n93
For everybody back home – VloMo Day 5
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)
See comments "For everybody back home – VloMo Day 5"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!
The Best Part Of Today – April 6th – Snow!
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.
Mike’s follow up saying that half the above video was lost
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?
See comments "Seesmic – Video Conversations"This is Red Five; I’m going in!
This is one of the things I’m going to miss most about England when I go to Canada.
I shot this on Monday in Devon, on the way back from Kate’s dad’s cottage to the station in the nearest town. 20 minutes of death star taxi adrenaline. I was wondering what I should do with it until I saw Gogen’s NaVloPoMo Day 7 video of his drive back home through his town at night, set to music. Then I realised I’d secretly known all along what to do with it. NaVloPoMo is full of people responding to and being inspired by other people’s videos. Organic video conversations. I love it.
And I love how – when cutting quickly to music – you can find and take advantage of chance interactions between image and soundtrack.
It feels good to finally add the score for real, since when I’m actually driving at high speed along single lane country roads, this is *always* what I’m singing to myself in my head. And if I’m driving and there’s nobody else in the car, maybe perhaps sometimes I might even possibly have been known to sing it out loud. Maybe even quite loud. Especially the bit that kicks in after he turns off the tracking computer. It’s like being 11 again!
Alternative video formats:
Quicktime / Flash (click if above video doesn’t play)