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
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.
LJ Rich 