The Ferrari - the Ultimate Performance Car!

Part 1 of the Ferrari. You can read the accompanying article on viewmagazine.tv.
Part 2 loaded at some time today

Unfortunately, Youtube's compression takes away from the aesthetic. The original file size was 3gig, before I reduced it to 55mb as you can see on viewmag. Youtube them does its own mash-up. They'll get it right soon.

Wiki Scanner

Th truth is out there.

What the $£@&*!

Ok this is an easy one. You're at a traffic light ( Robot -if you're in South Africa). Your window's are down, it's been hot. Two guys crossing the road throw a wrapper into your car. So what would you do. Drive off of course.

The vehicle's owner got out to challenge the youths and got stabbed. He would later die. Something's very wrong. If you're travelling to the UK, probability and the law of averages suggest you'll be fine, but have a bad day; wrong place, wrong time, and that's it.

The UK in the 90s did an incredible job of victimising DUI ( driving whilst drunk). Some people still do it, but the sense of bravdo attached has been diminished to idiocy, potential killers at worst. It makes you think why they can't mount a sustained campaign against this disease.

One of my former students made a comment in a vox pop: "what if". What one thing would he change, I asked. The way the media operate. They shouldn't just report but follow up, change things.

You could view what he said as rather naive, but he is onto something. In Ghana, where he lives, television has a strong social role. I'm not naive enough to believe TV makers should also become police. Make the programme, catch the culprits, but is there a role TV could be playing that until now it isn't. It does Live Aid to save the world!

A five second message strategic across targeted progs about the cause-effect of knives. Oh wait, that's already being done. They're called ads, and once the client runs out of money, someone else takes that slot.

So what's the solution? Cuz do nothing and, well. In the 0.2 world can traditional media be allowed to also multiskill and have a conscious?

Deja Vu

Rewatched Deja Vu - Denzel Washington again today. One of those films in the genre of Minority Report, which was a big influence in devising an Outernet interactive display - which viewmagazine.tv was just a part of.

The direction is as stylised as is possibly could be coming from Tony Scott. The scene of using "google Earth" resolution to whizz around the city was particularly enjoyable to watch. Some fine folk at a Californian University have more or less perfected that, and the point where the Deja vu Unit tap into a city cam, all doable. Now if they could just figure how to go through worm holes.

But equally satisfying are the sort of online sites: Deja Vu, Bourne, ghosts of citesoleil that combine strong aesthetic values and an array of multimeia offerings. By the way isn't ghosts of citesoleil something? Trippy! What a bar this doc raises.

If I'm ever in need of inspiration, I turn to Apple's trailer site. Incidently, but then you knew this, most of the film sites use the same codecs you find in Final Cut - h.264

In the end it's all about experimenting and finding what works.

How do you shoot a car sequence - or even car show

This week I have finally got through to finishing off the Ferrari piece after some final project markings.

Anyways, so how do you shoot a car show with no budget or using videojournalism, without any rigs, jibs, dollys, reds, aerial mikes, filters, specialised lenses, mounts, and so on ?

All I used was the A1 Sony in HDV mode, the rest is Gonzo.

The Tao of Multimedia

What's the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao got to do with Multimedia?

Following on from the Tao theme - an article which I hope adds to the debate about producing Multimedia packages and how one might go about it. I quote a number of very well meaning people. It's a bit longish but I'll post some bits here in a couple of days and the main article on viewmag.

Meanwhile here are a few passages that give some flavour:

1)Interactivity and Multimedia is part logic, part dysfunctionality. That's because our comprehension of language, our sense of narrative is linear and as follows logical. The Whorf Sapir hypothesis describes this simply as language shapes the way we think. The way we speak is logical and so we have a tendency to present themes in this manner.

2)Mutimedia and Interactivty is more than divying up linear features and placing them on a timeline. It works at an intuitive level if you're one of those people who thinks interstially, sees an object and can think up seemingly unrelated links at first sight which have depth later, you may make a good multimedia producer.

If you're too logical, apply to CNN as a reporter. TV reporting is about resolution and closure

3) In 1995, a residing New Yorker showed how multimedia is a multiple sensory affair and at its core structure IS considered Art. Auriea Harvey, a graphic designer and artist set the on and offline world alight with her work which would also grace some of the best museums.

