Christmas lights, Liverpool window display, Cardi B bi-location, and so on…
The last few weeks have involved anything but writing – from directing Christmas lights to producing a Liverpool window display, plus live visuals for Cardi B in two venues at once – it’s been a little insane…
It’s been an age since last I wrote, and I can only apologise wholeheartedly for the lack of communication. In that time, two books have been released, I ploughed through Nanowrimo, then out of nowhere I was given a thousand jobs at once.
The holiday season is always busy, but this must have been the craziest year in a long time. It started with Christmas lights – providing live cameras & operators as various celebrity guests get dragged to the middle of nowhere to press a giant fake button and a city’s lights go on… and that went on and on, in various states of rain and/or cold.
Then I got asked if I had ever thought about bringing a Selfridges-style display to life, marking the first time there has been a Liverpool window display on a grand scale… but this was so last minute, we only had a day or two to get it made & installed!
So all hands went to decks, but given that there was no time to fabricate robots (or ‘animatronics’ if you want to take the fun out of a job in which I get to decree “MAKE ME ROBOTS!”), we had to come up with a swift solution…
Thus, we took over the Union22 building on Victoria Street with video walls, creating a winter wonderland that plays 24/7, with Santa appearing alongside an animated show every half-hour.
It’s not quite Selfridges, but it came in early and under budget, and now there’s a Liverpool window display that’s turning heads!
Now, that was fun in and of itself, but to add to the jamboree I’ve been making all manner of amendments as the days have gone one… and occasionally vandalising it for my own purposes, such as turning it into a birthday card:
And while all that was going on, another call came in to supply VJs for two hiphop shows that were going on simultaneously. Unfortunately, it was so last minute that I wasn’t able to find people… but I was available – and given that I had been playing with remote access tech for the Victoria Street Christmas windows, I figured why the hell not do both shows myself at the same time…
And so whilst Cardi B was performing back-to-back in Wolverhampton then Manchester, I was the VJ for both shows, and thus able to amend the vibes from one to the next based on the reaction from the crowd and tour manager at the first location.
Of course, the next logical step from this is to be able to control both shows from the comfort of my bed… but then again, I was meant to be retired from this kind of work and just writing, so who knows if I’ll ever get to have this much fun out in the world again…
And with that all in the bag, and my sister due to pop with her first kid anytime in the next three weeks, I need to get back to writing, because it’s been a long damn time since I put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard…) and I’ve got to start digging properly into the books for 2018!
Much love as always to you guys, hope the forthcoming holidays treat you kindly,
Lx