film

Le Nombrilisme

POSTED IN my projects | TAGS : film, Nombrilisme 15 August 2009

A little film I made for this.

"Entries are now open for this year’s Straight 8 competition. For those of you not in the know, Straight 8 invites filmmakers to make a film on a single cartridge of super 8 film and enter it undeveloped and unedited to the competition (with an original soundtrack). Then you just sit back and wait to discover if anything will have come out…"

The competition for people that tell you that most of the editing is done "in camera". – Straight 8, super 8, gr8.

tiny music machine lost in Birmingham

POSTED IN geekery, music | TAGS : film, thingamagoop 20 October 2008

Dunkirk on Vimeo

Public Information Films

POSTED IN social media | TAGS : film, government, organisations, Public information films, social media, social object 28 July 2008

I know they’ve become quite the retro-cliché, but Public Information Films are a fine example of Government agencies passing information directly to the public – without spending an awful lot of time and effort second guessing the media. And I’ve just found an archive online — that you can watch, download, and use (subject to normal Crown Copyright rules).

Some might contend that they’re only remembered due to the limited options we had on TV then, much as people will claim of ‘Morecambe and Wise’ “anyone could have got 20M viewers, there wasn’t anything else on”. But unsuccessful TV programmes didn’t get 20M viewers even in the 60s (in fact Eric and Ernie’s dreadful first series was watched by a tiny amount of people, despite there only being 2 channels). The best of the PIFs are remembered fondly because they were well made and got their message across — and that’s something that can be done with social media tools today.

It’s interesting that they get shorter and shorter (generally) from 33mins(!) to snappier advert style as the years go on, the makers having learnt from the commercial sector. In the same way organisations now can look to the big YouTube hits and other social objects (Lolcats for example) and use some of the best techniques.

If you remember ‘Clunk-Click‘, ‘SPLINK‘ there’s a good chance you’ll have taken on the message too.

Here’s my particular favourite, Tufty the Road Safety Squirrel (I even own the LP):

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