MotionPlymouth Champagne reception

It was the MotionPlymouth Gala last night with movie star glamour as the dress code which I think we carried off really well. It was a fitting end to a great 2 days which unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of due to Noogy and compiling and editing the entrants for Openreel but I’ve only heard positive things said about it. The winners of each of the categories were announced and awarded their prizes but for me, the one that stood out was Nick Ward’s “Denise at Sixteen”. Not just because it is a fantastic film but because it was one of the first films we showed at Openreel way back in March. Well done Nick.

Proof that the 3 of us scrub up good


Respect Festival….again

Along with Jamie, Steve, Becky and Justin, I did another v-mob workshop today which was the second one as part of the Respect Festival. We were tucked away up on a balcony in the Guildhall but despite that, it still went really well. I did have a couple of problems with a kid throwing himself down the stairs and another forgetting that he had asthma when asked if he would take part in some fitness tests, and then collapsing whilst having a bit of an attack but I guess I just bring that sort of thing out in people. I didn’t really get to see much of the stuff going on but people who did the workshop seemed to have good things to say about it so I guess it was a success. But, the highlight of the day has got to be seeing Romain Larrieu, Lilian Nalis and Anthony Barness. They were sat on the stairs behind us watching the videos from the Efford workshop. After getting over the initial shock of seeing them, I was gonna ask them if they would like to take part in the workshop but we got a bit busy. Fortunately, Tom was there at the time with his mate doing a workshop with us so he went up and asked for their autographs.

Anyways, I think the videos will be put on the v-mob mini site but you might need to give it a couple of days for them to be loaded up. Below is some footage of the opening procession I managed to shoot before we got underway.
Procession


Efford Moves

I’ve just done another v-mob workshop. This one was with Sue Smith as part of the Effordmoves project. Along with Steve and Kate, I provided the technical expertise to help the children shoot their dancing on video mobile phones and then edit them. It was quite intense towards the end coz even though we were there for 6 hours as usual everything really kicked in in the last coupla hours. The videos are likely to be online in the next coupla days so keep checking the website.


Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006

I’ve just come across this courtesy of Chris at Pixelsumo. It’s a film made to look like a side-scrolling beat ’em up video game. You can watch it by visiting Selectparks The file is quite large but it is well worth the wait.

Screen shot from Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight


v-Idol

I recently did a series of workshops for iDAT with some summer schools shooting videos using mobile phones. Based on Googleidol, the kids picked tracks and then “mimed” a video. You can see the results here.


MotionPlymouth launch

MotionPlymouth launched today at the Big Screen and as Openreel is one of the official partners I went along. MotionPlymouth is a two-day festival which aims to illuminate the city, showing off giant projections, light-art and installations over 16th and 17th November. More details and how to enter the competition can be found on the website.

Katie and Dawn launch MotionPlymouth
Katie and Dawn launch MotionPlymouth

Openreel logo on the Big Screen
Openreel logo on the Big Screen


It’s big and it’s a screen

For Wimbledon fortnight, a big screen has been erected in the City Centre and Openreel were asked to provide some footage to show on it during the quiet periods when the tennis wasn’t on. So Sarah and I hustled and cajoed people to get enough work together to create a showreel along with some idents that Sarah made. Today was the 2nd showing of the showreel and I managed to get along to have a look. It was great to see the work on such a huge screen and played thru’ a massive sound system – I could hear it as far away as the uni. My one gripe though was that the idents weren’t shown. I guess with it being the BBC and them having a policy of not advertising (unless it’s their own productions that is – am I being cynical?) that’ll be why. Still, it was good to be asked.

You can see some photos I took of today’s here and more will be added later.


Lovebytes

So, me and Chelle went up to Sheffield yesterday to visit Lovebytes. It was an early start for me as the train left at 06:20 with Chelle joining it at Bristol but from the stuff we saw it was definitely worth it. Unfortunately most of the events didn’t start until the day after we were there but we still saw some good stuff.

First up was q3apd which is a Quake 3 machinima thing that uses elements of the game to produce a realtime soundscape. I tried to capture the sound as well as take loads of photos but I’m not sure if you’ll get much of an idea of what it’s about from listening to it. Next up was JuneBum Park’s videos. First was Advertisement which shows giant hands manipulating buildings to produce and advert. Next was Parking which again uses giant hands but this time to move cars around. Finally was Puzzle which shows an overhead shot of people sat at tables but they move around like a giant kid’s puzzle.

After them was Dwelling by Hiraki Sawa. I really loved this. It’s a black and white video of planes flying around a flat. In and out of rooms, around the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. I’m not sure if this was the inspiration behind it but when I was young and used to make model planes, I used to hang them from the ceiling of my bedroom and I immediately thought of that when I saw it.

The Showroom, where all of the above is shown, has a bar so after taking loads of photos, we paid it a visit and decided to have hot white chocolate. They have got to be the BEST in Sheffield, if not the world. Marsh mellows and shavings of white and milk chocolate on top of hot white chocolate – fan-bloody-tastic!!

After drinking them, we went along to Workstation so see Time Slice. Essentially it’s the same video sliced up into columns and rows. Quite interesting and the 2nd one with people in was the most effective in my opinion. It was stange viewing this coz it was in the reception of Workstation and it felt like we were intruding. I half expected the receptionist to come over and tell us off for taking pictures but she didn’t seem bothered.

So it was then onto the Millennium Galleries to see Bit-Scapes. This is a video installation that runs over 3 screens with the same footage on each. The first is untouched, the second is then slightly manipulated with the 3rd being completed manipulated digitally. You don’t really get the effect unless you stand back and can see all 3 at the same time but unfortunately with the screens being in front of a large window, you do get a lot of reflections which spoils it a bit.

And that was basically it. Apart lunch and a wlak walk around the shops, all that was left was a visit to Access Space. We’ve been to a talk by James Wallbank at Fave last August so as we were in Sheffield it felt wrong not to pop along and have a look. It was quite an impressive setup with everything running on donated kit and using Open source software. Lovebytes was shwoing showing something there but it was later in the week so we were gonna miss it. I think they thought we were slightly mad having come up all the way from the South West just for a day so at least we brightened up their day.

All that was left was another hot white chocolate and then catch the train home. We collected loads of leaflets and handouts and our heads were buzzing with ideas following on from the stuff we saw. Lovebytes is definitely worth a visit and I think next year we’ll go again but later in the week so that we can see more stuff.

Listen to q3apd
Clip of Advertisement
Clip of Parking
Clip of Puzzle
1st clip of Dwelling
2nd clip of Dwelling
3rd clip of Dwelling
Link to my Flickr photos


Video mashup

This is a really cool video mashup of Prince, The Kinks and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. The guy behind it is called CCC and has quite a few mashups on his blog here – http://www.mashups.blogspot.com/. Ben E King & The Police is my favourite.


Openreel

We had our first Openreel last night. Sarah and I have been planning this for months and we finally managed to get it up and running. Openreel is essentially an open projection night where film makers can come along, show their work and get to meet and chat to other film makers. Professionals, amateurs, students, whoever really, everyone is welcome. We were a bit worried that no-one would turn up but in the end it was packed and we couldn’t show all of the film. Photos have been loaded up into Flickr.