Monthly Archives: January 2008

Find your newspapers Stan Boreson

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Heraldnet’s Elaine Helm has been pondering the success of a video of the “King of Scandanavian Humour’ Stan Boreson performing ‘I just don’t look good naked any more’

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Sometimes an article or video gains a life of its own after it’s posted. That’s what has happened with a video we posted Dec. 21 of local legend Stan Boreson performing his song “I Just Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore.”

By the end of December, the video had been viewed about 11,000 times. That would have been enough for me. But it appears to be picking up steam in January. To date this month, it has had more than 50,000 views.

That was on January 10th. By the 21st Helm was reporting that “the video was seen early 400,000 times last week alone.” 

Now you could look for some deep level of understanding about the way viral videos work. This could be the almost perfect definition of evergreen content. But maybe it’s simple. As Helm says “They must relate to the message”. Looking at some of the blogs that link to the story that sounds about right.  From the diary of nudist to a number of the ’round robin’ style weblogs.

It’s just entertaining stuff.  It looked like fun to shoot as well although it seems like it wasn’t an in-house production.

Have you got anything like that in your video archive?  If not why not?

I bet you have more than one Stan Borenson on your patch.

Great video:Detroit Free Press

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I hope this doesn’t break the cross posting rules of the Newspaper video list but I thought it was worth shareing this video from the Detroit Free Press.

It’s part of their coverage of an investigation in to Detroit’s mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. The accusation being he lied under oath in a cover-up involving the sacking of the deputy fire chief.

Civic, criminal, juicy gossip. All the bases covered in this story. But two things really stood out for me.

First is the production. OK, there have been some comments on the mix of voice overs (all that needed was a more obvious graphic or an addition to the first line of script to set that up). But what’s really nice is the way they visually used the actual transcripts. Nice editing, genuine and interested voice over. A nice part of the package.

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The second part is the way it works off  you tube.  It’s still not that common for papers to be uploading to youtube. But the number of comments and links (and views) proves that you can keep the debate going.

Yes, it isn’t on their site but it opens up your access to debates in other areas. Following the links from Youtube took me to some interesting blogs with broader comment. All keeping the story alive. All linking back to the paper.

Good stuff

Guardian Suppliment: making video

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The Guardian, my weekend newspaper reading, landed heavy on the doormat this morning with a really good suppliment on making video.

Plenty of great practical advice (although the imovie tutorials are for ’06) and camera advice that goes from phones to camcorders. There is also a good round up of formats by Dan Ghung.

In terms of camcorders they recommend (in order of price):

  • JVC GR-D720 – 199
  • Sanyo VPC-CG65 – 200
  • Canon DC201 – 230
  • JVC GZMG275 – 500
  • Sony HDR-SR8 – 900
  • Panasonic HDC SX5 – 700
  • Cannon HV20 – 750
  • Sony HDR HC7 – 750

Their site has one of the articles in the guide section already and I’m hoping that they will put more over the week. They also have their guides for sale so fingers crossed this one appears soon.

Also worth a look is their photography guide.

And it’s all much, much better than the Greek Myths and knitting malarkey.

Toronto Star : Twenty Days

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Star: 20 days

Still playing catch up on the feeds at the moment but had to post on this just so that I don’t lose it in a see of bookmarks

Twenty Days: Lot’s of people picking up on this one, and rightly so.

Twenty days. Twenty thousand still images. A single message. Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk captures the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images.

Great concept and great execution. Just excellent.

iphone photoessay

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Not more link bait. Although try putting iphone or Mac Air in to a post and watch Akismet go mental.

No, this was a post by Dennis Dunleavy which points to a photo essay shot entirely on an iphone by Mother Jones magazine Washington Bureau Chief, David Corn. And boy doesn’t it show just how ropey the iphone cam can be.

Dunleavy predicts that

Corn’s approach is most likely something that will remain with us in an age where anyone with a camera phone can snap away a kilter and publish the results instantly.

And even though he doesn’t see it as the death knell for photojournalism, it’s something we have to get used to.

Even if the pictures aren’t perfect, they still count as a visual record of events. The more people like Corn remain enthusiastic enough to play around with the iPhone at major events, the more extensive the visual reportage becomes. And that isn’t all that bad.

On lighter note, the vagaries of the iphone cam did make me look twice at a shot of Rudy Giuliani. Couldn’t quite put my finger on what it reminded me of…

Rudy and Balok

 

No? Just me then.

The Macbook Air is rubbish

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OK, that’s shameless link bait. But I’m generally disappointed with what appeared at Macworld.

Yes, the new laptop is nice. Yes, I’m sure it’s a breakthrough in engineering. But I’m also sure it will probably find that it gets most of its business as an option for those who where also considering a PC laptop as long as it would come with diamonte cover.

After the recent flurry of cool hardware like the ipod touch and Iphone- truly innovative – I was hoping that they would give me more of what I moved to Mac for in the first place – killer apps.

When I decided to go Mac it was because Final Cut Pro and all the apps around it worked together. I was cutting on an Avid (which just happened to be running on a mac) using things like After Effects for the complex stuff. But even when PC’s got more powerful, when I looked at my PC laptop, I couldn’t see anything that came close to offering the flexibiltiy that the Apple software offered. I wanted that flexibility so I had to go mac.

FCP is now such a mature app that anything they add is just icing on the cake. There is no point in reinventing the wheel.

But until there is that killer app. That FCP that demands an air or a macbook pro. If I was PC based I would be finding less reason to make the shift this year.