Gay people save us from penury

The latest court philosoper to David Cameron's Conservatives is Richard Florida. He's an American urban economist. Apparantly he's big across the pond. He's famous for touting the idea that the creative sector is the growth engine for Western economies as menial work migrates to developing countries. Sounds like a slightly tardy idea just as the developing countries' development gathers pace. But what do I know? The important thing for us is that he touts the notion that the freethinkers needed to catalyse the creative sector must be given space and flexibility. Darling it sounds marvellous!

Even better, cities that set out to attract them need to be green, clean, tolerant and cultured. And typically with large gay and ethnic minority populations. Thus I fully expect, in the fullness of time, for favours of some shape or form (if not money, what?), to be poured upon Brighton where I live - for it is surely just about the gayest place in the UK, and also (I checked) has slightly more than the average ethnic minority percentage of population. I guess the fact that we have a Green MP might make our receipt of these favours somewhat less likely, but I reckon Caroline could use Richard Florida as a green stick to beat Dave with. He's such a freethinker, he's gotta be up for that.

Small hours big pictures

I've not posted for a while. I have an excuse. We have a baby. A new son called Humphrey. So I've been adapting to new lifestyle, lack of spare time, lack of sleep, midnight nappy changes etc.

Last night I was awake in the small hours listening to World Service radio. I always enjoy it. A science programme revealed that the next generation of hi-definition TV will have 16 times the number of pixels than the current domestic average. And you'll need some super bandwidth to receive the programmes. The inventors envisage that the audience will sit close to the screen and enjoy an immersive experience. It will be TV Jim, but not as we know it.

I have to confess to being a little sceptical. I remember going to the IBC in Brighton at around 1980 and seeing an exhibit of high definition TV on the BBC stand. And to my mind high definition TV broadcasting is still pretty rough. For example, a CRT gives a far better picture than even the best LCD or plasma screens to my eye. And CRT are far more adaptable to the high and low definition inputs which we find mixed together in British broadcast TV.

I'm not exactly a Luddite, but I do think that the story or content of a video film is far more important than any of its technical elements. I hate flashy filmmaking. And long guitar solos for that matter.

I really should be asleep.

Save Our Souls

We went to Asda today. Is was stressful. Waitrose is so much more sedate. My heavily pregnant wife felt this more acutely. "It's cheap here, but they make you pay with your soul" she remarked.

I thought of Fergie. The Duchess of York. She has her meagre stipend of £15k and very little celeb credit to draw upon. She must dig deeper, sell a bit of her soul. I notice she is involved in the production of a TV programme about her harrowing teenage years.

Poor old William Hague. He's got the opposite problem. The media are taking a bit of his soul, and he's jumping mad, standing in the road and shouting "Stop, thief!" and everyone is looking at him and thinking: "He really shouldn't have left his handbag in that unlocked car".

Mr Google and Mr Facebook make counter claims about the privacy violations of the other. There's gold in them there hills, but where is it exactly? Perhaps the model for exploitation is similar to Google's revolutionary take on advertising. They didn't need the big advertisers because they got millions of small ones. Now they don't need a celebrity scoop, because they've got a little scoop from all of us.

Is this what our old friend Karl Marx called social labour? Social relations made into commodities.

New world, old world, your soul has a value.

On Mortality

Remember that episode of Star Trek when Scottie stores himself in a feedback loop in a transporter so that he can be brought back to life when his stranded ship is found? He is awoken 50 years later by Jean-Luc Picard. The sleeping beauty awakened by the handsome Patrick Stewart. How marvellous! Apparently Patrick is “repeatedly voted the sexiest man on television by American viewers, and has a large gay following”.

Fame is one way for man to achieve immortality, as Francis Bacon noted. I believe he saw it in the negative: the avoidance of death, cheating nature.

Do you know anyone dead with a Facebook account? It’s not uncommon. Epitaphs in cyber space. A note left for the morning remains stuck to the fridge. But this note does not dampen, curl and warp, does not become brittle and crumble into dust.

A woman closed her Facebook account. She couldn’t get her ex-boyfriend out of her mind seeing him all over the site. Out of her account but into her friends’. Into her rival’s. Her life flashed before her as she was forced to delete her friends one by one – each time receiving the demand “Are you really really sure you really want to boot this lovely friend out of your life?” She gave ‘em all the boot, closed her account and received a nice little email. “You have successfully closed your account - but all you need do is log-in with your usual username and password to use it again”. The pusher dangling the narcotic lure. Virtual friendship - a chance at immortality. Write your own epitaph. “I wos ‘ere”.

A Flickr account is like living life backwards. It shows the latest pictures first and your life flashes before you as you scroll through.

