for videoblogging week 2011

shot, cut and posted from my ipod touch with imovie app

(view in HD on YouTube)

shot and cut on kate’s iphone
for videoblogging week 2011

I can’t embed this video, so here’s a link to it:

http://nokiaminimo.com/watch?movieID=3941

It’s a shorter 90 recut of Videoblogging The Conversation, for the Nokia MiniMO competition.

They want 90 second mobile videos, inspired by your favourite movie scenes. Shot on phones or point & shoot cameras. The standard of entries so far is pretty so-so – a lot of you vloggers could clean up here… The prizes include a trip to the Cannes Lions Advertising festival at the end of the month and a bunch of video kit and phones.

and I’d love your votes!

I’m going to shoot another one this weekend, I think, based on the opening scene of Narc, perhaps. More to follow.

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PS
I only found out about this competition by accident. Apparently, Nokia and MO Film have been touring universities this year, teaching mobile filmmaking to students.
I’m regularly amazed by how little joined-up thinking seems to happen with these initiatives. There are so many people around – like me – who are passionate about creative videoblogging and mobile filmmaking, and keep getting involved with trying to get people doing more of it. And then every time there’s a new competition or promotional event to get people doing it, they put a bunch of money behind promoting it, as if it’s never been done before – but never contact us. Frustrating.
All it would take is a simple email list. Maybe what we need, as has been mentioned before, is to start to organize ourselves?

Shot on my Nokia N93 phone

iPhone video file link

Shot on my Nokia N93

iPhone video file

in case you haven’t seen, or if you only get these videos via email or RSS, the last few days’ videos have been posted on 12seconds.tv rather than as individual posts on Twittervlog.

you can see them in the little player at the top right of the Twittervlog site, or by clicking here to see them on my channel at 12seconds.tv

no doubt more vlomo videos will be posted on 12seconds this month – it’s a manageable way to meet the challenge of posting every day, although I don’t just post any old clips there. Even a 12 second moment can tell some kind of story – and I try to get two or three different elements in each one.

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Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)
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It’s taken me a week to find the time to sort through the footage and cut it down to a watchable size – but here are 8 minutes of highlights from the 18 or so hours of non-stop filming we did on Day 1. We had some technical hitches with uploading, so I didn’t post from the road as much as I’d wanted.

@philcampbell, @vikkichowney and I were sent by Nokia & Womworld on an 18,000 mile tour of Twestivals last weekend, with instructions to document the trip on the new Nokia N86 8MP – we started in Helsinki, and then headed off in different directions – me to Bucharest, Phil to Dubai, Vikki to, um, Birmingham – where we handed our N86s over to @bvlad and @freshplastic who continued the tour – all of us reconvening in Oxford on Sunday night.

Twestivals are essentially meetups of Twitter users in scores of cities around the world, to raise money for local causes. Each city’s cause was chosen by an online vote.

Nokia sponsored our trip (as well as carbon offsetting our miles) by giving a Euro for every 5 miles we travelled. So in the end, we raised around €3600 for local causes. Plus we carried with us a free Nokia N86 for each Twestival we visited to raffle or auction.

More to come – and I’ll post some links to all the media that I and the others generated.

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4), Flash Video (.flv)

A little something from earlier.

I’m not going to be posting everything here – just a few bits and pieces. You can follow the whole tour on Twitter here: @ruperthowe - and by following the #n86tour hashtag that the three of us are using (just put n86tour into the search box) – and most of my video will be on my Flickr stream – when my phone is actually posting things properly. Bloody technology.

iPod / iPhone compatible MP4 podcast file

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Podcast file (iPod / iPhone Compatible)

Podcast file (iPod/iPhone compatible)

Podcast file (iPod/iPhone compatible)

I was putting together a big elaborate post-election video… but in the comments to the Placenta video, Frank Carver reminded me to take my own advice: the key to success in posting every day for Videoblogging Month is to avoid ambition – don’t up the ante each day. Just carry your camera with you, capture a simple moment and share it.

And I’ve been really enjoying Elsie Escobar’s VloMo videos – she’s recording her baby girl’s first few weeks. She made me realise: I have a videoblog, we’re thousands of miles from home, and I’ve hardly posted any video or pictures of Lila for all our family and friends. She’s seven weeks old and almost 14lbs already! So to start with, here’s 90 seconds from breakfast.

I love how all these VloMo videos and comments are creating responses and conversations.

Watch videoblogging month videos at:
http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08
and join the group at Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/groups/vlomo

Shot on my Nokia N93 phone.

Formats Available: iPod/iPhone compatible MPEG4 (.m4v)

Is this what Halloween is like everywhere in North America?

Madness.

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Speaking of madness, it’s suddenly Videoblogging Month again. Already? How did that happen?

Last year it was called NaVloPoMo, but it’s (sadly?) just been renamed Videoblogging Month 2008 – VloMo08 for short.

Post one video every day in November. That’s all you have to do…

2007 was the first year, and it turned out to be an incredible collaborative experiment. Exhausting but rewarding. I hope this year is as much fun.

Actually, I think for me it’ll be *more* fun. Last year I just didn’t have time to watch enough. But then, between us all, we made over 1000 videos in 30 days.

You can watch (and JOIN IN) at our new Mefeedia channel:
http://www.mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08

I can’t wait to see the videos start coming in.

Meanwhile, it’s now 2 a.m. – so you’ll have to excuse me. I have a *lot* of candy to get through before Amy wakes up.

Formats available: MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)

I finally did what I’ve been meaning to do for about 2 1/2 years. I made a hyper-videoblog post.

You can only see it on YouTube – here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtQg_LCq_T8&fmt=18

The thing that finally spurred me on was YouTube’s new Annotations feature. All this time, I’ve been waiting and hoping that they would introduce something like this.

But at the moment, they only allow you to use it on their site – no embedded players yet.

There are six different parts to it – what path you take is up to you. Click the options at the end of each clip to choose what I do.

I really was feeling indecisive about what to do with my evening – and it proved the perfect subject. I made it up as I went along, and it took 30 mins to shoot and 90 mins to get the clips onto the Mac, onto YouTube and Annotated with links.

I’ve always thought that for my hypervideo dreams to become reality, hyperlinked video would need to be a) easy to use, b) easy to create and c) within a setting that people are already comfortable with.

I’ve been working on much more complex hypervideo stories, and if this quick slapdash bit of fun seems to work, I’ll start putting some together properly. Let me know what you think.

It’s been a good week for me with my old nemesis YouTube. Tumblr saw my High Quality YouTube Embed Generator (thanks to Wreck and Salvage) and implemented it as standard on all Tumblr YouTube embedded players. So I helped make the world a prettier place.

The future is now! Even if this particular part of the future looks a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book from 1982.