Guy Fawkes Night – #vlomo10 day 6

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.

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.


Quicktime H264 Podcast file

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Pangea Day – Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards in LA, Day One

Pangea Day, May 10 2008

Nokia have flown me to LA today for the Pangea Day Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Challenge, in which I’m one of five finalists.

Update: I didn’t win, Eduardo Cachucho did, but the event was extraordinary and they laid on untold luxuries for me, Kate and Amy. We had an amazing trip.

Pangea Day was the largest film festival ever – all around the world, people gathered to watch films chosen by the Pangea Day judges. Both in officially organised events in cities on each continent, and in thousands of small community-organised clusters. The idea of Pangea Day is to bring the world together through film. It was a TED funded project granted to Jehane Noujaim, director of the documentaries Startup.com and Control Room.

The day before Pangea Day, I attended the Pangea Day Filmmakers Retreat, for which they flew dozens of emerging documentary makers to LA from around the world. It was a day of presentations from prestigious documentary makers and collaborative exercises, with group mentors. I had Matthew Modine as my mentor… So it was quite hard to resist doing my best Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Especially as the atmosphere was relatively humourless. 100 documentary makers. It was a bit like a pre-natal class. That kind of setup always presses my Naughty Boy button.

Anyway, it was a great experience. And it was all free.

Next Pangea Day – May 2010? They say they will try to do it every two years. It can only get bigger and better. Viva Pangea Day!

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