As part of a “youth happening,” the “BB Band” came to Lecco, complete with dancers. The music was live and very good, and the youth happening turned into an all-ages event with everyone enthusiastically dancing. Who says today’s young people don’t appreciate good music?
Tag Archives: video
Summer Storm Over Lake Como
55 secs
There was a beautiful storm last night, off in the distance to the north. I recorded for about 40 minutes, then edited it down – I only worked through the first ten minutes or so before I got very bored of looking for the lightning in all that darkness!
Lecco Gospel
I borrowed a digital video camera from the office yesterday so I could experiment with video as a means of communication. I have had a video camera for years, but haven’t used it much because it’s analog, so everything I shot had to be painstakingly converted to digital before I could do much with it, and I never got around to acquiring a good encoder, so I was never happy with the quality. Digital is so much easier – attach the camera to the computer via a FireWire cable, and off we go. I haven’t even had to buy new software, as a combination of stuff I already had around has proved to be sufficient. Admittedly, I have more digital media software on hand than most people, thanks to my professional history.
So last night we went out to buy tapes for the camera, and then in search of dinner. We ended up at the Casa di Lucia restaurant in Lecco, where we had a very pleasant dinner out in the garden under a pergola covered in wisteria. As we were finishing our second course, we heard a lot of noise in the entry area, which eventually resolved itself into a gospel choir coming to sing for the diners. We had heard that there was a gospel choir in Lecco, but had never actually heard them. They’re quite good, though they could use some help on pronouncing English.
The lighting was terrible – already dark outside, and the singers were backlighted. The “backlight” setting on this Sony Handycam seems to make no difference at all. I tried Nightshot here and there (not in this clip), which made everyone turn green. In some parts of this clip, you can see the cooks working through in the brightly-lit kitchen through the window behind the singers. And I didn’t have a tripod, so this is a good example of unSteadicam! And the mike is the one incorporated into the camera, so you get all the background noise of the diners (Italians talk even during formal concerts…).
First Steps in Putting Video on a Website
I’m experimenting with ways to publish video on the web.
This first effort was labor-intensive:
- I started from a video clip I recorded from TV to VCR years ago, and digitized some time later to MPEG 1, using Adaptec’s then-current VideOh! device. The original file was about 20 MB, not great quality.
- Today, I used Windows Movie Maker (included with Windows XP) to compress the video, per instructions found here. The file squeezed down to 6.1 MB.
- I then used Macromedia Flash, again following the instructions linked above, to create a streaming video (that is, video that will play directly from a web page) in Shockwave Flash format.
- I used Macromedia DreamWeaver (as usual) to create a new page for my site, this one you’re looking at, and place the SWF file (still about 6.1 MB) on the page.
- Posted the page to my website as usual.
NB: In Dec, 2004, I reduced the size of this video (240×180 pixels) in order to conserve disk space and bandwidth.
(April, 2011 – Had to do a screen capture of the old swf file playing in my browser to get a format I could upload to YouTube.)
Why This Video?
This clip is the end titles of an Italian TV program called “A Sua Immagine” (In His Image), a weekly sermon by a Franciscan monk. Sometime around 1996 they redid the titles, featuring video portraits of a variety of people, I assume to show that we are all made “in His image.” The overall effect is lovely and moving.
I can’t claim credit for anything in this video except at the very end. The last face you see is my daughter, Rossella.
I assume the copyright belongs to RAI TV; if anyone gets mad, I’ll take the clip down. I don’t know who did the music; Italian programs repurpose music from all sorts of sources. This piece sounds like Patrick Doyle to me.
The Fanvid Phenomenon
I wrote some time ago about the phenomenon of fan fiction , where fans make up their own stories set in particular fictional universes. Although publishers and copyright guardians are uneasy about the phenomenon (especially because many of the stories are sexy), I feel that the creators of these fictional worlds should feel highly complimented. Writing really good fan fiction requires a tremendous amount of knowledge and sympathy for someone else’s creation – it’s a sign of truly dedicated fandom, and a very sincere form of flattery.
Technology has now enabled fans to take things one step further: fan music videos. Fans take clips from a beloved TV series or film, and weave them together using a favorite song as a soundtrack. Some are funny, some poignant, some epic. Vids can explore single characters, or relationships among pairs of characters – relationships obvious in the original material, or imagined by the video creator (vidder). Yes, there are slash vids, too – it’s amazing the spin you can put on material by clever editing.
It’s a lot of work to make these vids. The vidder must get the source material into a format she can work with, often by copying and converting clips from DVD. Then she must trim it down to the scenes she needs, and edit it all together to fit with the music. The professionalism of the editing is often astounding, considering that most vidders probably don’t edit video for a living, and they don’t earn anything for all this hard work. Though it might be great practice for a film editing career. I’ve been tempted to make a vid myself, but so far have not found the right combination of tools (and time!).
