When you need a camera....

I've been doing a lot of filming of my family lately. First there was Lachlan's pre-school "Spring Sing" His class danced to 'Foot Loose' and although he was great, he really came into his own for the whole-school dance to 'Gangnam Style.'

We arrived at the Spring Sing a little too late to get a good camera position...a lot of parents arrived over an hour and a half early! So I shot the whole thing from way up high in the back balcony. Though it actually worked out quite well, because I used a tripod and was away from the bickering and tantrums of....yes, you guessed it, I'm referring to the parents trying to get a better view.

Anyway two days later was Lachlan's 6th birthday and he had a pool party at home.  I played Gangnam Style to see if he'd do anything. He was spectacular!  Without flinching, he found a commanding spot and started the dance he'd learned so well. He wasn't nervous, he didn't care who was watching and he didn't ever seem to care if his friends would join him... though they did of course.  I've edited a great mix of the school and the home performances... which I'll probably share publicly in about a dozen years time.  I think 18 is a good age to see yourself dancing to popular music aged 6... Nahahaha! I am that evil dad!

However, there's a couple of things I missed getting on camera. Like when the lifeguard we hired for Lachlan's party, calmly jumped in to save his struggling friend...and then when she saved another friend a bit later...and then when she saved another friend a bit later.  I'll never regret having a lifeguard at that party, but the 3 saves would have made a great a YouTube video!

After the party, there were high winds forecast. Not high winds for Scotland of course, but then hot weather for Scotland is like a winter's evening here in Los Angeles. We'd bought, and I'd fought, two very cheap gazebos for extra shade at Lachlan's party. So with the winds coming, I thought I'd dismantle one gazebo and try to secure the other to see how it would hold up to these very slight winds. (I'll help you read between the lines here - The gazebo's cost less than $20... and they are overly complex... and I was tired...OK so I couldn't be bothered!)

With all the work clearing up, I needed a shower...  I was just waiting for the water to warm when Fergus came shouting that Mom wanted me.  I thought she was just hassling me that dinner was ready, or the iPod needs charging, or her phone wasn't working the way she wanted it to, or... well you get the picture! So I said I'd be there after my shower. A few moments later Fergus shouted again that Mom really needed me.

The result is that I have no footage of Lynn at the far end of our backyard, relentlessly holding on to a twisted-and-flying-upsidedown gazebo. And I am also without any footage of me arriving to the rescue; partially wet and wearing only pajama pants...

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?)

I Was Here First.

So my wife has started blogging.  How dare she?  I've been trying to get her to blog for over 4 years and then, on a whim, she suddenly starts.   I guess I should be happy?  And I guess I am.  But it's more of a shock than anything else.  You see I'd given up trying to persuade her.

Over the years I've tried so many methods to try to persuade her to blog.

• I tried basic argument...which was never going to work lets face it.  We're married, so I am the last person she's going to listen to. 
• I tried the 'build it and they will come' method creating a wordpress blog site at LynnFergy.com.  Lynn showed no interest.
• I tried to shame her into blogging by posting inane photographs on LynnFergy.com.  This achieved a modicum of success, in that she liked the pictures of abandoned LA couches and soon started sending me more and more to post.  In fact, as back then I was driving her to and from work everyday, I would slow the car for her to photograph more shots of LA's eccentric couch positioning.  But still she would not type a word and I was sent the pictures by email to upload.
• Then I had a revelation.  I should write a blog and either she'd see how easy it was....or more likely, my inability would get her frustrated to the point of action to 'show me how it should be done.'   Hmm, that sounds like Mrs T is errr... difficult?  Well she's not, and here she proved it.   Lynn loved my blog.  Encouraged my writing.  Helped me improve and gave me nothing but support...  Although, as lovely as that was and still is, she still didn't start writing her own blog!
• Every so often, Lynn would rant about something or other in the news or on Facebook or Twitter and I would suggest that she wrote about it. The silence of her keyboard was deafening.
• I thought I'd be devious.  While we were discussing how media was changing, I suggested that she start video blogging; become a vlogger!  This was met with 'some resistance' and could be said to have either backfired or created a beautiful thing...depending on your point of view.  Our ThisDayToday YouTube channel emerged from this discussion...but still not a blog or even a vlog.

So I gave up trying to persuade her.  I began a new life, accepting that Mrs T might write beautiful scripts, monologues and stories but she would never write a blog.  The wordpress site lay fallow and when it got hacked, I removed it and pointed LynnFergy.com to our new YouTube channel.

So what prompted Mrs T to start blogging?  A bunch of things, not all pleasant, including the passing of 'Stripes' our pet hamster.  But mainly it was because Lynn wrote her feelings down in a Facebook status and felt that she wanted to write something longer.  Simple really.  Facebook's failings must have surely prompted many wonderful things.  

I pretended not to be interested, but set up her new blog as fast as is physically possible. 

She gets many more views per post than I ever get.  She writes so much better than I ever do.  I could be very jealous and so I joke that I am.  I feign ambivalence and tease her for checking the view statistics.  I poke fun at how long it takes her to write each post and grumble when she asks me to proof read [Yes, if you spot errors in her blog the faults are all mine... I'm told it's part of the role of a husband to graciously accept all blame]

But I'm actually pleased, happy and most of all proud of Mrs T.  But what ever you do this New Year, don't tell her!

I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year.

M