I write this on the eve of a video shoot. I probably should have got around to it a little earlier, given that it's now 12:35am and I have to get up at 4:30am, and the deadline for this is tomorrow.

However, our video was only confirmed 12 days ago, so my excuse is that I've been quite busy. Compared with an ad, 12 days isn't very long to sort everything out. And we have four minutes to fill, instead of 60 seconds, so I've been edging on insanity trying to prepare for it.

It doesn't help that my idea for the video is also unwisely ambitious. It involves a (seemingly) one-take shot in an exterior location in London. We also only have one day to shoot the video. The past few days in the UK have been plagued by gale-force winds and rain.

The video involves about 50 extras, but due to budget restrictions, we can only afford 28, so we're having to cleverly 'recycle' extras by putting them in different wardrobe/beards and having them run round the back of the camera.

6:31am: I have now had my breakfast at the catering truck and am waiting for everybody at our first camera position. I am the only one here. Weather is actually quite nice.

2:12pm: We are on schedule and have just come back from lunch. We now enter the dangerous post-lunch complacency period when everyone slows down and you suddenly find you've somehow wasted an hour changing a light.

4:03pm: We are almost onto the last shot. Everyone is really happy and saying things like, "It's been a great day." This spells disaster.

4:36pm: My fears are confirmed. In perfect timing with the last 'big crane' shot, the weather takes a turn for the worse. Suddenly it's dark, rainy and miserable. The crowd of supposedly cheerful extras looks bedraggled and miserable. They're supposed to be overly-happily clapping in time to the music in a kind of ironically overly-cheerful scene. They look half-hearted and annoyed. The novelty of being in a pop video has long since worn off. There also aren't enough of them. Our big shot looks very small.

5:57pm: Well, we did our best. I got rid of our crane so that the crowd wouldn't look so pathetic, and brought in the end 'pan-off-to-reveal' joke quite a bit earlier to reduce the length of time we were looking at our minuscule crowd. I had to do a plate shot of the 'stunt dog' as it refused to do its stunt because it was too wet.

The point of what I'm bleating on about is that music videos are hard work, and I particularly applaud young directors who start out making them, because, unfortunately, budgets are getting smaller still. So if you can make a half-decent one, you're doing pretty well. This goes for young commercial directors, editors, composers, animators, producers and designers too. So congratulations to all the nominees of the First Boards Awards. I can imagine it was quite hard work.

Dougal Wilson is a commercial and music video director, repped by Blink Productions in the UK and Furlined for the US.