Month: June 2006

Hnngh? What the… ? Microsoft have suddenly got all funky and released a Creative Commons license plug-in for Office, which allows you to specify a license type and tag your documents with it. How remarkably wonderful. Does OpenOffice have anything like this yet? KOffice? I think not. Odd odd odd.

Windows-only. Ah. Well, that’s OK then. Microsoft are still evil monsters bent on world domination, obviously.

Meanwhile: I’m being hit by comment spam again. This particular assault appears to be unfilterable, since it doesn’t link anywhere, and a whole bunch of (presumably zombied) PCs appears to be behind it. Quite what the objective is, I don’t know – with no links there’s no hope of even theoretical Googlejuice (even without the nofollow nonsense). I can only assume it’s genuine mindless violence, and/or testing a new botnet. Ugh. What a crazy world.

Two-thirds of the way through Barrie Rutter’s rollicking reworking of Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses: what a week! So far we’ve had a rompingly quick hack-and-slash through all three parts of Henry VI, in scarcely four hours’ theatre. In places it’s smacked of school play, but then, the whole cycle is a preposterous soap opera anyway, with some characters (poor Clarence, for one) barely sketched out let alone filled-in.

It’s patchy, then, but roll with it and there’s lots to like. Every speech drives the narrative onward, leaving one reeling at the twists and turns of (Rutter’s edit of Shakespeare’s rewrite of) English history. Hell, was this less than six hundred years ago?

Skim over the confusion of retitling the plays ‘Henry VI’, ‘Edward IV’ and ‘Richard III’, for the first two are merely a convenient repackaging of Henry VI parts 1-3; avoid wincing at the moderately awful brass section. Instead revel in the pace and levity, marvel that the tale is hugely entertaining, and admire Conrad Nelson’s emerging Richard.

If you can, see the tour in one of the smaller spaces – Glasgow’s Theatre Royal is a little large, grand, and velvet for what turns out to be a surprisingly intimate production. But do see it. This is Shakespeare in the style of Dynasty, and it’s gripping.

Plus, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen King Edward play slap bass.

Gia’s (& Damien’s) first ‘proper’ promo film for Danny Boyle’s new film Sunshine has finally made it through whatever byzantine approvals process is required for such things. You can find it here, and it’s smashing. Lovely burned-out lens flare interview with Boyle, excellent use of music. I’d rather have less of the film clips and more of Boyle, personally, but that’s just me being curmudgeonly.

Looking forward to more… March is a long time to wait.

Well, I ask you. Read BBC News Online’s ‘how are we supposed to cover news about ourselves, again? Oh, that’s right. So long as every paragraph is one sentence long, nobody with an IQ will care’ round-up of reactions – is there really no solid reason behind this?

Of course there is, it’s just that ‘MTV, VH1 et al are cheap and, you know, really not bad for that sort of thing’ isn’t very interesting. So they’ve all made up some blather or other to ‘help’ explain why the show must go.

My favourite rationalisation is DLT’s:

“…the world has overtaken it. People are watching music videos on their mobile phones now.”

Yes, I’m sure both people who’ve tried that have had a huge impact on TOTP’s viewing figures.

Media Guardian has the story: the children’s production arm of ITV, with offices in Leeds, Manchester and London, is to close. This was the largest children’s production unit outside the BBC; 19 people vs. 600, or whatever it is.

The Leeds department is where we made The Big Bang for nine years; I loved the gang there, and sorely miss the atmosphere and support generated by Production Manager Liz and Accountant Lance. They’re a terrific team, making excellent shows, but currently that doesn’t seem to be enough.

It’s widely assumed that ITV wants out of children’s entirely: it’s a public service requirement imposed on them by OFCOM, and the costs to ITV are fairly large. They commission £27m-worth of programmes, but the lost advertising revenue has been estimated at £10m or more. Now, ITV1 spends something like £800m on programmes/year, so this isn’t huge – but bear in mind that the TV industry runs on typical margins of 15%. £40m is suddenly a big chunk of change that could ‘better’ be spent countering Sky, and indeed the BBC.

If OFCOM rolls over and further reduces the current 8 hours/week children’s requirement for ITV1, CITV could disappear entirely.

