The slowest series ever. In November 2007, I posted Part 1, arriving in San Francisco; in November 2008, I posted Videoblogging The Conversation; this year it’s Vertigo. And they were all shot in November 2006. Holy shitsticks, I’ve aged more in the last three years than this movie location has in the last 50!
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Formats available: MPEG4 Podcast File (.mp4)
It’s taken me a week to find the time to sort through the footage and cut it down to a watchable size – but here are 8 minutes of highlights from the 18 or so hours of non-stop filming we did on Day 1. We had some technical hitches with uploading, so I didn’t post from the road as much as I’d wanted.
@philcampbell, @vikkichowney and I were sent by Nokia & Womworld on an 18,000 mile tour of Twestivals last weekend, with instructions to document the trip on the new Nokia N86 8MP – we started in Helsinki, and then headed off in different directions – me to Bucharest, Phil to Dubai, Vikki to, um, Birmingham – where we handed our N86s over to @bvlad and @freshplastic who continued the tour – all of us reconvening in Oxford on Sunday night.
Twestivals are essentially meetups of Twitter users in scores of cities around the world, to raise money for local causes. Each city’s cause was chosen by an online vote.
Nokia sponsored our trip (as well as carbon offsetting our miles) by giving a Euro for every 5 miles we travelled. So in the end, we raised around €3600 for local causes. Plus we carried with us a free Nokia N86 for each Twestival we visited to raffle or auction.
More to come – and I’ll post some links to all the media that I and the others generated.
Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4), Flash Video (.flv)
See comments "Spies, Free Hugs and Helsinki Twestival – Day 1 Nokia N86 Tour 2009"Old clips given a home for videoblogging week 2009.
Château de Quéribus (map) is one of the Cathar Castles in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south of France – the Pays Cathare, or “Cathar Country”. Quéribus is sometimes considered the last refuge of the Cathars – perhaps where the Cathar treasure (the Grail?) was carried to, by the four Cathars who escaped the bloody fall of Montségur.
It’s an eerie feeling to have it all to yourself before dawn.
iPhone / iPod compatible mp4 file
See comments "Capturing the castle before breakfast – Video blogging week day four"Fantastic Home Birth Video, about planning for natural childbirth at home with a midwife and birth pool in Virginia. It’s a beautifully told video birth story with an in-depth discussion of homebirthing.
I wanted to make a video about our own experiences of having two home births, but we were too close to it, and I felt I’d be doing a bad job of emulating a RyanIsHungry video.
So I was very happy when Ryanne & Jay told me that they were making a video about their friends Katherine & Todd having a home birth – they’re by far the best people for the job. This is it – and it’s fantastic. I hope a lot of parents and professionals find it and use it. Kate and I have a cameo via video chat about halfway through.
Their original post of this home birth video is here, where you can read the accompanying text and leave comments.
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See comments "Home Birth Video revlogged from RyanIsHungry"A family video. Our generation’s man on the moon moment.
See comments "The Decisive Moment – VloMo08 Day 4"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!
