Some stills from the Forget-Me-Nots shoot can be seen here (dancers) and here (band).

We're still working on this one, just shot a series of domestic murder scenes last night and doing stop-motion footage with medical supplies over next two days. Expect this pair of videos end of June, hopefully. It's nice to be working for friends, in an organic way where we can carry on thinking about / working on a project over a couple of weeks.

I will be back in London from 23 May-7 June, filming one, possibly two music videos. Would love to see any old friends. The first (definite) video is a crazy live shoot for Marcella Puppini's very groovy new band, the Forget-Me-Nots. We're shooting their May 30 gig at Last Days of Decadence in Shoreditch on 8 super8 cameras, which is either genius or a recipe for disaster. We'll see! I've built a special lighting cage for the occasion which I'm quite proud of, and I can't wait to see it in action.

If you would like to come along on May 30, I have some guestlist spaces, so please let me know in comments. (NB: do not assume you are down for guestlist unless I respond and say, yes, you're down.) If you happen to have a super8 camera and want us to give you some film and you can shoot, note that too. t will be an amazing night, and if you haven't been to LDD it's a fantastic club. Please come! The party is a Capote-style Black & White Ball and there will be swing dancers and nekkid ladies and Dusty Limits and all sorts of good things. Voila, Facebook events page. Voila, flyer:

See you all soon!

Friends: do any of hail from and/or reside in West Virginia, specifically the coalmining parts thereof? If so, please get in touch (or suggest nice folks who do). I have strange and harmless questions to ask about the local flora and fauna. (This is not weird Alex code for anything. I actively want to know what are the main trees/shrubs/flowers in those parts, what colour the dirt is, and what it generally smells like.)

Directed by me, animated by the wonderful Jorden Oliwa. NSFW due to, oh, a whole bunch of animated Naughty.

NB: Unofficial fan video. As in, not official or sanctioned, just done for fun because we felt like making an animation and Amanda was kind enough to let us use the song. For Evelyn Evelyn's song "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn", out on the album Elephant Elephant from Jason Webley's Eleven Records, and containing contributions from Amanda Palmer and Jason. There's also a high quality version on Vimeo (plus mov to download) which has been waiting to process for about 6 hours because Vimeo sucks like that unless you give them money which will never happen. As usual, more on the video (& process, & toys and extras) soon in the friends-locked part of my blog. But it's Sunday night in Brooklyn in the spring, and there are cocktails to be mixed.

I'm now on Twitter (as alexdecampi), if anyone cares. I'm doing it as a once-daily observational haiku type thing, which is to say I'm too poncey to break down and write about what sort of sandwich I had for lunch. I am instead writing cleverclogs Brooklyn verite about OTHER people's sandwiches.

On Sunday we moved to Park Slope in Brooklyn. New York is the ninth town in which I've lived and the flat in Park Slope must be the 30th or so temporary borrower of the phrase 'my home'. Drove down in a snowstorm; nothing like getting to know New York traffic in a 10-foot truck during a blizzard. The dog was curled up between my and Charlie's seats, her sleep interrupted by the occasional kick and whimper of a puppy-dream.

I'm already mostly unpacked (I've had practice). Charlie's in Manhattan filling out forms at his acting school; I've stayed home all day with the internet. New York is exciting. Park Slope is exciting, in that it's basically Primrose Hill with bagels and I liked Primrose Hill a lot.

I'm also terrified, of course, as I don't really know anyone here and all the casual work I pick up to keep myself sane from friends' bands and the burlesque/cabaret scene and all that... it's not around. Or I don't know how to find it. So, if you are in NY and know any decent bands/performers that want videos, drop me a line. I also rather fancy getting involved directing theatre... it's nice to be back in a big city.

(Londoners: there is a vague plan afoot for me to come back around Glastonbury time, but it requires a number of people getting organised, not least myself. So yes, I am trying to be back soon. I do miss you all, terribly.)

We'll be at the Peculier Pub, 145 Bleecker, from about 5pm. Come say hi. Pass it around as I have utterly failed to organise seeing any of you as I'm rubbish.

Note: if your LJ consists more than 80% of Loudtwitter posts, you shall be defriended within the next week. Your twits are duller than a day trip to Croydon, and no substitute for actual content.

