TV and Radio
Talking about TV on the radio
Do you have a high definition TV? Does its amazing technology do anything other than show off presenters’ spots? Do you feel that you’ve been conned into buying a big screen that makes existing TV programmes look worse? The Kilroy team would like to… sorry, wrong programme and, come to think of it, wrong medium too. I’ll be on BBC Radio Scotland’s MacAulay & Co this morning from about 9.30ish in an attempt to demystify HDTV, and as ever they’ll be looking for listeners’ experiences and/or opinions…
More bans
Junk food ad crackdown announced
Junk food ads during TV programmes targeted at under-16s will be banned, under rules put forward by regulators. Ofcom says these foods include any that are high in fat, salt and sugar.
There will be a total ban on ads during children’s programmes and on children’s channels, as well as adult programmes watched by a large number of children.
Mr Biffo reckons that’s the end of kids’ TV as we know it.
TV and movies coming to the Xbox
Apple isn’t the only firm flogging TV shows and movie downloads: Microsoft’s getting in on the act too.
Beginning on its first anniversary, November 22, Xbox 360 will become the first gaming console in history to provide HD TV shows and movies directly to gamers in their own living rooms. Xbox 360 gamers will be able to download full-length TV shows to own, and will be able to rent movies via download from the Xbox Live® network, the world leader in online distribution of high-definition gaming and entertainment content.
It’s not really a surprise - MS has been offering shows for download on Media Center PCs for a while, and the Xbox Live service has offered video downloads from the get-go - but it’s yet more proof that Microsoft’s vision for the Xbox is as an all-singing, all-dancing home entertainment system rather than just a console.
The November launch is US-only, and it’s unclear whether Microsoft will offer a similar service over here.
Freakishly thin bodies with giant, tottering heads
Information Week has published a nice opinion piece by Cory Doctorow on High Definition TV. He’s not impressed, and his op-ed takes in excessive DRM, daft hardware specifications and the aforementioned giant tottering heads.
Splat’s entertainment
As I mentioned last week, I’d been invited to see Sony blow up stuff as part of a new ad campaign - and because of the need for secrecy I wasn’t allowed to write about it. Which was annoying, as the Evening Times clearly benefitted from a leak and ran all the details on Friday. Oh well.
Anyway, now the cover’s well and truly blown I’m able to blether about it.
As everyone in Scotland now knows, Sony’s been filming an advert in Glasgow involving lots of paint. It’s an ad for Bravia high-def televisions, and the Glasgow one is going to be the sequel to the famous bouncing-balls-in-San-Francisco ad. I was invited along in my capacity as a blogger, in the hope that I’d write about it afterwards. Which, obviously, I’m doing now.
The concept behind the Bravia ads is that Sony’s tellies (they say) offer amazing colour, and as a result the colours on-screen have to be real - no post-production to tart up the colour, or turn cloudy skies blue, or anything like that [although post-production will be used to fill in any gaps, for example if a single charge didn't go off]. Given the importance of good light, sunshine and predictable weather, Sony naturally decided to film it in Glasgow.
The council and housing associations helped Sony find a suitable site - a condemned tower block in Toryglen, on Glasgow’s South side - and director Jonathan Glazer got a team of around 200 people to wire it up with explosives. Here’s the stats, according to Sony’s PR team:
70,000 litres of paint
358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs
22 Triple hung cluster bombs
268 mortars
33 Triple Mortars
22 Double mortars
358 meters of weld
330 meters of steel pipe
57 km of copper wire
Sony didn’t blow the tower up - although if you’ve seen the old tower blocks in Toryglen, you might think such an explosion would be an improvement - but instead, covered it in hundreds of barrels of paint, each one containing an explosive charge. They did the same with the neighbouring low-rise. When activated, the explosive charges create a kind of daytime fireworks show, with huge jets of coloured paint shooting all over the place.
It sound simple, but it isn’t. For example, to take the shots of the low-rise the explosives along the bottom of the block were detonated as a tracked camera zoomed along from right to left; then, more explosives were added and the camera shot again but this time from left to right. After that, the explosives on top of the block were set off, and after that… you get the idea. For continuity reasons the light needs to be identical in each pass, so the camera crew and techs spent an awful lot of time hanging around waiting for the light to change. I was there on the Saturday and in the previous three days the crew had only managed to nail two shots.
As I’ve mentioned, realism is important - but real life can be too realistic, so the ad crew spent a huge amount of time and effort getting rid of offensive graffiti, reglazing shattered windows and hanging curtains to make the buildings look lived-in. They also covered neighbouring houses - where people still live - with netting to protect them from paint, and they sent the locals off on all-expenses paid day trips to the seaside.
So was it worth it? Like most supposedly glamorous things I’ve attended (big gigs, TV studios, magazine offices and so on) the reality is much less exciting than the idea you might have in your head. Filming such an ad, it seems, is a bit like sex: you spend hours hanging around in a hard hat and a hi-vis vest while 200-odd people give you funny looks, then someone fires a klaxon and you create an enormous mess in a fraction of a second.
