Hi, I'm Charlie McDonnell: Video-Blogger, musician, and nerd. Have a poke around this website using the navigation bar at the top, or catch up with what I'm up to at the moment with my written blog, which you'll find below.
Well, I’ve definitely been sitting on this one for a while. What you will find in the video above, dear reader, is the first (and currently only) song by my new band, Sons Of Admirals! Which is, as mentioned, the result of Alex Day, Tom Milsom, Eddplant and I all merging to try and make music together, and hopefully create something that we could never have managed as individuals.
I’m really excited to hear what you all think of this, especially the music video, which is my first attempt at doing something that is hopefully a bit more professional than my usual videos. Special thanks go to Tom Bacon, for filming and helping me edit and colour the music video, and to Emma and Gryff for being in the video as our very loveable love interests. All of those people stepped in at the very last minute, for no money. Those are some serious friends <3
To point something out: Sons Of Admirals isn’t really a band in the traditional sense, and this definitely doesn’t mean that any of us are going to be giving up on our solo music, or Chameleon Circuit. Far from it actually, if all goes to plan, we’re hoping to learn each others songs and tour with both SOA and solo material. Also, it’s also not like one of us is the “guitarist” or the “lead singer” or anything, heck, as well as singing on this track I also directed the music video. That’s not the kind of thing you’ll get with a traditional band! We’re something new, and we’re very excited about it :)
Anyway, I hope you like the song! And as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
A lot of the stuff that I could mention in regards to my BAFTA experience has already been talked about by my good friend Alex in his post about the night, so instead of simply re-writing his post in my own words, I’m going to try and talk about everything that he didn’t mention. Starting with the stuff that he couldn’t have talked about: the actual presenting an award thing.
I went on stage with the genuinely lovely Joanna Page, who nobody seems to know by her actual name -- It’s only when I say “Stacey, from Gavin and Stacey” that people actually realise who I’m talking about. She was the best, funny, very pretty and just as nervous as I was, if not more so. We spent the time backstage chatting a little, both divulging that we wanted The Inbetweeners to win our award, and going over our lines even though we knew that we were going to have an autocue. The strangest thing was, I wasn’t actually as nervous as I thought I would be.
When you’re backstage, you won’t find a spare minute when someone isn’t coming up to you and asking you how you’re feeling. The rule is, by the way, to say that you’re feeling very nervous, so that they can tell you not to worry or whatever. But I wasn’t that nervous, I was just a bit excited … however, watching the clip back on YouTube, I can gather now you may have perceived me as someone who was ready to poo in their pants. My voice wavers, my hands shake -- now that it’s over, people have no problem telling me that “you looked great!” because hey, it’s happened now so it doesn’t matter how I did. Either those people are lying or misremembering the event. I definitely looked nervous, but I didn’t FEEL nervous.
Then came the BAFTA after-party (the Bafter-party lol) which Alex has already talked about and who’s feelings I share about the whole thing. It was lovely. Then, after the Bafter-party (try saying that ten times fast) came a goodie bag! The people at BAFTA are just too kind. The highlight of the selection of gifts was definitely this thing:
A "Bed of Nails" what
Click on that picture and you’ll see that every little white thing is covered in spikes. Yes, you’re supposed to lie on this. Notice the wording on their website: “the pressure of the rounded nails against the skin may help the body release endorphins” -- but you can’t sue us if it doesn’t work. The nails aren’t rounded either, they’re very spiky … Alex laid his back on this thing and, guess what? It hurt! Funny that LYING ON A BED OF NAILS WOULD HURT YOUR BACK. Needless to say, it’s now in the bin. It brought me and Alex lots of lulz when it was in our lives though, so I guess it really did release endorphins in that respect.
Finally: I was reading the amazing stream of messages that you guys were sending me after I was up on stage. Your support during this was incredible, a brilliant reminder of how dedicated internet communities really are. You guys are the best, seriously, thank you! :3
First balloon animals, now this … does anyone have a unicycle for sale? If the YouTube thing doesn’t work out, I can always go into clowning.
It was actually really fun to get back into doing a daily video project again, even though it was more “daily” than daily. It probably would have been boring for you to see a video of every day, I think every other day makes it easier for you to notice a significant improvement each time … that’s what I’m going to go with anyway. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was getting so into the juggling that, sometimes, I just forgot to film anything. Nothing to do with that all.
If I can learn to juggle in just over a week, I’m sure that you could manage it too, so if you think that it looks quite fin then I’d recommend it :) For me, as someone who never really gets out the house, it’s been good exercise for my arms. Lord I’m unfit. Anyway.
