Over the last week or so at GDS, we've been looking at new ideas for making videos.
One involves getting people to talk directly to camera. That's not as easy as it might sound, and requires someone with confidence, sparkle, and an ability to remember their lines. We were lucky - we found people with all those qualities, so the filming was a delight.
That's me, above, helping m'colleague Graham Higgins set up the rig before the interviewees came along.
I say "rig" like it was something complicated, but Graham is a master of improvisation and had assembled some stands and an old metal rod he found in a skip into a frame, across which we stretched a white bed sheet.
In post-production, we used a plain white slide as a background and Graham did a fantastic job of masking out most of the sheet. The results looked really nice. The aim is to have a background so stark that the viewer pays more attention to what's being said to them.
We're doing other experiments too. I've been working with Max Gadney this week, assembling some ideas for another film. More on that another day.
I've been commissioned to write something about mistakes. I'm looking for people aged 6 to 96 who have made a mistake, learned something from it, and are willing to share it with the world.
If you're interested, please get in touch.
News stories in which political leaders express shock about being spied upon always make me laugh. They're all at it, all the time. Everyone spying on everyone else. That's how it's been for years, long before the internet and mobile phones came along. That's how it will continue, long after the phones have been embedded in our brains.
That's the background to Spies like them, which I wrote late last night as my mind fizzed with the silliness of it all. File under satire.
Filed under: notes
(25 Oct 2013)