18-01-10 – *Puts on business hat* / *Socialises*

Bonjour, y’all! How’s life and the internet treating you? For me, it’s entailed…

- Posting 5 boyinaband videos
- Announcing the winner of the Hip Hop Composition competition
- Watching the incredible “Avatar”
- Going to Tamworth to catch up with my uni homeslices
- Recording all of the basslines to YAWA’s new EP
- Not having YAWA practice on Sunday
- Rachie surprising me with a… surprise.
- Having a big group hangout on Saturday

Axe Fx Ultra = considerable time drainage

Man! I thought for this week “I know, I’ll bosh out 7 videos about the axe fx no problem, make it a themed week and boyinaband will be well on the way to having one video a day!”

I managed alright with the unboxing and then on tuesday I recorded Kieran playing through the presets, but I had to stretch the presets out to 4 days worth of videos, both because there were so many good ones and because when I started on my video review, I didn’t stop. It took me:

- Over 2 hours to write it in the first place
- Another 2 hours to record all the footage
- So far 4 and a half hours of editing and I’d still say there’s another few hours to go.

So I’ve decided that if I want to get to the point where I can release one video every day, which would maintain a regular viewer base and be a boyinaband USP (unique selling point if you’re not familiar with bidness vernacular), I’ll need to pay someone else to do the editing. Sounds like boyinaband needs investment and I need to get finding a dude who is good with video editing. I bet there won’t be one for miles around…

So yeah, the videos will be slowing down a bit from now until I get funding – I need to concentrate on the business plan so I can get investment. I also need someone to start doing admin – I’ve got an email inbox of 50 responses, which seem to take about an hour to reply to 10 of them… and by the time I’ve done that and come back the following day, there’s even more left to do! That’s not counting the similarly growing inbox on youtube which I haven’t even had a chance to look at yet, or all the stuff on the boyinaband forum which I want to be majorly involved in, but am too busy making videos to respond to everyone on.

Alrighty – trail of thought over. I know what I need, now I just need to work on getting it! Business plan is this week’s #1 priority for boyinaband.

And the winner is…

I got to announce the winner of the hip hop composition competition this week! It was great fun listening to all the tunes, but it’ll be more fun to give out all the prizes! I’ve just got the e-mails from everyone who has won detailing what they want, so now I can sort it all out for them! To see the winners, click here!

Avatar

Freakin’ incredible. At times the CG looked like it was real – which is quite a feat when your brain is telling you that the alien panther thing is actually in existence. The graphics weren’t the best part though, I loved the story – a proper fantasy epic. There were so many little touches in there which made it feel like it inexhorably draws you in to the world and characters. A must-see.

After the movie, everyone piled back to mine where we sat and chilled, then played a fun game where everyone writes a person on a post it note and someone else has to stick it to their head. Then you go around everyone, they get to ask a yes or no question and the first person to guess who they are wins. I lost on the first round (can’t remember who I was then) and won the second round (when I was Sketch ).

*Catches up*

I grabbed Ogre and a bunch of his homeslices and headed down to Tamworth on Thursday to celebrate my homegirl Kat’s birthday! She’s awesome – one of those people who always seem to be genuinely smiley and happy and incapable of being selfish. We had an awesome meal at spoons (of the wether variety) then got up in the club (by which I mean noticed how every song sounded like another song that was released in the past 5 years.) It was a great chance to catch up with peoples – Jamie and Maria, two of my favourite people from the uni lot where there, they always make a night more fun, and we all ended up sitting around talking about movies for some reason, with Ogre sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge of Jim Carrey with us all.

Bass-ion accomplished!

Bad title, but good times – Jamie came round on tuesday evening and with the help of the Axe Fx (it’s taking a rather prominent role in things as of late!) we got all the basslines down to all the songs in about 3 hours. It helps that we’d already written all the songs, and half of them he’d been playing live so much that he already knew them by heart.

My plan is to get everything recorded by the end of January, mixed by the end of Feb and on CDs by the wolvo gig in march, which will be the EP release show!

No YAWA sunday this week

No-one could get hold of Jamie, Kieran was stuck in Birmingham and Zak decided he wanted the evening to himself and so this YAWA Sunday died a death. Bummer Ah well, I’ve taken to just working as hard as I can on boyinaband when things fall apart like this – I like having a project to work on that I only have myself to blame if things don’t go to plan.

Rachie hops on the bandwagon!

Rach decided that she wants to make a blog! I’ve been suggesting it to her for a while, but it looks like she’s warmed to the idea, as she came to my house with a set of plans and content written out already! It’s things like that which make me realise we’re pretty much made for each other. Then things like when we go shoe shopping and it turns out that every trainer I like is “too chavvy” that make me realise that opposites must attract. But yes, she intends to make a blog on GCSE revision, for those who want to really understand the topics. It’s an awesome idea and she’s just geeky enough to pull it off!

Saturday hangout!

A big ol’ group of us spent Saturday chillaxing in my abode, playing Wario Ware, experimenting with making milkshakes on my new blender (White chocolate chip cookie milkshakes = winning life) and making nu metal dubstep songs with the Axe Fx. All in all great fun – I definitely want to keep having these hangouts. The only problem is I feel like I spent so much time with friends this week that I didn’t get enough work done. It’s seriously difficult trying to balance social life with starting a business and running a band. I think I need to restrict myself from now on – if I don’t then I’ll never treat biab like a business and if I don’t do that then it’ll never make money like a business and if I never to that then I’ll never be wealthy enough to be able to hang out with my friends 99% of the time, whilst simultaneously making everyones dreams come true and saving the lives of third world children etc. (I don’t even think I’m being sarcastic. Just horrendously idealistic.)

Next Week on Dave’s Blog

So as I said – this week will calm things down a bit – last week’s 7 videos isn’t exactly do-able with no outside assistance, so I’ll…

- Make a video for boyinaband
- Do as much work on the business plan as physically possible and estimate when it’ll be finished
- Have YAWA practice
- Answer at least 50 emails
- Help Rachie to come up with a blog url (any ideas? Preferably in the same vein as boyinaband, dudeinadrama, graphicsgirl etc.)
- Start work on a 7 day song for boyinaband!

Until next week, hombres!