Author: Ru

Mrs Patel

Shot and edited on my Nokia N93 phone – excuse the lip sync – combination of the phone editor and Ovi’s flash video conversion.

“The next person to inspire me”: Mrs Patel from our local Post Office, about to be closed down by incompetence and greed in government and the privatised Post Office. After 35 years of service to our community – what does she get? An OBE? No. Termination.

This is today’s entry for the Pangea Day Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards.

The brief is to make 2 minute films about:

– The next thing that makes you smile.

– An act of kindness.

– The next person to inspire you.

– The best part of today.

They don’t stipulate in the rules that it has to even be shot on a phone, never mind a Nokia, but I’m doing what I always do and shooting AND editing on my N93. Hopefully that’ll give me extra brownie points with the judges! (if I get that far)

Please go here to the Pangea Day channel on Ovi and give me views and comments and favorites to help me out. You need to sign up for an Ovi account to comment, but if you have a spare two minutes, *please* do (also, you should upload your own)! It’s only the most popular films that will get a chance to go in front of the judges.

I should say that aside from the main competition at Ovi, the remarkable Mr David Howell has been appointed by Nokia to run his own Pangea Day competition at http://davidhowellstudios.com – post a link to your film in his comment section by May 2nd.

ANYWAY, enough selling

as for today’s film…

The Government are currently engaged in a disgraceful act of cultural vandalism. I believe that in 10-20 years – and beyond – they will be remembered for two things: The Iraq War, and the loss of the Post Offices.

For the sake of a mere ¬£200m per year, they are closing the last remaining centre of community in thousands of towns, villages and urban neighbourhoods. This is a brief interview with Mrs Patel, who has run our Post Office for 35 years. Two posts offices within half a mile of here are closing. Seven in our Borough. (and of course thousands throughout the country.) We have a higher density of older and disabled people in this ward than anywhere else in the borough Рpeople who will lose vital services.

I’m glad that I’m not going to be in the country at the next election. I’d be in a real dilemma at the ballot box. I couldn’t bring myself to vote Tory, but nor could I bring myself to reward the current bastards for everything they’re doing. Every day, more reasons to emigrate.

The Post Office issue is a classic case of everything that’s wrong with a) blind Privatisation and b) our party-based representative democracy. The local MP, Andy Slaughter, who lives opposite me, was fiercely against the closure of the Post Offices. But he couldn’t express that view in Parliament, where he represents us, or he’d lose his job. He was forced to vote for something he knew to be wrong, because his weak, venal party leadership had decreed it as policy.

Anyway, you probably came here to watch me making my usual arse of myself, not listen to my political opinions, so I’ll stfu and let you meet the lovely, inspiring, discarded Mrs Patel.

Original File: MPEG4 File

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MIA

Sorry I’ve been away for a while, particularly right after the start of Semanal.

I’ve been teaching gypsy traveller kids to videoblog all around the country, and trying to keep up with my other regular client work in the meantime – and it’s been FULL ON. I know I videoblog with my phone, and I know I should just post stuff and be damned… but apart from the fact that I can barely manage to check my email most days, I’ve felt like I can’t blog about my experiences with these kids while the project is going on. It might cause problems. So. I’ll be back in action in a couple of weeks, maybe less.

Also, it’s quite good to have a little break every now and then. Recharge. Now I’m champing at the bit.

See you soon.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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Semanal #1: The Sound of Music?

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to Play

Or if that doesn’t work, click here

—

This is my first post for Semanal

Post one video every week in 2008. That's all you have to do.

Five days after it was announced, there are already 80 people signed up!

Hopefully more will join throughout the year. (It's about the weekliness, and shouldn't be limited by whether people found out about it in its first seven days).

And this weekend in Brighton, Beth Tilston has organised a screening of films from Navlopomo – our month of videoblogging every day in November. Ryanne and Jay are visiting from America, and they'll be joining us. See more details about the screening here.

Semanal is continuing the spirit of Navlopomo, with a long-distance challenge instead of a 30 day sprint.

I expect that the cool things about Navlopomo will develop much further – the sense of community, the inspiration and the way that people replied to, referenced and remixed each other in their films. And we'll meet a whole load of new people from around the world.

Viva Semanal!

Formats available: iPod/iPhone (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv), Windows Media (.wmv)
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The Big Shave

I started growing my beard a year ago today. It’s my beardiversary. Randomly, a friend emailed me this morning and said “Love the beard” as a sign-off.

Like the N93, it was just supposed to be a brief experiment. I even shaved it off after 2 months to make one of my first proper little films with my phone (and as a tribute to Scorsese for finally winning his Oscar). I used the same music as his amazing 1967 short The Big Shave. I posted it on FatGirlInOhio – it was pre-Twittervlog. So lots of you won’t have seen it – and really, it also belongs here.

And the original, so you can compare and contrast:

Alternative formats:
Quicktime / Flash

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NaVloPoMo – The End :(

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to Play

I feel sad that this is over.

I feel sad that I didn't complete it in the way that I'd planned. Even though I never planned to.

But much more than that, I feel like laughing out loud for everyone else. All those who took part in just a little bit of it, those who got through most or almost all of it, and those who did it every day, within the deadline. A film every day for a month. That's so great.

We want to do a screening. And have a site. And record this somewhere so it isn't lost.

What have we learned? 🙂

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)
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Seesmic – Video Conversations

Not the most interesting post for some of you, as it’s about the features on a new video sharing site that only a limited number of people have access to. Sorry. Tomorrow might be better 🙂

I’ve been playing with Seesmic for the first time today.

(I got an invite after emailing the guy in charge a few weeks ago)

In my intro to the NaVloPoMo group about how we’d cope with trying to post video every day in November, I said that I thought any online video counted, no matter how it was recorded or published… so I’m going to follow my own advice and just publish the video conversation I’ve had on Seesmic today.

I’ve linked to the public versions of the videos, below. i.e. You can still see them, even if you don’t have a Seesmic account. But if you don’t have a Seesmic account, you just can’t get involved, reply or go anywhere else in Seesmic from these links. So you have to click on each link in turn. Which is a drag, but I guess it’ll open out before long.

The thing is, you can see how a video conversation can develop easily with this tool.

These links open in new window/tabs:

This is my original post, called “My first proper Seesmic: get mobile, Seesmic”

And below are the following short replies, all within a short time of each other, which develop into a conversation of sorts, where people are referencing each other’s replies. They’re quite quick, and you can see how this could get a) addictive and b) interesting, particularly if these people can use video to talk and show things beyond the confines of their desk.

Christian’s reply

Clint’s reply

Deek’s reply

Mike’s reply

Mike’s follow up saying that half the above video was lost

My reply to all of them

Adam’s reply

My reply to Adam and Mike

Nik’s reply

My reply to Nik

If you can’t be bothered to watch them all, my point in my video is that they’ve limited it so that you pretty much HAVE to use your webcam to record – trying to use anything else is a pain. And yet it would be SO EASY (and free) for them to change this – so that you could film outside with your regular camera and then just upload the file direct to Seesmic. At the moment, if you film something with your camera, you have to convert it to a Flash flv file before uploading, which is silly. It seems obvious to me that conversations could be more interesting if they were inspired by and conducted in more varied and interesting environments than just people’s desks/offices.

Hardly rocket science. But quite fun. And there’s a shortage of good tools to create video conversations. Damn, I hate that word. Why can’t I stop using it?

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