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

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WHO

FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

30.8.07 Things! Lots of New Things!

Okay, maybe "three" isn't the same as "lots", but it feels like lots to me.

Thing 1: New music video for Thomas Truax's "Why Dogs Howl At the Moon (Pt 1)"! Go here. And yes, I am following up my hit pop sensation with a really difficult video that clearly demonstrates how much Warhol and Svankmajer I've been watching. And that was even cheaper to make than the Schema video. (£200, in case anyone cares.)

Thing 2: There is a big article about said hit pop sensation of a video in today's (Thursday 30 Aug) Independent. Go read it. (And no, it doesn't seem to be on the newspaper's website yet so you have to find a real paper copy.)

Thing 3: Tickets for the next White Mischief are now on sale! November 10, the Scala, with British Sea Power headlining, 10-piece soul orchestra The Lord Large Experiment and tribal pop stars Kunta Kinte supporting, plus some, all or none of a human orchestra, ultimate wrestling with power tools, a special emissary from Kim Jong-Il of North Korea, some of the UK's best soul and retro DJs, the amazing Dusty Limits and much more, with Jules Verne as our Virgil, taking us on an unforgettable night of Victorian visions of the future, for a mere 20 of your British pounds. Buy now; it will sell out.

( 8:10 AM ) (0) comments

23.8.07 Sometimes the good guys win

My video for The Schema has - in one short day - become the ~~7th~~ ~~6th~~ ~~2nd~~ NUMBER ONE most watched music video on Youtube worldwide yesterday, 6th of all types of videos worldwide, and number one (of all types of video) on Youtube UK. This week we're ahead of the new videos by Enrique Iglesias (Universal), the new band Domino is pushing hard (Animal Collective), Ne-Yo, and something involving Pharrell Williams.~~25,000~~ ~~50,000~~ 136,000 views.

Remember, this is for a video made for £500 on one week's notice for an unsigned band.

I don't know what to say, except... well, I'm thrilled, mainly for all the people (especially my long-suffering and amazingly talented DP, Guy Routledge) who give up their weekends to work 12-hour days on my shoots for gin, cheeseburgers and a promise of "some day, we'll make it big".

( 9:41 AM ) (0) comments

22.8.07 The Schema video: finished!

Booyah. Here it is! Nudity, ginger twins, breaking stuff and some ridiculously awesome boyband dancing. All up there for your enjoyment, courtesy of two all-nighters in a row.

OK. I go pass out now.

EDITED (THE FOLLOWING MORNING) TO ADD: Tonight we'll be putting a hi-res flash version up on the criminally under-updated Lot 49 site as well as on the band's site, so you can see it in nicer resolution/colour.

( 9:44 AM ) (0) comments

21.8.07 And sometimes the night crashes into you, throwing you onto the rocky shores of morning without rest or respite

Up until 4am on the edit for the Schema video. Mostly done; just have to tweak and grade tonight. It won't be Walter Murch levels of quality, but it'll do, pig, it'll do.

Meanwhile, Camera Test 3 (Dusty Limits) and Camera Test 4 (Ryan Styles) up on my Youtube site. Usual self-flagellatory navel gaze about each Test at my Livejournal.

Do any of you have ideas on how/where I could publicise the Tests? I have a few more planned, and I think they're developing into an interestinf body of work, in an "I stole it from Warhol" kind of way. But I like to think old archthief Andy would have been chuffed. I am so lousy at publicising my work (mostly, because I'm too busy doing it) that I fear I need to call on outside assistance.

( 10:10 AM ) (0) comments

19.8.07 Konichiwa, Bitches!

New books: Adam in Chromaland (3 years in the making!) and Kat & Mouse 3 (the best yet in the series).

New music video: 41 slates, 7 hours, 900 feet of super16, 50 great extras including a goodly number of gentlemen from the London indie music mafia, three sugar-glass bottles, two tramps, a gorgeous half-naked blonde AND NOT A DROP OF RAIN. Up yours, BBC Weather!

New camera tests: coming soon. I am the Queen of Everything, and I make boys in red t-shirts break bottles over each other's heads for my amusement.

( 2:38 PM ) (0) comments

16.8.07 It's All Go, Here On Planet Alex

The second Camera Test is up: Ophelia Bitz, satirising a particularly odious Sandi Thom song. We... may get in trouble for this one. Click here to see why, but not if you're easily offended and/or don't like sexy girls, bad language or innuendo. Ophelia debuted the song (which she wrote for the camera test) last night at the Edinburgh Fringe, at the Reggie Watts Late Show.

