In the mean time, here’s a short video that I produced with other students to highlight a comedy event at my student union.

Filmed by Carl Davis and Graham Fitzgerald, Filmed and edited by Peter Hughes and filmed and produced by Rowan Johnson

Over the course of November 2011, Solent Student Union hosted a Battle of the Bands competition, which held the opportunity to play at the Grad Ball as the prize for the winner. During the event we saw some truly amazing and talented acts perform. We were on the scene for all of the shows as well as the Grad Ball. Now that the event has concluded, we have the full coverage here in an easily digestible roundup. Enjoy!

HEAT 1 – 9/11/11

Filmed by Peter Hughes, edited by Robert Collins, produced by Rowan Johnson.

Low Flying Boats
Low Flying Boats were the first act of the evening. Unfortunately they were unsuccessful in making through to the finals.

Foo Foo Fighters
Foo Foo Fighters proved to be another strong contender . However, they too didn’t make it through to the final.

Fly, Frankie, Fly (Heat Winner)
Shaking the room with their musically iron grip, Fly Frankie Fly waltzed their way into the finals.

HEAT 2 – 15/11/11

Filmed by Torrin Holland, Charlene Borg and Rowan Johnson, edited by Robert Collins, produced by Rowan Johnson.

Simon Says (Heat Winner)
Unfortunately due to a technical fault, we were unable to produce a video for the band in this round. However, Simon Says made it through to the final and are featured with a video of their performance in the finals.

Skymarshal (Heat Winner)
On what was the first of many great performances, Skymarshal rocked their way through to the finals.

Five Miles North Of Nowhere
Despite playing a strong set, Five Miles North Of Nowhere did not make it through to the finals.

Mash Attack
Mash Attack took to the stage like a storm, but unfortunately were not voted through to the finals.

FINALS – 23/11/11

Filmed by Mike Chadburn, Carl Davis, Nicola Gander, and Ed Hodierne, floor managed and edited by Graham Fitzgerald, produced by Rowan Johnson.

Skymarshal (Event Winner)
Following an amazing set, Skymarshal won the crowd and made it through to play at the Grad Ball later in the week.

Simon Says
Simon Says, one of the more unusual acts of the event, unfortunately did not make it through to the finals despite their brilliant performance.

Fly, Frankie, Fly
Surprisingly for such a great set, Fly Frankie Fly weren’t successful in winning the competition.

With thanks to Solent Student Union, and all of the acts, sound guys and everyone else involved.

You can watch it on the site here.

From the description:

Thanks to Southampton Solent Student Union’s efforts, the Coca Cola bus selected Southampton as one of it’s destinations for it’s Olympic Torch Tour 2011. The bus brought with it both Coca-Cola and one of the 2012 Olympic Torches (which had previously been held by Dizzy Rascal, and others). Students and the public were given the opportunity to have a photo taken with the Olympic Torch, and also nominate a future flame as part of Coca-Cola’s Future Flame competition. Southampton Solent has currently nominated several of it’s students from the awards thanks to their hard work in the University, be it raising money for charity or their contributions for Sports and Societies. Other nominees stand as well. Special guests on the day included the Mayor of Southampton, several local schools and RadioSonar.

A scout leader looks for his lost boy scouts… Alternatively, watch here.

This month’s rewind is ‘Hands’, a short documentary film I made during my time at college. It tries to explore the importance of our hands, and the various tasks they can carry out for us. Click here to watch it on the site.

August has been holiday month; a week and a half spent in the Polish city of Krakow followed by a weekend of rock ‘n’ roll at Reading Festival. It’s been a great time, but unfortunately there’s not much to show for it, production-wise. Which isn’t that bad, because we all need a break sometimes.

However, it’s not like I’ve only been galavanting around. I’ve been working on a lot of music stuff recently in preparation for my next album and tour. Yes, you read that right; this time round I’ll be touring. With thanks to technology and a couple of friends, I will now be able to bring my show to the road. Expect to see me playing venues in the UK and Europe soon (I’ll keep you updated through the blog).

On the music front, there is a little bit of an announcement to share. It’s not groundbreaking news, but the time has come for me to drop the ‘Blak Tornado’ moniker for my music. I’ll still be using it for everything else, but in the future I will be releasing my music under a new name, which will be announced nearer the time of the album’s release. This will be for discoverability (trying to explain how someone can find my music at the moment is difficult, due to the unconventional spelling). But I’ll keep you posted on that sooner or later.

In terms of videos, I’ve been working on a few corporate projects over the summer, but as you can imagine it’s not the sort of thing I can put up here. However, I do keep meaning to do new a Clayground short, and there should be some more opportunities to work on fun shorts when my friends return from summer break. So hold tight – there should be some more stuff coming soon. Until then, enjoy what’s left of the summer!

As Rowan and Jimmi are due to make a stunning comeback, I figured this would be an appropriate rewind. After all, who wouldn’t want to catch up on the epic adventures that Jimmi and I have had? Hopefully this will whet you appetite for some more of our crazy antics. For more, click here.

