David Chilvers makes videos about miniature games, which he shares on his YouTube Channel Olden Demon, a channel about rediscovering the joy in old Games Workshop products (or is it something more sinister..?) He describes his work as “literally just working on a laptop, pretty much typing out all my thoughts, occasionally standing up and doing the same thing again in front of the camera, then going back to working on the laptop to edit it all.”
I asked David:
When did you start working from home? I started working from home on this project a couple of years ago, but even before the pandemic I was doing a little bit of working from home in my previous job, where they liked to make everyone work from home and then complain when people did work from home, so I was doing that at least one day a week. I think two years fully on this project, though.
What made you decide to work from home rather than in premises offsite? It’s significantly cheaper. I could get everything I needed here, because I’ve got a very compact setup, so I don’t need to walk anywhere to do this. It would probably look a bit nicer if I hired out a special place, but I can really do everything I need to here, and at a certain point there’s a level where no one really complains about the video quality and the fidelity of things on YouTube too much because most people are shooting on their phones anyway. With a decent camera, lens and lighting I can get it good enough that I don’t need to spend any more money renting out a small space to do that.
What do you like best about working from home? Total freedom to do whatever I like! And the ability to block out any unnecessary noises or distractions as well, which is really useful, because when I’m creating these scripts it’s better if I can have nothing else going on whatsoever, just focus on the scripts, which is more creative work than I’m used to. When I used to work in an office I was using Excel and I could just do that with my brain off and just scroll down, make all the formulas, and it didn’t matter if there were all sorts of noises and explosions happening near me, I can easily do that. When I’m doing creative stuff dead silence is what I need.
What aren’t you so keen on/are there any difficulties in working from home? To be honest with you it’s fairly fine, the most annoying part is when it gets hot in the office during the extremely hot day that we get per year in this country, and when the light comes in I have to pull the blind down, shut the window and it gets very, very hot. The laptop gets hot as well, naturally, even on a cold day that’s going to get hot, but aside from that I can usually avoid most of the other weather conditions by just not going out to work.
What is your favourite feature of your workspace? I quite like the book rack behind me because there’s a lot of interesting stuff there that I can just whirl around and pick something up. I’ve got a whole bunch of books there that I’ve just not read at all, so I can just pick one up, have a flick through and a good old look. I do like the plants as well, they’re very good when they’re not dying or infested with flies.
You can visit David’s Olden Demon channel on YouTube, find out more on his website and follow him on Instagram.
Thank you so much to David for letting me photograph his home studio! You can visit David’s Olden Demon channel on YouTube, find out more on his website and follow him on Instagram.
Home / Work is a documentary photography project featuring people who work from home/live where they work. I am interested in how people design these spaces and how the lines between home and work are defined or blurred. If you are interested in participating in the project please get in touch.