The Great British Weather

Many of my readers will be aware of the weather we have in this country. It's, you know, okay. Not that bad. Bit moody. I can cope with it though. But today was very atypical of the Great British Weather. Today was a shit storm.

Today was windy.

Real bloody windy.

Of course, a bit of wind only ever blew a couple of hats off, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Today it was so windy that the university actually and genuinely sent out an email to all staff and students advising them on how best to avoid having your their ruined.

"Take shelter. Avoid open areas."

No shit. But I thought that if I went near buildings, they could fall on top of me. Damn it, that's actually a rather good point. I guess there's only one real way to safely deal with the wind, and the university was completely wrong about it:

Yeah, Mazza P's got it right. She and her oddly cartoonish feet were probably having the time of their lives today in the harsh weather.

The reason I am writing this post, however, is not to complain about DMU's patronising take on how dumb students really are, but to chat about my experiences with this weather.

When I left my house this morning, the sky was blue, the Sun was out and it was genuinely a nice day. There was a light precipitation when I arrived on campus, but what more can be expected from the average British Spring day, hey?

Today was the day when I was supposed to be running around campus like a loon filming every inch of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences while it was empty. I thought I'd gotten lucky with the weather. I stepped outside and immediately got rained on.

Ah, I thought, I'd probably better start inside. I went inside and set up my tripod in a fairly open-plan room. I adjusted my settings for indoors, opened the iris and lo and behold, suddenly the Sun pours in and completely ruined the shot. Damn it, I cursed briefly, not to worry though. Easy to fix. Today was apparently one of those days when the weather changes its mind more rapidly than a bipolar bear on acid.

Let me briefly talk about the bipolar bear. The bipolar bear spends its days not entirely sure what to make of itself. Sometimes it is happy, and then sometime it really isn't. More to this, the bipolar bear doesn't actually know what its natural habitat is. Unfortunately, it seems to be a rare offspring of a Canadian Brown and a North Polar. It's not even sure which parent is from where. As such, the bipolar bear is both uncomfortably warm and freezing cold at the same time. When it digs its teeth into a delicious moose, it wants to eat penguins. And of course, when it finds a delicious penguin to chow down on, it wants some meaty moose, drenched in maple syrup. The bipolar bear never knows what it wants and never seems to be satisfied. Except when it is satisfied.

Could you live in this torment? What if both of its homes are destroyed by global warming and Canadians alike? We have to save it. We have to help it.

#savethebipolarbear2015

What the hell am I talking about?

Uhh. Yeah. Soon, I had gotten bored with trying to film in this undetermined weather and I decided to make my way home. I popped the lock on my bike, got on it and waited for the brief rain to pass. The Sun shone through like any old summer's day. You honestly wouldn't believe that it had rained 12 separate times in the last hour. I thought I was in the clear. It would only take me ten minutes to cycle home. That must have been enough time to avoid getting wet all over, right?

My god. Was I wrong. I was so wrong.

I'm sure most folks around have been shot by a BB gun or a paintball at least once in their life, right? Well, imagine that, but a million of them all at the same time. Made of ice.

Shit. Fucking ow! Bastard! My face! My ears! MY BEARD!!!! 

That's right. God got his shotgun out and shot me in the face. It hailed right at me. And by doing some basic maths, I can determine that being on my bike against the wind and with hail coming at me, it like doubles the relative velocity of shit hitting my face, so I'm probably lucky to be alive.

I arrived home, battered and bruised and went straight for the rum to ease my pain. I'm okay now.

I narrowly avoided death on this occasion. Had I listened to the university's email, I might not have had to endure this. Let that be a lesson to you, kids. If your university warns you about wind, and you laugh in their face, they're going to throw millions of tiny balls of ice into your face and kill you.

Lesson over.

Pete out.

Videos. Lots of videos. All the time.

The past few weeks have been pretty crazy. I've been making loads of videos for loads of different people. And you know what? For the first time in my life, I am pretty damn tired of making them.

I should probably lead by stating that, at the moment, I work part time at DMU making videos. This started off as a six-week internship where I was meant to produce one video and that'd be that. But you know me, audience, when do I ever give up on an opportunity to make videos?

