Will Knott

T’is the season of Christmas parties. OK, this year, subdued Christmas parties, but the “be careful on the road” message still applies.

Twenty years ago, the transport  accident  commission of Australia created its first television safety campaign. The video below is an edit of 20 years of campaigns. Be warned if you thought that the “The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess” advert for the Republic and Northern Ireland was bad, 20 years worth will have you in tears.

Drive safely this Christmas,
Will

via Brandflakes for Breakfast.

Tony on TechTV101 complained that 3D in movies are currently a waste of time will never take off (see correction in the comments). I don’t think so.

Lets get the cynical bit out of the way first. Studios and cinemas love 3D as its impossible to do the “camera in the theatre” pirating trick with them. Just try watching a movie without the polarising glasses and you’ll see what I mean.

At the moment there are no movies that are greatly improved by the use of 3D. Just as the Jazz Singer was a gimmick where there was only 5 minutes of sound tacked in to a silent movie in 1927.

Try to imagine a modern movie done as a silent now? How much dialogue could be removed to work with those cards with the few lines? Exposition would need to be simpler in order to cope… etc.
Sound, widescreen and colour were all gimmicks once.

The entire production in photography would have to change in order to make the most of 3d. Since all movies have to be capable of being displayed on a 2d screen (DVD sales, Sales for tv broadcast, legal download) there isn’t going to be much use made of 3d, just as there isn’t much use made of IMAX.

So keeping that part of the market in mind, what is needed for 3d to take off?

The first big leap will be 3d home displays or 3D computer monitors. Then 3d still digital photography displayed on these home screens, and 3D games and interfaces on computers and consoles.
The still experiments will be what teaches the photographic and lighting requirements to the DPs (remember that lighting a black and white movie is a completely different technique to lighting a colour one. Something taken for granted today, but hard learned when it came in).  The gaming and interface side will show what can be avoided an what people do and don’t notice.

Just place your bets on a 3D chess game being an early release… slow rendering is possible as most of the pieces can be pre-rendered. A slow moving game like this, well slow moving when compared to a first person shooter should be fairly easy… at most 2 pieces move at once. Then things can get faster.

Then, live action 3D comes to play… (at the moment it is limited to CG and stop motion animation).

Suddenly 3d editing becomes a desirable (and probably new found skill).  Set budgets will soar (as the limited field of view is killed, as will be digital matt painting, unless they go 3d too.

Expect “AR” style commentaries on home released by that time too.

At the moment there are competing standards for home 3d, just as there were competing standards for sound in the 30s. And technicolor fought with de luxe for years. Give it time, and remember that the technical best does not always beat the good enough.

Tony points out that HD is still not ubiquitous. Well, the  HD argument is flawed because of “good enough”. Few broadcasters use it, and its coming out at a time when the low definition YouTube channel is the most successful one at the moment. In other words its not being used. It may look great, but its not being used.

However, would one second of 3d and one second of HD have the same bandwidth/spectrum cost? The HD broadcast protocols might just be useful yet.

and nearly took mum with it.

While in the queue for the car park to go to the Cork City part of the World Wide photowalk I got a phone call.

It was Mum’s neighbours.

The television at Mum’s had caught fire and she wanted me to get home as fast as I could. I did.

No one died, the damage isn’t that bad, but she’s declaring that she doesn’t want a replacement television (I expect that to last a week when soaps withdrawal kick in). After all, the electronic babysitter, the smiling entertainer in the corner had attacked.

On Saturday afternoon she plugged it in. And there was a crackle and  little puff of smoke, like a cigarette in the corner. She plugged it out. Still smoke.

She left the room to ring the neighbours and open the front door. When she returned there was a plume of black smoke rising.

Highly toxic black smoke.

I think at this point one of the neighbours rush in, fortunately wearing fireproof gloves (he has no memory of putting them on, on moment he got the phone call, the next he was coming in Mums door wearing them). He picked up the TV and tried to run out of the house with it. He would have succeeded if Mum (who I should point out is on crutches) decided to lead the way.

Slowly lead the way while a lump of toxic materials plumed and melted behind her.

At the doorway the neighbour manager to get her to turn towards the stairs, and get the TV out of the house just as it got past the smoking part and decided to head straight for the flaming finale.

A second or two later it was flaming on the front lawn.

Then he turned back. You see, melting plastic was igniting the papers Mum had around the TV. And the table it was sitting on was starting to go up. And the smoke (at least) has licking the gas boiler directly above the television.

Anyway, he put put the papers and books. There melting discs (the DVD player looks OK, but we can’t tell hat the heat did to it yet), a smoldering radio and darkened walls show how localised and high the heat was for a little while.

Scorched curtains are dumped, and the coats with melted holes at the end of the stairs are awaiting assessment.

