Billy No-Mates

Okay, so there was this goat called Billy, and he was always mocked by his herd for having a stereotypical name. Billy was never particularly happy at Goat School, even though he had rather good grades.

Billy had a brother called Bobby, who was the popular kid, the one who got all the nannies. Bobby always teased Billy for this, and ever since they were kids they had held a bitter rivalry.

One day, the herd were climbing a mountain. Most of the goats had elected to take the safe, shallow path, but Bobby had other plans. He would take the steep slope to impress the nannies. But Billy knew his brother wouldn't be able to do it. Billy had an A in climbing steep slopes, but Bobby had merely coasted a D. Would Billy leave Bobby to his fate? What kind of brother would that make him? Billy was at odds as he watched his brother foolishly clamber towards the steep slope. It seemed like all of the billy goats and the nanny goats were jeering him on. Billy was too shy to speak out though. No, there was only one thing he could do. He had to follow Bobby up the steep slope.

Bobby was being careless. He was already very far away, speeding along as if nothing could possibly happen. Billy watched his footing carefully. They were already high above the ground. He wouldn't be able to catch up with Bobby before he would inevitably fall to his demise.

"Bobby, stop!" Billy cried. "What do you want, Billy no-mates?" Bobby jeered. The comment cut into Billy like a knife. He was still no more used to the name calling than the day it started. "You're going to fall! You haven't studied!" "Please, a test can't measure up to what I'm really worth. Now turn back so everyone can watch me -" Bobby fell.

Billy locked his horns with Bobby's as he was dangling over the great expanse of nothingness. Below them, hundreds of feet of wind and air before the trees, which looked like bristles on a brush from this height. Normally Bobby was the stronger of the two, but now he was panicking, his legs trying desperately to cling onto whatever they could. Billy was shaking all over, tears leaking from his eyes as he tried to haul his brother upwards to a safer spot.

The moment seemed to last forever. The cold air rushing past them, all of their hairs standing on edge. Finally, Billy managed to pull Bobby up onto the ledge. Bobby clung desperately to the wall, panic set in his eyes, barely breathing. Billy looked back, the other goats seemed so far away now; did they even know what had happened?

"We've got to climb the rest of the way," exclaimed a breathless Billy. Bobby was silent. His eyes turned to his brother. It seemed like he was trying to mutter something, but nothing escaped his lips other than a few quiet squeals. "You're welcome," said Billy rather more confidently.

Billy motioned to his brother to follow his exact footing, and slowly they climbed up the slope. Billy's steps were delicate, precise and well-executed. Bobby's were much heavier and wobbly, but he just managed to keep stride with his brother.

Eventually, they reached the top of the hill. The other goats emerged and rushed to them. Immediately the more popular nannies doted over Bobby, and Billy was left standing awkwardly for a few moments. Bobby motioned that Billy had saved him, and the other goats were in awe. No one said anything more for a while. Bobby turned to Billy and patted his shoulder with his hoof in thanks. It wasn't exactly the hero's welcome he expected, but he had done the right thing. And that would do.

From that day, Billy was no longer picked on. He was looked upon with respect and finally received the dignity he deserved. Billy was happy, and Bobby vowed to study harder in his climbing lessons. All in all, a happy ending for everyone.

Leaving Leicester

While I've known for a while that I'd be leaving Leicester forever, and not exactly kept it secret, this past couple of days have been about packing everything up and sort of saying goodbye. I have my house here in Leicester until the end of July, but from now I don't have any solid plans to come back and stay in this house, and most of the folks I know here will surely have vanished by July.

It is odd to say that I'll never return though. Leicester has been my home for four years. When I moved into my new place in 2011, I felt such a weird relief that I wouldn't be living at home. I'd finally be able to fend for myself, and not have to put up with my family any longer. It was the start of my new life in the world of media and fun.

Of course, the best part of living in Leicester was Demon Media. For three years I got to be in charge, in one way or another, of Demon TV. I was able to pass on my knowledge and experience of video making to other people and that felt great. I felt part of something. Heck, I remember very distinctly in my third year at the Christmas meal, that for the first time in my life I actually felt part of a family.