When I stumbled upon Harvey in 97/98, she was a wave of new fresh air. Her site has since changed; I confess I liked the earlier one. But she wrote rules that did not exist, she created forms that were fully sensory and immersive. I kept a cutting of hers on my news desk for many years. This, what she does, leads; as opposed to the many of us that follow.

4. Early cinema early contains some allegorical forms of how Multimedia would come to see itself 100 years on. Watch
Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show Directed by the cinema pioneer Edwin S Porter in 1902 and Life of an American Fireman.

And who are the latter day Gladiators?

Over there

If you ever managed to catch Over There, the action drama series developed by Steven Bocho ( NYPD, LA Law) then watch out for the embedded video journalist.

Probably the only TV product I can recall where they give you a generous view of a VJ at work. I'd be demonstrating the style on previous VJ sessions - cantor movement of holding the camera steady and moving fluidly- before this fell into my lap.

Typical huh! Producers put out a show hoping you'll like it and what grabs my attention - an embedded VJ.

I was slouching in my favourite chair one Tuesday evening watching cable, saw the show, and leapt out to grab a VHS.

I have since got the DVD. The two screen grabs show how to hold a DV Cam to give you wide 270 degree shooting ranges. You pivot from your hips and your arms act as a jib


The first grab shows the VJ with the soldiers. The show's makers very kindly give you a view of what's being shot by colouring the VJ's shots blue. Neat!

If you really want to get the technique right go talk to a Marine and see how they hold the turret of their gun when they're "house clearing", the walk rubbing their knees and "cushion' their steps by bending their knees.

Alternatively, a camera person who works close to presenters on live shows has the skill. Here in the UK it would be those working Top of the Pops, Big Breakfast etc. or more recently say, Big Brother.

Word of warning though if you are working the field in hostile zones, take added precautions that other combatants don't mistake you for a soldier.

There's a classic TV News shot from the Intafada caught on camera. A camerman squats to take a zoom shot and someone watching him believing his has an RPG takes aim. The cameraman is violently yanked away when his friend realises what's taking place; the bullet barely misses him. OK he wasn't a VJ but you get my drift.

A lot of 8 days has me "crabbing" and "tearing" shots, and also Conflict and Warco - where I'm yet to post the full video of a training exercise which was so life like, many a few reporter broke down crying.

Image taken from War Games featured on Apple's web site
Please be patient with the two links. They're using Flash MX protocols, so don't load as swiftly and play out well as current Flash VL files

Extreme Transparency

It goes by different names, but at its heart boils down to one thing, telling the truth, but also revealing the process by which you came to that.

It's a mighty interesting conundrum if you're any one of the ff:
a) businesses/ brands contemplating blogs into your realm
b) Managing crisis management
c) A media/broadcast channel.

We all know so much more than we did ten years ago ( media literacy) and have a means to talk to one another en masse ( unlike ten years ago) that if you're trying to bury, suffocate, nudge something to the side because it does you no favours, forget it.

It used to be the preserve of whistle blowers and leakers but now the means to disseminate info do away with grand titles of old. "I'm simply telling you what it's like", guv "and this time I am being honest, cuz i blog it".

In the last couple of weeks we've seen a slate of it: RDF-Queen's miscalculated sequence shots, ITV's miscalculated press release over its Paul Watson's documentary.

And no doubt there will be as many more in a year as there was likely in five.

While back I did a big job for one of the humanitarian agencies. Persuasively deny, hold your ground and be prepared to back it up if neccessary. Politicans are accustomed to this in the counter. You ask a difficult question and they side step it with their own. The reporter pulls em back.

But now we are a nation of sleuths. How do the big PRs advise their clients on damage limitations? Simple, in my book, be honest and own up. Mea culpa; resistance really is futle Mr Borg. Offer solutions why it won't happen again, reveal the process which enabled it to occur, and offer extreme transparency as a fall back to the audience

Here's the editor of one of the UK's most influential news programmes, Newsnight shedding some more light on Extreme Transparency when I caught up with him some week's back. Peter Barron's trials for blogs et al has for the moment come to and end.

