June 2007 Archives

Fascinating article over at gaming and social software blog Wonderland, relating discussion with Jesse Alexander, Executive Producer of Heroes (and Alias, and Lost). The main topic concerns crossover between television and gaming, and not merely the usual 'how do we exploit this property?' nonsense. No no, this is bi-directional, with TV learning lessons from the games industry.

Let's face it, gaming isn't niche: PWC predicts spending on games in the US will surpass that on music this year -- globally, that's already the case. That there are games that tell fascinating, wonderful, gripping stories is not accidental -- that only happens when people know what they're doing.

While I wouldn't describe myself as a huge fan of Heroes, it does put its finger on something fresh. Perhaps it's that it's fluffy and light -- and could feel trivial -- but somehow taking itself as seriously as it does invites the viewer to buy in. It doesn't pretend to be something it isn't -- which is lightweight entertainment -- but given that, there's a sense of buckling the belt and the show saying 'right, let's get this party started.' That conviction is strangely infectious.

The best of the new Doctor Who episodes (Blink) have been similar; the BBC's Jekyll (by the same writer) ditto; the games I tend to like (BioWare's stuff, notably) could be described similarly. But it needs a delicate touch: I've always considered Lost to be overblown, in the same sort of way that X-Files always was and, arguably, Battlestar Galactica is, unless you're American in which case it's probably about right (discuss, 20 marks).

Read the article; it's interesting.

I've long said here that I dislike the phrase 'user-generated content,' for all the usual reasons ('users' sounds dismissive, blah blah blah). Also, 'user-generated TV' seems to me an oxymoron.

Ved Sen puts it rather elegantly, in a critique of Mint Digital's second UGTV conference (I laid into the first one last year; from the second we at least have photos):

Television, by design works at a large scale. Because of its technology, capital intensity and overall structure, it only works for millions of people at a time. It simply doesn't work for a few hundreds. That's why Youtube works - not because of the half a dozen videos that get seen by the whole world, but because of the thousands of videos which individually get seen by a few people. For User Generated content to go on TV - it needs to be good enough for a million plus audiences. How many pieces of user-content merit that kind of audience. It seems a bit like forcing a square peg in a round hole. Think of going the other way - imagine trying to create mass-Internet content. Why would you do that?

To me, the whole concept of UGTV seems not so much backwards, as inside-out. Which doesn't mean it's not going to happen -- as Sen goes on to note, Current.tv is interesting because it targets a very specific niche for which the approach might just work. But fixating on UGTV isn't necessarily a way to get things done in general.

Last week I was giving informal advice on a funding pitch. 'It's so hard to get decent news coverage in this field,' said the people preparing the pitch, 'So: we want to fund someone to identify good stories, and to push them to the media.'

I thought they were crazy -- they'd be paying an amateur to do high-level PR. Their thinking is based in an out-of-date concept: that 'the media' = press and broadcast. Don't get me wrong, printing presses and television transmitters are expensive bits of infrastructure, and there's a certain sense in having newspapers and television companies as gatekeepers. But you no longer have to play that game if you don't want to.

My suggestion was that they instead pay the staffer to get out and make the news films they wanted to see, and publish themselves. Their contention is that the stories are of interest to the public, but not enough interest to make it past news editors. Fine -- offer your stories to the public and see if they bite.

"But... where's the audience?" they worried.
"I thought you said these stories were of interest to the public?" I countered.
"But..."
"Oh, come on. You want to target teenagers. What's the audience penetration of BBC Local Radio News in that demographic, compared to -- say -- Bebo? And you see more risk in this approach?"

The BBC Local Radio News journo in the room didn't look happy. But really, the only people with anything to fear are those who are too tightly-bound to the existing infrastructure and its gatekeepers.

People like... those at UGTV'07?

I'm back on the road again, by the way. Had a brilliant day in a school in Port Talbot yesterday -- great kids, wonderful crazy films, hugely enthusiastic staff -- and I've two more workshops this week, at Techniquest and in Mold. Next week I'm in Dorset and Devon, for four more days of workshop.

It's all going to be a bit on the mad run-around side, but it's a joy to be back into it. However, things are likely to be a bit slow on the blog front for a couple of weeks.

Mark Ravenhill writes in yesterday's Media Guardian of his distaste for a world of script editing dominated by Robert McKee's Story. I completely agree, though I fear he's rather late jumping on the McKee-skeptic bandwagon.

