30 days / 30 videos / 30 seconds / 30 frames per second

for videoblogging week 2011

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

(view in HD on YouTube)

I just found out it’s videoblogging week. Starting today. Usually I’m on top of these things. At least to begin with.

So here’s one I made last week, when I got my iPad2. The girls had just watched a video of Amy riding a donkey on holiday, and as soon as it finished and reverted to Camera mode, they wanted to make their own. They didn’t need instructions.

The last minute of tonight’s Ravenscourt Park fireworks, seen from outside the park, on the way home with two very tired girls. A single clip for Day 6 of Vlomo. I was going to cut together a story about tonight, but then I remembered what I’d said. You see? I’m learning. So here’s the text version:

We had a party at our house, which was great – and then went to the park en masse. We agreed that we were going to stand outside the park and watch the fireworks from Starch Green – because they look just as good from there, and it’s hell inside the park: dark and crowded and expensive.

But some kind of zombie sheep effect took hold and we all kept walking into the park and paid £6 ($10) each. All of the children immediately wanted £5 lightsabres. I refused to get Amy one – and then felt like a douchebag. Luckily, we’d managed to smuggle in some booze in a child carrier backpack [classy]. So while we watched a small children’s firework display, I poured everyone an illegal glass of wine. This was the highlight. (Mostly because it reminded me of drinking Thunderbird on the beach when I was 15.)

Trying to atone for the lightsabre douchebaggery, I made the rookie mistake of loudly agreeing to let Amy go on the fairground Carousel in front of all the other children. Cue group Carousel expedition. We left before the main fireworks display.

It kicked off as we got back to Starch Green, where we’d intended to see it all in the first place. Amy was half dead. Lila was insane. The fireworks stuttered on and off for ages – from outside the park it felt particularly like a recession era display. But we did have this big ending, before we dragged ourselves home to clear up the mess from the party.

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This was shot with a Nokia N8, which Womworld/Nokia just sent me for testing, and which I assumed was set to HD video quality by default. I was really looking forward to seeing how it recorded the fireworks in HD, but was too stupid to check. Turns out it ships set to 640×480, so that’s all you’ve got here, I’m afraid. Spot the metaphor.

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Quicktime H264 Podcast file

Looking for a very reliable car? Look no further than the Toyota Camry

Mount Washington, Vancouver Island, September 2008

for #vlomo10

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H264 Podcast File

iPhone video file

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)

iPod / iPhone compatible MP4 podcast file

Old clips given a home for videoblogging week 2009.

Château de Quéribus (map) is one of the Cathar Castles in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south of France – the Pays Cathare, or “Cathar Country”. Quéribus is sometimes considered the last refuge of the Cathars – perhaps where the Cathar treasure (the Grail?) was carried to, by the four Cathars who escaped the bloody fall of Montségur.
It’s an eerie feeling to have it all to yourself before dawn.

iPhone / iPod compatible mp4 file

Found in the vaults. From May 16, 2008, 2 weeks after we arrived in Canada.
Worth remembering this week, as the winter sets in. Started to get my first proper pangs of homesickness this weekend. Which may be partly why I’ve fallen a bit behind in posting.

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Podcast file (iPod / iPhone Compatible)

(yes, my side of the screen is supposed to be silent)

this one has a bit of a story behind it.

5 years ago, we came out here to the Comox Valley for six months so I could finish writing a novel that i’d already been working on for a year.

it was about a young wannabe director who goes to America, visits movie locations and starts to lose the line between fantasy and reality. it was pretty funny – and I had a great agent – and everybody thought it was going to be a massive hit – and i fucking BLEW IT

i came back from Canada with the book unfinished and started working for my dad’s aluminium company. i blamed this on a car accident, which i said had stopped me writing. really though… (i’ve never admitted this before) i could’ve finished it if I’d just fucking knuckled down and applied myself. but there you go. 18 months and multiple thousand quid down the bog. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

then we had Amy, three years passed. the aluminium company went bust, and i went freelance (same thing, more or less).

but before i got properly lost in freelance hell, i gave the book one last shot. i flew out to San Francisco by myself in november 2006 to revisit the movie locations i’d been writing about. the idea was that i’d write and videoblog while i was there – the sights and sounds would fuel a reimagining of the story – and i’d return with a vision of how to tie together all my unfinished fragments.

instead i just lost the line between fantasy and reality.

so these clips have been sitting unwatched and unedited on my hard drive – a bit too guilt-inducing to open – until now. life is a bit more back on track, we’re back in canada, i have a good steady job working for someone i like and i’m starting to feel like i can write again… so i reopened the box.

i haven’t looked at them all again yet, but i have clips from movie locations all around the san francisco bay area. if you like this and want more, let me know and i’ll hack some of them together.

i’ve also just installed the AddThis plugin, something i’ve been meaning to do for a while. so if you like a video, you can easily add it to a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon or Delicious so other people can find it, too.

and the answer is Yes, this really was shot in Room 773 of the Cathedral Hill Hotel (map), formerly the Jack Tar Hotel, spinetinglingly unchanged 32 years later. and if you haven’t seen Coppola’s (and Murch’s) The Conversation, then what are you doing still reading this? you should be on Amazon or Netflix buying or renting it.

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Podcast file (iPod/iPhone compatible)

Podcast file (iPod/iPhone compatible)

***UPDATE***
8 Nov: I’ve cut down my links to make them quicker. Thanks for all the feedback. After several reshoots, I think I’m finding the right style for this, now – like my old FatGirlInOhio videos in 2005.
***

I call it a review show – but really it’s just unadulterated praise. A guide to stuff I love. Please add your own more informed and balanced thoughts and recommendations in the comments.

I talk about – and include episodes from:

EPIC FU
http://epicfu.com/
(can’t believe I didn’t mention Steve and Zadi)

BEACHWALKS WITH ROX
http://beachwalks.tv/
(can’t believe I didn’t mention Lexi)

LO-FI SAINT LOUIS
http://lofistl.com/
(can’t believe I didn’t mention the Helium Tapes)

WRECK AND SALVAGE
http://wreckandsalvage.com/
(can’t believe I didn’t mention Quirk and Nelson)

LO-FI SESSIONS
http://lofisessions.com/
(can’t believe I didn’t playlist Sunyatta)

RYAN IS HUNGRY
http://ryanishungry.com/
and my previous RyanIsHungry playlist is here

(damn, remembering everything you’re supposed to mention in 1-2 minutes is hard)

Podcast/Download file link (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)