There were, of course, low moments as well. I nearly killed myself in exhaustion for 95% of my third year, trying to balance the 60+ hours a week it took to manage Demon TV, and then somehow fit what was supposed to be 40 odd hours in of uni work. If I wanted to socialise or take some time off, then I was basically choosing not to sleep. This was also the year in which I had to constantly fight against the university because they were breaking everything all the time, right before deadlines. Why the fuck would you have essential maintenance on a system that is fundamental to students in deadline week? It's dumb. DMU is dumb.

That said, I made some fantastic friends in Leicester. I got to live with folks who are now some of my best friends, and that's awesome. It was also fantastic to work with these people, going for the same goal of making the best student media in the UK, which we totally won in my second year.

Of course, then came my year of just living here, without free money from the government to give me beer. For the first time ever I had to fend for myself, or just die. Well, maybe not die, but be in crippling debt nonetheless.

The first job I managed to get was in sales, and you all know how that went. It was god damn awful. I quit within two weeks and didn't make a penny.

Back at square one, I made some videos with various folks to make some cash. Then I finally managed to get a job at Argos. That was... Not great. But it kept me alive for three months before I got my job at DMU, which you all know I recently finished. Finding a job was probably the most frustrating part. This year was meant to be easy and fun, but I guess being able to stay alive and pay for that fun is a prerogative. Swings and roundabouts.

So yeah, Leicester has been a great place to live. And it does somewhat sadden me that I'm going to be back in my old, cramped room, which will now have even less space in it thanks to three years of buying my own stuff, but Kettering is where I need to be right now. Many great things are happening now with new projects, and I've finally found someone who makes me smile.

So this is where the next chapter of my life begins. I have no idea what's going to happen or where I'm going, if I'll still be in Kettering a year from now or what. But right now I don't care. Right now I'm happy and that's all that matters.

Here's to the next chapter.

Pete out.

The boy who never grew up and some dancing children...

A couple of weeks ago I told you all I had a new project lined up. Well, that time has arrived, and it involves me working with Starlight, Kettering's own dance and musical theatre school. Natalie (who of course you may remember from previous posts about News Man and such) got me involved in all of this, and now I'm filming as many of their shows as I can.

This all started because Starlight wanted to replace their current DVD suppliers, who were charging a whole heap of money to film their shows and send them DVD copies. The DVDs were... eh. The filming was okay, but the sound was... eh. I, of course, said I could produce something at the very least on par at what I reckon to be about a fifth of the price. They snatched that up offer very quickly indeed.

So a few weeks later, I had set up my camera in the Castle Theatre in Wellingborough and I was once again making money doing the very thing I actually want to do with my life. Yay!

This show was the sort of thing I'd never actually come across before, it was a sort of variety show with loads of dance routines performed by the kids who attend the dance school. It was sweet. It ranged from two/three year-olds who didn't really do very much more than bounce on the spot and wave at their parents, but nonetheless did try to follow the routine, to some quite talented teenagers. Some bits were better than others. But really, the show is for the parents, to watch their little angels on the stage for (maybe) the first time and going "aww" a lot. One of the routines was to the theme of James Bond, which had a very young Bond brutally murdering some teenage girls. That was pretty cool. It got loads of complaints from parents. But hey, art doesn't happen when you don't tread the line between what is and isn't acceptable in respected society.

So that one was easy, I just set up my camera and watched the show. Easy squeezy.

A few weeks later, Natalie's shows came around. Peter Pan and Second Star to the Right. Peter Pan, of course, was an adaptation on the original story in which a young boy brutally murders pirates and kidnaps children. The kids performing in this were the younger of the two groups of kids Natalie teaches, and they did an absolutely stunning job. It was remarkable that these young minds could adopt a persona, learn 90 minutes worth of dialogue and then perform to an audience. I couldn't do that.

Second Star to the Right was written by Natalie and her friend, John. It's a completely original story, and sequel to Peter Pan, performed by Natalie's teenagers. Again, they pulled it off spectacularly and made the audience roar with laughter and shed some tears. It was fantastically written and it was a genuine pleasure to be able to sit through both the rehearsals and the performances.