The Social Police

Policing Social web 2.0 jumps from the matrix world of one and zeros to the sapience hedonistic world, or is that the other way round. Matrix fans will correct me. But next time you go to a night club in London and you find a strange person watching you, you may not neccessarily need to be alarmed.

Relayed to me, the police are increasingly deploying detectives with behavioural science skills. Their job to study hedonists, figure out who's giving off conflicting body/verbal signals. It comes in the wake of growing ( can't verify this) claims of rape.

I'd be interested to join the group. In my on air TV career, I did quite a few reports with the police. I'm about to post one of the earliest. Circa 1992 out with Manchester police looking at Youth Crime for the BBC hit series Reportage.

If you're not familiar with Reportage, it was the BBC's jewel in the crown for young people making current affairs progs. If you examine the broadcast industry, several huge names came from that camp.

The standard of TV making was revolutionary and will still hold up now. It's a shame there's nothing like this anywhere at the moment. Current.tv, Resfest are great repositories for finding cutting-edge films, but at the BBC you got first rate training on the job. In fact it was the era where failing came as part of the job of trying to be innovative. That doesn't happen today.

So if you're reading this and you're an exec, a playpen for youngens to experiment with film and the web, not to follow what's already there, but to be bold enough to drive new ideas, would be welcome by many.

Another observation. The gene of crime is as decrepit then as it is now. No, you'd argue it's worse. But the most telling statement from a youth;" You get caught and you think they'll bang you up, but they just give you a caution and then you go out and rob again, and again"

Who says crime legislation isn't working. Look a nation of hegels

Reportage and Crime posting on Viewmagazine

The rugby was great but I don't want to speak about that

My heartfelt thanks to Tim and his wonderful friends for making us (Barry, one of my oldest friends and I) have a wonderful day at Twickenham, where he treated us to a fab lunch and then a ringside seat at the rugby match, and then drinks afterwards. Thank you.

I guess we'll have enough time, the next coming weeks to talk rugby, so this is not so much about the game, but a glaring observation, well two.

Large swathes of seats remained unoccupied. Why? If the RFU/ men in suits are truly serious about sport and its interest for the young, I can't see why free tickets weren't given out to youngsters (all now on summer hols).

Ok someone's going to raise the spectre of how much they would have lost doing that. Think for a minute! Ah you get the logic. The seats were empty. And it was a friendly.

Hail the thinking of disciples from the open Source Movement. Give version 1 away and if we're wowed, we will come back for version 2 and yes, pay.

There might have been scores of youngsters who would have loved to come, even if some of them had never seen a match in their lives. I was sat behind one 7/8 year old who knew more than the ref. I have got him on audio and will post for your delectation.

Secondly, what a wonderful idea these Ref Links are. Essentially they're limited radio transmissions you buy giving you the Ref's chatter during the game.

"Oy you I have had enough of you. One more of those I'm giving a penalty"

"You, leave it, leave it.. leeeeeavvve it (posted on viewmagazine.tv)

And occasionally, you'll hear: "Yes sir".

Now that's gentlemanly. Why can't they a) have ref links in football (soccer) and secondly, why can't they be equally polite, after pole-axing their opponents.

The Power of Dreams

David aged 8 with sisters

Since developing viewmagazine.tv, it's grown beyond anything I could have thought.

The blog's the same. So thank you for your company.

I write about topical, often even obscure issues that would interest my friends, peers and people around me.

I'm not as active a journalist/content person as I used to be, but things like working with Lennox Lewis on his fight with Tyson, diving with an expedition team to find WWI subs, discovering new areas of comms. on the web and what other people are doing is the sort of thing that I'd read on other blogs and I regularly do, so if any of this has caught your fancy, well, thank you.

A lot of what catches my eye is an idea about an idea, then finding its historical nuance, then looking at some form of trend extrapolation.

All this stuff we're doing has been done before, in some Victorian or should I say Darwinian guise or in a manner which wasn't clear until a critical mass of us became participants.

Then all of a sudden: the right place, right time, right everything happens. This is what Thomas Kuhn referred to as the Paradigm Shift.

