Video & Stock - Elizabeth May

Leader of Canadian Green Party, Elizabeth May shared her thoughts with me regarding the success of Sweden's Pirate Party. Does Canada need a Pirate Party? I've posted concerns about the effectiveness of single issue candidates running in Canada to R4NT.com.

I also followed Elizabeth around between Calgary Stampede breakfasts, to collect some stock footage of her pancake flipping. Between Marborough Mall and Chinook Centre, a series of tweets were posted by concerned supporters, that Elizabeth was forgetting about animal rights for the sake of a photo op at a rodeo (she was not, in fact, attending the rodeo).

The interaction between Elizabeth and her daughter (Victoria Cate) was quite interesting as they spotted the tweets, and formulated a response. This led to a quick discussion about social media, her daughter's role in helping manage it, and how tools like Twitter and Facebook facilitate communication between candidates and their supporters.

Stock footage of Elizabeth May's visit to Calgary can be found on Internet Archive concerning copyright and volunteering, fund-raising and the economy. All footage is creative commons licensed. Stock footage of Calgary Stampede breakfasts, and her family's management of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is currently uploading to Internet Archive.

Video - Do It Yourself

Short created in 24 hours for Calgary's 2009 FilmRacing competition. The is the same edit submitted to the competition, but rendered in HDV instead of SD (NTSC) resolution. Created by on-site team of Wil Knoll, Rachel Gertz, Gordon McDowell & Sarah Blue. Blaise Kolodychuk & Ben Blue (independently of each other) contributed music based solely on the script (as we had to keep everything possible running in parallel). If you'd like to recycle any of the footage, a downloadable MPEG-4 1280x720 master can be found at Internet Archive.

Video - CBC Rally in Calgary

On 2009-04-17, Calgarians headed to CBC's broadcast building on Memorial Drive to show their support for CBC, and to protest lack of support of CBC by the (currently conservative) federal government. I carted down a sign and videocamera, and after waving at traffic for 10 minutes ("is this what we do?") started asking fellow attendees questions about the CBC. The finished video is embedded in a R4NT.com blog post of a fictional nature.

Possibly the best point on the subject of CBC funding was articulated by DJ Kelly and Wil Knoll (but unfortunately captured by IndieCalgary.com and not myself): (paraphrased)

Although the CBC has become more self sufficient in its reliance on its ad revenue there was never an expectation of self sufficiency when the CBC was first created, and it is not fair to have that expectation now. CBC has been lucky that ad revenue has offset rising costs to taxpayers, but we're here to say we'll gladly pay for our CBC, and return to the original model which does not depend on ad revenues.

CBC currently costs Canadian taxpayers $34 per year, per citizen. I'm happy to pay that. In fact, as I explore this world of blogging, video production and avoiding anything that resembles what an investigative journalist would actually do, I'm quite certain that strong public broadcasting is key to maintaining a democracy through this transition period from newspapers to... whatever will replace newspapers.

Various remix friendly version of CBC Rally in Calgary and raw footage are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Video - Calgary Hearts Dubya

This is the video accompanying my R4NT.com article of the same name. It was created to highlight the fact, George Bush will be speaking at Calgary TELUS Convention Centre on March 17 2009. A protest is scheduled for 11:30 AM in front of the convention centre.

Recyclable footage can be found at Internet Archive (the 661 MB MPEG-4 is the highest quality available at 1280x720). And a 640x360 MPEG-4 render is also available on Blip.TV.

The video is placed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Stock - Night Driving Time lapse

Time lapse stock footage of me and Gary driving at night. Camera is mounted in back seat on a tripod, looking forward. This was shot while collecting footage for R4NT.com's review of WATCHMEN.

A 1280x720 resolution 311 MB MPEG-4 master of this footage can be downloaded from Internet Archive.

This footage has no audio.

Video - WATCHMEN review for R4NT.com

Zack Snyder's film adaptation of Alan Moore's WATCHMEN is as brilliant as Moore's novel. Gary and I recorded our thoughts pertaining to its awesomeness as we drove home from the theater. The video was then used as part of R4NT.com's WATCHMEN review.

To sum up: Movie good. Alan Moore is brilliant but crazy for saying he'll never watch the movie. Zack Snyder's mental state is unknown at this time.

The master render is a 255 MB WMV file. There is a brief time lapse shot of me driving at night at the end which is potentially recyclable.

The video is placed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Video - DemoCampCalgary #13

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video. DemoCamp Calgary 13.

At Calgary's Seven Restolounge on 2009-02-24 the 13th DemoCampCalgary was held by BarCampCalgary. I indexed this video coverage of the DemoCamp, so by clicking on the name of a software title you can immediately skip to a particular demo...

• Population Control then NaviBlast by Stephen Gazzard.
• Solidjott by Ben Eadie.
• WineCollective by Adrian Bryksa & David Gluzman.
• Curse of the Pharaoh 2 then Adventures of Nubi by Jon Lam of PH03NIX New Media.
• Video Guestbook by Andrew Hanna.

For anyone wanting to use footage of their presentation in a video of their own, the 900 MB MPEG-4 master is available.

Stock - Apple Store MacBook Theft

Stock footage shot of myself running out of an Apple Store with a MacBook box. I'd bought the MacBook earlier for iPhone development, but when asking for permission to shoot in the store I was told they have a policy against that. So I was only able to get an external shot at I run out. Intended as a quick visual gag in upcoming video.

A 640x360 MPEG-4 placeholder is available, as well as the 1440x1080i AVCHD SONY HDR-SR1 raw footage (70 MB).

Yes, this is an 8 second clip.

Video - 2009-02-09 Obama Press Conference

I'd like to point out that the Obama administration is posting press conferences to YouTube, acknowleding they are in the public domain, and enabling download of the footage in high quality MPEG-4 format.
The [Download this video] link can be found on the YouTube video landing page, as is a [Subscribe] button to the Whitehouse YouTube channel.

Video - Richard Stallman at UofC

On 2009-02-03, Richard Stallman gave a talk on free software and copyright. Since it is going to take many days to finish uploading all the raw footage to Internet Archive, I'll keep updating this entry as more formats (including free/libre formats) become available.

OGG THEORA video: (only edited version so far with super crisp frames)
http://www.archive.org/download/20090203-Richard-Stallman-UofC-01/20090203-Stallman-UofC-v19-512x288-vbr2500.ogm

OGG VORBIS audio:
http://blip.tv/file/get/Gordonmcdowell-RichardStallmanAtUofC884.ogg

MP3 audio:
http://blip.tv/file/get/Gordonmcdowell-RichardStallmanAtUofC423.mp3

MP4 video at 1280x720x30fps:
http://www.archive.org/download/20090203-Richard-Stallman-UofC-01/20090203-Stallman-UofC-v19-720p-vbr2500.mp4

MP4 video at 640x360x30fps:
http://www.archive.org/download/20090203-Richard-Stallman-UofC-01/20090203-Stallman-UofC-v19-640x360-vbr1635.mp4