Videoblogging The Conversation

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(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.

Amazing Rainbows! London says goodbye as we emigrate

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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.

Mrs Patel

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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.

Francis & Me, Part 1

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Jay and Ryanne and GoGen and David Howell and a whole lot of other people have been inspiring me recently with films of travels and faraway places. I love watching moments from journeys, cut together without explanation or narrative, with jumping atmospheric sound, for no better reason than they were images and sounds that the filmmaker noticed and wanted to capture. Magic.

I'm not sure I'm so good at doing that, but I've been sufficiently inspired to get off my arse and cut together one of my own journeys.

This is a trip to San Francisco I took almost exactly a year ago. I filmed every moment of it - that was part of my reason for going. But I shot too much stuff and never got round to publishing. And yes, I know I didn't tell any of you in the Bay Area that I was in town. But I was on a secret mission. I had seven days to immerse myself in my book, in Thanksgiving week. I got a bit lost, went a little crazy. And then I came home and got more lost in freelancing work. I'm hoping to work on the book again this November, for NaNoWriMo.


I can't believe a year has gone already. Anyway, more videos from this trip to come this month, I hope.



Oh, and despite what it says in the opening titles which I tacked on tiredly in the middle of the night, it's pre N93 - It was shot with a little Canon Ixus 900 pocket digital stills camera (borrowed, but i really liked it) and cut in iMovie.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Lumiere: Amy makes a video

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The only thing she loves more than watching herself in my videos ("again! AGAIN!") is holding my phone and looking at herself on the screen, thru the little low-res camera next to the screen.

The camera was glitching, which produces quite a nice effect.  There's no sound because this is a Lumiere.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times you say that, people still say "Oh! I can't hear anything."

Just goes to show how pointless it is to write text on a videoblog.  Why am I even writing this?  You're not reading it.  I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die.

I'm loving the Lumieres that are being made all over the world. Hundreds of them. To browse them, visit http://videoblogging.info/lumiere/

The rules are as follows. They mimic the conditions under which the Lumiere brothers made their movies in the late 1800s:

• 60 seconds max.
• Fixed camera
• No audio
• No zoom
• No edit
• No effects

Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

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For Lucy 

Two things that have hypnotized and haunted me all week:

Music: performed by Adam Quirk
from standards.bullemhead.com - see comments for explanation

Image: on every phone box in West London.
see also flickr.com/photos/ruperthowe

 

Lumiere Rules: Friday evening in a heavy rainstorm, moments after putting the baby to bed

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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 

PO Promo from Paris

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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. 

 

Rupert's Vlog Anarchy Entry

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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.

twittervlog: 6.53pm MASSIVE FLASHMOB silent rave in London Victoria train station!

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THIS IS (not) TWITTERVLOG! See Twittervlog for more details...

For new posts and feed, add me at twitter.com/ruperthowe

My project for videoblogging week 2007... and maybe beyond... will not be here - it will be short, disposable, Twitterish films sent straight from my mobile phone to Twitter at twitter.com/ruperthowe

Last week was my 2 year vlogiversary. I haven't posted nearly enough in that time, and most of my old stuff is offline.

I've always wanted to post more inconsequential short moments, to document cool, beautiful or interesting things as they happen.

In the end, I just film a lot of moments, and never post them because I don't want to clutter up my main vlog. Stupid.

I got a Nokia N93 in January and thought that it would mean I would film a lot of short Moments and post straight from the phone, but I kept filming and not posting. More stupid.

I thought I would try and use videobloggingweek to force me to do it... but then there are other, longer-form things I also want to do.

SO ANYWAY, I've only been Twittering for a week or so, but I love its immediacy and disposability - and a lot of the text moments recorded there remind me of what I wanted to do with vlogging, and with my N93.

Seems to me that these video moments belong more on Twitter than they do on a blog. They're for immediate consumption, and need the immediacy and disposability and Now-ness of Twitter, rather than being viewed later via feed or on a blog.

So I checked it out, and there's a free browser-based tool at www.twitterfeed.com which takes any RSS feed and posts it to Twitter.

I've set it up so that I can film a short moment on my N93, email it (via regular wifi) to Blip, then Twitterfeed.com automatically takes my feed and posts it to Twitter - to http://www.twitter.com/ruperthowe/

The result is a Tweet which contains the post title and a TinyURL to the Blip video.

