New Zealand's own Big Gay Anti-Hate Video is now complete and ready to roll on YouTube. Around 30 Aucklanders – and also a big crowd of punters at K' Road's gay Naval to Lily's new anti-homophobia song in time for May's International Day Against Homophobia, in a clip which has now had over 230,000 views. Then a French version involved several more video participants and got over 280,000 views. The crew at TV production company Melva Media felt it was important to produce a Kiwi version. "We wanted to challenge ourselves technically and artistically to put the message out there about homophobia and how it still impacts our lives," drag entertainer and video editor Tess Tickle tells GayNZ.com. "On the technical side myself, James Leuii and Anne Speir wanted to put into practice everything we have learnt about filming and editing and have fun!" The crew gave themselves a week to put the clip together. "It was four days of filming and three days of post production," Tess explains. "It was really a last minute process so we rang as many people we could find who would want us to come to their home. We had just one run-through with the song and then filmed them. We were on tight schedules and enlisted the help of Di Woodhouse, Davina Douche and Anne Frear to help us get through the shoots." Now the video is complete, the Melva Media crew say they're very happy with the result, "but in the world of editing there is always room for improvement," Tess adds. "In saying that though you can't spend forever on something always trying to make it perfect, you can lose the moment and the interest. "We also wanted to include a vast cross section of the older generation in our community as we can sometimes get overlooked in the pretty stakes, our version is more real, and of course coming from the world of drag, how could we not include the girls?" she laughs. "A big thank you to all those who helped out from Tess Tickle, Anne Speir and James Leuii." Watch the true-blue Kiwi Big Gay Anti-Hate YouTube video below. Matt Akersten - 9th July 2009