Empire

Another twelve hour day of admin. Today was all about inviting people to the album launch of brass, and trying to encourage a few people to come to our quiz. The lack of people coming is really beginning to get me down. We've worked so hard on it, but almost all of our friends are either not available, or not able to commit to coming right now... I suppose I need to reconcile myself to it being what it's going to be, rather than what I really want it to be. If there's only one team of eight, we'll split it into two teams of four and still have a fun!

I'm currently watching Empire on E4, which is the shiny new American show with songs by Timberland about the R and B industry in the States. It's a very cool concept, which I feel I ought to be enjoying a great deal more than I am. Unfortunately I'm finding it cliche-ridden and incredibly boring. It's like Dynasty with gangstas. Some of it is breathtakingly on the nose... An example of what happens when you get pop writers to try to create songs with narrative. I'd love to have sat down and talked to the makers about classic juxtapositions. You don't always have to say what you see.

In documentary making, we call this process "Lord Privy Sealing." There's some apocryphal tale about a young editor who was sent off to find shots of Lord Privy Seal, and came back with three separate images of Lord Palmerston, a toilet and an elephant seal! As a result, when someone visually decorates the spoken word with unnecessary images, we tell them it's all a bit "Lord Privy Seal."

There seems to be another show on E4 called Nashville, which, from the trailers, looks like the Country and Western version of the very same show! I might pitch to do a British version with a WI choir in Corby. I reckon that could be well sexy!