January is a strange month I find, swinging wildly between optimism for the blank page ahead and despair that another year has slipped away with a lot of blank space showing on that page too.
It’s particularly common of an ADHD brain that can’t immediately recall what exactly I DID last year with all that time. So, while it’s not in my nature to list achievements, that’s what I did today as a way to reassure myself that time wasn’t entirely wasted.
It wasn’t. But that doesn’t stop my first thought being that I didn’t do enough, achieve enough, at least as far as personal projects go. Still, I think I can rightfully feel satisfied with what I did.
I oversaw the production of 12 releases for Arrow Video (19 if you count those that had separate UK and US editions or UHD and Blu-ray editions), containing 22 different feature films from 6 different countries.
In the course of this I commissioned roughly 65 different contributors (technically more given that some of the people I commission have crews they work with as well).
I produced (in some cases co-produced) approximately 58 new extras (arguably more but one of the projects was inherited from another producer who had already commissioned some stuff so I don’t count those ones as mine, even though I oversaw their completion). One of these was a feature length documentary on the late Mike Hodges for which we shot what would turn out to be his last filmed interview.
I commissioned 26 new written essays and 24 new pieces of art.
That all adds up to a lot of work. Not just for me, but other people as well. All of whom got paid. Some of whom were making their first appearance on disc extras and quite a few of whom I was working with for the first time.
At Electric Dreamhouse we published 3 new books with 2 more in the bag and up for pre-order, for which I designed 4 of the covers.
In a year that saw real difficulties for myself and many close friends, including painful losses I really need to learn to see and embrace the wins.
Things got made. Good things that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. People who make things got paid to do what they do best. That’ll do, pig.
Neil Snowdon 