Money Behind The Scenes (Patreon)

And behold, here it is, the music video for Money. This was definitely the most highly-requested un-videographied song off the new album - and I believe rightly so, as it has some fun little visual tidbits that can't really come across in audio alone. I had always intended for it to be a full video, when I initially wrote the song for Piñata's Eurovision competition in May of last year.

Not to toot my own Electronic Wind Instrument, but actually wrote and produced this whole song in one (admittedly, extremely long) day - by far my speediest turnaround for something of this length! If you listen closely you can hear where I've taken shortcuts to get it done for the show the next day (copy and paste sections?? An artiste like Jazz Emu would never). The mixing etc. took longer of course, but the core of the song spilled out in a frantic rush, out of necessity. When I've performed it live, I've actually swapped some lyrics in and out, depending on what I've felt like. In particular, the Plastic Card With A Horse lyric has on occasion been A Coin That Lives In The Sky. I eventually settle on the Horse option, as they seemed to get the exact same reaction and I like trying to pronounce Lloyd's TSB.

We were keen to make a video for the song last year, but realised it needed significant production planning, as we needed a cast and a proper location to do it justice. So we delayed it until I was back from my festive travels down under - and I was able to plan a bit while out there too.

I got in touch with some of my favourite performers - Seán, Frankie, Abi and Babak - specifically knowing I'd need people who'd be great at some dynamic lip sync (and Babak who I knew would be excellent deadpan contrast to the rest of us big gurny overactors...). And they were all luckily available and up for it. We left at 7am on a grey Sunday morning from London's Vauxhall. I drove everyone and the equipment in a people carrier, and we had the whole venue (Butser Ancient Farm) to ourselves for the day. It was really nice not having too many storytelling beats to put together (cf. Eggerson Keaveney, which had literally dozens of fiddly punchlines to tell - we shot that in one day but definitely should've taken two...). This meant we had space to let the actors deploy their potent acting chops. Seán did some amazing improvised stuff with minimal direction - all we'd planned really was that it might be fun for him to walk around an ancient village in a suit. All the the additional gags (killing Frankie with a sword, talking on the phone etc) all came out from us messing around in the shoot.

The hardest shot to get by far was with the goat. We were desperate to get a two shot of Frankie and Abi standing right next to the goats. (Does it count as a three shot, if a goat is involved?) We were assured that they weren't dangerous, but were advised to throw food to distract them if necessary... It turns out the goats were mortally afeared of humans and wouldn't stand within 5 metres of us. An entertaining segment ensued of Hunter trying to follow them around with his gimble, to little avail, as the goats made for literally anywhere but his vicinity.

We got insanely lucky, in that it starting chucking it down at 5pm just as we'd wrapped, and I drove some snoozing actors back to London in a torrential downpour.

Hunter and I then spent another morning in an exam centre (we couldn't find a cheap enough board room location, and decided this looked funny and tacky next to the glossy ancient farm footage anyway), and then stomping around central London, getting dirty looks from corporate businessmen, as is my wont. The head-spinning gag, and the extra-arm gag, we came up with while shooting. It's interesting to unpeel these things as we're shooting - you can plan as much as you like but sometimes you can't get inspiration for things like that until you're physically doing it in the space. I'm lucky that Hunter is extremely light on his feet, and is always able to understand these specific ideas and instantly know how to execute them visually. For the head spinning shot I requested, for example, he immediately knew to divide it into two cuts, in which I rotated my head 90 degrees in each. We then finished on me wearing my jacket back to front, so the last shot could feel genuine and not graphically edited. Clever! It's always really fun problem solving these kind of things together, and we have a very efficient shorthand now.

It ended up being the most expensive shoot we've ever done, by quite some way, because of hiring the beautiful venue at Butser Ancient Farm out for a day, paying the actors, all the ridiculous costumes and props, transporting everyone there and back etc. For those interested, the total was £3,213, which comes to about 2 months worth of Patreon donations. It's a lot, but realistically maybe 20% of what it would cost if being done "professionally". And if feels worth it to me to invest in quality now, and hopefully pull in some more people to the Patreon with our high effort shenanigans. We're lucky that between us Hunter and I can cover a lot of bases, and are also getting better at guessing where to spend the cash and where we can cut corners. It's honestly a dream for me to get to pay talented people to do my Pieces of Art. So THANK YOU as ever for your support on here. If you can afford to keep supporting, please do! if you can't, I still love you infinitely. JE xxx