RAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I don’t know how you all do it.

So many of you taking part in NaVloPoMo have been writing comments on my videos every day, so I know you’re watching – AND you’re making incredible films. Which is what it should be all about, I feel – I don’t want to just be making films here, I want to be watching and talking, responding and collaborating. But I haven’t been able to find the time to do that for days. So I’ve tried to steal a couple of hours this evening to watch videos.

I watched 5-10 films while the dinner was in the oven between 8 and 9. Then I watched a few more while Kate ordered our shopping online between 10 and 11.30.

And I still hadn’t made a film myself. In fact, I was so busy watching that I’d totally forgotten that I was even supposed to make one myself. Until 11.33pm. So this is the only option left to me! Really fulfilling what I said at the beginning of NaVloPoMo about just posting ANYTHING. You can’t even *see* this, the low light filming on my phone is so bad.

Anyway, the point is that I’m humbled by the talent and passion and generosity everybody’s showing by both creating and watching other people. And a bit frustrated at why I can’t get my shit together to do it better myself.

At some point, I want to try to share links to some of the videos I’ve watched. But there are dozens being posted for NaVloPoMo each day, and I’m days and days behind.

Now I’m really finally off to my bed on the floor. Kate and I usually hang out quite a lot in the evenings, so it felt a bit weird watching separate things in separate rooms. I wish I could both watch and hang with her. Perhaps I’m going to have to set up an Apple TV in our living room and drag her even further into our hell.

Alternative video files:
Quicktime / Flash

See comments

Kate’s first videoblog post

Click To Play

I handed the camera to Kate today. We were in Burnham Beeches, just outside London (map/satphoto). The colours are incredible this year. Another thing I’ll miss in evergreen Vancouver Island.

I was trying to persuade her to sing her song The Falling of the Leaves (a Yeats poem she set to music – you can hear it on her Myspace page) so that I could use it as a soundtrack for the other moments I shot all around the woods. But this is better.

I think I’m going to give her the camera more often.

Alternative file types:
Quicktime / Flash (click to play if player above doesn’t work)

See comments

Trip on the ferry to Dartmouth

Click To Play

Just some moments from a trip down the river yesterday.

It’s a funny thing – I probably wouldn’t post this if it weren’t for NaVloPoMo. Because it’s aspiring to be something it’s not.

I wanted to do NaVloPoMo because I thought it’d make me feel more comfortable posting just *anything* without judging it too much. I wonder whether it’s having the opposite effect. Seeing all the amazing things other people are posting has made me dissatisfied with the kind of stuff I’m doing with this phone.

It’s made me realise that I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with my mobile phone’s aesthetic limitations. It shoots good *resolution* for a phone but I don’t really like the colours, the contrast, the *character* of the video it makes.

So while it’s great for capturing personal human moments and posting them in the moment, without frills, it’s not so good for taking moving snapshots of *things* that I see and want to photograph. The images just look flat, and dull.

I know that making things on my phone has got me making things and posting more often, which is great. And the aesthetic limitation has stopped me getting too hung up about what I make, which is also great.

But in NaVloPoMo I wanted to post a whole load of different types of films up, and some of them just won’t work with this phone. I want to start playing with a proper camera again.

And the truth is, I haven’t got time to. It’s already causing tension at home, the amount of time I’m spending at my computer for NaVloPoMo – and all I’ve posted are simple single-shot nothingy little snapshots. The time spent cutting the San Francisco film last week and this film today are just *too much*.

So I guess I’m stuck with my phone and its boring image quality. And that’s what I’ve got to work with this month. That’s my challenge. Fight the aspirational demons that tell me that you’re all making more interesting videos than me. Fuck it. Just post stuff. And talk. Create and connect. Kill the artist. 🙂

And yeah, yeah, I know… a bad workman blames his tools…

File types: Quicktime I Flash

See comments

NaVloPoMo – The Dirty Truth…?

Click to Play

Maybe. But I think that for me, NaVloPoMo is not just about making, it’s about watching and talking. 41 participants x 30 days = 1230 films. So the marital bed might be a little colder than usual this month…

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

See comments

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: