Fast Forward
The Fast Forward series that we have been working on for Ideas for Life TV is now coming along nicely, with just 5 days until the site and series launch – it’s all really rather exciting! We now have episodes complete introducing the teams, and showcasing the University of Warwick’s eco-one project. Filming was complete on Monday at Coventry-based Modec, and this weekend we’re off to the Autosport Show at the NEC to finish our item on the Westfield hybrid sportscar and hopefully start working on a piece on the Concept Climax car. Then it’s back for an update with our school teams on Monday. It’s all happening!
Online on TV, and TV Online …
I read somewhere (wish I could remember where so I could be an efficient blogger and provide the link!) that someone predicts that 2008 will be the year for online video to stop being overrun by naff home-movies and kids doing starwars impressions in their bedrooms or falling off their skateboards, and move towards the more polished production standards that we expect of TV. How funny, then, that one of the first programmes I watch on television in 2008 is Lenny Henry.tv – the BBC show that basically shows back to back online video clips – mostly shot on somone’s home camera and edited (if edited at all!) in a bedroom somewhere. I wonder what way it will really go. I’m an advocate for good quality online video productions (but then I’m biased!). Maybe instead of online video standards aligning themselves more with television production standards, it just might (just!) go the other way if this programme is anything to go by.
Kent TV
Congratulations to Kent County Council who have become the first county council in the UK to fund the creation of their own internet TV channel for the local community – Kent TV. The quality of production is excellent and the concept is a great example of how internet TV can be used as a catalyst for effective 2-way communications between a public sector body and the community it serves. Let’s keep our finger’s crossed that it really works and the public do submit their own video comments and text comments as the site encourages them to. Such sites need not be unachieveably expensive to create, as Ten Alps Digital, the company behind Kent TV knows very well. Having worked with them in a previous role on the launch of their Public TV site, I know their committment, vision and ability to draw content in from other sources is a good recipe for success.