ALL FREE! ALL AUTOMATIC! ALL THE TIME!

Re-Vlog: London Bombings - Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

From July 2005 - an immediate reaction. I'm so glad I found this. I lost a bunch of videos when I took my site down and my hard drive crashed. I found it last week at the Internet Archive. It was not long after I started videoblogging, and a lot of people liked it and still ask me for it. Coincidentally, Trine at thefilmoftomorrow.com asked me about it just this morning, which I thought was a clear synchronicitous sign that I should repost it.

Add this post to Digg, etc:

The Big Shave - for Scorsese

THE BIG SHAVE

is a 1967 short film by Martin Scorsese, set to 'I can't get started' by Bunny Berigan.

this isn't it.

this was shot on my phone the morning after he finally won his Oscar.

i think it was supposed to be a tribute.

Add this post to Digg, etc:

Peter Pan and Amy (1 min)

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On my day looking after Amy this week, we went to the Natural History museum to laugh at monkeys and to Hyde Park to laugh at rabbits and ducks. I've either refrained from or not got around to posting nice-but-inconsequential family stuff like this in the past, but one of my 326 new year's resolutions was to to try and put more things like this up for family & friends - people I know, rather than people I don't. Music: Broken Arrows, José Gonzáles Shot on my Nokia N93 phone

Shot, cut, scored and posted by email from my Nokia N93 phone

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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

this will never work. It's too futuristic.

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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)

Obsessive Compulsive Baby (50 secs)

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I'm not sure who's got the worst Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - her with her doors, or me with my baby... This is why I haven't posted for a long time - I have been relentlessly filming Amy night and day, but I am in denial about the obvious fact that I have turned into a babyblogger... I need to learn from Trine's latest post, I think... I may not have expected that this is all I'd want to vlog about, but in the face of such an overwhelming force, I am powerless to resist...

Anyway, If you liked this, you might like Daniel's "World Maps" video at Pouringdown.tv even more.

Falafel (40 secs - FatGirlinOhio.org)

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I've spent 10 years searching for a Falafel as good as the one I used to have on Haight Street in San Francisco in 1996. A decade of disappointment.

Yesterday, I persisted in my quest at this crumby-looking falafel joint in Shepherds Bush Market, just round the corner from my house.

Ricky Fitts:

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it.

And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes.

And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.

Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember...

Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

Lost (1 min 20 secs)

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A reissue of a movie I posted in haste last week, shot on my phone at Hampton Court Palace.

Enlightenment (30 secs)

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This is a reposting of my favourite film from my WorkingForMyDad.com days. I was made very happy all week by a comment BottomUnion left for me. It led to this page, where he had reposted Enlightenment after I disappeared last year, and lots of people had left nice comments about it. So I've reposted my old WorkingForMyDad.com films at WorkingForMyDad.com for whoever wants to see them.

I'm A Bad Mum (First To-Camera Piece - 110 secs - FatGirlinOhio.org)

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This is Amy, the reason I haven't been videoblogging for while.

Coppola's 1990 vision of the future of video (54 secs)

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It's the way he says it. Especially when you've just spent 90 minutes watching him descend into overblown moviemaking debauchery and chaos. So don't just read it - watch and listen. It still gives me goose bumps to hear him. Share it around. It's inspiring stuff.

'To me the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some... just people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them, and - you know - suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart - you know - and make a beautiful film with her little father's camera...corder - and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed... Forever... And it will really become an art form. ?

That's my opinion.'


AMAZING.

Help me (50 secs)

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Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

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Yesterday we got lost in the maze at Hampton Court Palace.

It's the one that inspired Kubrick to use a maze at the end of the Shining.

I didn't have my camera (I'm out of practice), so I used my phone. Pretty poor quality, and hacked together in just a few minutes... but kind of fun.

The videoblogging bug has bitten again. Hi to all my videoblogging friends of old. I'll be coming round and checking you out in the middle of the night...

How Difficult Can It Be To Use A Timer On A Camera?

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My mother in law's annual traditional photo of her guests in the windows of her rented holiday home... with traditional automatic shutter incompetence...

A year since I stopped videoblogging...

Chaos of baby and work and bandwidth charges killed my videoblog.
Sorry about that.
Now I'm unemployed, and there's YouTube.
So here we go again.