Alex de Campi: We'll have a poodle, a Baby Grand, and roses every day

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FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

24.7.07 Briefly Noted: Still Irresponsible After All These Years

It's been a doozy of a weekend, including but not limited to band breakups and rebirths, accusations of Swan Stress, and eight hours in the Bethnal Green Police Station. (These events are unrelated.) Sadly, I cannot tell these tales in full here, as they would certainly offend the sensibilities of young and old readers alike.

So instead, be contented the large amount of live footage from White Mischief that I've added to my youtube channel over the past week. Flipron, Evil Genius, The Real Tuesday Weld, Kunta Kinte and a clip of Mysti Vine's final striptease all up there for your enjoyment. And hopefully my new Thomas Truax video will be up in about 10 days.

Lastly, a big thank-you to everyone who voted for us at Cravefest. Our videos "Raindrops", "Dogboy" and "Bedroom Superstar" all made it into the top five in their categories, and we await to see if we will be selected for an award during the actual festival from 14-17 August in Toronto.

Please note I won't be updating regularly over the next month. I am growing sick of my diverse network of personal website, film website, myspace, LJ, et cetera and am working on a Grand Master Plan to consolidate them all. If I can pull off the design I want, it will be quite cool.

( 12:49 PM ) (0) comments

10.7.07 A Baptism

This is what indie film is: schlepping heavy boxes from obscure suburbs of London, and staying up until 1am the night before the shoot painting props.

A fortnight ago some friends and I flew to New York for the weekend to pick up my new baby: an Aaton Super16 camera package. On Sunday, we baptised it via a music video for "Why Dogs Howl At The Moon (Part 1)" by the wonderful Thomas Truax. Thomas builds his own instruments out of sawn-off phonogram trumpets, toy drum kits and anything else which makes interesting sounds when hit, plucked or bumped. You'll see two of them (the Hornicator, and auto-drummer Sister Spinster) in the video, as well as bits and pieces of Thomas.

I've been promising to do a video for Thomas for about a year now. I first spoke to him at the pre-Truck festival barbecue at the Windmill in Brixton in 2006, and have now filmed the video just a few days before the 2007 pre-Truck festival barbecue. This is how it is - doing a free video for a performer you believe in is time consuming, and is never free for me. Although we were sponsored by Fuji (THANK YOU, FUJI!) I still have developing costs and prop/art/lighting costs. I really couldn't even afford to do this video for Thomas but, you know, new toy.

The "Dogs Howl" video involves a lot of compositing and so will probably take until early August to exit post-production (in other words, for Alex to find a free weekend and afford to rent a digiBeta deck).

We've got a lot more shoots lined up. I'm planning a series of "Camera Tests" in the spirit of Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests", but rather than a silent portrait (or an interrogation), these are two-minute, single-shot experiments with lighting, colours, camera movement, and film stock, based around short, unaccompanied musical, burlesque or avant-garde performances by artist friends of mine. If you enjoy this sort of thing, stay tuned to my Youtube page, as many things will be finding their way up there over the course of the summer.

In early September, I'm also doing probably the highest-profile music video I've yet done. It's also the shortest: 60 seconds. (Meanwhile, have you voted for my "Dogboy" video?). I can't tell you how liberating it is to own one's own camera.

This is what true love is: a boyfriend willing to carry a redhead kit (obsceneley heavy flight case full of lights) back to Zone 4 for you.

( 9:33 AM ) (0) comments

2.7.07 Heart of Iron, In Stores Today!

Agent Boo volume 3: The Heart of Iron is released today. This is the climactic final chapter of the series, in which secrets are revealed, backstories explained, gardens visited and cities transformed into vengeful giant robots. The series sadly won't be continued beyond this volume because of poor sales, which means Boo's mooted visit to the Dinoverse and the ensuing Dinosaurs vs Giant Spiders smackdown will happen only in my and Edo's imaginations.

(Yes, Edo and I do create Agent Boo by sitting around and thinking up the most gleefully, childishly insane things we can. I'll miss Boo. She was a lot of fun.)

Also: VOTE FOR MY VIDEO, you lazy sods! I have over 150 so-called "friends" on each of Myspace, Facebook and LJ, plus Lord only knows how many people reading this main alexdecampi.com blog, and so far only 20 of you have taken the two minutes out of your day to do something that means a tremendous amount to me. Sheesh. And people wonder why Shrub got two terms in the White House.