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A classic/vintage care rallye we visited yesterday: a bit of a tradition, in fact. Too good to miss when you have a camcorder.
Mind you, it was a little disappointing from the dramatic filmic point of view. This was the pre-race gathering, where the vehicles were inspected and drivers briefed. They then left for the official start in the next village. Obviously, they didn’t all arrive at once, but neither did they leave at once: rather, they left about a minute apart. No field full of cars all revving their engines and no great convoy either.
I didn’t put any sound on this video. I couldn’t find any music that would fit — actually, I did find one or two pieces that sounded promising, but they all had “non-commercial” licences attached, so I couldn’t use them. And there’s no commentary because I didn’t have anything to say.
I don’t know what’s happened to the quality. It’s not terribly good, and YouTube doesn’t seem to have prepared a high quality version — at least, not yet. All rather mystifying, but I do have a couple of theories to get busy with.
Ho hum. Enjoy.
I wasn’t going to mention this here, but since the little video I’m posting here has now been featured in Germany (yes, two features within ten days; don’t even bother trying to figure out how that happened), I probably should.
Basically, there is a YouTube gathering planned for Munich in August. I’ve been tasked with providing some of the publicity material, in particular the official promotional videos. While I’m working on the promo vids, I threw this little teaser together, just to whet the appetite, as it were.
For those who’ve come here looking for answers, at the time I put this video together, they weren’t all decided. Well, here’s the latest information:
- Date:
- 8 August, 2008.
- Time:
- 1 pm.
- Meeting place:
- Professor-Huber-Platz, Munich, Germany, near Universität U-Bahn (subway) station.
If you need directions, here it is on Google Maps.
By the way, this shouldn’t be taken as a hint that I’ll be going. It’s a Friday, and I usually have to work Friday evenings, so… Sorry.
In the spirit of keeping my blog up to date, here’s my latest video — which is in German, but with English subtitles. Oh, and unlike the last video I posted here, this one’s a real collab.
Contrary to anything I might say in the movie, the real inspiration for this came from Miss V’s Top 5 list of Mega Cool things about Germany, in which missverstaendnis101 asks ex-pats to nominate some things they find cool about either their native countries, or their host countries. I decided on a slight twist here, and asked a bunch of my German subscribers to nominate things they liked about Germany.
Initially, the response was disappointing. Actually, the entire response was disappointing, but at least I got enough to make a video. It didn’t really turn out as I wanted, though: I was expecting about a dozen or so talking heads just reeling off a list, but in the event I had to do a lot more talking myself just to fill out the video a bit. Padding is occasionally actually necessary: here it makes it less obvious that the response was dismal.
However, the editing did take a slightly unexpected direction when I noticed that, while AericWinter and tavin15 both mentioned bread, AericWinter actually (coincidentally) inserted a pause exactly the right length for tavin15 to say his piece. And so I went for the split-screen look, which is not as complicated as it might seem, but is very effective.
The willing participants are (in order of appearance):
I really, really, most definitely need to update this blog more often. I keep meaning to, but I always end up distracted.
So, what’s been happening? Well, for a start, I’ve become slightly famous. Only slightly, of course, but tellingly. One of my YouTube videos was recently featured on the German front page of YouTube, and as a result, within a week I doubled my subscriber base. That put my channel inside the top 100 most subscribed German Director accounts of all time, which appears to be some sort of critical mass: suddenly, my videos are getting thousands of hits.
Not only that, but I’ve been getting fan mail. Not as much as, say, Matt Damon or Meryl Streep, but fan mail all the same. Now, the trouble is that I’d very much like to answer it all, but I haven’t been able to yet.
As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been made a YouTube partner. This is a relatively new scheme, and has only just arrived in Germany: I am among the first batch of German partners. This means that I can choose to “monetize” my videos. If you view monetized videos on the YouTube site itself, you’ll see adverts placed next to them: I get a share of the revenue.
That sounds like I’m selling out, but it’s not that much. I’m not allowed to say how much money I’m making, but it’s no secret that I won’t be moving to Martinique in the near future.
Of course, before I can monetize any video, I have to make sure I have the right to use every last photograph, piece of music and sound effect commercially; in turn, that means I’ve spent the last couple of days watching all my 73 videos and trying to remember where I got stuff from.
On top of all that, I’ve been helping out with publicity material for a YouTube meet planned for August, and trying not to neglect my real work.
So please: be patient and understanding. What I’d like to say is: Thank you everyone who has sent me nice e-mails and messages. They are appreciated, and I do read them all.
Did I mention I’m a Doctor Who fan? Well, I’m not so sure now. I just saw Voyage of the Damned.
Yes, I know that was last year’s Christmas special, but I just hadn’t got around to seeing it until last night. I was, you might say, singularly unimpressed, although that apparently puts me at odds with 12 million of my fellow Brits. But I have now vented my frustration elsewhere, so rather than revent it here, let me just give you a link: My review of Voyage of the Damned on the Gallifrey5Forum. It contains spoilers, just in case you’re one of the lucky few who haven’t seen it yet.