At the very beginning of my internship, I learned that I was, in fact, meant to be four people. Great, I thought, I'm fucking brilliant at making videos and other people just slow me down. Time to show this faculty who's boss. I very quickly came to love the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, the folks I'm now working for. Within my first week I was talking my way into the Curve Theatre to film the graduation ceremonies and to interview graduates. Bear in mind that I had been hired to make a video for July's graduation ceremony here. I was out making a video I hadn't even been told to do. Everyone was very impressed with my work. My goal was to put out a better video than the university-wide video maker did. And I think I scored a home run with three wickets to spare in extra time after advantage Federer. 

Sports lingo.

So anyway, I earned myself a reputation very quickly. On account of being four people, I had video requests from all over the gaff from what felt like every member of staff and lecturer in the faculty. I became the big man on campus. The guy who went from losing an election to be a student officer to bloody working at the joint. I gained access to everywhere I wanted to go, just because I could! 

I do often worry how easily I manage to talk my way into places. Maybe I should start doing that with vaginas totally something else.

What made that job brilliant was the freedom I had. My manager was the Faculty Manager, and therefore I only actually saw her once every few weeks, and so I could pretty much come and go as I pleased. Of course, that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. What I mean by that is, I went from having her as my manager to the marketing coordinator, who lives in my office. So instead of hopping around campus like a loon and submitting as many hours as I wanted (within reason, of course), I was suddenly being watched. This, for whatever reason, made the job way more stressful. While I'm still allowed to work on what I want, I have to inform her what I'm doing all the time, and come up with weekly plans before the week has even started! I know! That's not how videos work! They take an amount of time to film, and an amount of time to edit. Sure, now I can take a pretty good guess how long it'll take to make a video, but it never works out like that. Being restricted to 16 hours a week really hampers editing. 

Anyway, so that's my day job now. Don't get me wrong, it is fantastic, and I suppose it is a better insight into how this job might work were I to do this sort of thing full time, which I'm definitely looking into, but some of the fun has been sucked away. I guess that's just called being an adult.

With that explanation out of the way, I suppose I'd better tell you what stuff I've been working on, which is the entire point of this post.

With DMU at the moment, I'm working on the graduation ceremony video, which is my baby. I've emailed just about every lecturer in the faculty asking them to pick their favourite students (I didn't, but they gave me their favourite students anyway for fear I'd find some of the idiots and make them look bad) to be in my video. I'm doing a sort of cinematic thing with fancy camera angles and funky editing, rather than the usual talking heads video of just "I enjoyed my time at university because I got to feed the ducks every Tuesday morning." Read that quotation in a stupid voice.

I'll give you a moment to process.

Yeah, those videos are stupid. I'm doing it better. Other than that, I'm also putting together talking heads of lecturers introducing their course to the new intake. Not the most exciting project in the world, to be honest, but it keeps me off the streets. I'm filming it on green screen and putting a backdrop of their labs or wherever so that they can read off of a teleprompter and look like they're standing in their own room. Cool, right? I'm putting way more effort into it than necessary. And I like that.

A couple of weeks ago I filmed a music video for Flying Kangaroo Alliance. For free. I never make videos for free any more. But alas, that Keeley Knight is a pretty girl and she is a super good friend. I'm also pretty glad I'm doing it for free, because not only does it take the pressure off, but it also makes it fun. I haven't done a music video in years. Heck, I haven't really made a video that wasn't for marketing purposes since like... September. It's crazy. And you know what? It has been the most fun I've had in a while. Hanging out with my friends, making a fun video and listening to cool music. And it's certainly the best music video I've ever made. 

When we filmed the all-important band shots, the lead singer managed to convince a whole bunch of public to come along and dance in the video. I've never had that happen. Wait. Once. But that was a video I'd rather forget. In any case, I got to put my director hat on again. In this particular case, the director hat was, in fact, a tiara. 

Pretty fly, right?

Look how damn professional I am.

So fucking professional.

This is it right here. My business. This is what I do for a living. I love it.

So not long after I filmed this, I was down at Wicksteed Park filming a video for the grand re-opening of the Lake. I can say that now, right? Am I allowed? Yeah. I can. I still own the copyright, so it's all good. 