Er…
I didn’t see the tower block go up - that was being filmed later in the week - but I did see the explosives go off along the low-rise block next to it, and it was impressive stuff. I’ve been taken through the plan for the other explosive displays, and I think that when it’s all done and edited together it’s going to be pretty spectacular. Funny, too: the estate was rather keen on Celtic Football Club, and Sony’s first batch of explosives cheerfully painted the block in red, white and blue.
A couple of random thoughts:
* Due to the top-secret nature of the shoot, I wasn’t allowed to bring my digicam - and when the explosives went off, I was so far away from the action that getting a decent pic with the supplied Cybershot (3x zoom - bollocks) was damn near impossible. It’s particularly frustrating because if I had stood outside the locked-down set, I’d have got some cracking pictures. Naturally the Evening Times coverage meant that other people didn’t have to worry about secrecy and got some superb shots, which are all over Flickr.
* I met Sony’s European PR manager, which I was a bit apprehensive about after months of slagging various Sony divisions in print. However, rather than have me killed she offered me an ice cream (incidentally, I went purely because I was invited. I didn’t get cash, beer or kit, and I didn’t fancy ice cream either. Maybe I should have asked for a Bravia, or an Alpha DSLR).
* Whenever you have a security firm keeping an eye on things, at least one of them will be a shades-wearing arsehole who looks like Dom Joly but thinks he’s The Terminator.
* If I ever direct a video that needs sunshine, I won’t do it in Glasgow.
* One Glasgow newspaper received tip-offs about the shoot from people offering to disclose the location in exchange for £1,000. Unfortunately said newspaper’s writers were visiting the shoot at the time.
* I met some interesting people: Tim Sandys, who has a blog about art, and Carol Walker, who has a video/photo blog. Both sites are in the links list on the right, and both sites are well worth your time.
* Toryglen really is a dump.
Why SUVs?
As part of my day job I keep an eye out for interesting virals, so I’ve just watched a Greenpeace anti-SUV ad. It’s pretty complacent and I suspect, preaching to the converted: the idea is that if you drive an SUV, people will shit in your tea. I’m only paraphrasing slightly.
I’m no great supporter of SUVs - they’re a menace round here, although I’d also point out that the knackered Volvo 940s driven by the local enviro-weenies pump out considerably more crap and burn considerably more fuel than some SUVs - but environmentally they’re no worse than many big cars, and a quick shufty through department of transport figures shows that cheap flights pump out almost double the amount of CO2 per passenger mile than cars do (lorries are worse and trains are best). And of course, aviation fuel isn’t taxed the way car fuel is.
So why don’t there seem to be any ads aimed at people who fly EasyJet?
Time Trumpet
Armando Iannucci’s at it again…
HDTV? Meh.
In my role as rubbish superhero Gadget Boy, I get very excited about anything new, high-tech and shiny - so for example I’d cheerfully give a tramp a “happy finish” in exchange for a Nikon D50 digital SLR. But I can’t raise the slightest bit of enthusiasm for HDTV. At all. It’s like a normal TV, but a bit better, and a lot more expensive! Woo!
Yes, it’s better quality, and on a flat screen telly it’s nice to have jaggy-free TV. But with a normal-sized TV you sit so far away from the screen that the difference is marginal at best - and certainly not worth paying lots of extra money for. Am I missing something?
On the radio again
Blather alert: I’ll be on Karen Dunbar’s show (BBC Radio Scotland) this morning at 10.40ish to wibble on about mobile phones. And, er, that’s it.
Biffo on broadcasting
I think I’m a reasonably good writer, and as an occasional mouthpiece on the radio I’m ok at that too. But my two telly experiences have been unmitigated disasters - have you seen Broadcast News? The sweaty bloke? Multiply it by ten and you’ve got me - and when I’m without a script, I’m lost.
The ever reliable Mr Biffo, a man whose writing is ten thousand times funnier than mine, nails it:
When I was writing about videogames for a living I frequently got dragged into TV or radio studios to say something loosely interesting on the topic of games, but I’m sure I always disappointed. I think my Digitiser persona led people to believe that I had a form of Tourette’s, where I spent my life shouting “Moc-moc-a-moc”, and going off on surreal tangents about Mr T’s bins. In reality, when I have a microphone shoved under my nose I’m just a bit dull, mainly because I’m trying very hard not to swear.
…there is a gulf of difference between being able to write to a reasonable degree, and being able to stand in front of a camera and not look like you’re going to be sick.
That, incidentally, is why I blog rather than podcast: I’ve got a reasonably good voice and I’m reasonably good at the delivery, but I wouldn’t be able to do it off the cuff - I’d have to script it. And if I’m going to script it, why not just publish the script and be done with it, instead of reading it out and trying not to swear?