Indecision – an interactive hyper-videoblog story

RAAAAAAAAAA!

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.

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Immigrant Video Diary – Episode 2: “(Nothing But) Flowers”

One of the things that excited Kate most about coming here was the idea of learning to garden, to have her own vegetable patch.

The topsoil here isn't so good, and would need more added – and it was important to Katie that she should do it all herself. And she was 7 months pregnant, so didn't feel much like digging and turning a big bed. So she built a raised bed.

She used the shipping boxes from our move as a base (they'll rot away), then covered that with compost and cut grass left by the previous owners of our house.

Then she bought organic soil and manure in big plastic bags – not the greenest solution – but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

Turns out she's got green fingers.

The RyanIsHungry.com video that Katie mentions is here:
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/12/29/food-not-lawns-no-lawn-left-behind/


“This was a discount store,
Now it’s turned into a cornfield”

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One Minute Sunny

I like lumière videos. I like setting up a frame, as if taking a still picture, and then letting the camera roll for 60 seconds to see what happens within the frame. Often, something serendipitous will happen within the composition and within the allotted time.But lumière videos are silent, and I’m a big fan of videos with natural soundtrack.

Like Ryanne (and Jay)’s films, cut simply together, each clip with its natural background hum. There’s something very moving about the short rhythmic pulse of these sounds and images together.

I shot this one as a lumière , but it’d be half as good without its natural soundtrack. So I’m calling this a ‘son et lumière ‘ 😉

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_et_lumiere_(show)
(I used to love these, before irony)

Shot with the in-camera ‘Color Accent’ setting on the Canon IXUS 860, which allows you to sample a colour and turn everything else black and white.

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Ripen

Shot with the in-camera time-lapse setting on the Canon IXUS 860.

Music:
Roadrunner, by Gurdonark, via NegativeSoundInstitute.com

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Sun

Video thumbnail. Click to play

Click To Play

30 second lumi‚àö?£re

it's been almost too hot and sunny at the Vancouver Island Music Fest. the Puntledge River, which runs through the woods next to the festival grounds, draws as big a crowd as some of the stages.

Formats available:MPEG4 Video (.mp4), Flash Video (.flv), Cellphone – via Ovi (.3gp)

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Vancouver Island Music Fest: Amy and Kate dancing to 84 year old Earl Scruggs

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what? *plane* crash??

out for an evening bike ride with amy.

glad i took my phone out with me, for the first time in a long time.

a.c.a.c.

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Clocking Off, Cumberland Style

I realised… it’s not clear… these are strawberries, dipped in chocolate, filled with ice cream. I love pregnancy.

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plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

I just watched three videos by Jen Proctor, Cheryl Colan and David Howell, and realised that I should really stop worrying about finding time to cut all this stuff I’ve been shooting. Nothing is too small. Moments are MacGuffins.

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