Well I finally did it!

Now that By The Gods is well and truly over I decided that it was time to get my music videos online. Of course the fact that without the regular gatherings my ego has taken quite a battering, because I no longer have people coming over to me and saying that they enjoyed the videos, had nothing to do with it what-so-ever! I guess now I'll have to settle for people sending me emails <hint, hint> <nudge, nudge> <wink, wink>.

It wasn't really a difficult choice when it came to deciding which of my music videos should be the first to go online. I simply picked the one that everybody always asks to see, the one that everybody always asks for a copy of and so 'CIRCLE IN THE SAND' was chosen to be the music video that would launch the website.

Circle In The Sand will always be my favourite of all of the music videos that I have produced. I think it was the first time that I realised that what I was creating wasn't just a bunch of appropriate clips set to an appropriate piece of music. When people would tell me how incredible they thought it was, how it really captured the essence of the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle, I began to understand that I was taking something that was very personal to me and sharing it with others.

This music video will always hold a special place in my heart for the fact that it brought me back to Xena: Warrior Princess the show. Somewhere during the fifth season I lost my love of the series; I'm not sure if it was actually the series itself but organising the By The Gods evenings and producing the music videos became somewhat of a chore, no longer a passion or a joy.

When the sixth series began to air it felt as though I was watching it out of obligation, then came 'Who's Gurkhan?'. For a while I had been searching for the perfect clip to fit the lyric 'I'm a goddess on my knees' and I'd finally found it. So I decided to sit down and make the 'BITCH' music video. In doing so I had to capture a great deal of footage from the first, second and third seasons and found myself remembering why I loved the show so damn much in the first place.

I'm happy to say that since that time my passion for the series has not diminished.

My first impression of Gabrielle was that she was a bit of a wet dish cloth, but then I was watching a specially edited edition of Return Of Callisto and all I could decipher was 'some irritating blonde got married to some dopey bloke, when she could have had the dark haired bird in the leather and then this other blonde kills the dopey bloke and the irritating one can't kill the psychotic one, what a wuss!'

Once I actually started watching the series I fell in love with the character of Gabrielle.
She was a bard, so was I.
She was in love with a tall, dark brunette, so was I.
She was an irritating blonde, so was... (Hang on a minute!)
I loved the way that her character grew and developed, and despite her trials she never lost that light that Xena was so afraid she would if she stayed with the warrior.

Supposedly she was the 'sidekick' but in reality she was so much more and 'LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU' let me play with everything that the character had become.

There's something oddly appealing and sinfully dangerous about the relationship between Xena and Callisto. Despite the fact that Xena killed Callisto's family, destroyed the child  and created a monster 'psycho barbie' seems to have an attraction to the dark warrior, don't you think? Is that why she has problems killing Xena, or is that just an excuse to keep her around because she made such a good villain?

So it was only a matter of time before there was a story line where our protagonist and antagonist were forced to work together in A Necessary Evil, and it worked so well that they did it again in Sacrifice II.

They make the deadliest of foes and the most formidable of teams and 'CAUSING A COMMOTION' seemed like a perfect choice to sum up the relationship. When Madonna performed the song on her Blonde Ambition tour she had a play fight with her dancers - Donna and Nikki - and I guess it amused me, so I thought 'I can do something with this'.

Sometimes you're driving in your car, or in my case you're the passenger while Sweet Nuisance is driving her car, and a song comes on the stereo. And before you know it you're fitting the clips into place and seeing the music video in your head. That's just what happened with 'COLOUR BLIND'. At first I was laughing because the colours being sung about - blue, green, yellow - were not only the colour of Gabrielle's tops during the first four seasons but they were also in order. When I listened to the rest of the lyrics I realised that it was a really sweet song and that I really wanted to make a music video for Xena and Gabrielle.

I also think I got pretty lucky in finding clips with Gabrielle wearing the appropriate colours for the appropriate emotions; my favourite being 'feeling yellow, a little hazy about my love'. The 'triangle' created between Najara, Gabrielle and Xena was amazing, the way it was written, directed and acted made it a plausible possibility. Najara was clearly besotted with Gabrielle from the first time they met; and Gabrielle was curious about the crusader, especially when she appeared to be everything that Xena was but without the darkness.

So what if it had been Najara instead of Xena who had ridden through Poteidaia and saved Gabrielle from the slave trade?

But I digress. And that's a whole different music video waiting to happen!

In July 2000 Timothy Omundson was due to attend a convention called Olympiad 2000 in Manchester, England; five days before the convention Tim had to cancel because of 'Judging Amy' filming commitments. At that point I was halfway through making this music video, the introduction video that would have been played before he arrived on the stage. With the pressure to produce the video gone the project was shelved.

But even then I knew that I had something with the video, something that would get to the audience and so in March last year 'IN THE NAME OF LOVE' went back into production. The end result had that 'something', everytime I watch it a shiver runs along my spine during a particular moment. I wonder if anyone else experiences the same thing? Let me know.

This video was three clips away from being completed when we got the news that Ted Raimi would not be able to attend 'The Hercules and Xena Symposium' in 1999 - I scrapped the whole video. And it stayed scrapped for the next four years until after much nagging from my mother I decided to make the damn thing.

'PRETTY FLY' was pretty much the only way that I was going to produce a Joxer music video. Don't get me wrong I like the character, he was funny and entertaining, clumsy and accident prone, and although a legend in his own mind he did have the heart of a lion when it came to the people he cared about. So I was pleased that the song gave me the opportunity to portray all those great parts of Joxer and make everybody laugh at the same time.

So why do I hesitate when it comes to making a Joxer music video? Season 5, that's why.

I remember the big thing about how they were finally going to deal with the Joxer/Gabrielle thing in 'Chakram'. So he told her he loved her and then spent the rest of the season getting progressively more annoying to the degree that when Livia stuck her sword through him in 'Eve' I felt, dare I say, relieved.

That's why 'Pretty Fly' is so good, because it let's me remember what I liked about the character. Plus I managed to get in a few digs about Joxer being oblivious to what was really going on between Xena and Gabrielle. Poor Guy.

It's a pretty big deal for me. Before I made Xena music videos I wrote Xena fan fiction and every bards dream was to get that all exclusive invitation to be listed on The Bard's Corner... I never got that invitation. But about a week ago I received an invitation to be one of the first vidders to be listed in the newly uploaded Xena Music Videos section of the Australian Xena Information Page. YAY ME!

First I would like to state for the record that SUBTEXT RULES! but...You can't deny the chemistry that explodes between Xena and Ares or the attraction that exists between Gabrielle and Ares, I'm fascinated by both and 'BED' was a great way to explore both relationships.

Every once in a while I burn a bunch of songs to disc, go for a walk and see if any of the tracks scream that they must be made into a music video. 'I'M WITH YOU' was the first track on the disk, it was a very short walk! The lyrics were perfect for the episode 'Return Of The Valkyrie' and only 'Return Of The Valkyrie' so I took that as my challenge - one song, one episode.

Once again it was the deep love between the two characters that was at the heart of this video, and I wouldn't have it any other way.