Not that Story is a bad book -- it's not[1]. It's more that people who've been on McKee's course have an annoying habit of ending up as disciples, evangelising The One True Way of Writing Screenplays. They apply this to everything, from blockbuster films to hour-long documentaries to make&do magazine shows for children. And yes, I have had a discussion with a (very) senior children's TV figure, in which he invited me to learn lessons from McKee for a 2-minute item that involved yoghurt pots and string.

There are lessons to learn. But slavishly sticking to McKee's structure is at best a creative straight-jacket, and at worse a crutch for the lazy and talentless.

(if any journos are reading: there's your pull-quote. Heh)

A few years ago I attended a conference session about McKee's Story, in a meeting of science documentary makers. The panel unanimously extolled the virtues of the approach and derided anyone who queried their methods. Those of us at the back shuffled uncomfortably -- finally, I understood why I hadn't been able to watch Horizon for years; the editors gently enforced a Story-esque conflict/antagonist/turning-point/three-act structure. Whether it suited the narrative or not.

Eventually I could bear it no longer. I stood and said -- almost certainly less-elegantly than I recall, sadly -- "This session has had an excellent set-up and a modicum of conflict. However, it's sadly lacking in turning-point or hope of resolution. I propose a solution: I'm off to the bar."

A surprising number of people walked out with me.

[1] -- Come to think of it, I've not read it. I've read someone's session notes from the 1-day workshop, but not the book. From some accounts (see the Amazon reviews) this is the best way to find out what McKee's banging on about.

I've worked out why there's no SDK for the iPhone: the multi-touch panel would allow you to build a software theremin. And as we all know, the only thing that sounds worse than a kazoo is... a theremin. Hence: no SDK. Boom.

While I'm being geeky: has anyone else noticed that Apple's new website is quite wide? How's that going to render on an iPhone?

One of the things I've regularly found amusing about predictive text input is that where there's more than one match for the button pushes (which is usually the case), the default choice tends towards the whimsical rather than the useful. For example, 686 defaults to 'nun' rather than the perhaps more regularly-used 'mum'.

I've just found another one: 2564 defaults to 'clog.' I don't know about you, but I find myself wanting to discuss Dutch footwear far more regularly than, say, blogs.

how would we visit the South Devon Chilli Farm?

The irrepressible Fake Steve Jobs has a neat post on the we-haven't-seen-one-but-we-have-to-cover-it-anyway-so-let's-be-snarky iPhone stories that are cropping up all over the place, but mostly at Zdnet. The bit I really like is where he posits assessing press coverage using Fourier techniques. Much under-used for gags, Fourier analysis is.

For reference: I've been buying blank miniDV tapes from APR Media in Somerset. Nice people on the phone, their know their stock well, and I can't argue with their prices -- £1.53/tape for standard Sony miniDV, including VAT, and with reasonable delivery costs.

Today marks the third occasion on which I've remembered to call them only at about half past three in the afternoon. They've always said 'the tapes will be with you tomorrow,' and they've not been wrong yet. Yeah, I know, I've jinxed it now.

Recommended, anyway. They do everything from DigiBeta stock through blank DVDs, to hard drives and odd bits of digital camera gear.

[Update 20/06: predictably, within minutes of placing my order (which did indeed arrive promptly, hurrah), John emailed to tell me of a place in Bradford that's selling JVC miniDV stock for 99p/roll +VAT. If you can stomach the minimum order of 50 rolls: yow, that's cheap.]

Most Blockbuster stores in the US will offer high-def films on Blu-Ray but not HD-DVD. Remember, folks, that the Beta vs. VHS war was decided largely by which format the rental shops supported.

One could argue that in the next few years Blockbuster will matter less, as people increasingly download high-def movies. But that doesn't end well for HD-DVD either, since once the physical medium is out of the loop, who cares about formats?

As for Blockbuster's move being rushed: remember that a bricks-and-mortar store has a vested interest in there being just one successful format. Two formats take up more shelf space and/or cost more to acquire and manage. In fact, I'd be fascinated to know the deals that were put on the table by the respective industry groups -- who was able to move further on pricing? The conventional wisdom has it that Blu-Ray discs are more expensive to manufacture, but I guess we don't really know.

This blog hardly has the largest readership going, but hey, it's worth a punt...

Right now, I'm in the last month (ish) of my confirmed time on SciCast. The project continues, but my direct involvement winds down. That means I'm looking for work, most likely from August.