Before I head off I just wanted to say, thanks a bunch to everyone that pre-ordered a T-Shirt! Now that we have all of the orders, we’ll print one for each of you and ship them on their way to you as soon as they’re done. Just to implicitly state how brilliant you all are: you’ve made this shirt the best selling T-Shirt that DFTBA has ever produced! Which is a very humbling statistic really, thank you so much for your support everyone ^_^
Actually, you know what? Contrary to what I mentioned in this video, you definitely can be a Doctor Who fan without having tried Fish Custard. I do these things so that you don’t have to … though, you want to be a hardcore Who fan? You probably should give it a go. And, if you want to consider yourself more whovian than The Doctor himself, maybe try and make fish custard a regular addition in your diet. Though I wouldn’t recommended that last suggestion very strongly.
It's a T-Shirt! yay
So! As mentioned in the video, I have created a new T-Shirt. Listening to all of your suggestions from last time, I put much more effort into drawing this one, and I’ve provided you with an actual photo/video footage of the thing so that you can see what it’ll really look like. Plus, ladies sizes! This was a very frequent suggestion last time, so I’m really happy to provide you lovely women with shirts which will actually fit you. I know my friend Alex will be very happy about this -- he’s a very skinny man, a ladies XS is a perfect fit for him.
T-shirts are no longer available, sorry!
I have to be honest though, in fact you probably noticed from my tone near the end of the video … I don’t like selling stuff, and I really hope you’ll understand that I’m not doing this simply to grab a quick buck from you all. YouTube is my job, sure, but I have genuinely always loved art and design, I’ve wanted to try my hand at this since I was a kid, and to be given the opportunity to make things that I’m really proud of is an absolute luxury for me -- I love it to pieces.
I hope you all can appreciate that, I’m not here to try and shove T-Shirts down your throats. For those that have expressed an interest in me making these, I hope you’ll like them, and for everyone else: my videos are a free gift to you all as far as I’m concerned. If you’re not interested in getting a shirt, supporting me so that I can keep making the videos, that’s fine, I don’t mind in the slightest :)
Every time I think that I’m starting to settle into something which vaguely resembles a normal life, some massively surreal opportunity comes to bite me on the bum. But it’s an exciting bite on the bum (if there is such a thing). I’m here today to reveal unto you all that I, Charlie McDonnell, that guy who makes videos on the internet, will be going to the Television BAFTA’s. To present an award. So I’m going to be on the television. Presenting a BAFTA. I don’t get how this is allowed.
I mean, surely I’m going to get on stage only to have everyone shout “he’s not a celebrity, what’s he doing up there? Kill him!” and then Graham Norton is going to pull out a crossbow and shoot me in the head. And then they’ll drag me off screen like the fraud that I am, with a snail-trail of blood in my wake. And then I’ll get blood on my new suit! Which will definitely be the worst thing about that hypothetical situation.
Wow, sorry for being so grim. Let’s forget about the blood. BAFTA! This year, YouTube are Sponsoring the Audience Award (the only award voted for by the public) and the lovely Jamie at YouTube sent me an email asking if I wanted to present it. Voting is taking place here if you’re interested, and the show is taking place on the 6th of June. Hopefully they’ll let me shoot some footage while I’m over there, I reckon the experience would make a fun video :)
I have nothing more to say than that, just wanted to share my excitement with you! Also, I’m probably going to have nightmares about a crossbow wielding Graham Norton tonight.
I’ve heard that, when you go throughout your day, your brain puts a sticky note on the things that it deems most important -- the things that you experience the biggest emotional reaction to. Then, at the end of the day, it takes the most important memories (the ones with the stickies) and runs over them -- it’s a starting explanation for how your brain chooses what you should be dreaming about. I mention this because, well, the night before I made this video … I was dreaming about Doctor Who. Apparently that TV show is more important to me than I’d originally realised.
So, here, for those that are clueless, is a very brief sum up of the show, and a run down of my reasons for liking it as much as I do. As I said in the video, I felt like I needed to justify myself … getting comments from people saying “I don’t like Doctor Who, but I still like your Doctor Who music!” is always lovely, but I can’t help but feel like those people are silently judging me. My response: it’s not always brilliant, which is what makes it so consistently brilliant. If that makes any sense.
By the way, something that I didn’t mention in this video (which I probably should have) is this: I like Matt Smith. People have been asking my opinion of him pretty much daily since he was revealed to be the doctor, so here I am, telling you now, that I think he’s doing a brilliant job. I do, however, think that his best days are yet to come, so I’m going to reserve any final judgment until this series has finished. My friend Ben Cook who writes for Doctor Who magazine has already seen the entire series (lucky bugger) and has told me that the last few episodes are the best -- I reckon that’ll be Matt’s time to shine.
So, Doctor Who? What do you think? I’m looking forward to seeing your comments about this one -- Doctor Who talk is always surprisingly intelligent and in-depth ^_^ Don’t let me down!
Hah, remember the time I said I’d try to blog more often, and then I stopped blogging entirely for almost two weeks? Yeah, that was pretty mean of me, sorry about that … but now I’m back! And not just that, I have a video that I made to show you! I hope that makes up for my absence.