I decided to make my filming of these far more complicated than the dance show by literally tripling my work. I didn't need to; it's not even what was asked of me, but I wanted to. Because filming. Instead of just setting up a camera, leaving it and trusting a sound tech to record the audio, I set up a central wide shot on the balcony well above everything else, had my DSLR recording close-ups with a 300mm lens and captured sound using a shotgun mic. So I was doing the work of what I would normally direct three other people to do. But no matter, I'm Peter Hutchinson, the best videographer in Kettering (probably). It was stressful, tiring, and awesome. I hadn't felt that kind of buzz in such a long time. By the end of the two shows (which both happened in the same day, I failed to mention, making this feat by the team even more amazing), all of my gear was down to the five minutes or less, either in battery life or card space. It was one of those shoots where I had to stop and think in every break to try and maximise efficiency in my gear. Thankfully, everything worked.

Immediately the day after that mega tiring day I was back in Wellingborough filming more kids dancing. It was... Less good. I decided to only use the one camera again basically sleep through the show. And it was a bloody long show as well. Each act lasted nearly an hour. But hey, there were a couple of bits of interpretive dance in there that were pretty cool. Everything else was literally for the amusement of the parents, I feel.

Now, of course, I have to edit it all. The trickiest part of that will be synching up the footage from Second Star and Peter Pan, but for all the effort that was put into making those shows, I owe it to make some damn good videos from them for the parents to enjoy all over again.

I very much hope that life gives me more of this sort of stuff to do. It really is fantastic.

Pete out.

DMUsed to It

Yesterday I finished my final stint at De Montfort University. This time round, as a member of staff than as a student.

I remember very clearly, as a student, fighting the upper management, trying to get something good out of them. They sucked massive balls. Hard. So naturally, when they offered me a job I immediately accepted it without question. I would be working for the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences instead of the Faculty of Technology (the faculty I belonged to when I studied). The Faculty of HLS is the biggest and best faculty in the university, so naturally I thought everything would be well managed and things would be fine.

Well, that's how it started.

I was hired originally to make a video for the July graduation ceremonies. Cleverly, HLS decided to get a head start on it so that they could have the best video out of all the faculties and wouldn't have to run around at the last minute trying to get it done in one go. And of course, who better to hire than the best videographer on campus? Precisely. This was ideal. Five months to work on a project that didn't need to be finished at all until the end of June. I've made awesome videos in a couple of days, so this should have been a synch.

Obviously, this got put on the back burner a bit. Since I had so long, I decided to do lots of research and loads of pre-production (everything involved in planning a video before you film it) so that when it came to putting the video together, it would be awesome. So in the meantime, I started working on "e-induction" videos. E-inductions are, as every fresher will know, the online course that you take before arriving at the university. Since I was around, we decided to turn a lot of the on-screen text into video form, to make the whole experience (hopefully) less tedious.

This is where the nightmare began.

I had to organise every programme leader and every head of school and get them to agree to a filming date, go through the pre-production phase with all of them and hopefully make some damn videos. This mostly went okay. Trying to talk to lecturers is a pain, because they don't have PAs, but otherwise most of them were an absolute pleasure to work with.

You know what's worse than trying to talk to and organise lecturers? Trying to talk to and organise students. My word. The graduation video was back, and I needed lots of students. Again, this mostly went okay, but I was missing all the students from one of the schools. One student said it so well:

"I would have taken part, but my perception of DMU is so bad right now, that I wouldn't be appropriate. And honestly, everyone is feeling the same."

Ah. I won't go into why every student from that particular school was angry for legal reasons, but you get the idea. Things started to unravel.

So I had a video, somewhat incomplete. The e-induction videos were going swimmingly, with a couple of hitches but hey, that's the media industry. The end of my time at DMU was fast approaching, and so I needed to sort out what this graduation video was supposed to look like.

"Yeah, the upper management of the university haven't yet decided what to actually do with the graduation videos from the other faculties so... We can't really do anything more yet."

