For my Valentine.

This year has been a love story.

For the love of *insert blasphemous term*, 

why did we decide to make a video, 

every *insert expletive* day?!

The wife has been blogging again  and has let slip our decision to stop producing a video every day. Freeing ourselves from the daily schedule is long overdue, allowing Lynn time to write for other projects and me time to, well, I don't know quite what exactly.  Lynn tried to summarize by saying I wanted to wear a suit again, but that's not quite it.  Suits are really just uniforms with more options.

What I want is to do, is more in the the field of business and less in the field of cameras and video editing. You see we started ThisDay Today as a business. There were no illusions that our comedy videos would make millions, we just knew that we wouldn't become experts on online video by thinking about it.  We had to actually make videos. We knew we had a lot to learn, therefore we should make a lot of videos...

So we've learned a lot.  We've learned how to set up a studio, manage a shoot, direct, edit, upload, share, configure YouTube channels, manage licensing... and make quite lovely quiche to keep the even lovelier performers coming back. And we've learned that we love doing this.  The wife and I work quite well together... especially if I do as she says without question. ;-)

I've also learned that I want to do more of it.  Not more, as in more than our daily show, more as in working with businesses.  Perhaps making branded content for businesses, or perhaps even the right job will come up with the sort of analysis and development challenge that I find I crave.

Roses are Red,

Violets are Blue,

Posting vids daily,

Is a hellova todo.

You know for me our Valentine's Day video sums up this journey so far. We've changed so much about our videos since we started. They're now longer, ruder and sometimes even contain more than one take. But we still try do the whole thing in one take, Lynn still molds the script around the performer and we rarely know what the background of the video will be when we're shooting it... which can feel a bit like tightrope walking without a safety net.

If I watch our first video with Alfred Molina,  I cringe at my edit...but it still makes me laugh. Back then we didn't know Mr Molina so well and we thought we might have to rent a proper studio to keep him happy. We were sort of embarrassed about our makeshift studio above our garage. We needn't have worried though.  I seem to remember Lynn made a quiche that day...the first of many.

Cut to shooting the Valentine's Day video. This time the character was straight from Molina's mouth. He called Lynn with the idea and she wove her magic into a script. As usual, we had no idea what background to use when shooting it. And I suppose fittingly for Valentine's day, Fred brought his wife Jill to watch the proceedings. We had a lot of fun. In fact you can hear Jill fail to stifle her laugh at the end of the Feb 1st video which we also shot that day.  Lynn made another quiche; brocoli and cheese this time.

So the Valentine's video sums up the year for me.

We didn't over analyse. We just got on with it.  We all contributed our own piece of the puzzle and helped each other with theirs. Throughout we had fun, laughed and worked hard.

And even though our video may appear to be somewhat anti-Valentine's Day... 

I wish you the happiest of Valentine's Days, Mrs T.

(I wonder if this blog post means I can forgo getting a card?)