Yes, after all that hard work, we’ve done it, it’s been edited, and this is Episode 2 of Gadget Spy
Yesterday was spent at Virgin Towers filming the second Gadget Spy – this was all done in a bit of a hurry,Virgin are keen to get this up and live on the web by next week – Eeeeek!
So we collected together an array of gadgets (and had some help from www.firebox.com – thankyou!) and hopefully got enough material together for our 3-minute webcast.
The gadgets include a few of the things I’ve been impressed enough to blog about or take flickr pics of, including the Cisco/Linksys Router , the Archos TV+ and the Jawbone noise-cancelling headset.
This was an incredibly fun day, it was tiring but very rewarding, as we’ve been working flat out since last week getting everything together for the magic day of filming.
We're in the studio area and setting up - within about 10 minutes, most floor space is covered with tech. There is a general need for tea. We've also realised that it's going to be boiling in here.
Phil from Virgin checks the gadgets - we have to work out which order to put them in right at the start of the show, so we can get the camera to pan across at the beginning and match our working script.
We like to have a few quirky, bonkers products in "Gadget Spy" - last time it was the Bubble Wrap Keychain. This time it's the Guitar Rockstar.
Thanks to http://www.firebox.com, who provided us with a few gadget loans for the pilot, and kindly let us borrow a few more for episode 2. Everything is boxed back up and sent back to Firebox HQ, so they'll lend us stuff again!
More tech ready for filming: you can see the top of the Pinnacle PVT Video Transfer, the Linksys Router, and the Archos TV+ as well as a few bits poking out of the case.
Dan, camera operator, checks the footage. Anyone doing any filming knows to check as soon as you do the first take, just to make sure video is actually recorded.
Here I am, "sitting in" - we're testing the shot before filming properly, we need to make sure the lighting works for the camera, and I've put a mark on the desk so I always sit in the same place!
My suitcase: Kit 'n' Heels, har har. This case got really battered when I took it to China and Dubai, and it's held a lot of tech in its time. On the way to and from Virgin Towers it's bulging with strange and wonderful stuff.
Behind the camera, filming the intro! We steam through the voiceover, the outro and each gadget, doing a couple of takes for each one - the basic rule is when you do a "good one", you do one more for safety. Normally, I'm pretty good at this, because I'm used to live TV and one chance to say something. However, by the end of the day, saying "Port Cool Fan Laptop Stand" took me about 6 tries. We got it all in the can though, and the next thing is editing it up for release - Working date : 10th September 2008
What follows is a quick look at what went on in the day. If you want to see the Flickr Gallery, please feel free to click here. I’m really looking forward to seeing the final cut, hope you like the pics!
Wow! Remember I did some filming about 3 weeks ago for a pilot called “Gadget Spy” at Virgin Media? I went off to visit Firebox a while ago to scope out some quirky electronic gizmos for this, pulled in some cool stuff from my industry mates at Archos and the like, then (and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing), we managed to get a filming date in the diary. I just got an email this morning saying that they’ve completed the edit!
So this is the Inaugural Gadget Spy mini-cast! It’s the first time the VirginMedia web chaps and I have ever done anything like this – the idea certainly comes across, and if the powers that be like it, then who knows, they might put a budget behind it, and we can do it again in a month or so, As far as I know, the more clicks they get, the more likely that is – so do please add yours 🙂
Gadget Spy Pilot show: www.virginmedia.com/digital/gadgetspy
Yes, I wish I knew.
If you’re a component, it’s easy, you just shut down until someone comes and fixes you, or that’s it, game over. If you’re more carbon-based than silicon-based, it appears to be a little more complicated.
You see, I’m currently suffering from life overload, and as usual I’m writing a blog with the perverse mindset that trying to make enough sense of the stuff I have to do by sharing with the internet will help in the real world, as I’ll be left with a blog of how to handle overload at the end of this post.
Am I making any sense? Of course not. My brain needs some serious defragmenting. Perhaps some down-time would be in order….
Things I have to do #1 I really have to tell you about Forgetting Sarah Marshall, perhaps one of the best films I’ve seen in a long while. Actual laugh-out-loud funny, along with some very geek-friendly in-jokes that kept the (in this case, geek-filled) cinema in stitches.