WHAT?! I'd been working on this video for ages, getting stressed out, ready to crack on with the final edit, and suddenly I've been told that it's been put on hold. And guess what, that's the way it's stayed.

I had to end my time at DMU with an incomplete project. And it sucks. I've told them that I'll happily finish it once the university has decided what they're doing, but this is silly. To think that we planned so far ahead, only to turn around and go back to the beginning months later.

I realise that I've done a lot of slating about DMU here. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed my job. And in every single job ever, you are going to have to deal with people who don't seem to fully understand what it is you do, or how hard you've been working, but mostly you won't actually come into contact with them. They'll just annoy you from afar. I worked with some brilliant folks, who helped me when I needed it and mostly let me get on with my projects, and allowed me to be fully flexible with my hours. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had, and I'd do it all again. DMU is a good university, but it does need to sort out its shit every now and then.

So there we have it. Another door closed. With my leaving of DMU, I'll also soon be leaving Leicester. The next chapter of my life is about to begin, and I have no idea what road I'm going down. Recently I've had some excellent changes to my life that are going to make my time back in Kettering genuinely amazing, included in this are some new projects that I'll explain soon and of course News Man episode 2 is well underway, with more of it being completed daily.

Things are good right now. Very good.

In other news, I was working at the old Park today, and I made some new best friends. Every time they went on my ride, they'd fist bump me, tell me what number ride they were on, and we'd have a laugh before I pushed the button that made them go away again. Before long, they exclaimed "SQUAD!" and I had no idea what this meant. Apparently, this means that I'm now part of their crew, or indeed "squad". I feel like this is going to be a thing.

Pete out, squad.

Natalie

The Great Wasp Saga

So there was a HUGGEGEE wasp in my room. Like MASSIVE. So big that the word "huge" needed two extra Gs and a further two extra Es. It was like the size of my thumb. How it got in here is completely beyond my comprehension. My window wasn't open at all in the night, and in fact wasn't open yesterday. So that means that this bastard wasp has just been hanging out in my room for like two days. What was it doing? Just chilling out on the window sill? Probably.

What's the point in this story, you ask? Well, I had to tell the story of the most traumatic experience I've ever had with a wasp.

Like I say, this huge wasp was just chilling out in my room. It was on the curtain when I discovered it just before I was going to make some breakfast. I could see it walking downwards towards the ground, and it disappeared. I wondered where it had gone, and it started climbing up the back of my of my computer. It then just started chilling out on the back of my PC, near one of the cooling fans. I was gravely concerned at this point. If it were able to get into my room without my noticing, perhaps it could also sneak into my PC, at which point it would certainly die. I could not let this happen. I bravely found a tupperware box and tried to sneak the wasp inside. When I thought I had it, I placed the lid on, happy with my efforts.

The following events may shock and disturb.

I could hear the wasp struggling. It was all like, "BUZZZZZZ" and I was concerned. I looked at my new pal, only to discover that he'd tried to escape from the box, and was subsequently caught in the lid. I was mortified. I couldn't bear it. It was obviously in so much not-pain, since bugs don't really feel pain (at least not on the level we do). It was wriggling, and I was so scared that I was killing the poor thing. In an instant I dropped the box and opened the window. Thankfully the wasp flew out the window, looking back as if to thank me. We shared a brief moment of sorrow, and then he went on his way.

I don't think I made a new friend today. Gosh it was horrible. Now I know to simply invite the wasp out into the open where it can frolic, instead of imposing my harsh tyrannical justice upon it.

Woe is I. Hopefully you've learned something from this too. Make friends with wasps, don't fear them, and don't let them fear you.

Pete out.

Escapism

I'm sure everyone in the world has a desire to run away from home, to get away from people and noises and the horrid stench of the city. Well, I guess people who don't actually live in cities don't really get that, but you know. Everybody wants escapism.

The last few days have been absolute bliss. Over the Easter I didn't really have any time off. Sure, I got drunk a lot, but I wore myself out with all my working and my projects and all the stuff, all the time. So when I got the chance to actually take some time off, I took that and probably did all the best stuff I could with it.