I have two short films I dearly want to get off the ground. They have been postponed due to my general lack of a physical abode for the past year, and due to my not having progressed very far on the feature screenplay that was to follow hot on their heels. I'm now nearly finished my feature screenplay* (page 94, represent!) and it is a new year and all that, so: ONWARDS.

I am looking for a producer for these two short films. And by "producer" I mean fundraiser/organiser/marketer/etc, not a production manager. One short film is a bit of a crowd pleaser - a 12-minute silent comedy; the other is a long (25min), very absurdist tale of love and existential fear. The idea is to shoot one or both of these (perhaps back to back?), campaign them in the large festivals (Sundance &c) and use that as a springboard to get the feature project moving. They could be shot in either the UK or America. (On that note, I now have my British passport. Huzzah.) My music video career should be moving up a notch this year as well, since I've just signed to a very good mv/commercials production company in LA and another (for the UK) in London. More details on that once they've made their announcements.

NB, in case you are not familiar with my work, it is fairly avant garde/absurdist and often deals in socially inappropriate ways with the ghey, the drug, and the generally 'immoral'. This is my world, and that of many of my friends, but I realise it is not everyone's and thus if you have issues about any of these subjects you probably won't like my films. NB2, I want to shoot both of these on 35mm.

*This is not my first feature screenplay. This is about my sixth. It took me five previous to figure out what I wanted to say in my debut feature. It's an odd little absurdist rock and roll It's A Wonderful Life.

It's been quite a busy month in terms of interviews. Awesome music video blog Shots Ring Out talked to me about the "Leeds United" video so if you're interested in the "behind the scenes" or making-of, have a look. SRO have been a huge supporter of my work so if you do stop by, give them lots of love.

Joanna Draper-Carlson at Comics Worth Reading (the only comics blog, in fact, that I consider worth reading) talked to me about Tokyopop, my series Kat & Mouse and comic writing. Make sure you read the comments as there's general hilarity when a guy named Tom, who's a bit more sexist than he thinks he is, stops by and suggests to the mainly female audience that our widdle brains might not be able to handle higher thought... saying not to investigate this is anti-science, but then not backing up any of his claims with, you know, actual science.

Lastly, and thank heavens this isn't in a more widely read site, I crack jokes about class A drugs and childrens' books. What can I say? I was in a very, very sarcastic mood, and was quite exhausted.

There's another good interview on my whole music video creation process going up on the 27th November on UK fanzine The Antagonist, do check it out - it's actually one of my favourite interviews of recent times. Jess (the journalist) really did her homework and asked some interesting things.

I has MOAR video: "Last Words", for The Real Tuesday Weld. This one was shot back in April, for a different song - "I Loved London". This was back when I was drowning in being torn away from London, the city I'd lived in for 10 years, to help my mother in America rebuild her life after my father's death from cancer. But London was breaking my heart, and I had to go. And so I made a big gay goth fable to say goodbye:

We later recut the video for this song, after "Last Words" had been picked up as a featured song in the film Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist. This turned into one of the most stressful videos of my life, mainly due to failures involving post-production staff. Gory details later, in F-lock.

And yes, this will be the last video for a while... unless of course Amanda's video gets sprung on me in the next week.

And now for something completely different:

After all the drama and high cinematic art of the (still pre-release) "Leeds United" and "Last Words" videos, me and the gang wanted to cut loose and do something silly and irresponsible. Luckily, Manda Rin, quite literally one of the nicest people I have ever met, hearts the silly and wholeheartedly embraced the idea of a cheeky, J-pop style innuendo fest with VERY. BRIGHT. COLOURS. Hope you will too. Warning: this video has no redeeming social or cultural value; it is pure POP.

Please be so kind as to click through to Youtube and rate/comment on the video if you have a moment; this is quite important in the internet popularity contest that is the Youtube ratings system. Also, if you have a decent connection, you may want to click "watch in high quality" at the bottom right of the video as the resolution improvement is really significant.

This video's production was not without its dramas; in the friends-locked section of my LJ I will be writing about these in a day or so. I know I'm very behind on posting about my recent adventures (I haven't even explained the F-bomb I dropped) but, oy, busy.

I will be continuing to witter away on Livejournal occasionally, thanks to the joys of friendslocking posts. I just won't be blogging in a... public... sort of manner.