What’s odd about this movie is that I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to see this, even though I enjoyed “Knocked Up” and “40-year-old Virgin” from the same stable. It’s described as a “romantic disaster movie” in the press kit, which hints at something more than your run-of-the-mill schmooze-fest.
A lot of the time, I’ll walk out of a movie theatre and think “well, that’s another 2 hours out of my life, oh well”, but this was different – my companions and I were rather surprised at just how good the movie was, and even talked about the funny bits over sushi at Satsuma afterward.
The premise is simple: Bloke gets dumped by TV star girlfriend, Bloke gets back on horse (to know which horse, you’ll have to see the film). Underlying that premise is one thing that’s left out of so many movies these days – a real sense of humour and characters that feel authentic and sincere. Russell Brand puts on a great performance, and the script is satisfyingly tight – all killer, no filler, boys and girls. Watch out for some admirably geeky Tshirts too. In short, I’m quite the evangelist for this one.
Things I don’t have to do #1
Here’s my moo card – I threatened to upload the pic in a previous post. The back says something about me being from Outer Space, to see if anyone actually reads it…
Other things I have to do involve editing up Qype‘s chocolate tasting video at Melt and Firebox‘s mini-movie about some of their gadgets, getting a Virgin gadget project going (hush hush at the mo), and going on QVC this weekend amongst others.
I’ve decided (in my infinite lack of wisdom), to do a Quentin and make this a mini-series of “do’s” instead of one long hard slog. Dinner is calling, and I made fairy cakes for dessert. I’m no closer to making sense of my quest to handle overload, but I do think it will be easier to manage on a full stomach.
My goodness, how naughty, it’s been ages since I last blogged… I can only apologise wholeheartedly and hope that the pictures below will help somewhat… these are from the long-since attended Spinvox ICA 60th Anniversary party a million years ago, i.e February.
Now here’s something that doesn’t happen every day… it’s a picture of me in OK magazine!! how exciting, apart from the fact that a) this was from 2005, a million years ago, and b) there’s an errant bit of hair in my face…
Tomorrow I’ll be off to Bournemouth to do some filming in my capacity as Tech Girl on the Telly – but rest assured, I’ll report back from this fabulous occasion, probably on the train back home if I finish processing my emails… which reminds me, if you read my “extreme” blog a few weeks ago, I went off to that club Guanabara in the end, and the London School of Samba gave a live performance, which was incredible – I’ll post up some pics of that as well.
So I’ve finally returned back to the UK, absolutely tired out, and completely and totally culture shocked by the craziness that is Las Vegas and the ridiculousness that was CES.
I found out that there were 2 million square feet of exhibition space of which I probably only managed to get across a fraction- and even then that was with incredibly hard work and very, very, very comfortable shoes.
For now I’m back in the UK – once I’ve finished unpacking and sorting through my email, I’ll be spending time getting ready to talk about JVC’s MG330 HD camcorder on QVC UK . For the purposes of this blog, and for general curiosity, I’ve found out that a) QVC is the biggest electronics retailer in the world, b) Marco Polo House, where the studio is, was named after real broadcasting Satellites in Space and c) the UK arm reaches 21 million households, which explains why people come and chat to me in really odd places like Milton Keynes British Rail Station.
Actually, it’s great fun when people come and say hello most of the time – although I once got recognised at a certain large 24hour supermarket at 3am buying Imodium – that’s the not-so-glamorous side of life in the public eye – “Hi LJ, how are you? Oh, not too well I see” was the gist of that particular conversation.
On the plus side, when I was flown over to QVC in America, where it’s the 5th most watched channel in the States, I went to the mall the day after the show, and someone came up to me and said “Wow, you’re that videogame girl from England!” – that made my week!
