Tom Nicholas

Deconstruction | The Friday(ish) Update

Added 2023-07-24 16:03:24 +0000 UTC

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday(ish) Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

What have I been up to this week?

It’s been a week of finishing touches here.

On Tuesday night, I filmed the last couple of pieces of my upcoming video about online grifts. This was a big relief; mostly for a non-obvious reason.

My home office doubles as a writing space and a filming space. On some projects, I complete all my writing and then switch into filming mode. But, other videos involve much more back and forth. While I’ll usually have a very good structure and plan prior to filming, sometimes I will begin filming before I’ve completed every section of the script.

The practical challenge this presents is that the large acoustic blankets I use to reduce the amount of echo in the room whilst filming make it impossible to use my desk for writing. So, in months where I am switching back and forth between writing and filming, I have to do a lot of setting-up and setting-down as I transform the space between uses.

My absolute dream is that one day I might have the budget to pay for a proper office/studio space that is a bit more feng shui than a spare room in my house. But, for now, I’m happy to have packed down the kit for a short while.

With those last few bits filmed though, the video is looking very close to completion. Myself and Georgia, my editor, recently met up to look through some drafts of some sections and I can’t wait to share it with you all!

And outside of work?

Life is not only pretty busy work-wise at the moment (with the new video’s release just around the corner) but also in my home life.

As long-time readers will know, I’m currently gearing-up to get married and so my evenings are now largely being occupied by organising seat plans and food options for our my partner and I’s wedding reception.

I’ve been finding a lot of the skills I’ve bit up in my various jobs over the years have been coming in handy. It turns out that having some basic skills in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite can quickly save a bit of money! And I’ve done a few jobs in the past which involve lots of event organisation so that’s come in pretty handy too.

I have started to feel bad when I catch up with friends that, when they ask me how things are going, all I have to talk about is wedding stuff. I’m sure it’s very boring but it is the thing that’s operating most of my free time at the moment.

Nevertheless, I’m of course hugely looking forward to the big day and to celebrating with my partner!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

I’m on a bit of a film binge at the moment.

Barbie and Oppenheimer both only came out today here in the UK [ed: I wrote this on Friday even though it’s going out on Monday!] so I haven’t been to see either yet. This week though, I did manage to catch the new Indiana Jones.

The Indiana Jones films were always ones which meant a lot to me as a kid. I remember really enjoying the Young Indiana Jones series on TV as well. Nevertheless, at some point I kind of just forgot about it. It wasn’t until I went to Disneyland a few years ago and went on the Indiana Jones ride that I suddenly had major flashbacks of loving it. The music just awoke something in me.

The last attempt to reboot the series was, as anyone who saw it will know, pretty terrible. As such, I had pretty low expectations for this one. But I actually kinda enjoyed it.

It’s unlike to be the film of the season but I thought it at least managed to recapture some of the joy of the earlier films. I particularly thought it was correct for them to return to a more properly “historical” theme. The previous film’s focus on aliens felt like it didn’t quite gel with the spiritual/mystical/biblical forms of paranormal it's that the originals engage with. Without spoiling it, this film at least felt much more thematically congruent.