Purely an outlet for my overwhelming nerdism, before it starts to get serious.
Sometimes I'll be very interesting and write about things that I think are amazing, but other times I'll be whiney and patronising and maybe see if anyone notices some Blink 182 lyrics chucked in whenever I feel like it. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out...
I can't remember a time when there wasn't a fair amount of hullaballoo about the kind of women used in advertising. Whatever they're promoting, they're usually models of some description designed to make the target viewer either want to be her or want to bang her. Using these idealised and, when in print form, airbrushed women doesn't make for a realistic advert.
It's just something I've become used to.
But it's also something I don't really understand. I think a really good example of this is in chocolate advertising.
A lot of chocolate adverts make it out to be a luxury item that beautiful, successful women indulge in from time to time. And that's great. Really, chocolate should be a luxury item. It's not the kind of thing you can just eat and eat and eat and not have to deal with some consequences. Presenting it as such is probably for the best.
But that doesn't make for fun advertising.
So they make it sexy, they make it naughty. They, like most other advertisers, show a typically attractive-shaped woman enjoying it in a sometimes worryingly sexual way. They're enjoying it almost too much.
Flake ad, 1991
I understand that the idea is that viewers will want to be that successful, attractive woman who still allows herself indulgences from time to time, so why wouldn't they pick that same choice of luxury sweet?
But none of them have ever resonated with me. Those adverts have never been the reason I have chosen a particular brand of chocolate over any other. Largely because I don't tend to pick my food based on advertising anyway. But also because all those very similar adverts don't make an impact on me. I care so litte about those stuck up bitches who treat chocolate like masturbation.
For a chocolate ad to impress me, it should make me feel like chocolate makes me feel. Yeah, it's an indulgence, so after I've had some I feel satisfied and happy.
Kind of like I feel after the Dawn French Terry's Chocolate Orange adverts.
They were a special kind of clever.
They used a woman who didn't look like a model. It wasn't an unattainable goal to be like her one day. She looked like a normal woman, who enjoyed chocolate enough to have the authority to comment on what good chocolate. She looked happy, too, with her Chocolate Orange. She didn't treat chocolate like a dirty little secret. She treated it like something that enhanced her quality of life.
In those ads, at least.
And they were funny. Which is probably why I remember them so vividly from my childhood. I like funny things a lot. I haven't seen an advert for anything that I've enjoyed quite so much in recent years. What makes it good advertising is simply that I remember it so well, and still find it funny, so long after it was broadcast. I have fond memories of the Terry's Chocolate Orange ad from when I was seven years old.
It helps that I really like Dawn French anyway. But I could also identify with it, especially as a chubby kid who did horde chocolate when I had it.
There are simple reasons I still like this ad. Largely because there's not a lot like it any more.
It's an advert that shows how real people treat real things and can still make its product look good.
I was asked at a job interview recently if I was into fashion. I didn't answer the question well.
I wasn't expecting it and I gave dithery "Um, not really. If it's doing something interesting, I suppose." My attempts to elaborate did not go well either. I explained that something unique or quirky or different will interest me, but that I'm not interested in keeping up with whatever might be new at H&M. Every year, it'll have something for when it's cold, something for when it's warm, something for going out, something casual and something professional. And they'll be basically the same as last year's lines and I won't buy any of them because I already have loads of clothes.
I stick by what I said. But I realise that while I spoke enough about what I don't like, I didn't really cover what I do.
I like seeing people do interesting things with their clothes. And I mean, something really, really unique and different and unlike as much of the rest of the world as possible, in a way that still compliments their character and form.
For instance, I have this friend who... I have this friend:
This is Hollie Would. I have never seen her looking anything other than fabulous. She does clothes well. Very well.
She used to regularly host a variety night full of people who also did clothes well. Performers including singers and jugglers and burlesque dancers and drag acts, all of them really imaginative, with their performance and with their look.
They looked interesting, they look intriguing, they looked like the kind of people I wanted to pay attention to.
People like Odelia Opium, a burlesque dancer who incorporates her costume into the dance. While I have seen burlesque dancers who do the same dance in a different outfit and call it a new act, she's different. Some burlesque performers get their gigs just through the price tag of whatever they're throwing on the floor. This one makes her clothes work with her movement. They match the theme of her dance, they are an integral part of each performance. She does burlesque a credit in the way she uses her outfits.
And it is part of what makes her consistently brilliant.
