We need to put some equity into the brand

Picture the scene. It's late. Maybe about 1.00am. You've left The Cat and Mutton or The London Fields and you're heading back to the live-work loft space that you rent in the inky depths of Hackney, near where the kid got stabbed last week, having stopped off at Tennessee Chicken along the way to pick up a halal bucket and a bottle of Fanta. Your flat mate's staying at his girlfriend's tonight so you've got the place to yourself. Before settling down to a night of YouPorn and blazing, you decide to watch 4 Music for a while. A Lady Gaga video comes on. Yeah she's quite fit. She'd probably collect it. Your hand is now down your trousers. The next video starts. What the fuck. The video that you directed a few weeks ago is playing, but it seems different. The song sounds peculiar. The edit is discrepant. You blink a few times. Did someone spike me in the pub? No. You are not tripping. This is not a Ketamin flashback. We took your cherished video, re-edited it to a dance, bassline, drum and bass, dubstep, Blaze, Bimbo Jones remix of the track and didn't tell you.

Despite all your solipsistic delusions, we didn't do this to deliberately wig you out. Here's the rationale: re-editing a video to a dance-ish remix gets you on a bunch of specialist TV channels - Flava, Flaunt, Bliss, Clubland TV, Starz, MTV dance, 4 Music late night; this in turn moves you up the moribund TV airplay chart so that when the boardroom jocks open up their copies of Music Week on a Wednesday, they can feel a little more confident that their record is going to be a 'hit'. Faith is everything. And like scripture, the airplay charts act as a panacea for everything that they privately fear is wrong with the project.

The reasons why we don't involve directors in this process are fairly obvious. It would be way too painful, expensive and time consuming. It's hard enough getting one edit right. "But I love that shot of the singer". What the one where his eyes are closed and a pile of chins are concertinaed down his neck? The one where he looks a little bit like he has Down's syndrome? That one? "But it's so expressive. He looks like an angel. I think it's really important to be brave with this edit". No. These battles are too draining to have twice. Anyway it doesn't need to be good; it just needs to exist.

So what's the solution?


Welcome to the world of illegal video re-editing. Get a Mini DV tape of the finished video, a CD of the remix and 500 quid in cash. If you still have a corporate cab account get an Addison Lee to the corner of Colvestone Crescent and Riddley Road - if not the 38 will have to do. Pressed between Ahmed's telecommunications, where you can get your iPhone unlocked for a tenner, and Mobolaji the butcher, who specialises in under the counter mandrill heads and other bushmeat delicacies, you will find a small black door that is always open. As you descend the dimly lit, carpeted staircase the aroma of kif and stale body odour will drown you. At the bottom call out for Thami. After a few moments a man of indeterminate age and race will loom out of the shadows, his wrinkled dugs loosely covered by a dirty vest. He is blind - his eyes glazed by a white mucous membrane - and prone to receiving visions of such intensity that they leave him breathless and prostrated. Hand the tape, the CD and the cash to Thami the seer and leave. In a feat of unfathomable editing sudoku he will then flop, chop, flip, loop and speed up the existing footage until it works with the new track. A new Mini DV master will be ready for you to collect and service to Fastrax the very next day.

Here's a recent example of Thami's work for you to enjoy:

Alesha Dixon - Let's Get Excited (Blaze Remix) from Nikke Osterback on Vimeo.