So: friend amnesty! If you have friended me, and I have not returned the favour (because I am lazy/ignorant/otherwise preoccupied), please request that I friend you back in comments, below. All you will get in return is half thought out bile and slander, plus assorted mopery, but then you've been reading my journal for a while and you know what to expect, yes?

My last few weeks in London were extremely tough, to the point of nervous breakdown. Quite literally every project I was working on (and at the high point, it was about five at once) went wrong in some way, and I personally lost a fairly hefty amount of money on two videos going over budget. I don't really want to talk about it, because it would involve me saying things that might hurt other people's feelings.

Adding to my worries, I still haven't been paid yet by the fashion week job (two weeks of working until midnight every night) and they've gone all silent. Great, because I really need to be out another grand-plus on a gig.

I also had to fire an editor off a super-urgent project (and thus the editing of said project became part of my already crippling workload) due to some reasons which once again fall into the "hurtful to others to discuss" category. The tragicomic cherry on the cake was the MD of said editor's production company stopping by, taking a look at some of my work (including the Amanda Palmer video, no I don't have a release date for it yet), saying they're about to do a big relaunch, and suggesting they might want to rep me. My response? "Hell no." The issues surrounding the editor suggested much larger issues within the company, and my gut instinct was just, "steer clear".

I got back to America Wednesday (having shot "Guilty Pleasure" on Monday and spent Tuesday returning crap from the shoot to companies across London). Since touching down, I've pretty much been editing nonstop on the super-urgent project. It's all done. The artist likes it. But the VFX which were supposed to be done and with me by Friday are not, in fact, with me. So I'm over an already stretched deadline. Can't a girl ever catch a break?

It's been a month to try even Job. I don't go over deadline. I don't go over budget. I deliver good stuff. But God, I'm tired of nickel-and-diming it. Speaking of which, here's a video I did for £100 last December and which is only now getting a release: (clicky on picture to go to vid)



Soon to come by me are "Last Words" by The Real Tuesday Weld, "Guilty Pleasure" by Manda Rin and of course "Leeds United" by Amanda Palmer. The Manda Rin shoot went really well, especially given the horror of its preproduction. It was an... ambitious video for its budget, shall we say. But it looks like it's turning out the way I intended - sexy and girly and wrong and very funny, with bonus art attack. Once it's finished and out in the world, I'll post my original pitch for it up on Radar for the curious.

Lastly, I've decided to give up blogging. For a lot of reasons, encompassing it being hard to write about the downside of the industry without angering/hurting people (and thus I find myself unable to convey an accurate picture of what goes on in my directing life), it being about time I finished my damn Wrecking Ball screenplay, and it being not necessarily a thing I agree with to know too much about the artist behind the work. So from now on, unless you know me in real life, you will have to be content with knowing me only through the work (which will be posted on LJ, Facebook, Youtube and Vimeo). At some point next week, my website will be replaced with a simple photo front page and some links to my videos. It's been some good years, but it's always worth leaving a party while you're still having fun. Ciao, and happy trails.

I'm in Hell, and if you are interested in what Hell looks like, let me tell you: it's lots of air-kissing, and minimalist-yet-soft dresses in various neutral colours all somehow incorporating chiffon. As I got no fee for my last few music videos, I took a gig filming London Fashion Week so I could afford a plane ticket home. The pace has been unrelenting, not helped by the edit suite I'm using having a copy of Final Cut powered by rubber bands and grumpy hamsters.

But every time I get exhausted and down by the sheer amount of runway shows, designer interviews and daily diaries I have to cut, I come across a young designer's show which is so wonderful it just lifts my heart. Hi, Rozalb de Mura and Mark Fast! May great things happen to you! Hi, Reem - I want all your clothes, and you're such a nice person! Hi, JSmith Esq! Your hats are beyond awesome, and all your models SMILED! And thank you all for not showing your work on identikit anorexics from Bialystok. God am I tired of unhappy-looking Eastern European models stomping down the runway with constipation face. (It's also amazing how many designers didn't have a single black, Asian, or Far Eastern face in their runway shows. Bad designers! No biscuit.) Go here for more.

Tonight we do the final grade on Amanda Palmer's "Leeds United" video. It seems word's already gotten out on it as very positive, and I've been contacted by a couple big production companies and video commissioners, which is really flattering. We'll see what happens when they actually see the video.