The house still has a twinge of toxic black smoke in the air. Lumps of melted black plastic show the progress of the equipment out of the house.

Under the tree sits a partially melted TV surrounded most of the desk it once sat on.

So Mum is alive and as well as she was on Friday. Except for a little come down from the adrenaline. And she has a new lease of tidying up. Five bags of newspapers and magazines went to the recycle centre on Sunday.

One small bag of books came back. (Shouldn’t have looked, but a cookbook and a book on censorship in Ireland returned from the dump along with a USB extension cable. Well it is recycling).

I’m unplugging a lot more equipment now. And I’m spared from the soaps.

I’ll give it a week until she starts looking for a replacement. I just wonder if I can talk her in to making a wheelchair friendly kitchen for herself.

take care,
Will

This is a cross-post to Culch.ie but I’ve embedded the video mentioned below.

Once I loved Big Brother . Note, there is no number following that title.

The first Big Brother .

The most interesting thing about the first Big Brother was how different the contestants were when compared to the crop over the last eight years. Few of the contestants were fame hungry. No one really knew if it would work… it was a very expensive experiment.

As a group it seems that many of the first contestants are, well, not working. Some are still working somewhere in media (usually quietly behind the scenes now). True, none of them found the dizzying heights of fame as the most famous looser of Big Brother, Jade Goody , but few people let alone reality show contestants have.

Then again, one the the first contestants, Mel is responsible for the Big Brother “eye” logo . Its her eye.

If the first year was a test, the second year was a fine tuning exercise and the third year seems to be the brass ring that Channel 4 have been searching for ever since.

The problem with Big Brother is… its boring. Nothing can really happen. Its mostly people sleeping (along the way Big Brother introduced a “no sleeping during daylight hours” rule and will play alarm clock noises at dosing contestants. Yes folks, it eventually got that bad) and talking. True, occasionally bickering and insulting each other. Add in a bit of metaphorical back stabbing and you have the basis of a soap. But a soap is better acted and paced.

Which is funny if you think about it. The contestants are usually those that want to be famous. Every contestant now knows what is going to happen, but they still line up and go for it. Big Brother isn’t a talent show (so no dreams and or surprise performances) but a group of people (supposedly) being themselves for a number of weeks.

But a funny thing happened along the way. It started to get ignored.

The explosion of racism on Celebrity Big Brother 5 in 2007 meant that the TV show was being played out on international headlines. That summer’s show (Big Brother 8 ) was a quieter affair. You know how big a TV show is from the amount of coverage it gets off the TV. Susan Boyle made this year’s Britain’s Got Talent a “must watch” show, if for nothing else but the the ability to talk about it afterward. Who wants to talk about Big Brother, until there is an explosion anyway. Not literally. There have already been too many bomb scares in that house.

The biggest thing about Big Brother 9 was not Big Brother 9 but the Big Brother zombie based TV series Dead Set , parts of which were filmed at a Big Brother 9 eviction. No doubt there are jokes to be made about Davina McCall being a great zombie.

And Big Brother 10 is about to burst on to our screens.

Whoop-de-doodle-do.

The first, opening night, show will generate media coverage. It always does. However how much of that coverage will still be there the following week. If on July 1 you approached a random man or woman on the street and asked them to name one of this years contestants, (barring an Irish contestant, Ray Shah got his local radio show partly from Big Brother) I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to tell you their name. Ratings are down for Reality shows in general at the moment, and the series mean ratings for Big Brother are on a decline .

Regardless of that Channel 4 does to the show, unless the contestants themselves are appealing, I don’t see a hugh surge in ratings yet.

As for the title, its actually from the “Literally” series of spoof videos for “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. But it applies. The series has slowly turned. I’m not too sure its turned for the better.

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• Will enough people watch Big Brother? (guardian.co.uk)

Torchwood? We’re beyond the government, outside the United Nations, second left over the flyover, straight on at Budgens, right at the lights then first left by the Qwik-Save.

The BBC show Dead Ringers did a parody of the BBC show Torchwood. Oddly, the spoof make sense of its source material. If nothing else it explains the plot holes…

No idea if this will stay live for long.

tags : Torchwood, Television, Dead Ringers, Spoof, Parody, YouTube

Dear Frank,

Thanks for telling me about the open call for an advert in Cork. As you said, the producers (who don’t seem to have a website) wanted people to hug…

So I showed up to the Clarion (and thanks for the Wi-Fi) and registered. Since the aim was to hug, and someone else have come in to register at the same time… get got put together. Hello Irene on the off chance that you do the search for the blog.

This was my giggly-ist audition ever! We kept setting each other off. I may have blown the audition, but I’m in the best mood ever. And all without the use of chocolate!

On the off chance that I get a call (too many giggles?), I’ll let you know.

take care,
Will