Since the time we thought better of

Let's see, what been going on? Since I last wrote, I've been getting over that horrible cold that I developed while going out every night like a teenager. In the meantime I've been rehearsing for our upcoming battle of the bands show at Girl Bar, recording on our album (more listening really, I haven't recorded anything myself for awhile) and working on the video for "Delay" - I guess I'll say a little about that.
We filmed the footage for "Delay" in May of last year in my hometown, Paradise, Kansas. I had been really excited about the video because since I was a kid, I always wanted to film a video there. I used to daydream about being in a band, about a band being in Paradise, about filming a video in Paradise; I squandered many a middle school afternoon by not paying attention in class and instead looking out the window. There is this brown house across the street from the school and I always had this fantasy that The Thompson Twins would move in there.
Anyway, so the whole band was going to Kansas last May and I thought as long as we were there, I really wanted to go to Paradise and film a video. I wanted to do the song "Delay" because I thought it was such a great song and would be perfect for the type of video we could get in Paradise. I knew we wouldn't have much time, and it would be a crazy hectic shoot, but I wanted to try.
We got to Paradise in the afternoon after a long drive on I-70 from my parents house near Kansas City. I had other agenda items I wanted to get out of the way first; we visited our old farm, took a tour of an old house that I'd always wanted to see and had recently been featured in a newspaper article, and then we went to see my new baby cousin Beau. So after all that I started getting a little antsy, trying to get everyone motivated to film the video. We got ready, Dylan took the camera, and my sister Adrienne carried the boombox while Beau's sister Lauren followed us. We walked around town filming footage. We had gotten several scenes in when the camera battery started to get low. I plugged the battery and charger in at the park and left it there while we went back to my cousin Brian's house (Beau's dad). Yes, in a town like Paradise you can do stuff like that!
After we visited with Brian and I felt the battery might have some more power, we filmed a couple more scenes and then left to drive on to Hays where we were staying for the night. I later watched the footage on the camcorder and was very happy with the results and eager to start editing!
Some days later when I got back to LA, I imported the footage. The first problem I found was that somehow we had turned off the auto image stabilizer function on the camera, so a lot of the footage ended up being took shaky to really use, especially considering the rush we were in while filming it. Also, I was in such a hurry to get the video edited that I kind of jumped in without much of a game plan. Mind you, I did catalog all the shots and had intended to sort of story board out what I had before editing. But my impatience got the best of me, and I just started slapping it together without much thought to flow or theme or anything. Then I had some cool effects that I wanted to use so I just sort of indescriminately.
In the end, I came out with an edit that the other band members really liked, as well as my friends, but I was not completely happy with it from an objective viewpoint and thought I could make a video that was much better technically. So even though we premiered the video at FUBAR in June, along with the "Mustache Rides 5¢" video, I ended up scrapping it and starting from the very beginning, reimporting all the video.
So now it's 8 months and lots of excuses later and I'm finally back to finishing it. I think part of what scared me about actually "finishing" it is that then it would be done - the lifelong fantasy I've had of that video would be complete. Plus, it would probably be viewed online by a lot of people from my hometown area and it may be the only thing a lot of them see about my band.
All that aside, I'm getting close to finishing a new edit that I will be immensely proud of! Hopefully it will do Paradise proud too.
Aside from that, I've been very excited about the progress of our new album. I've also been trying to book some shows for this summer, mailing out our press kit, CD and DVD all over the country and the world. It feels good to be putting this much effort into the band at the beginning of the year.
Well, a little birdie told me that Brandon just wrote a big blog, so I'm going to sign off here and go read his now.