Anyway, I make videos for the Park like, all the time. They're my biggest client. So I couldn't refuse an opportunity to get some filming gear out and make pretty pictures magically appear from a dull, lifeless lake. In the summer it'll look great. But it's not summer yet. And so, the great tragedy of this time of year has once again occurred. Things happen, and they don't look good. On this particular adventure, I was aided by the beautiful Natalie Castka, who for some reason wanted to help me. I know, it staggers me too. A person, nay, a pretty person, wanted to help me with nothing in return? This doesn't happen. I guess on the day before I did stand around in a Ring Master's outfit looking pretty and signing bits of paper all for her benefit. Eye for eye, I guess.

Being pretty seems to be a fast growing theme in this blog post. Lots of pretty final years in the graduation video.

So, after two weeks of constant filming, the editing phase began. Why it worked out like this is completely beyond me. I had a tonne of fun editing the Flying Kanagaroo Alliance video. It felt all nostalgic. Making a video to try out new things and edit really well. A video I can watch a thousand times and point out every mistake, and yet still enjoy it. But I tell you, it soon got very tiresome.

Recently, I've also become quite financially inept. In February, I didn't get paid nearly enough to break even. How I'm still alive and £400 up is beyond me. So it's been a struggle. And it's also been very lonely. I haven't been able to just nip to the pub and have some grub with my mates. I've just been sat at home, drinking all the alcohol I can find. When I'm alone, my brain does some stupid things to me, which I'm sure I'll one day reveal, but not yet. The point is that I started to really miss people and drove myself a little mad. It hasn't been aided by the fact that what feels like a million of my pre-arranged meet ups were all cancelled or forgotten about.

I embellished a little there. It wasn't a million. I was just sad.

So on Tuesday evening, my house mate, Mike, came home with a Ray and we got very drunk and very not sober. This cheered me up a little. Then, yesterday, I hopped on a train to visit another very pretty lady called Hayley. We hung out all day and you know, for once I was able to just chill out without the need of alcohol. It was good just to be in a genuinely great friend's company and forget about the world and everything in it for a while. That really turned my mood around. I was happier than I've been in a while.

So there you have it. I'm all good, don't worry. It's Easter soon, and that means I'll be working at Wicksteed's again and the chaps will be coming back from their various universities around the country. I'll actually be able to work and regularly be in the company of others, which is something you really miss when you're hired as a solo video maker. Things are, right now, on the up. Maybe it's time to work on a new video project?

Or take a break. A break would be nice.

Pete out.

Life as a Salesman

I feel like this post is either going to really informative, bitchy, hilarious, or all three. Let's find out together.

So in my last blog post, I mentioned that I went into the sales and marketing industry for a couple of weeks. Only a week before that I actually had my interview.

"I've decided to give you a job," that fucking asshole said only a day after my initial interview.
"Fantastic! I can't wait to start!" I exclaimed excitedly, unknowing of how awfully corrupt, fascist and cut-throat this dickhead of an industry is.

This was the start of a job from Hell itself.

My first morning began at 8AM. I know, right. Eight-fucking-ay-em. The first thing I had to do was learn a pitch. Yup, when those folks walk up to you in the street, they have a script. But they get taught it in such a way as to make you think that they're singling you out. Let me give you an example.

Sales Dick: "Oh hey there, take a look at this!"
Unassuming Pedestrian: "What's this then?"
At this point, the salesman completely ignores the question.
SD: "I'd just like to say a massive thank you for stopping today. So many people just walk straight past, so it genuinely lifts my spirits to chat to you. So what're you out doing today, just a bit of shopping?"
UP: "Yeah, just getting some socks."
SD: "Fantastic! Well, if you've got thirty seconds, we could have a quick chat."
At this point, the Sales Dick does what is known in the industry as a "turn and burn". Essentially, they completely turn around, walk over to their station without looking back, just assuming that the Unassuming Pedestrian will follow. And they do. Once you break eye contact and lead someone, they'll follow. We're fucking sheep.
SD: "So I'm here today with [various charity], you've heard of us before, yeah?"
UP: "Yes..."
SD: "So I'm sure you know about all the great we do, yeah?"
UP: "Well yes..."
SD: "And I'm sure you'll agree that it's a really great cause, right?"
UP: "Yeah, of course."
Notice here how the SD twists the question, assuming the answer of "yes". It's another cruel and evil trick.

I'm going to stop the pitch there, because you sort of get the idea. The entire notion of the pitch is to assume all of the answers that the target will say. You may have noticed that in the first question. "Just a bit of shopping?" If this is wrong, then they'll be corrected. We can't help it. "So I can definitely count on your support." In fact, even when we've gotten the citizen to sign their life away, the sales cunt still assumes everything. "So I just need your postcode. So LE3..." It's all designed to make folks give over answers unsuspectingly because they want to correct the sales prick.