As Google Earth builds up successive images, as do Panoramio and Flickr, we will look at a place – it’s virtual image thus mediated – and scrape away layers of time. Virtual archaeology. The world wasn’t always this hot. The sea was south of London. Paris was not a desert.

The past is another world. Images consume reality. Is this nonsense? These could be my last words…

Have you read Roland Barthes’ Mythologies? It was one of the first books to look at the mythological structures at work in popular culture. Those French geezers took the anthropological theory of Levi Strauss’ and applied it to their own culture.

Barthes observed that the mass media puts people into pigeon holes. Once you have a media presence you are quickly classified as an archetype. Jordan the slut, Cheryl Tweedy the victim (have you noticed how often she is “frail”, “tormented” etc?). Once you are classified as an archetype it’s very hard to cross the line to become a different archetype. Once a slut, always a slut.

Psychologist Oliver James observes that this mechanism also works within families. Each child gets characteristics ascribed to it at an early age which soon become defining. “She’s the lazy one of the family”. Even when you’re having a civilised meal with your grown-up siblings they can so easily get under your skin with the tiniest reference to the stereotyping you have suffered within the family. “You’ve never been very good at taking a joke have you?”

So, the way of the press, is the way of the family, is the way of human psychology. We navigate our way through the complexity of personal relations with the crude tool of labelling people.

Famous people now have so-called Google reputation managers. But you and I don’t. So, be careful with your on-line identity. Once you are defined it’s a tricky job to change your label. Although as an Indian proverb has it: a bad reputation is better than no reputation at all.

In the light of all this, it is with some trepidation that I announce my internet acting debut. I play a Danish geeky businessman. I’m really very macho and fit you know…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5a943p9QmQ&feature=player_embedded#

Because I'm worth it

Commissioning video for business requires trusting relationships.

Many who commission video production for business, spending significant sums as they do so, are not confident when judging the worth of paying more for better quality. Better quality in video can seem of intangible value. I get the same feeling when I get my car fixed: Should I get opt for the new cormthruster unit that'll last me another 5 years or risk just getting the widget pipes cleaned for half the price?

And this presents me with a quandary: as I make video for business, should I concern myself with achieving high level aesthetic values when the client cannot see the point?

It’s an issue I take seriously. Is my obsession with quality dysfunctional? Are my quality control measures the wrong ones? I’ve thought about this and I’ve managed to convince myself that I’m doing alright.

Good filmmaking speaks to the unconscious. When we make video for business we do have to communicate information, but on the whole, video is not as good at doing this as text. What video is good at is communicating to the subconscious – affecting attitudes and understandings.

Narrative is a profound craft that changes minds. Religion, politics and Max Clifford all use it to make meaning. Because we watch TV regularly it’s easy to think that telling a story is easy. It isn’t. There are rules and techniques that can be studied and mastered.

The worst sort of corporate film dramas are little more than lists of facts and points that need to be communicated - put into the mouths of characters. Exposition isn’t drama. The communication of facts and attitudes needs to be translated into the language of human conflict to attract our interest.

Visual composition has been studied and analysed. There are rules to be learned. And sticking to them can make a programme that is easier to watch and which communicates more effectively.

There's more, but in short – the skills we bring to bear in the creation of video for business create effects that look simple, but which come from the study, mastery and application of technique. When budgets get squeezed we can compromise our art – and that can compromise the result and the effect. What the client wants is someone who is only going to spend their money where it's going to have a significant effect on the impact they are trying to make.

I’ve talked myself into it – I am worth it!

Media Influence

There's been a lot of fuss about the Raoul Moat fansite on Facebook. Distasteful as this is, what's worse is that the mass media should take some blame for Mr Moat's killings.

The coverage of Derrick Bird's killing spree was intense and hysterical. There's plenty of evidence to show that the more intense the media coverage of an event the more copycats are created.

This is because our brains naturally refer to what's happening around us to model our behaviour. We determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. Presumably, Raoul Moat's fans have been affected by the mass media zeitgeist in a similar way to Moat.

The data about the affect of mass media suicide reports is amazing. Stories of car suicides, in which only one person dies, generate wrecks in which only one person dies. Stories of suicide-murder combination, in which there are multiple deaths, generate wrecks in which there are multiple deaths.

Heavyweight boxing finals influence murder statistics in the USA. When a match was lost by a black fighter, the homicide rate during the following 10 days rose significantly for young black male victims, but not young white males. And when a white fighter lost the match, it was young white men who were killed more frequently over the next 10 days.

This well-know psychological phenomenon can be used for the good. In one study withdrawn nursery-age children were shown a 23-minute video. Each scene began with a different solitary child watching some social activity and then activly participating to everyone's enjoyment. Just watching this film once was enough to reverse a potential pattern of lifelong maladaptive behaviour.

In my little corner of the world we try to use this effect to improve behaviour. I guess that's what training films are all about.