Hello all. After a long time without any Rowan and Jimmi goodness, here are a few production stills from a new music video Jimmi and I are working on. It probably won’t be finished until October or November, but we’ve started it and it’s pretty epic. Here are a few more pictures to whet your appetite. More to come as available! (For those of you not familiar with Rowan and Jimmi, you can find out more here.

Does family entertainment on television exist anymore? A friend of mine and I were discussing Doctor Who a short while back, and how it is becoming increasingly harder for ‘Family’ shows like these to appeal appropriately to the full spectrum its aimed at. I initially blamed this on poor story writing and plot development, but taking a second to think about it I realised that it may not be the fault of the writers at all.

As someone who understands the way that the modern television aims it’s programming at very specific demographics (e.g. “a 16-24 year old atheist, heterosexual male who’s interests include night clubs, alcohol consumption, socialising and playing Xbox”), it occurred to me that virtually no content is aimed at generalities such as families anymore. With so many channels on TV dedicated to specific types of people, and television on demand, we’re no longer stuck in the days where people have to watch whatever is being broadcast. Either there’s something better suited to a person’s niche tastes on another channel, or they’ll be able to satisfy their boredom online through on-demand content. With so much of this specific content available, it’s no wonder family shows like Doctor Who fail to enthral to the masses unlike yesteryear.

When I tried to think of some examples, I actually found it very hard to think of modern ‘family’ programmes. Doctor Who, as mentioned, is one and The Simpsons is another that I could think of. But both of these are long running shows that have been on TV since before we had such a diverse selection of media. And the only style of show that I could pinpoint as being largely ‘general appeal’ were ‘Butlins’* programmes, such as the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. But even these shows have a large number of naysayers like myself who wouldn’t dare indulge in such cheap, manufactured entertainment. Because there’s always something better out there to be watching.

But I suppose this isn’t news to the industry. Even family orientated shows like Doctor Who know that they’re missing out viewers by trying to appeal to too many people at once, ultimately alienating one demographic. Hence why they spun off The Sarah Jane Adventures for the kids, and Torchwood for the adults, in a bid to keep people involved in the franchise they’ve created. Even family-minded conglomerate Disney seems to be focussing more on specific demographics nowadays rather than the general market. What hope does it leave for true family entertainment?

Well, probably not much hope. But can I say that this diversification is bad? Certainly not. As both a consumer and creator of content, I find it to be a benefit. By there being a large demand for content, it means that my chances of eventually finding a job making media has increased dramatically. As a consumer it means that I never have to watch something that doesn’t stimulate my tastes, intellect or sense of humour. It’s a win-win situation. But what it could mean is that, when I’m older, I’ll never be able to sit down and enjoy television with my future kids – we’ll all be too busy watching separate things on different televisions or computers in the house. No doubt in our own individual rooms. Would something be lost there?

*Butlins is a British holiday resort that puts on talent shows, cover bands and other novelties as entertainment.

This month’s rewind is ‘Robot’, as it was this month last year when it came out. Although it’s only a modest achievement in the scheme of things, ‘Robot’ is the longest short film I’ve made yet, and one of the films that I put the most effort and time into. We had such a great crew, and great buzz around this video and it was amazing to finally finish it. Enjoy.

As such, nothing really new to report here. I’ve not had the chance to work on a new video yet as I’m still trying to work out how I’m going to animate in my new place – wether I can use one of the tables here or if I’ll have to buy a special one for that sole purpose. But I have been working on some music. The track I’ve embedded below is called ‘Animals’ and is a bit grungier than the stuff I’ve been working on for ‘Low Flying Boats’. I’m still undecided as to wether I’m going to try and put it on the album, or save it for a later project.

Speaking of ‘Low Flying Boats’, work is undergoing on that. I’m currently trying to selectively narrow down the album to ensure that the tracks are the best they can be before I release it. It’s a long, slow process, but I’m sure you’ll love it when it’s out! Anyway, here’s ‘Animals’:

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been a year since Robot was first screened! I remember how long it took to film and all of the pain and misery everyone involved went through to make it. (I jest, I hope!) So for those of you haven’t seen it already, or would like to watch the video again, here’s the link. Enjoy!

Today I decided to take a look at my digital music earnings, which you can see in the screenshot above. These figures are from the entire time I’ve had my music available digitally, which is from March 2008 until March 2011. My albums are hardly flying off the shelf. (In total I’ve sold what would be the equivalent of three albums.) However, one thing really took me by surprise.

I was looking through the figures, and noticed something strange. As you can see with the releases and songs, the numbers are quite low but the profit isn’t too bad. They’re a fair representative of the cost of the album or song ($9.99 or $0.99 respectively). Then I see streaming and notice it says 42 plays. Wow… wait, what? $0.07? Are you kidding me? Yes. This is true. Spotify pays artists $0.0016 for each stream on their ad-driven service. Having dealt with online advertising revenue before this doesn’t strike me as particularly out of the ordinary, but I just find it hilarious. As such I calculated how many plays I would need to earn a liveable income and the figure was 625,000 plays a month to earn $12k per year (which would be £7.5k in the UK and not a liveable wage). That would be roughly 20,833 plays a day. I doubt most famous artists receive that many plays per day on Spotify!