I'm a writer and editor, and I produce video for broadcast and the web. My background is in science television: communicating complex subjects to large audiences is, hence, something of a speciality. Doing so with levity and a degree of panache is a personal preference, but I can be serious when needed. And I'm really very good with websites. I'll roll my sleeves up and delve into databases and CSS if I have to, but I mean more on an organisational, 'what's possible?/what's desirable?/what's worthwhile?' level. Oh, and I do schedules and budgets and all that jazz too.

If your organisation is looking for advice, assistance, or opinions on web media, particularly in that cusp where technically challenging stuff meets the public, I might be able to help. My consultancy rates are, of course, exorbitant. I'm also available for longer-term work: got a big new engineering or science project that needs documenting along the way? I'm your guy. Think the public should know what goes on inside your building? Let's talk. Want to share your successes with your customers in an entertaining manner? That too.

Contact me via email, as jonathan[at]quernstone.com.

There are times when the BBC looks like a blundering behemoth, not so much intent on world domination as accidentally trampling the rest of the industry as it fails to see beyond its own nose. Then there are times when it demonstrates that it really is the global centre of excellence one would hope and expect. There's no dichotomy here, of course: the BBC is vast, it has many heads, and at any given time a statistically significant number of them will be facing precisely the wrong way. So it's pleasing -- and not a little scary -- to come across a situation where the BBC isn't merely looking in the right general direction, but is striding onward, leading a charge into the bold new (media) future.

Thanks to Tom Loosemore, here are the BBC's Fifteen Web Principles, as signed off by the BBC board. There are several things to note:

1. None of the things listed will come as a surprise to people who've read the Cluetrain Manifesto, follow Euan Semple, chuckle at Hugh MacLeod, marvel at the talented Mr Hammersley, and generally hang around getting excited about blog-type stuff.
2. It's nevertheless nice to see a concise summary that's also practical.
3. This was, apparently, signed off by the BBC board.
4. I'll repeat that, for the hard of nuance:
5. This was signed off by the BBC board.

I'm currently working with a small handful of fairly sizable public bodies, and last week I was talking to a whole bunch of visitor centres and museums. And you know... the BBC gives every impression of being waaaay ahead of pretty much everyone else on this stuff. There are occasional flickers that suggest other institutions' interest is piqued, but there are serious language and conceptual hurdles.

As Euan says, it's not really about people who 'get it' vs. people who don't. It's about those of us who think we see something -- glimmering in the light, just out of reach -- managing to express that clearly enough for others to catch a glimpse of our perspective. Then it's about holding onto that vision for long enough to define and build something around it, so the real decisions can be made.

After all, it's not clear that the BBC is right. As it strides boldly on it could well be flattening perfectly good alternatives underfoot, or leading us all over a precipice. And then we'd look proper silly.

But until then, documents like the Fifteen Web Principles are tremendously valuable. They're pragmatic, straightforward, plain-speaking, and reasonable. What's clever is that implementing them requires a fairly radical approach to engineering, organisation, and editorial management. If you accept these principles, doing something about them -- doing it properly -- is challenging.

Case in point: with SciCast, I reckon we get a partial score on less than half of the principles. Which is better than it might have been, but not as good as it needs to be.

The unlikely-named Steve Spangler is big in the world of Diet Coke and Mentos explosions -- I believe he was doing it before the Eepybird boys -- and he managed to persuade the company to spring for a high-speed camera. The result? Mentos in a fizzy drink, filmed rather artfully and at 2,000 frames/second. Nice. Video here.

[hat tip to Paul for the link]

Stewart Copeland writes about the second night of The Police's new tour. Well worth a read; anyone who's been on a stage will recognise and understand.

Given that YouTube is stuffed to the gunnels with lip-syncing videos, I probably shouldn't have found this one quite so entertaining. I think it's the way-better-than-average production values, and the clever use of props. Besides, how many lip-sync videos include catapult take-offs?

Sheep racing, duck trials, and shearing exhibitions compete with the delights of 'ewetopia,' at The Big Sheep. It's big in Devon. Apparently.

Tee-hee. I'd completely forgotten the run of drafts in which the lecture about food allergies and hazards was based entirely around the different ways in which a Christmas Pudding could kill you. The very opening of the lecture involved us dropping a giant Christmas Pudding to land SPLAT! right where Krebs had been standing a split-second earlier.

Cartoon violence rocks.

The use of 'mike' instead of 'mic.' It's a shortening of 'microphone.' Tsk.

(example in this article, which I'm reading because it was linked from Robert Sharl's post here, on which I can't comment because I don't have a Google account, or something. Robert: you've seen the video from TED of the Microsoft SeaMonkey/Photosynth demo, right? If CoreAnimation makes that sort of thing easier to implement, I'm all for it. Yes, we'll get pointless crap too, but we have that now, it's just uglier than it will be.)

