Archives

Whenever I hear that people are protesting I discount this as bored people keeping themselves entertained but upon watching the film 503 I changed my mind. The documentary is about the protests that took place over a period of 503 days when Augusto Pinochet was kept under house arrest in England for his crimes against humanity. When interviewed the protesters explained that these actions were their way of remembering all the disappeared people. It was through the actions, like the crosses outside parliament square and the 503 day protest outside Pinochet’s house in England that helped them feel better. Describing the moment that they heard Pinochet had been arrested you saw that these people were jubilant. 503 days later that jubilation was gone but the community of protesters had expressed their concerns to an international crowd, ready to listen to what they had to say. The documentary is different from many other documentaries I have watched and I’d recommend watching that one simply to see how protesters are not stereotypical of those we see in newspaper cuttings and films. more info

There is an increasing number of professional outfits now offering their content in podcast form, from Euronews to the BBC, from Reuters to The Guardian and others. As a result there are a number of great resources for news content.

The Media guardian was one of the earlier outputs and concentrated mainly on media news but since then The Guardian have diversified their content output to include a number of news programs. These include The Guardian Weekly Podcast, MediaTalk, Newsdesk, and one or two others I have yet to listen to. These programs are good for two reasons; firstly they provide world news when it’s convenient for you and secondly because professionals are creating this content therefore the content should be more reliable. They provide in-depth analysis, getting interviews, and discussions that help the listener understand the topics that are being discussed. In effect they are creating broadcast-quality programs as radio stations have done in the past.

As I write this I am happy that I have been to watch quite a few interesting documentaries at the Frontline Club. The two most recent were made for Channel 4’s Unreported World. This is channel four’s “acclaimed foreign affairs series” and covers a number of topics. The two documentaries I watched were South Africa: Children of the Lost Generation and  Jamaica: Guns votes and money.

Both are investigative observational documentaries showing the progress made by the journalists as they try to uncover the stories that other documentary channels cover. The South African documentary gave an insight into the drug Tik and how, although it is mainly affecting those in the slums is also coming to the wealthier white areas as well. It is well shot and there are a few interesting interviews that give us a good insight into the problem.

What makes a good documentary is the quality of the interviews and how they are put together to inform and educate us on the topic they are tackling. A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash is a perfect example of this. Using a great wealth of interviews and archive material it illustrates why the current consumption of oil is unsustainable. It is well constructed and has a strong message.

Basil Gelpke, born in 1962, in Basel, Switzerland has had an interesting career. He studied anthropology, economics, and the production of scientific films. He went from working in advertising to 24hr news with the European Business channel during which he got promoted to become the channel’s Paris correspondent. On assignment in South East Asia he was one of the first journalists to venture into Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. He would later help setup N-TV, a 24hr news channel in Berlin. He did some work on the Swiss Survivor series and “Expedition Robinson” programs. In 2002 he read a paper from the Sydney based Hedge Fund on the topic of decreasing oil reserves and spent many years researching the documentary before finishing this documentary for a screening at SXSW2006.

Documentally - Oct 1, 2007

Good points. I try to do the same and am in fact staying over in Birmingham tomorrow to save on the unessesary milage over two days. I also like to use my laptop on the battery where possible so as not to be contantly drawing on the mains. I am sure switching between uses less power. I recently bought one of these devices as well.. http://www.reuk.co.uk/Owl-Wireless-Electricity-Monitor.htm It is amazing seeing what is being used and when..

When I started video editing it required a powerful desktop computer and moving it around was hard. Now I’m working on a laptop. This is great for the environment and here’s why.

When the equipment you are using is portable it means that you can edit from the client’s offices rather than your own. Several times already I have gone to the office of those whom I work for. If there is a desk free beside them then they may go along with their daily routine whilst I keep working on my own work. Once there’s a rough cut I show them the edit and see whether they like it, apply any changes and once that’s done I can author a DVD.

Those stats are the current upload and download speed test results whilst watching France 24 on Zattoo. In other words I should have enough bandwidth to use operator11 without too many problems now.

Today’s news is as follows. Having seen that Bill Palmer of the Iprong podcast and website would add the 300th friend on Facebook I decided I would take this opportunity to add him. His podcast is “for the ipod generation so take the time to listen to it. It’s mainly about iphones and ipods but mixes in quite a few artists in the process. The second event was becoming the 3000th person to use twittermail. I saw someone mention that they were up to three thousand and I decided to be the 3000th. Now that’s done it’s great. It’s twice as great since it helps to emphasise that I have reached over three thousand tweets since becoming a twitter member. The last bit of news is that it’s blog action day tomorrow. The topic is going to be the environment so right anything with an environmental conscience for your blog and share it with the world. That’s it for tonight.

I’m online from 10-15hrs  a day on average and as a result I’m used to having everything available within a short amount of time. I also had access to a PVR with a hard disk upgrade for quite a long time. As a result of both these developments anything that is not available to me when I want to watch it goes unnoticed. That’s because “It’s an on-demand world” as was concluded in one edit I worked on for a client about the future of broadcasting.

Piotr - Oct 6, 2007

Check this out: http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/NewsML/P-newsML001_NewsMeetingPresentation.pdf?display=EN and this: http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/NewsML/ This is a professional standard for exchange of metadata.