You might have been the first to do video online 10 years ago, but it was way before its time and then someone else did it three years ago and presto.

Sometimes this blog is about the day's events. Isn't that what a blog is supposed to be, someone just muttered. That might have been the case, but there are now an infinite number of blogs for anything. This really is publishing made simple.

BTW I'll blog the Rugby with some footage later, plus the issue of info architecture content design.

Growing Pains
As we grow we need new shoes and clothes. Viewmagazine suffers from the same creep ( yes I get the double entendre :) ). One minute you're a size 10, next. Good Lord, you're a 14.

So it's time to make adjustments. For Viewmag, I hope will mean cleaner lines, wider pieces, more exacting video, like the recut promo on the front page, and new ways of engaging content and you.

I hope it also means at some point the idea behind Viewmag, which is: take a popular mag idea and try out hopefully good content that you'd find interested and has a bent towards the new new thing that we do, will grow much, much further beyond the concentric circle of friends.

I often recollect the skinny boy, aged 8, with the big art pad drawing pictures of planes, space ships and aliens, thinking when I grow up I'm going to buy all the chocolates in the world and fly to the moon.

My teachers report that came back said: "David is a lively child and ( blah blah blah) but has a tendency to day dream.

Not sure I'll make it to see the "man in the cheese", but dream?

That's what we have, what we do. It's what provides a bridge from the impossible world to the plausible, a streak of hope for what we might want ( Gosh David you're being a little bit too profound, loosen up) and the ability often not to take ourselves too seriously. ( Doc, I keep fallin, what does that mean?)

And the one thing we should not attempt to take from an 8 year old, or much less, is the power of dreams.

Hope you can stay around for us to dream up some new ideas.

p.s Chocolate Mmmmmm !

I did not know Svengali Tony Wilson who's just passed away

But I was present during the big time of The Hacienda. Then working at BBC Manchester, we'd climb into the disco, house, funk tardis that is The Hacienda.
More recently at a Net2.0 gathering Tony was on hand interviewing the manager of Robbie Williams. I filmed bits of it. Greatly entertaining as Tony shouted down punters telling them to **** off.
I'll post that one day. May he rest in peace

Cannabalising post from Prof Monck - Shark Attacks

Before leaving for his two weeks of the exclusive island resort somewhere near the Fijian Islands, Super blogger and author, Crunch Time, Adrian Monck posted this.

The Sun got itself well and truly stung. Us TV types look forward to a full independent inquiry into how the paper was fooled and how it carried the hoax forward to its readers.


In a shameless deed of cross canabilisation, I posted this on his blog and just in case you're not one of his regular readers, posted my response here.


OK, so we won’t be holding our breath.

. . . but was it fooled? No one's talking. Well at least that's what being reported.

Can't remember where I read/heard, but what appears to emerge is the local newspaper which first showed the pictures had a circulation bonanza. So, The Sun?

Coast authorities are reported saying rather than deterring visitors and surfers, it's done the converse.

So could this not be an up to date version of The Sun's 1986 headline "Freddie Starr ate my Hamster" ?

It is after all the "Silly Season", though that's hardly true looking at other news events.

In the end you could argue:
* No one was injured from the piece's publication. No that's not a reason to publish unsubstantiated claims.

* Some (?) made a tidy sum from the event; the original photographer claims not to have profited.

*Our penchant for the occasional whaky story retains our chutzpah for eccentricity and the Monty Pythonesque: "It's a dead Parrot !"
!
* Tourism to the UK will be boosted as a result: Hey those zaney Brits are at it again.

* David Letterman will probably have done a sketch by now, thus aiding the Sun's brand quotient.