I'm wading through piles of paper trying to find a specific document that I must have mis-filed/incorporated in a pile of 'not worth filing' stuff/generally misplaced/etc. Instead, I've found a bunch of documents pertaining to the 2005 Christmas Lectures. Specifically, early drafts of the scripts, with scribbled notes from rehearsals and run-throughs.

Captured in the margins are moments of insight. Such as: when the opening line of Lecture 3 changed from 'Look at your arm!' (no, really -- and no, I didn't write that) into 'You're all turkeys!'. Which I think ended up as 'You're all vegetables! And some of you are turkeys!', but you get the point.

Then there's the musing where James asked, of an entire lecture, 'What's the question we're addressing here?', and I recall sitting bolt upright and saying 'Not quite the right question. It should be: what's the perspective shift we've inspired?', that led to refocussing the entire lecture around the rôle evolution has played in shaping our diets (even later drafts defocussed the lecture again, but that's another issue).

There are the parenthetical comments that note the first appearances of The Goat, and The Squad of TA Soldiers (both eventually dropped again), and the moment I first dreamed up having a mad machine serve Krebs 'the pill on a plate' so beloved of 60s Sci-Fi, that ended up as the opening of lecture 5.

This is how I like to remember the creative process. Rewrites are painful, but the moments of inspiration, of throwing out cruft and fixing something, of refactoring entire trains of thought -- those are magical events.

Writing at that sort of level, with that sort of care -- agonising over both individual words and the shape of sentences, about how paragraphs flow, and about driving driving ever onwards whilst simultaneously coaxing contrasts of intense grandeur and amicable ease -- it's hard.

And I like it.

I should do it more.

One of the problems we're facing with SciCast is that just as video is becoming fairly universally accessible, the manufacturers are retiring the only type of low-end camcorders that really make any sense -- mini DV. Sony, JVC and Canon each have remarkably few consumer DV cameras on the market, as they push towards supposedly more modern formats like recordable DVD-video and, particularly, hard drive recorders.

They're all perfectly reasonable acquisition formats, but if you want to make films rather than force people to suffer through every second you shoot, you need to be able to edit the result. And this is where the non-DV formats rather fall down.

DVD-video is a lousy post-production format but still arguably better -- at least for now -- than the format used by Sony and Panasonic hard disc recorders, the snappily-named AVCHD. (just to be really confusing, there are also AVCHD camcorders that use data DVDs as the storage medium, or even flash memory cards)

The trouble with AVCHD is, ironically, how fantastic it is. It's an MPEG4/H264 variant with an extremely large frame size. Which is, in short, crippling for current PCs to decode. Anecdotally, systems that can handle four streams of the MPEG2-based, DV-derived HDV format can just about handle one of AVCHD.

Playing back the video on your PC isn't where your problems end, however -- edit system support is sadly lacking. Sony's Vegas editing package is supposed to handle it, and I hear rumours that Ulead Videostudio can too. What we really want, however, is support in iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premier. None of which is in place at the moment.

Right now, the best option is to -- I kid you not -- pull in full uncompressed HD via an HDMI capture card, but that's hardly realistic for a supposedly domestic format. There's an interesting thread here about forthcoming AVCHD support in Final Cut Studio, but it's equally clear that the strain of cutting AVCHD material is going to drive demand for übermulticore desktop computers well into the end of the decade. Right now, the only viable option is to re-render captured footage into some intermediate codec for editing. Which isn't something you want to talk your granny through. There's no word of support in the likes of iMovie, either.

So we're left in the faintly ridiculous situation that editing video is today harder than it was a couple of years ago. We've a plethora of mutually-incompatible formats, excessive render times even on the beefiest of desktop PCs, and still not many cameras with proper microphone inputs.

Personally, I'll take cheap, reliable, and decent-quality DV over any format that's theoretically HD but practically unplayable except in unedited form, direct off the camera. Harrumph.

(though I wouldn't mind me some HDV...)

My hate/hate relationship with my N95 continues. I was showing it to Matt tonight, and it crashed within about 30 seconds of my starting to demo it. He was actually quite impressed; from the way I'd been talking, he'd expected more like 15 seconds.

Anyway, catching up on feeds tonight (via the wonderful new NetNewsWire 3.0), I find that Scoble has blagged himself an N95. One of the problems I've been having is finding sensible software repositories for Series 60 apps to try out; one of Scoble's comment threads helps there.

