Hello and welcome back to Behind The Selador.
It’s been a productive week for the channel. Firstly, I’ve started writing the script for my next video on the Literary Influences of David Bowie. The process of researching and writing the script for this video has been challenging, as I have been trying to alter the formula I use for these videos to keep things interesting for myself and the viewers. By “these videos” I mean the short (but promising) “Literary Influences of…” series, of which there are a staggering two episodes. You would think that I wouldn’t start running out of ideas until the episodes hit the double digits. Well, you would be wrong in thinking that, because boy are we running low.
I’m only joking, I’ve got ideas; however, I do believe the formula for making these videos could potentially become stale if I don’t change it up. I don’t want all videos to go like this: literary-related story (Lou Reed poetry reading/Ian Curtis meets Burroughs); background information leading up until music releases; analyse three songs with literary influences; continue story following music releases; conclusion. This formula has worked for my first two videos, but I have altered it a little for my David Bowie video. It will not be drastically different; all I’ve basically done is begin (again) with a literary-related story, but then instead of continuing it at the end (like Reed’s poetry Reading), I have instead fragmented pieces of the story throughout the video. It isn’t a massive change, but it is a change. The script isn’t finished yet anyway, so it’s hard to say whether it’ll come out how I want it to at this moment in time. For all I know, this very small alteration of an ironclad foolproof blueprint might just be my channel’s undoing. We’ll see…
As well as working on my Bowie video I have also got my next video after that in the works. I like to break up the Literary Influences series with videos on random shit and this next video is no exception to the rule. The video is on Henry Miller and his book Tropic of Cancer, which was banned in the US and UK for 27 years due to “obscenity laws”. I believe this video will be relatively short, as I would like to start getting more content out as opposed to releasing one video a month. As it currently stands, the Miller video is in the “researching stage” of development and will be ready to write up once I’ve finished and recorded the voiceovers for my Bowie video.
I have also been working on the thumbnail for the Miller video which I am finally happy with. Creating thumbnails can be a soul-sucking process of twiddling with filters and adjusting effects until something clicks in your head to consider it finished. The worst-case scenario when creating a thumbnail is tirelessly working on one for hours and coming out of the creative process with fatigue, a headache, and a thumbnail that isn’t exactly what you wanted but is good enough. That is a trap, don’t fall into it. Keep twiddling, fucking about, trying new things, whatever, until that intuitive thought tells you “You’ve got it. This is the thumbnail you’ve been waiting for. This thumbnail will be the thumbnail to change the way people think about thumbnails.” Take it from me (a man of many thumbnails): it comes eventually…. But it doesn’t come easy.
Lastly, I just wanted to acknowledge the passing of Television frontman and guitarist Tom Verlaine who died on the 28th of January (last Saturday) at the age of 73.
I cannot claim to be the biggest Verlaine fan, but I do really like Television’s debut album “Marquee Moon”. I was first exposed to Television in the documentary about Anthony Bourdain called “Roadrunner”. There is a scene in that documentary (one that I rewatch from time to time) where the song “Marquee Moon” starts playing over the top of a montage of the rise of Bourdain’s popularity after publishing his book Kitchen Confidential. This scene is around the 15-ish minute mark of the documentary and I seriously recommend watching, if not the full doc, then at least that scene. In the scene we see Bourdain doing interviews with Oprah, Letterman, signing books etc. whilst the crescendo in “Marquee Moon” plays in the background. The music builds and builds as Bourdain’s popularity does, culminating in the peak of the song when this melodic lullaby-esc riff drifts down from that high peak; Someone in a comment section somewhere described the peak as sounding like “seagulls” and I couldn’t agree more. Either way, as this part plays we see Bourdain walking through the twilight of New York, cigarette and bag in hand looking cool as fuck, ending with him entering his favourite bar. It’s hard to describe but it’s just so well done, so watch it for yourself.
But yeah, my terrible description of that scene aside, I basically looked up the soundtrack for Roadrunner, found out the song playing during that sequence was “Marquee Moon” and grew to love the album. As it stands, “Marquee Moon” is in my top 3 songs of all time, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon. It sucks Verlaine is dead but at least we have the music.
Once again if you have anything to add or any questions shoot them down below.
Thank you for reading.
The Selador.