I even got taught how to take negative responses and turn them around.

UP: "Well I don't want to give away card details."
SD: "Oh no, don't worry. Your account number is just the card ID. It's pretty much just your name in number format, and the sort-code is just your bank branch."
UP: "I prefer to put money in a bucket."
SD: "Well actually, this is the safest way to do it, because it ensures that all of your money goes straight to the charity on a bank to charity basis. Money in a bucket can be taxed, lost or all sorts of stuff."

BASTARDS.

UP: "Well surely if you're paid by the charity, some of the money I donate will go to you?"
SD: "No, actually, we're paid from a pre-allocated marketing budget set aside by the charity and managed under a separate company."

CUNTS. Stop and think about that. A pre-allocated marketing budget set aside by the charity. Fine, so the money that you might donate today might not, in fact, go to me. But where did the pre-allocated marketing budget come from, exactly? DONATIONS!

I hope I'm providing a service here today. Don't fall for this stuff. Put these sales companies out of business. Especially if they're making money for charity. Ask them if they're paid. If they're not, donate by all means, but if they are, then refuse and give to local charities or buy loads of stuff from charity shops. Just don't let these bastard companies continue.

But how much are these assholes paid? Well, that depends how high up in the hierarchy you are. At entry level, you get paid between £14 and £25 for each person that you sign up, depending on their age. When you become a team leader, you get a little more based on your team's income. That's already more money you're taking from the charity. When you become an event organiser, you have to do more admin, so you paid double for everyone you sign up and a commission based on your teams. And then when you rise to the manager level and have an office of your own, you're very easily earning £1000 a week because you're stealing even more money from charities. That's a fuck tonne of money that these bastards are stealing from the mouths of starving African children.

It also makes you a bad person. I have never felt hatred like I did for these people. They're all assholes, and they sell all the time. Even in regular conversation. "So you've had a good day, yeah?" I know it sounds innocent, but there's the assumption again. A normal person would just ask, "Have you had a good day?"

Let me lead you through my steady decline.

I didn't make any sales today. That sucks. Ten hours wasted on nothing.
Oh good yes, I'm chatting to someone. Turn and burn. Great. You're interested? Good, money. Just sign over your life. Jolly good. Just made £20. From a charity. Fuck.
"Oh it's no worry if you don't want to sign up today. Just check us out online and make a decision later." No one gets paid if they do it online. Perfect.

That's right, I started sabotaging myself. I didn't want to make money any more.

After two weeks, I had decided that enough was enough. I woke up, fully intending to go into the office. There I was, on the shitter at 6AM, thinking about how bloody awful this job was, when I made a snap decision. I'm quitting. Now. I'm going. I need to text my manager. "I'm not coming in today. Or ever again. I can't stand stealing from charities. I hope you all rot in Hell." Back to bed.

Bear in mind at this point I was pretty desperate for money. I was so desperate that I started working at Argos when my contract at Wicksteed was up. I know, crazy. Hopefully I have demonstrated how crappy and evil this organisation is.

So remember, if you ever see anyone in a nice suit, with that really dumb hair that professionals seem to have these days (you know, with the shaved sides and the ridiculous quiff), punch them in the face immediately. I'll help.

Sometimes I see the folks I used to work with. I swear at them. A lot.

Don't ever work in sales. Just don't do it. Save yourself.

Pete out.

Two Years and Five Months

That's how long it has been since I have blogged on this blog. Bloggety, blog; blog.

"Why now?! Why have you tortured us for two years and five months, only to once again spew upon us the ramblings of the crazed man that you have surely become?" I hear you so avidly question.

The truth is this, dear readers and mindless internet trolls. I got busy. And I don't mean like, busééee, I mean genuine, down to Earth, pen on paper, eye to eyepiece, ears to headphones, fingers to mouse and keyboard busy. In my third year I even kept a diary. I know. Who even uses diaries any more?

I do. I use a diary. They're bloody useful.

So I thought maybe this re-introductory post could detail what exactly I've been doing with myself for the last two years and five months, but I could just witter on about nonsense, and you'll get bored and doze off and I won't know or really care because I'm over here and you're over there.

