A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
Published Date 11/6/13 8:46 PM
Organising on Facebook is suicide for the internet and the future of our society. We need to do different and we need to do this now, luckily this isn’t actuality a very hard thing to do.
The most simple/basic thing to do is to have a organising website hosted on a independent/activist server – you can ask such people as OMN for an social office organising site or network23 for a basic blog. Then to reach into (but not be controlled by) the closed walls of Facebook you can post links to your content FROM YOUR SITE to Facebook. With this you can kinda have the best of both worlds.
The second part is more ambitious and geek centred, read this link for some ideas on building tools LINK
Its important not to get engrossed in the geek/activist paranoia about security – the is non on the open web, it was designed that way and its why it has been so successful at tacking over the world in the way it has. If you wont to do anything secret or possibly illegal – do not do it on ANY activist or corporate website, that’s what physical meet-ups are for.
The is a potential small exception to this statement, will talk about Per-Per encrypted connections in an other post – BUT this is not a thing to use for 99% of activist communication so not relevant here.
At a minimum all future campaigns should be using the atavist hosting and post links to inside the walled corporate internet. I can help, leave a comment here on this activist hosted site. Or try this site out for organising
Published Date 11/3/13 4:38 PM
DRAFT (needs a spell check)
The was little preparation for the filming of the action beyond asking a film-maker a week before the event. No information on what the action is or were it is, I come an hour early to the meeting place with equipment I think I might need.
It turns out to be a activist quire taking over the auditorium of the Shell sponsored Royal Festival Hall to sing a political song to the huge ordnance before the main concert comes on.
OK I have a a load of extended battery’s, good small qaulerty HD video camera, a short directional mic, a MP3 recorder and a good mobile phone with HD video camera.
Decide to place the MP3 recorder on the body of the person sitting in the middle seating of the quire to get soled sound. set-up the video camera on a fixed shot in front of the group then hand film with the mobile phone, with short mic to make shore I have cutaways/reaction shots and close ups.
Half an hour before setting off to shoot I discover the a second camera man is coming to film as well, he will be shooting stills with one camera and long shot video with a second stills camera in video mode. I would have liked him to take and use the good quality HD video camera as he is seated across the stage so would be in a good position to use the zoom – as nearth of his stills cameras have a good zoom. The issue is that he would not be formiler with the video camera, this together with shooting stills at the same time means this option doesn’t work out.
With the run though of the song it turns out the is no time/focus to find and attach the MP3 recorder to the central quire member, it ends up in my pocket. While looking at the seat allocation it seams its going to hard to setup the video camera on a fix shot as the is nowhere to put it, only a drop onto the stage.
Arriving at the venue, the is a reluctances to bring out the cameras, mics, cables etc. as this would bring attention to the nerves group of activist am sitting next to. I have no idea when they are going to start singing, I don’t think they have a common agreement eather (:
Looking around the is no place were I can get good video framing, in front of us is a row of narrow occupied seating then a drop to the stage, off to the side is more close set seating full of ordinary ordnance members. Behind me is a exit and a bored looking usherette.
As the humming of the song starts, I turn on the MP3 recorder and drop it on top of the quire members bag next to my seat. I shoot some establishing shots of the ordnance and auditorium using the mobile phone as if it were a stills camera.
The is no time to setup the video camera so start the mobile phone video rolling, soon discover that its to dark for a good image, but the song has started and I would miss half of it if I switched to the video camera that is still in my bag. Keep the phone camera rolling but am much to close to the action in my seat, even holding the phone arms leagnth away, this also creates a lot of bad wobble as it has so image stabilisation.
Hoping that the second camera man has his camera on and steady, after 45 sec I move out of my seat and across the isle and squeeze into the next row to get a wider shoot, The usherette lucky ignores me, though I get hissed at by the people am obscuring, they quieten down when they realise am filming. Am off to one side so still don’t have good framing even when holding the camera out at arm length over the stage (more wobbly cam). Its the best I can do, as the banner drops (surprise to me when it happens) I capture the audience clapping, then the group of young people behind me join in with clapping, spin round to film them. The song comes to an end, and the quire shuffles out sing as they go. I interview a usherette who is supportive then the theatre manager who is not, she puts her hand over the lenses and pushes me out of the theatre. It was all over in 3 minutes, a very successful fun action.