I just found it incredibly amusing that to earn even $1 on Spotify would need 625 plays. It really drives home why it’s becoming increasingly harder for people to earn money from creative  mediums such as music and film making. And with streaming supposedly being the solution to piracy (the user pays nothing but the artist still gets paid), it’s going to become even harder. At this rate it’s probably more economical for people to pirate our music than it is to use these services – at least we wouldn’t be making a loss with hosting fees.

Now before I depress any of you creative people reading too much, I’d like to just turn things around and point out that digital downloads, on a brighter note, are much better for the artist. As you can see from my figures, I’ve earned a healthy $20 for my digital downloads. That’s enough to have paid off the fee for one of my two years of having my music available on these services. And the fees that the companies involved take is probably the equivalent of what an artist would spend on producing a CD anyway. So there’s still hope for us. We’ll just still have the age-old issue of people not wanting to pay for music to deal with. But if it’s worked so well for so long, albeit lopsidedly, hopefully it’ll stay this way and people will continue to support artists by actually buying their music.

A couple of interesting facts now about my music:

- Project 52 is my most profitable song, with 4 downloads and 5 streams, earning $3.11.
-  ’Humble’, ‘Monastery of Anarchy’ and ‘Just Because You Can, It Doesn’t Mean You Should’ are the most streamed songs, with 6 streams each.
-  An Unnecessary Biography has been more profitable than Unlucky For Some by $1.93, although both albums have been sold the same number of times. The differences come through single sales and streams.
- My music is much more popular in the US than it is in the UK/Europe. I’ve earned $21.00 on iTunes US as opposed to $2.93 on iTunes UK. Both of these trump Spotify.
-  The songs that have appeared in my videos or have had their own music videos have had more sales, whereas as non-video songs have lower sales and higher streams. Quadrat in the Tree, Life Really Sucks and Sapphire 2 both have stronger sales and few streams (presumably because they can be heard on Youtube). Other tracks like Monastery of Anarchy and Frog Boy have higher streams than sales.

Before I wrap, I’d just like to confirm that I’m really not a numbers person. But some of these statistics, just like Google Analytics, can be fun to look at sometimes. In a scale like mine, it really doesn’t mean anything. But for me, I can see how my work impacts itself (like music videos encouraging sales, etc.) but most of this is just guessing. There’s nowhere near enough information to actually see real correlations between those things. And at the end of the day I don’t care how many of my songs sell, or how much money each song play is worth on Spotify. I only care about people enjoying my work.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention about Spotify is that every play generates income. Although initial payouts are bad for people like me, if someone listened to tracks on Spotify the same amount of time as they do for physical copies, the artist will receive payment for every single one of those plays. If you think about albums that people listen to non-stop for years (I certainly have some of those in my iTunes library – some of which have been played hundreds of times), every single time I listen to it the artist would receive money. Over the course of those years, the artist could theoretically earn more from one single person through Spotify than they would have if the person had bought a CD or downloaded it through an online music store. But, on the other hand, there are also a number of albums in my iTunes library that I’ve only played a couple of times. In those cases the artist would have benefited more from me buying an album at £7.99 than they would have if I’d streamed it a couple of times on Spotify. It’s such a wide field and both options have such far-flung benefits. What would be ideal would be a service that offers the benefits of both streaming and purchasing. I for one would throw my muisc aboard a service like this, but with the titans who control the music industry tangled so tightly around each other’s fingers, will anything like that ever be negotiable?

Evolving the foundation of the site, I’ve added a few cool features to the site over the past few days. They’re not huge features by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel they contribute to the overall experience of using the site. I’ve got a breakdown here.

Being best known for my animations, it’s probably about time that I had some animation on my site. Now I have. You may have noticed some animations appear on my site a short while ago; there’s one on the home page and another on the music page. These are really neat animations made using an app called Hype from the Mac App Store. It’s really awesome and made creating those little animations really easier without the need for something like Adobe Flash (which requires a browser plugin).

More animation you may notice can now be seen on the home screen. If you look, you’ll now notice that the tiles on the front page now cycle through images. This had been the plan ever since the inception of this design of the site, but I had never had the time to implement it without breaking the cool little hover animation. Now that works, and if I do say so myself, it really helps bring the site to life.

Now onto something functional. You may notice that the sentence on the home screen has changed. It has, and now has a link in it. This link, that asks you to let us choose a video for you, will load a random video on the site. Give it a click and it will choose one of the hundred videos currently on the site for you to watch. It’s pretty neat and helps you discover more content on the site. Give it a go!

Another feature is the news ticker at the bottom. This ticker is Twitter integrated and collects my tweets to display to you. This means that you can see the latest news about our world at a glance.

Finally, another minor but long overdue feature is an indicator for new content. Now when a video has been added, you can now find it easily by following the little star banner attached to the content images on the site. On the main page it’s currently attached to the Blog tile, but of course will move to reflect new content. And, for example, when a new video is released, you will now be able to follow this banner straight to the new content.

Overall, I’ve tried to make the site a whole lot more usable for you and I hope you enjoy and appreciate the changes. And if you have any, please leave your feedback in the comments and I’ll try and see what we can do!