Oh go on then, you've twisted my arm. You've given me the most oriental of skin irritations. I shall tell you what I have been doing for the last two years and five months.

The last time I wrote anything at all on this here was when I was deep in the cesspit of editing together the epic Granite Moths saga, which still isn't finished by the way. That was in my second-year, and I remember the house being rather large and rather cold. The rest of that year consisted of co-running Demon TV mainly, probably some course work here and there and generally having a ruddy good time. I made a lot of friends in a lot of places and had probably the most fun I've had on set to date, making my first Demon Media Awards opening video. It was a classic. It'll go down in history. If anyone from Demon TV still remembers it. They probably don't.

God, you know when your glasses are just so fucking filthy?, and they just won't clean. It's bloody annoying. I'm getting real life lens flares all over the gaff.

Some of my more astute readers may have noted that I used a comma there after a question mark. I think that should be a thing. Because sometimes, you ask a question, but then you add something to the rest of the sentence. The second clause may be in relation to the question, but in itself is not directly a question, as I sort of demonstrated above. It wasn't the best example, as the conjoining clause could very well have been part of the question, and a comma wouldn't normally have suited that scenario, but it's for the good of art, god damnit!

Uhh. Tangent.

Hypotenuse.

Adjacent.

Third year! Man, what a year. Probably the most stressed and sleep deprived I have ever been. I distinctly remember that the first term was probably my most enjoyable experience at uni, and I also remember that at the Demon Media Christmas meal that year, it was the first ever time that I really got Christmas. As some of my devoted readers, viewers or stalkers will tell you, I hate Christmas, largely because of my broken and dysfunctioning family, who I despised for my entire childhood.

I digress. That first term was loads of fun, but I'd also taken on the burden of being a third year, and also being the Station Manager of Demon TV, so by Christmas time I was bloody knackered. My exact thoughts were, "Damn, this term has been so busy, but it'll be alright, second term is never that bad." I was delusional, clearly. Second term on De Montfort campus is the craziest, silliest and hand-ins time of year. To name a few, we did a 30 hour TV/radio broadcast for charity, I ran in an election that I didn't win, had a weekend in Amsterdam immediately afterwards to be immediately followed by Varsity, the busiest two weeks on the Demon TV calendar. And in this time, I somehow needed to film, edit and write a tech project, make tonnes of videos and whatever other coursework I can't remember. Needless to say, all of my coursework was done in the very last minute.

And then my Uncle died. I haven't really described what my Great Uncle means to me. Growing up, as many of you know, I lost my mother, which of course made my Dad an intolerable asshole (using a child's perspective there, I have tonnes of respect for the bloke now). And when I say intolerable, I would mean he was distance and blah blah you didn't come here to hear about this junk. Essentially, my Uncle Bob became my role model. The man I looked up to. His death tore me apart. Right at dissertation hand-in.

I broke. I broke more than I have in a very long while. It took ages to get back from that one.

Still, summer soon rolled around and I went back to work at Wicksteed Park. I may be the only person in the world who thought that working a full time job at a theme park was, in fact, a break. It so was. It's definitely the best job I've ever had.

Over the summer, I blindly made the decision to move back to Leicester for a year. Why not? My housemate, Mike, and I searched far and wide, about a week before we wanted to move in (all good, right?) and then found the house we're in now. It's alright. Does the job. We have two spare bedrooms, so naturally we took the bed out of one and it's become a giant, empty room with nought but my green screen in it. It's great.

Then this academic year started. I have got to stop thinking in terms of academic years. In September, I landed a job in a sales and marketing firm. "Great," I stupidly thought, "I can do marketing. I make videos for the purposes of advertisement all the time." OH HOW WRONG I WAS. I'm going to do a full post on this one, but believe me, it was shite. Total shite balls. I quit after two weeks. At least I managed to knick two weeks of sales training for free. Then I worked at Argos. Eeeeeehhhh. It was alright. Some good folks there, but man was it dull. That lasted until the end of January, when I started working at DMU of all places. I'm still there now, but again I think I'll do a full post on it since it's pretty cool.

So hopefully you feel adequately caught up. I don't think I've bored anyone to death, have I? Good.

Now that I have some more free time, I do imagine that I'll try and come up with some more of the funny old stuff I used to make. I want to. It's been a while and my writing fingers need a good stretch.

Ciao for now.

Pete out.