I’d worry about the impact such a move might have on the BBC. The public service requirement on ITV was partly a hold-over from the days when a broadcast license was ‘a license to print money,’ but it’s also there to give the BBC some competition. CBBC is a considerable asset in the run-up to charter renewal, but it’s still expensive, and it’s uneven – notably, they’ve not been interested in factual programming for some years. Could it find itself squeezed?

Even if CBBC continues in its current form, the loss of CITV would take £27m out of the industry, which would effectively decimate children’s production outside the BBC. It’s already spectacularly hard for independent production companies to make any money out of children’s – there’s not enough commissioning to go around – and offhand I can only think of HIT Entertainment who’d survive a total closure of CITV. Perhaps The Foundation too, and a couple of the larger preschool specialists.

Yikes. Suddenly I’m frustrated that SciCast has been delayed until next year – exploring alternative delivery models is partly what that project is about. I wanted to use it to provide data and background for other, subsequent, projects. It looks like that ‘subsequent’ timescale might have to be sooner than I’d thought.

Minor wobbles about my possibly being in Italy aside, we’re pressing ahead with the next stage of SciCast. If you’re in the Bristol or Chester areas and fancy hosting a video production workshop for a day in July (~12-16 people; age 12+; family groups welcome; we’ll need a largish room or a hall), we’d love to hear from you.

Or, if you’d just like to see the films we made back in April, you’re welcome too.

In either case, follow this link to the holding pages.

And yes, remix fans – the films are published under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA). More about that later, because I managed to get it written into my contract. How modern is that?

Yesterday: ‘Would you like to go to Pompeii?’

‘Er… when?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘What?‘

‘You’re not available? Damn!’

‘No! I mean – yes! I could do that. I think. Tuesday?’

‘Send me your CV, let’s both think it through and talk tomorrow.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Today: ‘Dreadfully sorry, the original guy came back. Er… we don’t want you any more.’

‘Drat.’

‘Nothing to do with your suitability, you sound great – he’s just worked out that [and here’s a bit of explanation that I’ll omit because nobody gains from my relating it] so he’s back on board.’

‘Oh. Woah. Fair enough. Well, it happens.’

‘We’re really sorry. We’re really really sorry.’

‘Nah, don’t worry. Good luck with the shoot, and you know where to find me if… you know, actually, I hope nothing happens. Not because I wouldn’t love to be involved, but…’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah.’

June 28th, on Five, Live from Pompeii. I’m not involved. Nice thought, though. And a rather amusing reminder that when things happen in TV, they happen now. I’m actually missing that.

Plus, I had cause to read about pyroclastic flows, which are my new favourite thing.

I’ve just posted this to a mailing list, and since I’m rather proud of the gag I’m going to repeat it here:

> Was there no news, or is the great urban public waking up to wacky science?

Let’s not kid ourselves. The entire planet is watching football, which rather limits the range of stuff that can go in the front part of the papers – it’s a terrific experiment – and the EepyBird video which seems to have kicked all this off was stupendous.

Much as I’d love to walk down the street and see people filming experiments on every corner, I somehow doubt it’s going to happen. Hmm… shame, really, it’s rather an appealing image. Mind you, people would only complain:

“This neighbourhood’s gone downhill. Kids here used to be making cyclotrons and Gauss cannons, now it’s just nucleation and elementary surface physics. Next they’ll be into ghetto stuff – optical interferometry or – oh, mercy! – chemistry. If only they’d get off the streets and do something useful with their lives, like learn how to play World of Warcraft.”

The EepyBird video has been around for a while – I linked to it here a couple of weeks ago – but it’s got some serious traction in the mainstream media. Yesterday it was the lead story on the Metro website, and this morning Today did a feature. It’s possible I was still half asleep, but – it went out in the 8:10 ‘big interview of the day’ slot, didn’t it?

The Today phonecam video is online… at YouTube. Yes, you read that right. The BBC have published video online via YouTube. Freaky.

Meanwhile – if only there was a national competition for films like this. But hey, what are the chances of a genius project like that actually existing, hmm?

[cough] more later [cough]

The giant pinhole camera using an entire aircraft hangar. Good effort, I look forward to seeing the results.