Sometimes, things don't go that smoothly...

As you will know, Messyworld likes to do very complicated shoots. Unfortunately, despite some of the sets being very 'Wallace and Gromit' or even 'Acorn Antiques' style , they also can be very expensive at times. Last year we invested £25,000 to film for Messyworld. This is pretty normal and produces around 12 updates (the rest being filmed individually). Unfortunately, on one of the days, we suffered major electrical problems at our studios caused by severe weather.

For some reason, we decided to open our studio complex in the middle of nowhere. Perfect for shooting wam content with gunge prep rooms to produce serious amounts of mess very quickly, lovely hot showers, dressing rooms, kitchens and 4 totally waterproof studios. All nicely tucked away in its own private grounds on a small business park. All great, but, there are drawbacks. Like when things go wrong, you can't just get things fixed in a couple of hours like you would in London or the south-east (where we are originally from).

Luckily, because we use the studios for other things including the occasional live broadcast or webcast, we have a backup generator and managed to get 2 of the ring mains working. The main overhead studio lighting was still out. All the models had been booked, the sets built including the Apartment 19 set and all the gunge mixed. We couldn't bail by this point. We filmed with as much lighting as possible and used some blitz wartime spirit and the keep calm and carry on mentality to get us through. And, lots of tea, because we're british and that's how we solve things!

However, when it came to post-production, we were not happy with a small number of shoots. We had planned to completely scrap them altogether and cut our loses, taking a financial hit. Problem was, some of them were series linked and dropping an episode would confuse people, especially where ongoing scorekeeping was involved. And, scrapping them would also mean a hit on the reinvestment that we are always determined to make. Yet, as we get very good feedback on our production values we didn't want to weaken that strong reputation we have for quality.

Another problem was this came not too long after we had a major upgrade to our studios, replacing the showers, toilets, heating and even some of the structure of the building. It is a pretty large building and the public liability insurance means that, quite rightly, we have to keep things in very good order.

So, we had to think long and hard about the direction the site would take for a while.

A little secret: We have a couple of people, whose identities are strictly confidential, who *occasionally* get sent videos a few weeks before they appear on the site. We think of them as a focus group to help us make editorial decisions. They are fully paid-up members but we can test videos that we are not 100% confident with on them and get critical feedback.

They loved the videos and basically told us 'they have to go out' despite the slightly lesser quality.

So, we have found a compromise, we will go ahead and release the content but will compensate with an additional update alongside them.

The content in question includes:
Apartment 19: The Wannabe Model and The Rivals: Episodes 1 and 3. There are one or two others but we managed to get them to a fairly good level, the lighting was focused entirely on the models getting messy, so presenters, Lisa & Louise may be a little dark.

We have now updated our back up electrics to prevent force majeure events from impacting us so heavily.

Tomorrow, Friday 15th, we'll have 2 updates.