So I’ll be broadcasting live for 24 hours on the 27th January and it will feature JVC’s hard drive camcorder that I took around CES with me to Vegas. So that should be quite fun. It’s still quite surreal chatting away to my phone and I really am enjoying this blogging service, it has to be said. SpinVox might even come over and film me doing this which should be even more fun, although I don’t think it will be very telegenic to have SpinVox film me doing what I’m doing right now which, at the moment, is my laundry 🙂
I can’t believe it’s already halfway through January… I’m in the studio with Graham Wood working on some exciting music projects, and this week I’ll pop over after the initial recording session to do what is known in the trade as “Tweakage” – I’ll also be composing a mini ident (that’s about 3 seconds of music) for a digital device, which is always exciting, as I love to take into account the acoustics of the device, and what it looks like before working out what tune it should have!
spoken through SpinVox tweaked by LJ
Take a look at the picture on the left – what really got me is that I wasn’t outside, I was on the 3rd floor of the gargantuan Sands Expo / Venetian Mutant-Sized Hotel Complex.
So I spent today at the Billboard Digital Music Seminar at CES. If you add 8 hours of interesting interviews about the state of the music industry, together with (for some reason) air conditioners in the conference room set to “superconducting”, and a quite frankly impressive amount of coffee, I was not just disoriented, I was M&S disoriented.
Just to give you an idea of how odd it is to happen upon a mini Venice, this is the back view that I came from. It’s not enough that you’re wandering around St Mark’s Square, eating gelato and hearing opera music piped through the hidden speakers – to make it even more italian, the gondoliers are all accomplished singers, warbling sweetly as they punt you around the man-made canal.The more I see of this city, the more I’m falling in love with it. It’s so bonkers, I feel more normal.
Last night, I bumped into a whole bunch of female gamers, one of whom had the same birthday as me. We’re chatting in the taxi queue, and then we’re in a taxi to Caesar’s Palace, where we go to a place called Pure, a very exclusive club. I wish I could have stayed there, but, dear reader, I had to get back to do some editing, dedicated as I am to the cause.
I tried my hand at Craps tonight, and appear to have quite the knack of throwing the dice – I’m still amusingly foggy over the rules of this baffling game, but I put 20 bucks on the table, and walked away with 32 – yes, the last of the big spenders, but I’d rather spend my money on the coffee so I can make the most of my last few hours here. By the way, today’s vid is TV with a twist. Catch it at www.virginmedia.com/digital, or type “LJ Does Vegas” into Youtube and do please write something nice after you’ve seen it!
p.s. Here I am at 2am watching FileZilla do its thing from the hotel. I love the fact that because there are over 180,000 geeky tech folk converged in one place, myself included, we’re all trying to get online, all the time. The internet connection is pitiful 🙂 I also love the fact that the queue for Starbucks downstairs in the morning is amusingly long – every time I stand in it, I wonder if there would be the same queue for coffee if there was some kind of holistic health show on instead. I swear, caffeine is the drug of choice for the tech industry. Apparently, the coffee place in the convention centre actually ran out of beans on the first day of the conference, they’d underestimated the caffeine consumption of a bunch of techies by quite a large margin ! Right, I’m *really* going to bed now. Goodnight.
It’s Day 2 of CES, and I am still shellshocked by the whole thing… not only did I attend Tiger Direct’s annual PC building race last night – I left there with a PC building apron and a great bit of footage! That’s already on Virgin’s site. This was like a modern-day gladiatorial event, with some of the audience shouting so loudly, I could feel the sound vibration going right through my camcorder!
I then went on to Corsair’s Pirate Party, which was even more surreal that I expected – there I got to chat with Fugger and Kingpin, two of the world’s premier overclocking afficionados.
They talked me through exactly what overclocking involves, and then showed me a computer that looked like it might have been built by the Borg. I’m FTP-ing the footage across right now, while I’m in the “Blog Pit” in the Sands Convention Center, Vegas, before recording some audio voiceover material in the booth to go with the piece.
To have a look at the video footage, which will probably be available tomorrow, UK time, just head on over to http://www.virginmedia.com/digital
It’s crazy out here! I’m at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show – and it hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already overwhelmed. Nothing you see on the telly can truly prepare you for the opulent experience that is Las Vegas. Mix that with gadgets and I’m in a very happy place indeed. That, plus the fact that the hotel I’m in has a sushi bar downstairs that is absolutely incredible.
LJ Rich 