not yet//a chardre story

it took maybe about 34 tries to film the video.

by the time we actually got the final shot into editing, you could tell we were worn out. i could see the bags under leo's eyes, i could see how it wore down on him. we started, stopped, and paused filming; we charged the camera batteries, ate, napped for mere minutes at a time, but 26 hours passed before we were done with the final version. leo's eyes were puffy from stifled tears between shots; i couldn't bear it but i knew what i'd thought of would help.

we recorded probably the most honest, unscripted, uncut, and completely genuine video i've ever wanted to, needed to, or had to record. i never intended on releasing such intimate content onto our channel, especially the actual BAM channel, but we knew we had to fix it. most of it, anyway.

our audition was slowly creeping up to 200 million views. and as conceited as it sounds, we knew we had a fanbase. i took the track of us singing, and overlaid the clips of leo reading out hate comments. we knew fans would have our back, and we both knew that having 10 consistent fans was better than having 10000 flaky ones. 

we kissed. on camera. a lot. i snuck that into the final too. and as i exported the video, listening (cringingly) to myself singing as a young teen, and only interrupted by leo's cracking voice reading out the letters "kys" over and over, i decided i'd add one more thing.

leo had gone to bed, and i dug out my old hard drive from my mum's "memoir box" in the kitchen. we took it everywhere. everything in it was tiny, albeit important. our first key to a rental house because of a concert. piece of confetti from the first show. first tour ticket, etc. one was a hard drive, full of all my school projects as a kid.

i plugged it into my laptop and scrolled through until i found what i was looking for.

in primary school, we had a project called "what do we want to see in the world?"

i did mine on human rights. ironic, right?

i cut the four-second clip of me going "accept everyone, human rights!" and added that to the end of the video. 

added the tags, added a title, fixed the thumbnail.

/posting: 98%/

uploaded.

i saw the notification bell already going off, merely seconds after i'd ejected the hard drive. 

i'd deal with it tomorrow.

i switched off my laptop and went to bed.

next to the only person that could bring me comfort.