Then, there was the Middle Aged Mermaid, a drag act that presents the relationship of Ariel, the Little Mermaid, a decade or so after she left the sea to get married. It's a funny act - parodied Disney songs about the high price of living in London. And the clothes are fantastically imaginative. The Middle Aged Mermaid wears a dress made of Oyster cards with a gauze tail flowing along behind her. I have no idea where the idea came from, but I love it, and I've enjoyed chatting about it to the Mermaid herself and others about how quirky and original it is.
It's that kind of weird innovation that I enjoy about the things that people wear. Even though it is just a dress, I think it makes a huge difference to my overall enjoyment of the act.
I like that kind of oddness. I like seeing when people make dresses out of Pokemon cards or Lego or bottle caps. My friend Jan went to MCM Expo this year wearing an outfit made entirely of beer cans. I have a T shirt that, while rarely worn, is cherished hugely because it changes colour as the temperature changes. In the summer, it shows off any and all sweat stains, but I think it's an incredible piece of fashion technology.
That is the kind of the fashion titbits that I enjoy. I don't keep up with what comes down catwalks, because I don't care what you wear as long as you're comfortable in it. I'll enjoy it all the more if you wear it well, if you wear it with confidence. But if you feel good in it, that's all that matters to me.
My housemate is a comedian. This is his act:
He made that mask himself. He's working on a new one. He fiddles with the costume as he gigs more often. His outfit is brilliant. It creates a character so unique that you can't help but remember him. If clothes are supposed to make you stand out, I'd come to Neuroses before I went to basically any high street or designer clothes store. We'd go round the charity shops, chop up someone else's hand-me-downs and make something of our own. We'd be creative with it. We'd make something unique and original, something that reflects us.
Which, I think, is the point of fashion.
Not to say what is good and that everyone must wear it. But to show off the way people have chosen to reflect themselves through their clothes, for other people to emulate or improve on or ignore, depending on their reactions to it.
I like the things that surprise me, the things I don't expect. The things that pique my curiosity, not because I wonder where they were bought, but because I'm wondering where the idea behind them came from. Because I want to know how they were made, why they were made, what else can be done with them - how far we can run with this idea and what more we can do with it.
Generally, I spend most of my time procrastinating and / or nerding out, for that is the typical behaviour of the dorky student. But I have been doing things recently that are making me feel productive for longer than it takes to do them, which is the downfall of any work done towards my degree.
For the past few months, I have been putting a lot of effort into something that started out with a bunch of silly jokes - as do most of the things I do. But this, unusually, has got me excited in a way that the feeling has persisted since last October and it is still making me delirious happy.
Tim
Last year, as part of my degree, I did a module studying Short Film (and I got a first in it, which is a bit irrelevant, but made me super happy). Tim, a friend from the course, and I decided that it would be fun to make the films that we had written and had planned to write, rather than having just a bunch of short film scripts gathering digital dust once we had finished the semester. We also figured that this would be a good way of building up a creative portfolio before graduating from university, not only for us but for anyone else who wanted to get involved - other writers, directors, actors, editors, crew... We bounced the idea around some of the people on our course and they seemed to like it.
Then, one day, Tim and I showed up for a seminar that had been cancelled. Neither of us has received the email informing us of this, sent little more than an hour before the start of class while we were in different lessons. In a bit of a first-world-problem bitch fit (in which we bemoaned how much we were paying to be at university and still getting stood up), we decided that we did not need our teacher and were perfectly capable of writing and making short films by ourselves.
Terry the Toucan, the mascot
of Tiny People Fabulous
Over the next few weeks, the two of us met regularly to expand on this. We messaged people on our course asking if anyone else wanted to get their films made. We left link to our Facebook Members' Group on the message boards of various local and uni-based drama groups. We turned some of our script ideas into actual scripts.
As the weeks went on, people started noticing us and asked if they could get involved. There was a massive (but inevitable) imbalance in the favour of young actresses, so we spent an afternoon emailing anyone who looked valuable asking if they would like to get involved. Some of them did.
We started filming what was going to be our first short film shortly before Christmas of 2012. We had loads of issues from the beginning, but we had expected that we would and we approached them with the kind of optimism and eagerness typical of such newbies as us.
On set of the first film we shot!
On the day of shooting, for instance, the heating went out in my house, so we had to fill a bath with water from the kettle. It took more than an hour. It was hilarious.
Somehow, miraculously, we got the whole of the film shot in one afternoon.
Then we had to delay the voice-over recording, which meant that the editing was also delayed, and we could not get the film finished by the deadline we had set for ourselves. We had hoped that we would be able to have at least one done before the end of the year.
We did not.