We retire to a café to exchange video, Hew missed the first 30 seconds due to focusing issues but after this he has a good wide shot and some nice cutaways, his sound track was also useful as both my mics were to close to the singing to capture the wider auditorium atmosphere and the clapping of the main audiences. I lay all 3 mic tracks over each other to get a fuller sound and to try and hid that the MP3 recorder was accidentally set to a fixed sound level rather than AGC so suffered from clipping of the sound during load bits of the song. Towards the end of the song Huw dose get into a discussion with his naber which is recorded onto the track , I have muted it down but you can still hear it on the finished film (:
I have to go and film a NUJ conference early the next morning, that’s another story (;
When it came to the edit I was in a rush – set the project file to 25FPS which is standard European video format, the editing package crashes every 5 min becouse of the bad formating of the stills camera video, produces a ruff edit, drop some draft titles over it, sleep on it then tweak and send off to the group – I still do not know what stories they wont to tell. Would be happy to just do a ruff edit and get it out as I have all the NUJ conferences stuff to do, but it was a good action and the is a good film in there so give them the option of a more polished piece. Come back to it after a few days, humm the sound is auta sync, looking at the sources files the mobile phone video is at 29.97 FPS and the stills camera video is at 23.976 FPS and the project is at a standard 25 FPS no wonder we have sound/video sync issues.
I had synced all 3 sound tracks up then locked them in place, then cut up and moved the video around… to do the draft edit, this was now not easy to fix and the more editing I did the harder it would become. I tried changing the output frame rate to 23.976 which didn’t help then to 29.97 which didn’t either. In Adobe Première you cant change the project frame rate for a project after you set it, so what to do. Looks like I have to re-do the edit from scratch (render both badly formatted video’s into one good to edit format before starting). Or live with some video/audio syncing issues. Other matters were pressing.
Be in on the planing of the action, and build camera angles and sound recording into the action from the start.
Have 2 people filming:
* One – long shot on mini tripod, then second hand held camera for audience reaction mashore of good auditorium sound on the first camera.
* Second – fixed action sound with recorder in quire and mobile camera/sound for medium/close ups.
Good to have a 3ed person responsible for makeing shore security dose not interfere with filming/action.
Have redundant sound recorders in the action. Make shore all equipment configured and is working at same frame rate and timing.
Published Date 11/2/13 6:04 PM
Next stage on boat (1):
Find friendly boater with a generator and good backup tools
Find a disc changing tool for B&D angle grinder
Mark off 2” cutting on the ceiling bulge
Extra mask and overall – find safety glasses.
Cut the fibre glass, using a hover to reduce dust
Then wood saw to remove the bulge – convert into tender?
Buy box of stainless steel screws and long 2×1′ wood and fix to roof, then apply insulation and floor laminate to make new ceiling.
Soughes trolley to bring down to fake stone slabs from building yard in dolson.
X Buy and wheel down, cut wood for base and make metal braces for holding the vertical slab.
X Order stove to hackspace (send message to list) and flu trolley down to boat.
X Buy sandbags, place in bilge to cushion concrete blocks and in the bow space.
Move boat under bridge, cut 6” hole in roof for flue
X Put stove in place (fix down after testing in place for a week)
Add more vertalation
Fix flu in place, make metal plate for roof of bout with support.
Get wood
Test fire, carbonmonoxide detecter.
Remove big box, use this to store my non boat positions (need place for this).
Next stage (2):
Think about doing the whole floor with hackspace laminate
Think about using cork tiling as insulation, might not be an issue after wood burner in place.
Buy water bladder for the water box – move the box forwarded under the bed. Basic plumbing in place.
Build a wooden platform for the bed, find a mattress.
Bring down Steve’s cassette toilet – put in place with a curtain.
Put a battery box in place and a number of batteries, fit a second solar panel and wiring for charging from the boat battery’s.
Put LED lighting in place, run cables length of boat, buy on/off switches and put in place.
Next stage (3):
Buy anker and store at front of boat
Fit or build navigation lights
Fit a spot light
More solar panels
Windmill 12v