Recently, Alex Day has made me his go-to guy for creating videos to go along with his music, which has been a lot of fun so far. Sitting in front of a camera and talking to it has been my main gig for a while now, but it’s been nice to break out of the Vlogging Charlie mould to see if I could fit into the Director Charlie one. I mean sure, the videos still look a bit amateur (which is fair enough, because that’s exactly what I am) but I’m proud of them, especially this new video for Alex’s “The Time Of Your Life”.
Directing videos for Alex has been a great training ground too -- I’m much harsher with myself when putting something together for my own channel, whereas on Alex’s I tend to give myself more room to take risks. It was only after making Holding On that I felt like I had the ability to put together A Song About Love, and it’s also definitely been a lot of fun trying to come up with narratives that go well with Alex’s music.
As always, I’m interested to hear your thoughts -- what do you think of this video? Would you like me to do more straight directing stuff for my own channel? Maybe something with more of a story? And, most importantly, what do you think of Alex’s abnormally flat head? There’s one bit in the video where his hair lines up perfectly with the top of one of the pictures on the wall, it’s kind of amazing.
Also! I wanted to say a quick thank you to Emma for being such a brilliant Robot, the video would have fallen flat on it’s face if it hadn’t been for her 1337 acting skillz. Finally, if you liked the song, click here to get it on iTunes :) Bye for now!
Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m any kind of scientist. I’m a fan of science, I do my best to try and understand everything, but when I’m explaining science I do have a habit of dropping the more technical terms in favour of making it easier to understand, and hopefully more interesting to the uninitiated. This song is no exception to that, I know that I’ve generalised the roles that the chemicals mentioned in this video play in the brain, but hey, I wanted to make a nice song! So, if there are any angry scientists reading this (which I highly doubt) then I’m sorry for trying to make science more fun.
If you’re new to the scientific world of love, hello! I have a few links for you that might be of interest. First, this episode of RadioLab, which is how I stumbled upon this topic in the first place (RadioLab is just a brilliant show in general, by the way) and secondly, this TED talk by Helen Fisher. Those should be nice starting points; given that love has been shrouded in mystery and wonder for so many of us, I personally found it really interesting to hear about how it actually works, and I hope you do too.
Also, in a statement unrelated to the rest of this post and to the video: sorry! I’ve realised that I only ever really find the time to blog when I have a new video up on my YouTubes -- I’m going to do my best to improve for you all. I mean, I’m not going to blog just for the sake of blogging, I don’t want to waste your time, but I’ll hope to get up about one simply textual blog a week alongside the weekly blog to accompany a video. Don’t hold me TOO tightly to that, it’s not a promise, but I’ll do my bestest :)
Thought it would be worth making something a bit more lighthearted after last week, and what’s more lighthearted than balloon animals? Cheers to entendslamusique for suggesting this challenge, it was a lot of fun to be able to sit in front of a camera for half an hour making balloon animals and call it my job. Trying to edit that half an hour into something watchable though? Not as much fun, but I hope it payed off.
Two quick thank you’s! First, the guy that you’ll see on my monitor for the entirety of this video is Michael Floyd from http://balloon-animals.com -- every single twist that you’ll see in my video is a result of me trying to emulate his balloon animal greatness, the man is a master. I’d also like to thank Rebecca Watson at http://skepchic.org for featuring my “How to be Famous?” video, and for calling me “fabulous” -- she’s a bit fabulous herself.
Actually, you know what? A third thank you! I’m just in that kind of mood. As a result of the “How to be Famous” video I’ve been completely inundated with some of the most brilliant, thought provoking comments and video responses that I think I’ve ever received. You guys are the best, seriously, I’ll definitely have to start throwing some more of my thoughts around in the hope of seeing some more of the intelligence and wit that you displayed over the last week. Serious kudos to you all, thanks :)
I definitely feel like I’m entering into new territory with this video, I’m pretty sure this is the most opinionated I’ve ever been about something. I showed it to my friend Dan Brown last night who felt the same (he also really liked it, probably because his whole gig revolves around sharing his opinions on things). My Mum even suggested that I call this video “Charlie Gets Serious”, and after my sister watched it, she patted me on the head and muttered: “Deep, Charlie. Deep”.
I’m curious, after watching this video, how do you feel about Charlie with opinions? Injecting a joke between every jump-cut has always been second nature to me, so it definitely felt a bit odd to veer away from that near the end of this video. I think it’s an important topic though, one that I’ve wanted to talk about for a while, and one that I’m very sure of myself on. Also, as always, I’d be interested to hear your opinions on the topic in general!
Part of my inspiration for the video came after watching the documentary ‘Starsuckers‘ -- it’s a good watch if you can find it. Thanks for not being trying to be famous!
