What a blast it was – and a great example of how mobiles can be used to capture stories from users that we’d never get to see or cover otherwise. The basic premise was that Hugh and Jo provided loads of punters, radio talent and bands at summer festivals with mobiles to film whatever they wanted and then pieced it together to document last summer’s festival scene.
Afterwards I was asked if I thought my colleagues in BBC Vision (the telly-and-video-making bit) or BBC Journalism (the news, sport, weather bit) should be doing this. And, while of course they could, I left Shoot the Summer feeling like this was the perfect thing to be coming out of one of our radio-based areas. The texture of it just felt like radio to me. Audiences voices mixed with radio talent and bands, first hand experiences and – of course – music. Sure it didn’t have all the polish that a TV production on summer festivals would have had – but it had something more intimate than what you’d capture otherwise. Having been to ALOT of the festivals in my day, I definitely felt like it capture the feel of festival going far better than the professionally-produced Glastonbury: the Movie did.
Watching it also backed up another hunch I’ve always had – that while musicians are great on stage, they’re not nearly as interesting as crowd members when you meet them. The only parts of the film that left me fidgiting and not laughing or enjoying myself were the ones where the bands were on as opposed to the punters.
I really hope I see more of this type of work coming out of the BBC in the future.
One of the most exciting things about being here in Seoul is that I’m finally able to see mobile TV (DMB) in action. Hopefully, Mobile TV of some sort will be launching in the UK during the next few years and so the opportunity to see this new opportunity for content distribution in action is great. Here’s a few pictures (on a rather dashing pink iridescent phone)…
I was surprised that they all had long extendable antennas! Not sure how that will go down in the UK where we’re used to very slick mobiles without antennas.
I’ve been trying to talk to people here about the programming they watch on it – looking for insights into what’s worked and what doesn’t. Interstingly, they keep telling me, ‘It’s just TV. Nothing special.’ And, they don’t seem particularly aware of any interactivity – other than the programme/channel guide – on the platform. This is, of course, a consumer perspective – I know there’s more going on behind the scenes editorially.
Functionally, two cool features I saw were texting alerts about live programming reminders to friends in your phone contacts and DVR functionality, which one user really raved about liking.
Consumers I’ve been talking to have also been complaining about problems with reception and been telling me that WiPro is a better way of getting video content to their phones. I need to check the WiPro stuff out but no one I’ve talked to has been able to show it to me on their phone yet.
Mobile Games
Mobile Service
Mobile Entertainment and Community
Outstanding Contribution
Innovative Content
… No category for mobile TV (and no broadcast entries in the above categories). This backs up the attitude that ‘its just TV.’
I hope that’s not the case. From what I’ve been seeing at work, I think it can offer us new opportunities to create specific content for audiences that are on the move and who have different user and content needs in those situations.