On Saturday we started production of episodes 2 and 3 of News Man. Added to the cast this time round is Natalie Castka, whom you may have noticed has been mentioned in other posts. She came all the way to Leicester to act in a silly little project for free. I know, right? It's crazy. To think there exists at least one person out there who wants to do things for fun and for the benefit of other people. Mental.

Anyway, the day was filled with lots of fun and excitement and laughter and some acting. I can't give anything away just yet, because of spoilers, but know that me and co-producer Chris Devey were very impressed with Natalie's acting talents.

So that's the first bit of escapism. Making movies, for fun. Chris and I don't expect News Man to ever hit the box office, and to be honest I don't think I'd ever want it bound by media law and budgets and stupid Hollywood shit.

Then, of course, we went to the pub. Natalie and I had a few drinks and a good natter before she had to catch the train home. All in all, it was certainly one of the happiest days that I've had in a very long while. Thank you.

On Sunday, I didn't do very much at all. Yusef moved in properly, which was cool, and otherwise I just monged out. Didn't do much of anything. I caught up on some of my uni editing, which was less cool, but needed doing because of all the monging out I've been doing as of late.

Speaking of monging out, Monday I actually went into work. I saw my manager for the first time in a month and we had a very positive catch up. It's usually very much, "It doesn't seem like you've got enough, so let's bring down the number of hours you're doing." Sigh. BUT YESTERDAY she said, "Sounds like you've got it all sorted. Let's boost your hours," YAAAAY! MONEY!!

By midday of yesterday, I'd gone home. Yesterday was quite a special occasion though, what with it being the 20th of the 4th. Mike and I had a lunch time of not so much sobriety, and then I chilled out all afternoon, getting some bits of work done. I'm not even sure what I did. In the evening, Mike came home with a Ray and we got even less sober. It was wonderful.

I woke up this morning completely at ease. I'd planned to have today off to continue my escape from life and I sure as hell did. After a hearty breakfast I hopped on my bike and decided to go north along the River Soar. And I'm bloody pleased with what I found.

Ducks! What with it being spring time, all the crazy-colours animals came out to play. I've never seen a duck coloured like this before, with a green face thingy. Isn't it cool?

I also found a neat little waterfall. There's a heron in that picture somewhere.

This is the main event, really. My cycling had brought me to the lakes of Watermead Park. It was bliss. Tranquil. I'd escaped from the city and found somewhere beautiful.

These last few days have been everything I've needed. I was feeling pretty shitty about myself over Easter, but now that I've well and truly chilled the fuck out, things are looking up. This year was meant to be about this sort of stuff. The whole year was meant to be easy and fun and not with my family. Winter totally sucked, what with working at Argos and barely having enough money to survive. Now I actually don't have any money at all until the start of May, but who cares? There's some pretty pretty stuff in the world. And I can see it.

I'm now in my last four weeks at DMU, and so all guns are going to be blazing for a little while, I can imagine. But after the 15th of May, I can do whatever I want. I'm gonna go cycling a lot. Film loads of News Man. Make some new projects for myself. WHO KNOWS?! As long as I can run away and be with my friends, I'll be happy.

Pete out.

Velcro Works on My Beard

Yup, Sure does. I'm pretty certain that I'll be able to make use of this soon enough.

I also just spent the last couple of hours of my Saturday evening sprucing up my bike, Polly, adding new bits, giving her a bit of a buff. Oil. Lots of oil. She certainly needed a good seeing to, though, having spent the entire winter in a shed. Poor thing. I bet she's well happy now that she's able to frolic around the streets and fields of Kettering again, her new wheel working more beautifully now than it did out of the shop.

You know, for the last year I've been struggling to think of what I'd class as my "hobby". Because while throughout uni, videos were certainly my hobby, they've now become my life. At the moment, I spend the weekends and some weekdays working at Wicksteed Park, and then in the evenings and every other moment of my life I'm making videos. DMU pays me a wage to make them. So now it's my profession. Don't get me wrong, it's what I always wanted, but some of the magic and sparkle has gone away. It's no longer the activity I use to break away from the world and enter this magical realm, where anything can happen. That said, News Man certainly falls under the "magical realm" banner, what with it being completely off our own backs where no one makes any money. Not even our professional actors.

