Talker

The wheels hit the Gatwick tarmac and skid in the drizzle. North Terminal. Soused. Forsaken. Walk for 10 miles to baggage reclaim, stinking of Easyjet, dehydrated by lager and snack packs. Take the lift up to the Monorail and transfer to the South Terminal; fall asleep on the Gatwick Express to Victoria station; find the cab rank and get in a black bus. The driver clocks the luggage.

"So, been on your holidays?"

Please God no. Not a talker. Anything but a talker. Don't answer. Pretend to read crackers for a bit.

"Me and the missus are going on holiday next week with the kids. To Sharm in Egypt, just by the Red Sea. It's just easy isn't it. All in. Everything. Four a la carte restaurants. As much as you can eat and drink. Name brands too. Been for the last three years. We used to go to Turkey, but I got fucked off with the night flights. Mind you, to be honest, it still cost me five and half grand. But that is for two weeks. And the kids love it. They just fuck off and do their own thing and leave me alone.

It's lovely and hot there. Boiling mate. 45 degrees. Melting. You've never felt anything like it. Last year they started doing some green, environment bollocks. You know, so you have to take your key out of the slot when you leave the room and that turns off the air con during the day. 'Be green' or something. Tight cunts more like. They're snide the Egyptians. So I just stick my Matalan card in the slot when I go out. Environment. Bollocks. For five and half grand I want a cold room when I get indoors."

Sir, would it be OK if I paid you to stop talking? Or alternatively I could kill you?

Vacation

I'm going on holiday to Naps next week. So if you're short of things to look at on the tinternet, you might want to try these.

Big Balls' new internet drama, 'Who Killed Summer', is now live. Peep it here.

If you're not already watching this, please start because it will make your life better.

And here's a picture of Andy Soup on the set of his latest Blackout Crew video:


Watch it.

Does it look out of sync?

Lip-sync is the Pandora's Box of video making. The commissioner's succubus. It will come and torment your sleep, raping your dreams. It will fill your life with burdensome toil and sickness.

It starts on the shoot. Your eagle eyes are glued to the monitor. ACTION. You feel a bit jittery. Shouldn't of had that cup of tea so soon after the last one. Fuck, does the lip-sync look out? Hushed:

"Von does the lip-sync look weird to you?"

"Sorry bruv, hard to say. There's a bit of a delay on that monitor."

OK. I'm sure it's fine. This must be their eighth video or some shit. I can't even remember. It'll be fine. If they can't sing along to their own songs by now, we're fucked anyway. CUT.

I should be professional and make sure though.

"Wow. That was amazing. Probably one of the best takes I've ever seen."

"You really think so?"

"Yeah man. That was gold. Unbelievable."

"It wasn't too serious?"

"No it was perfect. Just remember to actually sing the words out loud. You know. Don't mime. Great though. Really good."

Safe. Job done.


Only it isn't, because in reality it's impossible to tell whether an artist is hitting their sync on the day of the shoot. And by making an issue of it, you only succeed in making them feel more self-conscious and more likely to over-enunciate the words as they sing. And that's bad.

The true horror starts to unfold once you get into the edit. A link to the first cut hits your inbox. The relief of the video not being shit gives you a momentary feeling of elation. You watch it a few more times. Yeah. I'm wicked. But then you start to falter. A nagging doubt creeps in, numbing your stomach, working its way down to your bowels, slowly prompting the question you never wanted to ask: does it look out of sync?

You have just opened Pandora's Box. And now you're going to pay.


Dread takes hold. Wait. Hang on. Hang the fuck on. It must be because I'm streaming the video. Jesus. It's the tinternet's fault. Fuck you tinternet. I'm on top of this shit. Phone the producer:

"Dude, I need a DVD of the cut. I don't care dude. Get him out of the meeting. I really need a DVD. Great. Thanks."

The bike arrives a few hours later. You tear open the jiffy bag and load the DVD. Cunt. Why doesn't this shit ever work? Nothing fucking works in here. That's what pisses me off. Phone facilities.

"Pete, my DVD player's broken again. It just really pisses me off that nothing ever works."

"Have you tried putting it on AV2 - the DVD channel?"

"I didn't actually try that yet."

Yeah whatever. AV2. I knew that. Chat bout. You get the controller, switch the channel and hit play. No. No. No. No. Cunt bags. The video still looks a bit out of sync. Does it? Just slightly. And not all the way through - only in certain sections. You watch it again. Segments of performance that seemed to be in sync before, now look like they're out of sync. By the third viewing, the artist looks as though they're singing along to a different fucking song.

Maybe it's just me. Once you start studying it, really scrutinizing it, the lip-sync in any video can seem out. I'm tired. Maybe it's a hallucination - a lip-sync mirage. I need a second opinion from someone on the Taiwanese marketing sweatshop floor.