Letterman: 10 things associated with Brits that are just er, mad funny.
1. They put custard on apple pie and eat jelly, yuk! (bum, bum)
2. They soak vinegar on their chips. (Ba-de-bum)
3. They call the sidewalk, the pavement. (ping)
4. Soccer is football £@&*% (hahahaha)

Drum roll

5. They speak with a funny accent (Boo)
6. Body wind jokes are funny ( no sfx here please)
7. He has a blond flop, speaks with rotund vowels and wants to be Mayor of England.
What?
Oh he want's to be Mayor of Hackney.
Where then? C'mon researchers do yer work!
8. Beckam turns down movie role to play soccer (swoon. whaaaat. He's maaad)
9. They named this bell here Ben. No, it's not an ex-boxer.
10. More Sharks, this time in the middle of London. (Hahahahaha..that's funneee)
(whispers to Letterman) Er, yes they're actually at this place that used to be city hall.
Oh!

* Itt's invigorated further talk/column inches of "what is journalism?"
*And finally The Sun has a good stab at achieving google-rank supremacy with the word, "shark". One last push.

I reckon there are a couple of execs at Canary Wharf with a G&T in one hand and a mobile in the other to Kelvin MacKenzie having a wee giggle.

In front of them is Peter Snow's (BBC Newsnight) retired war pit and they're shuffling pieces around looking for the next big story. No sorry, that's some other newspaper exec (Black).

There are lies, damn lies and statistics. But then factually with this story we might never know.
NB: A footnote for someone's autobio.

BTW, did you hear about the network news broadcast which flagged up a pic of a very famous rapper with a reference to the dark side of pharmacy? Surely shum mistake.

p.s. Apologies for any typos in advanced Prof Monck :) Have a good hols Adrian

direction of the director

Busy day tomorrow, Twickenham to watch England vs France - Ruggers ie Rugby. A truly good friend of mine has comp tickets for the match. It's going to be a truly heroic one. England are in good form but France their old nemesis won't give an inch.

Barry, my buddy and I have just shared a good laugh; the last time we went to a match. It was South Africa against Brazil when we lived in Johannesburg.

We got there late so the only way to get to our seats was to run across the pitch, with some 40,000 people seated waiting for the national anthem.

"Man, please what ever you do don't trip", I said.

Ruggers is one of those Brit affairs. My US friends always tutut when I bring it up. "Hey man, there's Rugby and real football", they add.

Yep even David Beckam has learnt to call the lesser known sport, soccer @!&*

But Football? My most memorable recollection, somewhere in the 80s. Marcus Allen, playing for the LA Rangers. I'm a dirt poor student watching the game, when the electricity cuts.

It ran on 50 pence piece slots; you know a bit like finding a dime. Point is I didn't have one, so I sat watching this blank screen, screaming quitely.

Superbowl receiver-play touch downs. It still hurts today ( David gedda life!)

After Ruggers we're off to add to the Bourne's coffers. It's already grossed the GDP of Russia. But here's where I go to school again.

Film school, journalism practice class, they all help, but nothing beats watching a film and trying to get into the head of the director, such that you anticipate shots and angles.

Greengrass, the director, has one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants styles, so I don't expect a mind meld. But it can be fun or annoying.

Often it means I'll watch a film again; on DVD to enjoy its scond time around. That said very few films have me returning again and again to look at the superb cinematography and direction.

The more recent ones include: Black Hawk Down, Man o Fire, A river Runs Through it (great Fly fishing shots) and Bourne Supremacy. Tomorrow I'll most likely add Ultimatum to my list.

DC and during an interview with former CIA boss James Woolsey I ask him about Spy Films: "What does he think?"

Woolsey: "Oh they're nothing near what we do".

Guess the audience cares very little about that.

The beauty of video

The beauty of video isn't just its aesthetic but its true power and simplicity; the progressive capturing of reality. We could take an array of software to produce the likes of 8 Days , but you'd agree that sometimes the simplest is the most powerful.

Take a camera, choose a backdrop and ask a simple question.

In this case it was if you could chage one thing, what would that be?

The students then, that answered this were untainted; their views crystal, their honesty obvious, their heads and hearts ruled.

Who knows, but as they climb the totem pole of journalism, will their views change? So for me as much as them, this is a tad anthropological - a freeze frame of history. No, really their history, when they might ask themselves in years to come, was I right.

In1992 I did the same with a 13 year old uncertain of South Africa's future. She lived in a small town near Pretoria. Here's veronique back then in Through the Eyes of a Child

The piece is equally dear to me: I'd barely been in South Africa when one of the top independents asked me to produce direct this with three day's notice and a turn arounf of two days. .

