Amanda Palmer and the night Lou Reed died

Animation stories

26 Nov

It was 27 October 2013, the night that Lou Reed died. 49 of my friends and I had clubbed together to have Amanda Palmer come and play at our party.

This was one of many similar parties all over the world and part of a Kickstarter that was the first ever to raise over $1,000,000. This phenomenal amount of money led to an album, 'Theatre is Evil', and a book, 'The Art of Asking'.

On the way to the gig, my wife (Alex) and I spoke about what we wanted out of this experience. Twitter was still finding its feet in 2013, so direct interaction with your heroes was much rarer. We thought about the kind of questions we might want to ask, experimenting with things we could say to make ourselves sound cool. When you meet someone that you respect, just for them to know you exist is nice, and we wanted a chance to say thank you for the music that got both of us through some pretty tough times. We figured that if we had some kind of interaction with her, that would mean she might remember us too.

The party

Our Kickstarter party was held in a super-secret speakeasy in East London. We entered a building that was disguised as a second-hand shop, gave the password we had agreed earlier, and were ushered downstairs to a basement bar with a low stone roof and a slightly out-of-tune piano.

The night of our party, Amanda was sad about Lou Reed and played some of his songs in tribute. I had a brand new DSLR camera that I didn’t really know how to use, and I’d just quit my safe and comfortable position at the BBC to create a new animation company.

I had no idea how to do that either.

So, while Amanda sang, just as an experiment, I filmed some bits and pieces and posted them the next day.

The birthday card

*Amanda Palmer singing with The Dresden Dolls*

About halfway through the show, she asked if someone could help her create something for Neil Gaiman’s birthday. I put my hand up, and we ended up taking photographs of everyone at the party holding up signs that read ‘Happy Birthday Neil’. It also involved Amanda Palmer crawling towards me naked as I took photographs. In the back of my mind was the video for Do It With A Rockstar. Unsurprisingly, I was a little bit scared. Luckily, my wife was there to hold my hand.

Sadly, the editing of this film is so bad that I don’t want to show it to anyone. When I say I had no idea what I was doing, I really mean it. But just for completeness, here it is…

Let’s just say that we’ve come a long way since then!

From that Kickstarter party, we got everything we talked about in the car. What we didn’t know was that the terrible film I made would eventually lead to us making things together that are truly beautiful.

Gigging in Bristol

As the company started to grow and I learned how to edit and make films properly, we began to make some really nice work. But things were quite difficult in my personal life.

The weekend that Alex’s mum died, we had tickets to see Amanda Palmer at the O2 Academy in Bristol, a very different kind of show to the Kickstarter party. At the start of the show, Amanda asked who was having a great day. Everyone cheered except Alex and me. Then she asked who was having a terrible day. Alex was the only person who put up her hand. Amanda pointed directly to her and said, this concert is for you.

Amanda is really good at letting you know you exist.

That night her songs made us cry and laugh in equal measure. At one point, I yelled out ‘Free Bird!’ as a comedy request, and the Grand Theft Orchestra stopped what they were doing and played it for a few minutes until even they couldn’t take it anymore.

CC Animation Studio – the early years…

I am telling this story because it’s relevant to the email that I eventually sent a year or so later.

We had a new baby, and my company was going through a difficult transition – some of our most talented people had left to start their own company, and I was scared that the whole thing would fold and that I wouldn’t be able to support my family anymore.

I was terrified, but I wanted to view this crisis as an opportunity to redefine what we do and to take a second look at what our reason for existing was, questioning why, as a group, we dedicated so much of our time to making explainer films. I concluded that what makes our animations so different from other companies is the real-life artists involved in making them – we are passionate about the quality of our output and put a lot of ourselves into our work.

I had an idea to make a series of films about inspirational women and use them to let our artists flex their creative muscles. I made a list of people that I would love to work with, and Amanda was at the top of that list.

I still had her email address from the birthday video.

So, I wrote to her.

Dear Amanda,

Once upon a time, I helped you to make a video for Neil’s birthday after a Kickstarter gig in London the night that Lou Reed died. From those humble beginnings, I now run my own animations company. We are currently working on a series of animated shorts featuring inspirational women, so obviously I thought of you.

Here is a recent series of films we made about FGM with the Royal College of Midwives that you might find interesting and also as an example of the kind of work that we do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5E936tbv4g&t=6s

What I would be looking for from you would be 1-2mins of mp3 audio on or around the following subject and your permission to use it.

“What advice would I give, if I could talk to myself, the last time I wanted to give up.”

We will do the rest. I’m happy to keep you informed of progress etc. and give you first refusal on anything we make with it.

Please let me know if you are able to help 😊

I hope to hear from you soon,

Dann Casswell

P.S. As some further background…

You may not remember this.

But I derailed one of your gigs at the O2 Academy in Bristol by yelling Free Bird and then you played Free Bird, for which I will be eternally grateful.

In fact, I think every time I have seen you in concert you have played something I requested, which is kind of amazing and makes me feel a little bit bad for everyone else. The last time you were super pregnant in Bristol, just you and a piano, and I requested 'Vegemite' from way down the back of the church.

To my surprise, Amanda replied that she would love to do this, and she introduced me to her staff who help organise these things. By this time, she had moved on from Kickstarter and was looking for some additional content that could go on her Patreon site. She thought an animation might be nice!

So, for the next year or so, I sent her production team an email every two weeks asking them for a time and a date when we could discuss the project – they would almost always reply with 'Soon'.

Meeting Amanda again

Eventually, Amanda was due to play a gig at the Bath Literary Festival. Since we are a Bristol-based animation company, I bought some tickets and wrote to her team again, suggesting that we meet her before the gig. Amanda agreed.

Myself, Alex and one of our best artists, Caroline Rudge, went to the gig. At first, we were too nervous to really pitch. We had an idea that we would like to make a music video for the upcoming album. But Amanda didn’t like that idea. She didn’t want to hand over a full song to a company that she didn’t know or trust yet. So I suggested we develop some trust by doing something smaller first.

She wanted to create something to help promote the audiobook of The Art of Asking, which seemed like a good fit. I left Alex and Caroline to talk with Amanda about the details and stepped outside to punch the air!

What we ended up producing was this film. It’s a bit better than the birthday film. Mostly thanks to Caroline, I think. But please forgive the really long intro – we know better now!

Dann Casswell
Creative Director
CC Animation Studio