We have since been told that that deadline was wildly over-ambitious and that there was no way we could have done it without cutting some serious corners. So we chose to see our first fuck-up as a learning curve rather than a failure. This film is still not out, sadly, but it is very nearly finished, so it should be very soon!
We took a break over Christmas while everyone went home from university. I used the time I had free to get some scripts written and to do as much admin stuff as I could so that we could get right into creating when we got off our holidays. We began shooting another film (sadly also not yet edited) upon our return to London in January, which we had hoped to release before the end of the month to suit its theme.
One setback that has plagued us is our own silliness.
I had to put Tim and Rianna in the naughty corner to stop them
disturbing the process.
Again, we have been advised that this was somewhat ambitious of us, and again we decided to learn from this.
We did not.
Around the end of January 2013, we planned and shot a film designed to be released by Valentines' Day. Needless to say, it was not.
Kim, director of "Pulled"
We had all of the filming done well within our chosen deadline, but we had the same issues with editing as we did with the other films. We had very few editors and even less available technology, and we are still now sorting out putting it together. But being sorted out it is, and come together it will! It was an amazing experience making this film. Our director, Kim, was incredible and had such amazing and specific ideas - she knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was original and cool. She did great things with the script and made it very personal and very unique. We were lucky enough to be working with some devoted actors who pushed themselves to do new things for the sake of our art.
Dressing our beautiful leading lady
on the set of "Pulled"
For all of our films so far (excepting some uncomfortable friction with a temperamental director), I have worked with some incredible people, mostly students at university with me but not exclusively. Everyone has been gloriously dedicated and enthusiastic about everything; their attitude has made every process feel so much more exciting.
Working on a creative project personal to us with no other reason than that we wanted to was - and is - amazing. I have had so much fun with Tiny People Fabulous despite the setbacks that pretty much all of our projects so far have suffered. Keeping optimistic has been essential, but I think it is beginning to pay off.
Admittedly, our first film is short and silly - and so our most of the others we have planned for the future - but it is our silly film and it suits us perfectly! Tiny People Fabulous was born in silly circumstances (the first three or four film ideas we had were based purely on dick jokes of some description) and it would not have made sense to us to do any of it without a sense of fun.
Our first uploaded film, "Get Out Of My Room", is a great way, I think, of introducing Tiny People Fabulous to the world. Being based loosely on real life, it lets you all see what you're getting in for when you get into us - and unashamedly so.
We shot it in one absurd but efficient afternoon, edited it over the next few days and actually had the whole thing complete in about a week or so. It all went incredibly smooth and went pretty much how we had hoped the others would. It was a far simpler film to put together (with only one location and nothing as fancy even as voice-overs), and having both editors and technology freeing up right around the time we needed them certainly did not hurt the process.
Our modest editing crew
We are very pleased with how it turned out and supremely grateful to everyone involved in making it, as well as everyone who has watched it already and offered us some feedback.
I am so looking forward to the next few weeks and the release of the rest of our films already in progress. I cannot wait to start shooting again because I have already had so much fun and worked with some incredible people. I can only see good things happening for Tiny People Fabulous.
On set of our very late January production.
In the meantime, I can only offer a thousand of my most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has contributed even slightly to everything we have achieved so far and to offer this to the rest of the world...
Thanks!
Tim and I on set. We're definitely not messing around.
We're all vaguely aware that the fairytale/Hollywood presentations of love are a bit twisted; there's always a happily ever after and you can always sort of see it coming, no matter how long and annoying the story leading up to it might be. No one above the age of about twelve really expects that that is the way love actually is. It is generally taken for granted that the whole world isn't quite as romantic as pop culture would like.
I happen to be really into my comedy musicians. As in, beyond what is ordinarily considered healthy. And I have noticed that comedians tend to know a hell of a lot more about love than songwriters. Instead of arguing about this, I am going to take a handful of chosen songs and let you decide for yourself whether or not you agree. (This is also my way of pressuring my friends into listening to more of my silly music, but they don't need to know that.)
So. You see someone, and they make you feel like this...
(Song starts at 1.10)
And they probably make you feel a bit like this too...
And you're terribly afraid that this might happen...
But eventually you pluck up the courage to say something like this...
And if you're lucky, you get this...
Although it'd be a shame to end up like this...
(Song starts at 1.23)
And (if you're anything like me) there may be a bit of this...
But, ultimately, it's going to work out okay, because...
See what I mean? They know their stuff. And frankly half of these are more romantic than most of the bog-standard love songs floating around...
That was too easy. I apologise. I don't regret it though.
Incidentally (haha; it's a pun), I personally think that these are two of the loveliest love songs ever written and they were both written by comedians:
