The Real Me BTS

Hello everyone, I have been regarding so much love for the new song ‘n’ video on YouTube and the Discord, it’s truly so cockle-warming. So, I thought it would be nice to talk a bit about how we put the video together technically, since a few people were asking some detailed questions.

For those interested in the crunching of numbers, this video cost £1228 to make. That’s not taking into account Hunter and my own hours working on it (many and lots). It’s money that’s going towards vital things like venue rent, actors fees, translucent prop tentacles x10. That number’s pretty much exactly a month’s income on Patreon here, and the rest goes to paying our sweet tiny butts for our time. So you can see that we’re investing a huge chunk of this income in moving the ship forward. Purely for the joy and love of it!

The rest of Emu Incorporated’s income comes from music streaming, YouTube, Bandcamp etc. I honestly couldn’t have imagined sustaining myself on this small business in 2019 when we first started. But here we are, and it is such an honour!

Previous videos we’ve made were a lot cheaper (I think Still Waiting was under £600, and that was the most expensive we’d done so far) but we are running out of favours and becoming more ambitious and business-like in our aims. My good self and my good Hunter produce the whole thing ourselves (as not a naturally spreadsheet minded-person this has been a real learning curve for me). I personally find it immensely stressful on the day, making sure all the cogs fall into place (I can administrate doing admin but it is not my happy place). But the feeling of accomplishment when the edit comes through and seeing all the attention to detail in the art design etc (that at the time just felt like trying to stick a heavy silver tarpaulin to a wall that I am not permitted to adhere anything to by my landlord, because, I suppose, in a way, that is what it was) is a real treat. Hindsight makes it all worth it.

We filmed the alien scenes in my abode, with the bed crammed against the wall, Luke (reluctantly) smeared in hand soap, which didn’t really show up on camera (just for us, that one). He had to pulsate his abdomen for about two hours and was an amazing sport. We then went to a hotel in central London for a bit of surreptitious filming in their futuristic hotel room. We didn’t prepare for the room to be facing directly out onto the street, and due to the cramped nature of the room, the towering nature of Hunter’s physique, and the movements required, we ended up shooting what really looked to the external eye like a cheap porno. Hunter was kneeling on top of Luke on the bed at one point. It was a little much for the passing group of tourists to handle and they stayed pointing and staring for about 20 minutes. I played the music on a Bluetooth speaker from the shadows in the corner.

A few days later, we shot the white background stuff in a studio near us. It was much more relaxing (far fewer props, and less time pressure), and messed around with the 360 camera. Lovely stuff. I then had to do some pickups a few days later, and spent 5 hours walking around London with it strapped to my stomach, grinning like a maniac and mouthing the words to the song, as the original stuff wasn’t really dynamic or joyful enough. At least, what I thought was mouthing, but actually from the in camera microphone transpired to be very extremely quiet singing. Hence the unsettled looks from those around me. I also went bowling with a dear friend of mine and made him miss his turn because I was trying to strap the 360 camera gear to my chest. But we must suffer for art.

After the first cut was ready, I asked someone on the internet to design a graphic from the video. They apparently completely misunderstood the tone of my brief, and the monstrosity that emerged (above) is completely unusable. You’ll see that it’s truly horrific, grotesque, pseudo-erotic. I can only apologise to the artist who assumed this was what I wanted. On the plus side, it made me cry with laughter last night, which I realised after that I haven’t done for quite some time. Money well spent.

The production for the song itself is for another time, it was one of the trickiest ones to wrangle in terms of music production, and honestly my ears need some time away from it. But I’ll talk about in a livestream at some point soon!

That’s all I can think of to say right now. I adore you all potently.

JE XX