So yeah, I'll admit that turning a hobby into a profession kind of bummed me out a bit when I thought about it. But there I was today, with my workshop clothes on, oily rags in hand, sprucing up the current love of my life. It may sound simple and not at all exciting, but I may make cycling my new hobby. It's been years since I took my bike out for a good thrashing around Pitsford or wherever. The other week, I took my other bike, Cyborg (named as such because I built it last year as a spare bike), on a half hour sprint north along the River Soar, and that was great. I was run-over of course, due to the lack of breaks on Cyborg, but otherwise it was a nice getaway. So now all I have to do is hope that there are some really nice cycling routes around Kettering that don't require a car to get to. There'll be something, I'm sure. And hey, sling my DSLR on my back and I can take some pretty pictures too. That'd be nice. I like pretty pictures.

My life is going to take a pretty weird turn soon. I've lived in Leicester for four years, three of which have been because of uni. I do find it a bit odd that I now work at said uni, but it is a massive stroke of luck. But yeah, soon I'm going to finish my stint at DMU, and then my tenancy is going to end on my house in Leicester, and then I don't ever intend to return. I'm going to move back to Kettering for a while, but do I want to stay there? I have some pretty cool Kettering-based projects coming up, so for the time-being at least I will be. I know living back in this relatively cramped house with shitty internet is going to annoy me, but I do need to save some dollar and start driving really.

You know, when I started writing this post, it was meant to be a complete rip-off of my friend, Natalie's post about finding happiness in the life you live, even if it's not where you wanted to be. Many of you will know that I've never been a particularly positive person, and sometimes I can be downright miserable, but her post did inspire me to try and find these little nuggets of happiness. Perhaps in May, I shall keep a journal each day of the things that made me happy that day. Hopefully "alcohol" won't appear too often. This paragraph definitely isn't finished yet, what with the point made in the first sentence not being completely resolved.

So for the last few days, I've woken up feeling pretty shit about myself. And unfortunately, that happens on more mornings than I'd care to admit. But fortunately, when I'm alone, there's a logical part of my brain that usually tells me to cheer the fuck up and get on with my life, because negativity can only kill you quicker. Of course, when I'm with friends, it's all good. They do that for me. And the last couple of days have been a tribute to that, really. Yesterday I was tearing down the road on my bike, swearing at every driver who came an inch too close to me, and being almost too willing to cut up cars on that busy roundabout. I didn't particularly fancy being alive, to be all honest with you, but the positivity of my buddy Richard started to rub off on me a little, and we just had genuinely nice customers. Well, a couple of awkward assholes, but hey, it's part of the job. Today, I was sort of feeling the same, but I was on a ride with Natalie all afternoon, and there's just no way that anyone can be miserable around that woman.

This brings me back to last week, actually. There were these pikey kids who were terrorising us and the customers, and when they made a derogatory comment about two little girls, I lost my shit and shouted at them, "DO NOT SAY THOSE THINGS. GET OUT AND DON'T COME BACK," and they didn't come back. I was fuming. A few minutes later, I saw the two little girls again, with beaming smiles on their faces and they gave the most heart-warming "thank you" of all time. They didn't half make me feel better about myself, you know. And then the day after, I was letting a middle aged woman and her son onto a ride, and I went through my usual spiel, to be met with, "thanks, sexy" (from the woman, thankfully). I was completely taken aback. I fumbled about, completely lost my train of thought and totally messed up my verbal instructions. "Thanks, gorgeous," she ended on. Christ.

So uh... I'm not really sure what the moral of this story is. It hasn't really been a story, to be honest. Hopefully you've learned something new about me, I certainly have. Two things, really.

1. I can totally velcro things to my beard.

2. There is at least one woman out there who thinks I'm attractive.

I'm going to chalk that up to a win.

I want to go on an adventure. And write about it. And take pretty pictures while I'm on said adventure. Yeah.

Pete out.

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.