July 2010 Archives

I've mentioned No Media Kings before. A blog I've followed for years that started as a small guide to self-publishing books by an ex-employee of a major publishing house. Finally, the author, Jim Munroe, embraced the DIY spirit fully and turned the blog into a journal of everything he was doing. Sound familiar?

He's even had crossover success with his IF game Everyone Dies and his graphic novel Sword of my Mouth.

The geek in me just had to link the latest post. A guide to making your own classic arcade game unit. This time using a PC set up instead of hardwiring a board.

I feel any bare bones guide to doing stuff DIY - especially putting on an event which requires bring an artist/act in from out of town - must talk about the following aspect:

Two clarifications. This is if you are taking the matter seriously and it's not a bad thing. I love every minute of being involved in music and the arts.

I know that certain promoters in town who read this point will be actually feeling pain in sympathy as they read this.

So. We've been having a great time getting busy for both this event and this project. We met Ren Hang at the airport as this was his first time in Shanghai. The event is on Saturday but he is also doing some shooting while here. That's where the crossover with the label project comes in. 

Last night we met with Pairs at Yuyintang and shot photos up in their room for rent, which is done out like a dance studio. We hired it for a modest hourly rate and then had complete private use. People came directly from work to do this and it went on a couple of hours - so the other point was to go out and get decent hot food for everyone while they worked. 

Half way through, Ren Hang's camera had a problem. The lithium battery (available only at camera stores) ran out. This was not a big problem as I'd already identified the camera shops in our neighborhood. Because we were spending all week chaperoning a photographer. We were also there to play through Ren Hang's slide show and check everything worked. It didn't, but we got it all sorted because we were there days before.

So, all these things required having money ready too. Not everyone gets this point. I have a friend who was very recently approached by some film makers. They petitioned hard to film this person and they agreed. They then started going, on the spur of the moment, to high profile ticketed locations - then making themselves scarce and leaving the artist to pay for their tickets, food and transport (and the artist had no idea it was coming). 

Also, check out my swish sign in the photo. The plane was a bit delayed too. We got the night bus from Pudong airport (just 20 RMB each) and got into town again at 2 a.m. and then someone called him to do a night shoot in a park. I could go on and on but the basic idea is that some groups have staff for this but if you do it yourself, indie style, you have to be prepared to actually do it all yourself.

We got the samples and found them to be excellent. The t-shirts, while certainly cheap, were decent enough and the printing great too. 

This is the store: right here

We ordered one of each of their sizes: s, m, l, xl, xxl, xxxl

The xl is a medium fit on me and I'm 178 cm and slim. We also chose the Y8.50 shirts, not the Y8.00. There's a massive quality difference. The cheaper ones are complete ass and the more expensive ones are not bad at all.

Finally, our design uses grayscale with many shades so we went for the heat transfer printing method. Unlike the previous post's quote, this way charged per shirt and we ended paying Y12.50 per shirt for a small run. 

We spent yesterday afternoon out and about in the Zhongshan Park area of town shooting the principal footage. The sun was blazing and the streets busy, but we got everything we wanted. Including professional looking tracking shots using a huangyu che. We achieved this by going to a nearby market and slipping the guy a 50 (Chinese dollars). I sat in the back with the camera.

Here are a couple of screencaps from the footage. We used the custom presets feature in the Canon XL2 to make it black and white with solid blacks and high contrast. The video itself also achieves an old movie feel by keeping the shutter speed at around 1/50 and using the cam's special 24 Fps setting.

In one of them I spelled out the details of where we practiced. In China rooms come with full equipment including a drum kit and all the amps and mics. I wrote:

Big steps are being taken in our label project.

Adam, our producer, is going away for a six week summer holiday and we assumed that our first online and physical releases would have to wait until he got back on September 1st. But other things are happening that I want to chronicle here so I can follow up easily later.

Adam produced a mix of Pairs' track Yangpu Qu right off the bat and the band gave really detailed feedback. A second mix is already done and everyone is happy with it. This suggests to me that we can launch our label page on schedule - directly after the weekend of 31st July. That's when Ren Hang will be in town to do some photos and play our event.

Next up, I go into the studio with Little Punk to put down her solo material this Wednesday. The style is lo-fi punk-folk that can't really be described in genre terms because the soul of the music comes from Little Punk's distinct voice and vision. I have sat down with local film buff Yingzi 影子 and planned a video for the track I'm not in the mood for making a song. Video ideas are on the way for Pairs too, but they are gonzo style ideas from Xiao Zhong and will come later. We'll shoot LP's using a Canon XL2.

So I just posted here about our indie record label that as yet has no name and no online home.

We had our first session recording Pairs and I said that we were yet to record Little Punk's solo material. That's not entirely true.

Little Punk sings for the Shanghai band Boys Climbing Ropes. I met her on and off across the last couple of years and one thing that interested me was her prolific writing. She has pages and pages of poetry, prose and song lyrics and her preferred solo style is lo-fi indie folk. Perfect for our label.

So, last week I finished writing eight tracks with her. We recorded all of them using the Zoom H2 and next week is simply re-recording them in better quality.

The tracks use only vocals and guitar and the Zoom has a two channel setting where the mic is split front and back, making it perfect for duos.

We got lucky again. As with Pairs, behind the chaotic outer shell and free creative spirit was a very focused and hard working artist who knew exactly what she wanted. The songs are excellent. I will try to make one of the demos available here once I sort out a player problem.

We will record with Adam at Luwan Rock again.

This is a weird one to post about as there's no name or reference site yet, so bear with me.

Me and a friend wanted to do something to promote a certain style of music, lo-fi or DIY indie. So we decided to do a label. It has no name and I wasn't going to post on it for a while. However, some concrete things happened so here goes.

Our plan:

1) Form a label in theory

2) Record music from Shanghai based band Pairs and solo artist Little Punk

3) Get famous avant-garde photographer Ren Hang to shoot them

4) Make a label page on Douban and make all this stuff available

5) Make cheap CD's of the albums and distribute them for free

6) If the idea proves popular, try to 'do something with it'

So what happened? We had our first session and recorded Pairs.

It's been a while since our last full event at Kungfuology. That was the PETA show which is not on this blog.

Next up. Having struck up a relationship with Beijing avant-garde photographer Ren Hang, I decided to bring him down for a show. We originally wanted to get him on at an existing regular event, a photographer's night at Dada Bar. I didn't work out though so we crafted our own.

Before I talk details, this event has a special condition: I'n bringing someone down from Beijing. Obviously this adds massively to the cost. An event featuring artists from only the same city would cost only a fraction.

Ren Hang. I followed his work as a genuine fan and ended up buying prints from him directly. This led from looking him up on Douban to having a direct line/relationship. 

We decided to have the event at Yuyintang. Ren Hang will show his work via slideshows and video then we wanted the band Boojii to play. Time Out magazine were going to in some part sponsor the event, but that didn't come through either so all costs I mention had to be put up by ourselves.