Fast Forward today. This observation of ones views is more acute in politicans, who start their careers with an alacrity to change the world. Few survive the course with scruples.

As journalists we all go through a pupae phase - almost akin to Stephen Covey's dictum (Seven ways of Success): dependecy, independency, and interdependecy.

And along the way, do we really change. Will this generation born into the web mass-niche media alter its views to accommodate the traditional generation?

Itumelang - one of South Africa's dynamic twenty somethings said something that was neat explaining change in South Africa. "We've had a political change, but not a social one". Ditto Journalism?

What will become more important? So far, the environment, social interaction, the "us" culture as opposed to the didactic era of Thatcherism and dare we say Thatcherism. 2.0 (Blairism)

Of the Masters students in this video, many are doing well. Sub editors, and editors-in-chiefs of lively journalistic organs.They hail from four corners of the world. It was a thorough joy teaching them,as it was the out going group this year. I tip my cloth cap.

Their curiosity welded the old and new, the future and the now, and a freshness that we as cynical journalists admire - for once we were honest truth seekers. Yes, many of us still are, but the knocks of the profession, the relentless culture which often eschews what matters for what is tantalising is burdensome.

When a daily paper can run misleading headlines of Sharks off Britain's coast knowing it's not true, but bask in the circulation of a three fold increase in sale, you're inclined to ask the question again. What is it we do?

On the full version of What If Doug, a successful ( I hope he won't mind) designer cum journo in California wants to change cooking books. They're too bland and don't bring out the essence of this great art, he comments.

This isn't frivolity, but a microcosm for all things that take up space doing nothing in particular. So go on. What would you change? And if you happen to record it, will it stand the test of time in years to come.

Urgh!

My Phone's gone with 10 years of contacts and all sorts.
Bummer!

Time's threesome

Copy of Time subscription dropped through post. OMG you mean you pay to read it???

Three snippets inside: delicious, fab, studied.

How the Bourne Boys keep it real
The bit where Greengrass hooks up with Matt Damon after the studio had set up a meeting:
"At London's Heathrow Airport, with £15 in his pocket, Greengrass realized, "I'd better get some money, 'cause I'm taking out one of the world's great movie stars." His cash card was overdrawn. "So I spent the whole meeting with him thinking, Please don't order the steak."

Outward Bound - a profile of David Milliband, British Foreign Secretary
""He's the Foreign Secretary? He's so young!" exclaimed social activist Atta ul Haq"
Adding he can't be more than 30. Milliband 42, suggest short of dying his hair what is one to do?

And Woman Man, Death God
Woody Allen discusses Ingmar Bergman who died recently.
Said Bergman to Woody recounting story: "He ( Bergman) would show up on set and not know where to put the camera".

Incidently I'm so glad Time saw fit not to prefix Ingmar with "director". Reminds me once flicking through the UK's TV presenter handbook. Huh! there's my picture, I shrugged to a friend. Then we got to Sir David Frost.

It was a blank page, no bio, simply, Sir David Frost, with his agencies telephone number below.

I mean if you don't know who Frost or Bergman is, well!

Black Role Models

Report on Radio 4 Today, and splashed across the front page of The Guardian something that's been around for a while, but I guess the power of the press release, timing and political pressure [ a year long government study] means oxygen of publicity: Black boys need role models beyond pop stars and bling rappers.

Circa 1993, on my last leg in SA, the same feeling prevailed. I even did the occasional mentoring talk, But South Africa is a vast country with role models a plenty, and while they are not free of social problems, the strata, the visible presence of middle class professionals will have done much to suggest alternative lifestyles for wavering youth.

In the UK you could argue that as a visible minority, the challenge is convincing a young un, that black doctors, lawyers, academics do exist. I know it sounds a naive thing to say. Working for BBC Reportage, I reported on this. The group I found were around 13 years old with guns (they wouldn't show their faces on cameras prefering to hide behind scarfs, so the editor had me drop them for something else). That was 15 years ago.

What's happening now is a generation of neglect boiling over the pot.

Recently, a group of black youngsters gathered around an editor friend of mine, amazed at what he did and that he could make a living. He drives a new model jag; their immediate thought was he was in the music business.

Where we are now is a deep seated problem and one that politically has been ignored to the point of a festering social disease. And yes it does cut both ways: parents and authorities, many believe to blame.

Politically you could choose, as has been done, to ignore it. And by that I mean not give it the full weight of attention it deserves. "Its a constricted problem. Doesn't affect the surburbs". Successive governments have done so.

The starkest most brutal comment I heard comes from a film: "Let them shoot one another". But the realisation is quickening that it's societal. Do nothing and Blade Runner's murky outlook will look like Sesame Street: no go areas and locked off areas of society.

We're not near to South Africa's model where violence has led to whole streets being walled off with security guards. What was fascinatig for me during my reporting days was how localised violence was. A side issue: Soweto was almost cheek by jowl to the Joberg and the affluence of say, Sandton but Sandton remained unblighted by the rage.

This is not exclusively a problem to do with young black boys. It exists around social, as well as class and ethnic lines - all connected in a complex but easy-to-judge matrix.

At the point that someone shoots someone else because they want that badge as a gangster; they want to do time to show how "hard" they are, you know you have a problem, and that's not a colour issue.

It's life, respect, and what the hell has gone wrong. More importantly, what's the solution?

Car progs

About to post the full 20 mins of the film on Ferrari 599 GTB soonish.

If anything I hope it demonstrates what you can achieve with video journalism outside the confines of news productions.

I'm no where near doing a first here. Scores of programme makers have used dvcams to make progs.

But I hope what comes through is the mobility and turn around. On the day I filmed it was raining sheets, so that added to the drama. The film took a couple of hours to produce and then i developed this dummy site.
If I were to pursue the car idea, I think the K.app is, it's not a programme on cars per se, but one on the culture and lifestyle that surrounds the car, so nuances such as people talking to the presenter, Kevin Haggarthy, get a look in - where it's relevant of course.

I cut it on my powerbook and then took the final cut into Afrer Effects to add some tints. BBC Top gear can use up to 24 production crew for its show : Editor downwards. Cost? A couple of thousand pounds. A VJ prog maker? Er you do the maths.

Not quote top geat, but one gear - fast and furious. You judge. Up by the weekend. You know sometimes companies give freebies when they like what you've done. D'you reckon Ferrari might give me their 170,000 pound GTB 599?

You gota try

News legacy news and virtual reality.

Many many years back at the inception of TV News, the presenters wore DJs and bow ties. They they became less formal and around the mid 90s - one of TV News' mini revolutions (except there was no revolt) - surveys amongst viewers indicated they preferred their reporters to be, how shall we say, a little less stuffy.

Some networks dropped the tie, and adopted the open collar. The suit and tie still stayed on in the studio. We viewers like guests dropping int our living rooms to be smartly turned out.

I watched the news today. No, rather differently. Some time back I was asked to be one of the reviewers for one of the networks examining its news.

So I put myslf in that position.. and my immediate thoughts watching one of the channels was how clean eveything looked.

I think there are parrallels here with war or cop movies, perhaps film making, period.

The early films were highly polished, with clean lines, and awesome cinematography. You could get hit by a grenade or give chase to that bank rober but still that brill cream slick of hair remained intact.

Then audiences rebelled. They just stopped watching. Homicide Life on the Street, and NYPD showed a more grittier, verite, sense of what happens when someone fires off a 22. or cops have a bad beat.

Could adiences do the same with news? That broadcast from the floods, Heathrow Airport's twenty-people-deep, angst-ridden departure hall, that morning raid with the police, all messy affairs, but newsmakers are taught to look their smartest.

So could audiences turn off?

My take, no not in their droves. It's a question of legacy. We watch the dominant news sources because they come with the sstandard bouquet of channels, and so long as they present a universal unified on-screen language, we probbaly have little to make any comparative judgement.

Homicide, 24, Millennium,The Shield, Lost showed an alternative face of drama in a sea of convention until then we'd thought was the norm.

But the next TV revolution is not far off. How soon till we get to 10mbs?

why?