The competition?

Well this was bound to happen.  When we first proposed this course, there was nothing like this around:

NYVS  is  the  World's  Top  Online  Film  School

NYVS provides anyone with a video camera an easy and affordable way to learn to make films and videos like a Hollywood professional.

As a NYVS member you'll have access to video courses, critiques, tutorials and a learning community that will help you quickly become a master at video editing, video production, videography, iMovie, Final Cut Pro and much more!

http://www.nyvs.com/

It's video tutorial driven on a subscription model (not a bad annual rate at all), but there are some real parallels with T156 - a good dose of social media learning, a practical focus, and aimed fairly and squarely at video production for the web.  I'm certainly curious enough to subscribe, and I suspect I'll get as much out of it as a film maker as the time I put in.

Looks like it's been going since about August last year, and a lot longer than that in previous forms.  It's a bit disappointing not to be the first large scale attempt in this mode, when we've been marking time to get the go-ahead. But given their introductory tutorials have around 2,500 hits in less than 6 months, I think it's a good demonstration that there's a market there.  The interesting figures will be the hits per tutorial behind the paywall.

So given there's some similarities between what they offer and what we plan to - the obvious next question is what are the differences.  Any opinions?

Negotiating deadlines

We're starting to get into a rhythm with the production - Rick and I kicking off on Mondays in Herefordshire and then parachuting to Milton Keynes for a slew of meetings and anything else we need to do here.  By next month we'll be in full flow, filling a website and knocking out video, but for now it's all about pinning down details around a succession of tables (and sometimes floors).

Progress Meeting with LTS

Today's most important meeting was one of the big ones, sitting down in all the extended team of creative  professionals that will help us to roll out the course in October. These guys are a central part of why the OU had such a good reputation for it's teaching materials, but sometimes you'll find different professionalisms pointing in different directions.  The result can be quite a gulf between a team of academics producing content and an LTS team whose priority is form.   A good way through is to take the time to appreciate one another's professional expertise and judgement, as well as to make sure we're sharing what it is that's exciting about the project.  Luckily we've some very good people to work with, always worth listening to.

Building up trust is important, because we have different points of responsibility in the workflow and different sets of other projects we're dealing with in parallel.  So if deadlines slip, things can get tetchy.  There's no accounting for really bad luck, but personally I'd rather head of problems before they happen if possible.  A colleague last week told me "Until this comes back, you can tell me anything, as long as it's not a surprise" about £25,000 he was effectively lending me to get a conference off the ground.  It's not a bad approach and one I hope we can deliver on.  The schedule is tight, but tomorrow's first job is to look again and see if we can tighten it up again to make the space to get the very best support we can.  Setting realistic and real deadlines and meeting them is a good way to getting there, and will get the job done with less suffering all around.

The harvest of the archive

I have been researching the Open University audiovisual archive for background material to be used on the digital film schools project, T156. The Open University has an audiovisual archive that spans its history, over 40 years. With this in mind I started a search. I wanted to find some film archive that was focused on the processes involved in film making. I would to hear from the production team, actors or crew. Using the OU/BBC database I soon focused in on two programmes.

The first and most inviting is called 'Cast and Crew'. This sounds absolutely ideal and on closer inspection I found that it was specially created for The Open University. In these programmes we hear perspectives and debate from the production team. The format is that of a studio based discussion between the cast and production team. A behind the scenes perspective for the following iconic 20^th Century films.

The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

My Beautiful Laundrette

The second is called the Joyride. We follow a Scottish production team through the process of creating their film. We follow the members of the production team through the process of creating a scene and the difficulties they encounter such as negotiating costs and dealing with authorities to get various permissions.

Now I have identified the archive it is now a matter of working with the intellectual property (rights). We will treat the footage to remove and third party rights costs.

All programmes are stored in the archive on Digital Beta-cam. I will need to remix the audio track to remove any music.