeds, lighting, exposure etc. are all still kinda outside my understanding. I'm learning though. The KC video may not exactly be beautiful, but I think it has a certain charm to it. I hope? Maybe? I read a very encouraging interview (here) with Michel Gondry before I began filming where he said:

"I care less and less about the aesthetic quality. It finds its way into it anyway. I can't bother with that and the less attention I pay to it the better it becomes."

That was exactly what I needed to hear. The perfectionist part of my brain got booted well and truly out the window and I concentrated more on just having fun and throwing as many ideas into the silly thing as tI could. All the mistakes - the wonky shadows, visible wires, shakes and wee glimpses of hands were suddenly Good Things, not Bad Things. I tried to keep in mind stuff like Adam & Joe, Oliver Postgate and the Teeny Little Super Guy from Sesame Street rather than, I dunno, Chris Cunningham or Shynola.

Speaking of fun, I can honestly say that this was one of the funnest projects I've ever worked on. It was a blast. Along with my wonderful fiancée Alex and my best friend Fergi, we hunkered in over four long nights and pretty much mucked around. Alex in particular was incredible throughout - she worked her socks off, took damn near every photo (8000 odd) and came up with loads of the best ideas. I couldn't have done it without her, no way. She's amazing. Fergi did some brilliant stuff in the crazy-kitchen scenes too. Check the cups in the cupboard at 2:43 - I didn't even spot him doing it. Haha!

Photo: two blurry men work on a blurry thing.


As for Kid Canaveral, I was super chuffed to work with them again (I did a poster before). Kate has been completely lovely at putting up with my rubbish and giving me freedom to go nuts with their song. So if you like 'Only Went Out..', I'd really recommend you pick up their album 'Shouting At Wildlife', it's a cracking wee record that's full of energy and life. I'll try to get round to a proper post about the band soon because this one is going on a bit and I'm worried people will just tune out. One thing I will say is that they're off to SXSW next month and they've been organising a few gigs to support their jaunt - check out their website for more details (they're playing Glasgow, Edinburgh and... New York!). If you can, pick up some tickets or pick up an album - you wont regret it.

 

Anyway, enough from me. Please have a look at the video - if you enjoy it, clicking on the 'like' button on YouTube goes a long way in helping it reach more people. If you really like it, any tweets, posts, blogs or links pointing people towards it would make me a very happy man. I'm quite proud of it. Hopefully soon I'll be able to do some more video stuff (Jonnie Common & Johnny Lynch, I'm looking at you). Stay tuned here or on my Twitter for further stuffage.

Materialising Hills

This morning I woke up to on-and-off heavy snow showers and spent a good while running around with my camera taking little videos. I noticed that the hills in the distance (the Campsie Fells) would vanish and reappear really quickly whenever the clouds rolled by. The next time I spotted a hint of blue sky, I pointed the camera in their direction and hoped they'd materialise from the gloom.

I got lucky! If I'd started maybe 30 seconds earlier then the hills would have been completely invisible at the beginning of this clip. Ah well, nevermind. I took my first foray into the mysterious world of After-Effects to speed this clip up to double time - the original just took a little too long to expect anyone to sit through it. I like clicking back and forward to see how much the view changes in such a short space of time.

Music is 'King Creosote's Wineglass Symphony' from the album 'Concubine Rice' by Lone Pigeon.

Here comes December..

Nine New Views

I know, I know, another video. Sorry. Well, should I apologise? I dunno. I presume most people who read this blog are mainly interested in drawings and not whatever boring crap I point my video camera at. Ennyyyway...

This is a short post to promote a slightly longer post over here. What it is, is a collaborative blog to accompany a collaborative group exhibition in Philadelphia in which I'm participating. The show, called the 'World's Fair' features work by a few artists from all over the shop - visit the blog to find out all the details. The video (kinda) makes sense when you see it in context.

I'll try to post some exclusive content up there over the coming weeks, if that's any incentive to subscribe. You probably need to be a bigger bigshot than me for 'exclusive content' to mean anything but hey, read it anyway.

Oh yeah, the track used is 'Looks Like A Sunrise' by Billy Pilgrim on Fence.

The Kitchen Gallery


I've opened a small gallery called 'The Kitchen' in Shawlands, Glasgow. The first, currently untitled, show features work from a variety of different artists.

Above is a little preview video of the space. Right now access to you, 'the public', is severely restricted. I can't have any dirty beggar wandering in now, can I? Hmph, I should think not. Strictly for those in-the-know I'm afraid. Should you wish to exhibit here, please contact me and we'll see if we can come to some sort of arrangement.

The first show includes: A print by Sanna Dyker 'All Will Come Out In The Washing', a print by Gemma Correll, 'I Like It When We Share', untitled bunting by Christopher Bettig, an untitled drawing by Robert Hanson, a print 'Teacups' by Kate Sutton and a collaborative installation 'Washing Line' by Alex Horne and David Galletly.

Blackpool


This is just a little video made from the few odds & ends I shot while I was away in Blackpool. Nothing particularly amazing but I felt if I didn't edit these clips together, they'd just sit on my computer and never get looked at.

I filmed these on the new still camera that Alex got me for my birthday (a Nikon Coolpix s8000 - I almost bought Alex one for her birthday last month but got her a bike instead). The quality isn't quite up to my other camcorder videos, but a wee compact still camera shooting HD is pretty awesome. Click it up to 720p to make it a little easier on the eyes. Youtube should really have the option to let the uploader chose the default resolution.

Blackpool was, of course, tacky, funny, nostalgic, scary and weird but that's why you go. The photos I put on Flickr probably show it off a little better but, as I say, I had to do something with the video clips. A good holiday.

What I Wore Today In Video

I've been playing with my camcorder a lot recently, more for fun than anything else. Well, that's my excuse for being rubbish anyway. I kinda feel like there is a goal to aim for with this video stuff, but I guess there isn't really. Will I be a director one day? Will I make a documentary or conquer Hollywood? Nah.

Anyway, the above clip is the most recent thing I've mucked about with. A real-life version of my What I Wore Today drawings. The goal was to work out how to get images to show over the top of video and, hey, I managed it. My initial intention was to produce quite an elaborate little movie about what I was wearing but once I started, that went right out the window. If I don't delete this after a week (it's quite a weird, invasive thing to put online), I might have another go. It already makes me cringe but I feel a little better when I remind myself that I'm just a beginner.

Apart from that, in the past wee while I have added a dumb trailer for a skateboard film I'm making with my friends (this is almost exclusively for our own amusement, pretty much nobody else will find it funny or in any way impressive), a stupid clip of us sliding on a wall and a video showing the mess Alex leaves when she makes a birthday cake. If you want to follow my progress in the world of moving pictures you can view and subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

Hmm.

EDIT: I should also mention that the idea for this video and all my What I Wore Today drawings came from this wonderful Flickr group started by Gemma Correll (of doing amazing drawings fame). Also, the song is 'Food and Pussy' by Dan Reeder from his self-titled album. Check out Work Song when the Man is getting you down.