Video Episodes:
6 Views
19:50:50 11/11/08
Videoblogging The Conversation
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 19:50:50 11/11/08
Click to Play (yes, my side of the screen is supposed to be silent)
this one has a bit of a story behind it.
5 years ago, we came out here to the Comox Valley for six months so I could finish writing a novel that i'd already been working on for a year.
it was about a young wannabe director who goes to America, visits movie locations and starts to lose the line between fantasy and reality. it was pretty funny and I had a great agent and everybody thought it was going to be a massive hit and i fucking BLEW IT
i came back from Canada with the book unfinished and started working for my dad's aluminium company. i blamed this on a car accident, which i said had stopped me writing. really though... (i've never admitted this before) i could've finished it if I'd just fucking knuckled down and applied myself. but there you go. 18 months and multiple thousand quid down the bog. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
then we had Amy, three years passed. the aluminium company went bust, and i went freelance (same thing, more or less).
but before i got properly lost in freelance hell (see this video for evidence) i gave the book one last shot. i flew out to San Francisco by myself in november 2006 to revisit the movie locations i'd been writing about. the idea was that i'd write and videoblog while i was there - the sights and sound would fuel a reimagining of the story - and i'd return with a vision of how to tie together all my unfinished fragments.
instead i just lost the line between fantasy and reality.
so these clips have been sitting unwatched and unedited on my hard drive - a bit too painful and guilt-inducing to open - until now. life is a bit more back on track, we're back in canada, i have a good steady job working for someone i like and i'm starting to feel like i can write again... so i reopened the box.
i haven't looked at them again yet, but i have clips from movie locations all around the san francisco bay area. if you like this, let me know and i'll hack them together.
i've also just installed the AddThis plugin, something i've been meaning to do for a while. so if you like a video, you can easily add it to a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon or Delicious so other people can find it, too.
shot in Room 773 of the Cathedral Hill Hotel ( map ), formerly the Jack Tar Hotel. and if you haven't seen Coppola's (and Murch's) The Conversation , do so immediately.
3 Views
21:31:25 05/06/08
Amazing Rainbows! London says goodbye as we emigrate
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 21:31:25 05/06/08
Click to Play This has just been selected as one of five films in the final of the Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards, which will be judged on Pangea Day, May 10th.
5 Views
15:44:19 04/09/08
Mrs Patel
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 15:44:19 04/09/08
Click to Play
The next person to inspire me: Mrs Patel from our local Post Office, about to be closed down by incompetence and corruption in government and the privatised Post Office.
This is today's film 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 Office.
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. We have a higher density of older and disabled people in this ward than anywhere else in the borough - people 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.
2 Views
21:43:05 06/22/07
Lumiere Rules: Friday evening in a heavy rainstorm, moments after putting the baby to bed
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 21:43:05 06/22/07
Click to Play
A crucial inconsequential moment. The only one I've posted all week. It's been a H.A.R.D. week.
Lumiere Rules is a game I've been wanting to play for a few weeks, inspired by Andreas.
I put down my Nokia for the first time in months and picked up my old Kodak DX7440 (which, totally coincidentally and appropriately) Andreas recommended to me before I even started Fatgirlinohio, when I was looking for a camera and was admiring the colours on his photos and videos on his blog. I love that camera. I needed it for this because it has a flat bottom, unlike my Nokia.
From Andreas's blog , Solitude.dk:
"The rules are as follows:
* 60 seconds max.
* Fixed camera
* No audio
* No zoom
* No edit
* No effects
They mimic the conditions under which the Lumiere brothers made their movies in the late 1800s.
"Aske Dam, a good friend, told me about these rules last summer when we were attached to the same research project. They mimic the conditions under which the Lumiere brothers made their movies in the late 1800s. All transfer seamlessly to web-video and videoblogs except the last one. On the web we are used to compress our videos because the raw files from our cameras are too big to be practical. But is the compression not an added effect? You can certainly tweak the compression settings to provide results that differ tremendously from the raw camera files.
If you make any videos that abide by the Lumiere Rules tag them lumierevideo ."
More info and Andreas's videos at: http://www.solitude.dk/archives/20070522-2202/
Also see great lumieres by Gogen and Bshoot
1 Views
23:56:19 05/19/07
PO Promo from Paris
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 23:56:19 05/19/07
Click to Play
This is a promo I've made for the nice people at... well, you'll see - shot in Paris yesterday. My phone ran out of battery as I was shooting the last shot, so I had to wait to come home to cut and post it. It was in the Odéon area, around the Theatre National de l'Odeon , the original Odeon... from which the word Nickelodeon was eventually derived.
I'm really excited. I'm having a few vids screened and, um, I think I'm going. Yeah. Big change. Twittervlogs from Hollywood in a couple of weeks.
Visit their website here.
3 Views
06:36:22 05/15/07
Rupert's Vlog Anarchy Entry
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 06:36:22 05/15/07
Click to Play Music is The Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the UK. Lyrics here
i can now never hear the Pistols or the word Anarchy without thinking ' Vlog Anarchy ', a post by Verdi in 2005 - check it out.
14 Views
23:32:12 04/04/07
twittervlog: 6.53pm MASSIVE FLASHMOB silent rave in London Victoria train station!
[LESS INFO] 14 VIEWS | ADDED 23:32:12 04/04/07
Click to Play
9 Views
21:17:28 01/12/07
this will never work. It's too futuristic.
[LESS INFO] 9 VIEWS | ADDED 21:17:28 01/12/07
Click To Play
For those of you coming direct to this post via links, I guess it's kind of superseded by the next one I did , which I edited IN-PHONE...
Formats available : MPEG4 Video (.mp4)
1 Views
00:18:37 01/12/07
Shot, cut, scored and posted by email from my Nokia N93 phone
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 00:18:37 01/12/07
Click to Play
this morning I went out for a 15 minute run, shot a film with my new phone,
cut together a few different clips using the in-phone editor, added
some music and posted to blip & my blog using a free wifi hotspot.
I am TOTALLY PSYCHED that i can do this. I've been completely unable to make any films or post anything because of work and travel and family, but that may all change with this - it's so quick. Will make catching moments, EDITING and posting immediately a practical reality. And all for free. AMAZING.
if you know other people who are editing with their phones - or just shooting and posting from mobile devices, please let me know. i've been a bit out of the loop for a few months.
Formats available : MPEG4 Video (.mp4) , Flash Video (.flv) Tags: nokia , n93 , the , road , less , travelled , nokia , studio , running , phone , mobile , rupert
04/09/08