Also, last week, in between prepping for Fashion Week, finishing my Cinema Extreme application, and finishing the "Leeds" edit, I wrote on an indie/dance pop video for label ThisisfakeDIY, via the Radar commissioning system. A couple days ago I was told I won the commission! So I'll be staying in London another two weeks or so to shoot that. As usual, I can't say who it's for yet (some of you on Radar already know, but SHUSH!). It's another low-budget spectacular, but such a fun song and the label are letting me do something really mad.

So, as usual, I'm looking for collaborators. I need about 15 actors/performers/attn-h0rs for a one-day shoot. The video is about happy people doing things they love, in several subcultures or niche interests (it portrays them very kindly). I am especially interested in people involved in anime/manga/furry cosplay, sub/dom pairs, and anyone who can do Bollywood-style dancing. I know this seems like a really random list and it is in a way, but just trust me. I'm also looking for a curvy black female dancer, and does anyone know a male bicycle courier (the more tattooed and dreadlocked the better) who can do tricks on his bike?

I will put pretty much anyone in front of a camera so am happy to hear from experienced actors/performers as well as complete camera virgins. Both types of person present different and equally exciting challenges to me as a director. As noted above, budget is very small, but everyone will get paid a small amount and generally fed and loved. Shoot is only one day, in a London studio, and will take place in about 2 weeks' time.

Riddle me this, o internets. Why does everybody get their knickers in a twist about the violence in this music video (which I love), and totally ignore the steaming pile of morally bankrupt shite that is this video? Back in t'day, John Hughes would have made a movie about how that redhead nerdy chick totally gets revenge on Little Miss Cool for being such a psycho bully. (Oh wait, I think he already did).

While on the subject of violence in videos, I found this amazing and terribly moving. Use it as a palate cleanser after that last one.

Meanwhile, controversy time! Don't enter your music video into film festivals, it is a waste of time and money. If you are mainly active in music videos in the US and UK, there are a maximum of seven festivals you should enter, and the good news is that two of them are free. These festivals stand a strong chance of getting you work: they're the only ones the reps, production companies and commissioners go to. Any other festivals, well, entering is like a man pissing down the leg of a blue serge suit: it might make you feel all warm inside, but nobody else is going to notice.

The 7 Festivals You Should Not Miss:

MVPA Awards, USA, entries open circa March, awards show July. Cost: $50/entry or $25 for MVPA members.
LA Filmfest, USA, entries open January, festival June. Cost: $35.
SXSW, USA, entries open November, festival March. Cost: $25 (before Nov 12).
Rushes Soho Shorts, UK, entries March, festival July. FREE.
Edinburgh Film Fest (Mirrorball), entries open November and end April, festival June, Mirrorball submissions are FREE.
UK MVAs, UK (debut year, so this one's still under a watching brief), entries close August, awards show October. £50+additional sneaky £25 upload fee.
Sundance. Yes, no music video category. Yes, all the music video people go there anyway. Submissions end September, festival January, cost $35 (shorts, early deadline).

As a first alternate, those interested in working in commercials, and with deep pockets, may want to try for the music video section of the D&AD Awards (UK, submissions end November, awards May, cost £100).

Tell me of more important festivals for music videos. I am interested in festivals in Latin America, mainland Europe, and Asia/Australia. I do not want to hear about every festival, only the most reknowned one per region - the one the video commissioners go to. None of the rest matter. Once we work out a master list of the actually useful ones (as opposed to the blue-serge-suit numbers) I'll do up a nice little cut and keep guide in Illustrator for all of you.

Story & direction by me. Animation by Asterisk Pix in New York City.

The shoot for Amanda Palmer's "Leeds United" went better than I could have dreamed yesterday, considering that I had such nerves the night before that I wanted to kill myself. I don't know why I was getting myself in such a state, it was only a mixed narrative and performance video with 120+ extras, 8 dancers, choreo, 6 backing musicians, a giant sign made of lights and a very independent-minded (but gracious and intelligent) singer. And 16 hours to shoot it in. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer is, for once, nothing did - mostly thanks to my producer and my crew, who redefined the word "legends", and to Amanda, who delivered an absolutely electric performance (20 times in a row) while remaining the Queen of Good Sports and ambling around chatting to our huge and enthusiastic group of extras. The Coronet is also a great location to shoot in - their production and tech staff are really on the ball, and if it weren't for Keith Of The Lighting Desk, our job would have been about a million times more difficult. Crikey, this is droning on like an Oscars acceptance speech, isn't it? How dull. Here, controversy: there were some last-minute changes worked out a day before the shoot. They stressed me out, for I are Kubrickian control freak, but they made the video better. I will write more interestingly about the video later, but meanwhile, have a few of photographer Michael Brydon's production stills:



This doesn't even hint at the insane ornateness of the video, but it is incredibly rock and roll, no? Amanda was not fond of that sign (she worried it would look too egotistical, if folks didn't understand the video is a parody of the whole diva/female singer going solo thing - especially when lifted out of context, like here) but I was adamant about having it. So, the sign: all about my ego, actually. It (the sign, not the ego) was made by Pink Floyd-founded London experimental theatre collective The People Show. More:



We borrowed this jacket on Saturday from London designer Aimee McWilliams - we were working out Amanda's wardrobe up until about 10pm the night before the shoot. "Elvis mic" courtesy of cabaret enchantress Tricity Vogue.



A very few of the amazingly dressed crowd of volunteers who turned up to be in the video. Any experienced director or DoP generally feels terror in their hearts at the prospect of a video whose visual success is strongly determinant on a lot of friends and fans of the band showing up to be in the video - it's usually an utter failure, as the number of first videos shot in a club where there are 8 bored people pretending to be "a crowd" will attest. Plus, the Coronet (our shoot venue) is MASSIVE. But luckily Amanda has a very creative, involved, and well dressed fanbase - some of whom had driven down from Manchester that morning to be in the video, which means they had gotten up at 3.30am to brave the M1. Thanks, girl in pink, and your awesomely understanding mom!

Today was spent mostly sleeping and having a long hot bath, rejigging a music video pitch for someone else (no rest for the wicked) and a brief wander down the South Lambeth Road to see Stephen about re-cutting our as yet unfinished video for "I Loved London" and using it instead for his big pop single off that same album, "Last Words".

Then, just now, as I was lying in bed munching some toast & jam and reading an old MOJO story about the girls from Roxy Music album covers, a chunk of plaster the size of a manhole cover detached itself from the ceiling and fell onto where my head had been just nanoseconds before. It was so heavy it broke the toast plate. For some reason I find this hilarious.

First off, this is probably the most important piece on the music industry you'll read this year. It's scary, in that it suggests that the only way I may ever get to spend $100,000 on a pop video is if I put a mobile phone in it.

Meanwhile, my friend Stephen's new album is getting great reviews. Stephen puts out an album about every three years; shares a music publisher with the Doors and a bunch of acts way more famous than him, resulting in his work often being used in film, tv and commercial soundtracks; and also has an increasingly successful career composing for film. His song "Last Words" is in the upcoming Juno-esque teen flick, Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist. You probably never heard of him, but he's doing better than Rihanna. As is Amanda Palmer, who thanks to relentless touring (and generally being quite an awesome songwriter) has built up a massive and loyal following... helped by inexpensive but wonderful image-reinforcing music videos by her friend Michael Pope.

And the number of re-shoots going on in the music video business in recent past? Massive, as some commissioners prove penny-wise and pound-foolish and certain new recording stars haven't been made to read Steve Albini's wise words yet. £80k Sophie Muller video ditched for £15k white-box extravaganza (that can't have cost more than £5k. Nice profit!). Reason? Whats-Her-Name wasn't happy with Muller's closeups. Santogold's follow-up to Nima's excellent debut-single video: many directors wrote on it (including one of my director crushes, Ruben Fleischer); a friend of Santogold's was commissioned. The resulting, allegedly substandard video was ditched and then Kim Gehrig caught the hospital pass and had about 3 days to make this one. More, that I can't be bothered to list. Expect this flailing to continue, along with production companies walking away from projects after budget cuts.

Sounds like I'm talking myself out of a career here, doesn't it? In a sense I am. I think the future is going to belong to solid videos that top out at $50,000, one per album, unless it's sponsored. Considering the most I've ever gotten for a video is about 1/4 of that, I'm not too bothered. But expect many other directors to pick up their toys and stomp homewards as it gets near impossible to make a living.