Meanwhile, to the wonderful world of Internet Vote Rigging! Please help send Evil Genius, my boyfriend's band, to play at Reading Festival by voting for their song "Attack of the Sybarites" on the Nokia Rock Up And Play competition. It's quick and free, and does not require registering - just click, tick "\m/" and done. (The clip is very lo-res and only part of the song; we had a 5MB size limit. I'll put the entire song up on Youtube soon.)

Also, help the best thing to come out of Sheffield since Jarvis win some awards! Scarlet Blonde are a rock/electronica duo whose self produced first album is one of my favourites of this year. This past February I made a video for their song "Bedroom Superstar", and I'll be doing another for them in the autumn. The "Bedroom Superstar" video is now up for an Access All Areas award as Best Video. They're also up for Best Electronica Act, Best Female-Fronted Band, Best Album and Best Something Else I Can't Remember. However, voting is by SMS and will cost GBP1.50 for UK residents. Which is pretty uncool of Access All Areas and Manilla PR, but there you go. Vote by texting VIDEO A to 81581.

( 8:34 AM ) (0) comments

14.8.07 Camera Test 1 with Tricity Vogue, Now Up

I've uploaded the first (of four currently filmed, with a fifth planned) of my series of Camera Tests. This one is jazz/cabaret singer Tricity Vogue performing "Ain't Gonna Get No Sleep Tonight" at the RVT, recorded back on 13 July.

There's a shake to the footage, which I believe is due to the vignette filter I used. I'm of two minds about it. I'm also in two minds about the grading I did - since the footage is Super16, I'm looking at it in Final Cut as 10-bit, 4:2:2 colour depth. For the non-technical among you: that means "teh pretty". I graded it up, was quite pleased with the result, then exported it to a H.264 Quicktime. Ugh! The colours went all flat and somewhat colder than I wanted (especially skin tones), so I warmed it up, raised the saturation (to the point where the Final Cut version wasn't very nice anymore) and exported it again. On my Mac cinema monitor, the Quicktime was still flat, but considerably better than the first attempt. Now that I look at it on Youtube on the office PC, it looks too warm and a touch dark.

Sigh. I don't know whether, as Charlie would say, "this is something that everyone will notice because it is actually a problem, or only you will notice because you are a hypersensitive film director and have looked at the footage eight squillion times". Decisions! Or, possibly, just denial. (Films, like other forms of art, are never finished, only abandoned.)

Other Camera Tests to go up over the next week or so when I have time.

( 9:54 AM ) (0) comments

13.8.07 Extras Needed for Music Video Shoot, Sat 18 August

I have a big music video shoot coming up on Saturday, a very last minute thing. It’s also going to be quite high profile – the shoot is being covered by a major UK newspaper and will be part of a front-page feature in their magazine supplement a couple weeks after.

(True fact: I got this shoot thanks to a recommendation from one of my Livejournal readers - I know who you are, and you have my thanks, it was a very kind and generous thing to do.)

But I need your help as extras! The video is for the song “Those Rules” by The Schema. The song is pure pop fun, all about women who don’t give normal guys a chance. The video is a comedic metacommentary on the music industry. It starts off as a fairly standard amusing indie video, but then these be-suited twins appear, representing the music industry, and create absolute havoc, interrupting the video for cringe-making marketing plugs, trying to replace the lead singer with someone more attractive, and so forth. It should be heaps of fun, and we have a gorgeous (and very central) location.

We’re filming in Embankment Gardens, the area with deck chairs and a stage right next to Embankment Tube from 9am-4pm on this coming Saturday. You’d be needed to chill out in a deck chair and read a gossip magazine/novel, chat to your friends, listen to your iPod or just have a snooze.

We also need to do some closeups of people, and have a couple more featured parts, so if you’re keen to do a bit more or have acting experience and want work for your reel, there's definitely the opportunity.

Feel free to tell your friends, etc. There’s a lot of deck chairs that need filling.

Meanwhile, I have a tremendous amount of film work I haven't had time to throw up on YouTube yet. For the past month I've been testing out the new Aaton by filming two-minute camera tests with some amazingly talented cabaret performers I know, and I have studio performances by Tricity Vogue, the lovely Ophelia Bitz, Dusty Limits and Ryan Styles (the avant-garde performer, not the comedian) all waiting for finishing touches. But I've been somewhat derailed (happily) by this upcoming shoot for The Schema.

( 10:06 AM ) (1) comments