"Yo dude, come in here for a sec and look at this video."

AV2 it up.

"What do you think?"

"I like it."

"Did it seem out of sync to you?"

"Now you come to mention it, the lip-sync did seem a bit funny."

Right now I want to kill you. Lots of times. The phone rings. The L.E.D display flashes BOARDROOM. Great. Just what I fucking need.

"That link you sent is out of sync. You need to fix it."

Yeah cheers. Like I didn't know that I need to fix it. This is it man. I'm going to start crying.

Yep. Unfortunately this is how it goes sometimes. There are videos that I've commissioned that I can't even watch because all I see is a big, fat, meaty mouth filling the screen, uncontrollably gabbling the words of the song out of time with the music.

My advice to all wannabe Pandoras is simple: bitch, don't open it.

That is delete

On Wednesday we shot the video for 'Coming Up Easy', the second single from Paolo Nutini's number one album 'Sunny Side Up'. Dan and Julian off of PTE Media directed it; Nick Moss was the producer; and Simon Poontip was the executive OG cheque writer. Badman forward. Badman pull up.

P-lo knows what time it is.


After three consecutive shoots hooked in the Ile Noire doldrums it was nice to be back on location. The unit base was a pub called The Palm Tree, nestled in a small park by The Regent's Park canal in Tower Hamlets. Ghetto. You could hear the rats screaming as they scuttled along the towpath. But the air was charged with the promise of hi-jinx. We shot a scene inside the pub. Although it was only 10.00am, the extra playing the bar maid got on the turps and then stayed on it for the rest of the day. Oh shit. She was still there when we wrapped, absolutely out of her mind and violently declaiming the fact that she was bi-polar. Production had to call her a mini-boss home. She cut an abandoned, ruinous figure as she slumped into the back of a dirty Vauxhall.

Yes, overall it was a pretty jokes day of video making. And as is now customary, I'd Prefer Not To TV set their battery of Flip cameras to gold mode and made this exclusive 'making of' the video.

Get Buck from I'd Prefer Not To TV on Vimeo.

Imaginary conversation with a stoned artist volume 1

"Hey man. So I read the treatment. I just don't think the idea has a point."

"Oh OK. But what videos do have a point? I mean what's the point of most videos?"

"I dunno man. I just want something with a point to it."

"But this kinda does have a point. You're performing in it and then other cool stuff happens."

"But that's not really a point is it. It's still without a point."

"What, you mean it's pointless?"

"Yeah man. It just needs a point. And some fucking balls man."

"OK cool."

Click.

Fuck. I think I'm gonna be sick. This video was supposed to be delivered two weeks ago. I don't need this fucking shit. 'A point'. Jesus. Nothing really has a point does it? What the fuck is 'a point' anyway? Where's the mad book? I need a definition. Poincare, poinciana, poind, poinsettia... point. A tapering extremity. A mark of punctuation. Here we go. The significant or essential thing. Great. So what am I supposed to do? Get Stephen Hawking to direct it? This is bullshit. In fact that's unfair on bulls and shit. I need a real job with a point - something like a hedge fund manager.

Smoked out or loc'ed out

The deaths of certain celebrities are momentous enough to prompt the timeworn question "where were you when so and so died?" For the previous generation it was all about Elvis, JFK and John Lennon. For us it was ODB and of course Princess Diana. The night Diana stacked it I was riding back from a party in Sebb Chew's Proton, listening to 'Only Built 4 Cuban Linx', when we passed a newsstand outside a corner shop on North End Road with a tatty late edition notice that displayed the following - DIANA KILLED IN PARIS CRASH. We turned on the radio and a special bulletin confirmed the news.

I can't remember where I was when ODB died.


However, on Thursday when the King of Pop took his last pethidine laced breath I was koching in Best Kebab waiting on a small doner wrap. Jamal walked in. He seemed diminished somehow, lacking his usual swagger and clearly agitated. His face was blotchy - his narrow eyes red-rimmed. He'd been crying. He started talking to a man standing by the counter.

"I can't believe he's dead cuz".

"What?"

"Ain't you heard? Michael Jackson cuz. He's dead. He had a heart attack, you get me. I can't believe it".

The man didn't reply.

"I swear he never touched them childlets cuz. That was just the media chatting breeze. Michael wouldn't have done that cuz. I know he wouldn't."

The man laughed. One of the brothers handed him his order and he walked out. Jamal barely seemed to notice.

Bird flip

This really is the only way to deal with a Flip wielding idiot. Thank you to Nicky 'Weird Shit' Verber, aka Turbo, for sending in this picture.