Hamish Campbell

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.

How to film this action well

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

Published Date 10/28/13 2:14 PM

Remember everyone is a volunteer, nobody at camps is payed to do the hard work.

At Balcome when I arrived tech was a disaster, all the power was brought in by car by taking 12v battery’s to locales houses brought back by car drained till flat then repeated each day. This both rapidly destroyed the lead acid car battery’s and meant the camp was actually running on fossil fuels.

I like a challenge so set out to fix this, it wasn’t a difficult thing to do, took me half a day to gather and assemble all the pieces, by the evening I was tired but prowed the was a solar power set-up that would permanently charge 2 phones for the length of the camp as long the sun shone. It was relative simple to carry on building this out to make the whole camp work in the same way.

In the morning the sun came up, I got out of bed to plug in some phones and what did I find, my days work had been pulled apart in the night because people “needed” components to play music in the party camp. A frustrating day gathering up the parts agen only to find that the battery had been destroyed in the night by running it flat.

It wasn’t a easy technical problem, it actually was a more complex harder to fix social problem. The was no shortage of competent people at the camp, but they weren’t involved because they had experienced variations of the problem above – that nothing could be built – everything was transitory and broken.

The social solution?

Push the few apsultute loons out of the space, this tends to be emotionally violent, we mediated by giving one loon the equipment he needed to set up his own space. The second one, when challenged, pushed him self out of the space and took his stuff with him. Short and (emotionally) violent in both cases but they did both go away and allow the space to grow and function.

The second issue was less challenging but probably created more resentment, this was that the equipment and space was held in “common” for the camp and everyone could use it as THEY thought fit. This was at the root of the destruction of battery’s and regular burning out of equipment – the was a big box full of broken stuff, each day expensive replacements were ordered and the day after it arrived most of it was in the broken box – camp spending on tech was completely out of control because of this.

To fix this we had to shift the control of the equipment from the “common” to the smaller growing tech team. How do do this was simple, sitting in the tech tent all day asking people what they wonted stuff for. This was a gentle and helpful thing to do BUT behind the sean it was building up a pile of resentment from the “crew” who were used to using and bracking tech equipment freely and it being replaced at camp expense.

After this successful transition the tech space became boring, it worked, phones were charged, laptops powered, media and legal work done, peopule could check there facebook. The wasn’t much to do but sit in there to make shore the “loon” energy did not come back to dominate.

Though it did came back to bite later. 

Published Date 10/27/13 12:34 PM

A look at the parts that make it happen (DRAFT)

Lets look at the groupings first that balance helping/hindering a campaign. These are of course B&W images to highlight issues, on the ground things are always complex with many overlaps.

The “family” – what is most important to them is having a senses of belonging, brining safety, warmth and meaning into there lives which they do not have in the outside world. This is good in as far as it creates a warm and carrying centre to the camp. But it is eqauley bad as it creates a unfriendly shell around parts of the camp “you haven’t been here since the beginning, you cant tell us what to do”, “he is a police spy”, “the newcomers are eating all the food and not doing any work” the tends to be a growing rejection of people who arnet part of the “family”. This leads to a decline in camp/campaigning effectiveness as people who are good at campaigning tend to not be interested in the continues internal sqwobals of this fractures and dysfunctional “family”. The is a increasing tendency to push out new blood and sougheded people from core parts of the camp. The family then repeatedly shrinks and implodes often trying to take “there” camp with it.

The party people – there garate when they organise regular fabulous party’s for the space and campaign. They are much more draining when there party is for them and involves lots of alcohol and late night music while the wider camp are trying to sleep. The mess this creates in the camp and in peoples heads drags the camp energy down.

The hippy’s, “all you need is love” this might be true BUT anyone who has live on a camp will know you need working water, a functioning kitchen, lighting and regulate wood for the fires etc. In camps these things generally/often end up being provided by angry people and at meetings you regaluly her creys of “you need to clear up after yourself” “who is bring the water” “last night some one eat all the XXX and messed the kitchen up” “can we stop playing load music after 11.00”. The hippy answer of a hug and kind words becomes thin after this has been repeated for the 3ed time with no real practical hands on help. You need love AND respect AND equality AND practical work to keep a camp functioning “all you need is love” is hippy crap in this context and if this is out of balances then no amount of “love” will save your camp or larger campaign.

The me, me , me, narcissistic Christ figger. At every camp the are young men who have father issues and messianic complexes, you can tell them by there holy clothes and obscurantist language. Not surprisingly These guys generally end up abusing young women and having fights with older men. They then drag the camp energy down by building sides to defend these actions.

The you, you, you, Christ figger are the invisible santes of camp life. At balcome the was one guy who cleaned the compost tolits for the whole time, in the morning oftern clearing the shit off the seats from the drunken party people, replacing the toilet role that the hippys dident have time to do while rushing off for important crystal harmonising and herbal tea… in the kitchen the were a group of older women who cleaned and cooked and cared, each morning clearing up the mess of the late night kitchen party crew before breakfast could be made… in both cases these people/groups were frayed and burned out as the camp came to a close.

Napoleon complex. The best that could be said for this issue was at least Napoleon was a good general, at protest camps this competency is rarely balanced with the damage done. 

NGO bods. the tendency to be lots of them visiting the camp during big days of action if the are media opportunitys, campers should be a little cynical to take care that the give and take in such situations is balanced.

Empire builders. Have there place if the empire is open and competency based, horizontalism tends to keep reasserting it self as nobody is paid to do this work.

The SWP’s. the undead of activism, they always bring the plaque with them so best to dissuade them if at all possible.

Campaigners, are key to the campaign (; but their agenda often conflicts with the more direct action crew focus – this has to be mediated as both startatergys are key to a good outcome.

Grassroots media team – Individualists. God could I talk about this one….

Direct action crews. At protest camps we love the SPIKY and the FLUFFY the problem lies in how to keep the love flowing.

Mainstream media team (corporate cock suckers) have a lot of power and responsibility, they ALWASE fail in the responsibility part so real focus is needed to keep them focused.

And more to come…

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