Incidentally, I'd agree with Scoble that the phone's camera quality is excellent -- noticeably better than the not-at-all-sniffy K750, and Nokia have toned down the somewhat crude over-sharpening their previous high-end Zeiss-lensed überphones applied. However, there are two problems with the N95 camera; shutter lag is pretty bad, but more of an issue is startup time. I count it at about five seconds, which is extreme. I've started flicking the lens cover open while the thing's still in my pocket, as I'm walking up to where I think there might be a shot. Once I'm in place, I still have to count to three before the screen's up and stabilised. Ugh.

Just so those of you who haven't been paying attention know: comments here are down. Disabled for (shared) server performance reasons; I was getting hit by so many spam-bots, the comment script was nailing the server. Not that the spam was getting through -- the filters were taking care of that -- but it was still driving 100+ threads to reject everything.

I haven't had chance to work out a solution yet. Sorry.

I like things like this: a bull (called 'Derek'), in a field, wearing a GPS receiver and location transmitter. Guess where in the field he's going to be at 3pm daily, and win tickets to Glastonbury, care of sponsors Orange.

Nice. Whimsical. Not even the bad puns annoy me.

(via Iain Tate's crack unit)

I just woke up my venerable workhorse Power Mac from its overnight slumbers, and it made extremely worrying graunching sounds. A few minutes' warming-up and it seems to have settled down, but still... eek?

Please don't die please don't die please don't die.

I bought it on 18^th September 2002, and it's been rock-solid since then. True, I have swapped out the hard drive for a larger one, fitted more RAM, and... actually, that's about it. The video card took a beating when an old LCD monitor blew, taking out the card's VGA output, so I'm down to the one (ADC) screen now. But it's a real trooper, this thing. Still runs everything I need like a champ.

Wibble.

The votes are in (sorry about that, David...), and the winner is announced. Apparently no two judges voted for the same first choice, so it all came down to ranked lists and single transferrable vote. Which is pretty darned cool, actually.

Great work from David Colarusso on all this, and congratulations to the winner. Fun!

Great critique of the London 2012 logo, from Coudal Partners. I'm particularly fond of:

It's simple. When we hear "my kid could have done that!" we think "success." Some of the greatest logos of all time involve two lines (the Christian cross) or three lines and a circle (Mercedes). Your kid COULD have done that, but she didn't. Nor did she design the graphics standards manual that goes with it. So give it a rest. Or send us her resume.

The beta of Movable Type 4 is out. Damn, and I was so close to moving The Daily Grind to WordPress, too.

Swap sardines for whitebait, and Portuguese conference food would closely parallel North Yorkshire’s. Though somehow I suspect Bridlington might struggle to accommodate a conference of 850 science centre and museum personnel and associated hangers-on. But I digress. Daily staples included roast potatoes and rice pudding – thankfully not served together – and coffee breaks were enlivened by these things. Which are basically egg custards, but sweeter and with more vanilla and a whole lot less nutmeg.

And very fine they were too, usually running out within seconds. On the last day of the conference, however, somebody had obviously been totting up the last cents, and great heaving plates of the things appeared. The coffee tables groaned beneath their weight, and under the pressure of bodies as we unceremoniously elbowed each other aside.

We ate every last one.

Since people seem to be liking the N95 comments, a few more:

• It crashes. A lot. Sometimes in the middle of calls.
• Hunting between 3G and standard cells seems to be the cause of most of my connection problems. Roaming in Portugal I've had to disable 3G altogether.
• The camera startup time and shutter lag are hilariously awful, and seriously impact the usability of the camera.
• Battery life is poor -- I think worse than the quoted life for the iPhone? If Apple's handset actually hits the specs -- which Apple gear usually does -- I think it'll be considerably better than this thing. With WiFi off and only brief use, the N95 needs recharging essentially every night.
• The charger is the dinkiest, neatest little thing you ever did see. Great piece of kit.
• The camera lens cover has an annoying habit of getting activated when pushing or pulling the handset out of a pocket, just like the K750. The K800/810 avoid this by having the cover move on the perpendicular axis, which is much smarter.
• I've had horrid problems with SMS message centres, that are quite baffling. In Portugal, it receives but refuses to send texts, which is irritating as hell.
• Video quality is stunningly good. For a phone.

Strangely, I'm still enjoying using the N95. Mostly because in places it's so bad it's plain entertaining. I'll be fed up with it long before the contract is up, but we still have six months before the iPhone arrives in the UK (longer for a 3G version?), so I guess it'll have to do for now.