Video - not just stills

I have been known to shoot video as well as stills. I don't generally rate video as being of any great importance unless it's video of friends or family. It's just not my thing. I prefer still images. This video, however, was somewhat challenging to shoot, if you pardon the pun.

Certainly the video quality is nothing to write home about. It was filmed on my Blackberry, back when my Blackberry still worked. That thing lasted 14 months before the main board died on it. I don't consider that money well spent. Given that it took a full 15 minutes to reboot, it wasn't even a great phone although it did have advantages.

Curtailing myself from further digression, this video was filmed with the Blackberry held in my left hand and my pistol in my right hand. I still managed to knock down a couple of steel plates. Now those plates were very heavy and needed to be struck in just the right place (the top 3 inches) or they wouldn't fall. It's possible to hear my bullets hitting the plates.

Occasionally I will set up a real camera to record video - not, I hasten to add, a video camera but a compact that also shoots video. In fact that compact (a Canon S1 IS) shoots much better video than it takes photos. The video quality is higher, even if the shooting isn't.

What I'm saying is that in an online world, video can be fun. The trick is not to make videos too long. Ideally 30 seconds should be your longest video. People just don't want to hang about watching videos - not when they can watch grass growing, paint drying and have all those rice puddings to knit. 

My personal favorite of all my videos is of the execution by gunfire of a Virgin phone. Virgin and I had a tolerable relationship for a number of years but as I moved from 2G to 3G, the relationship broke down. This video shows the charges, judgement and execution of a particularly awful phone. Aside from the constant beeping that the phone produced whether I was using it or not, it did some pretty dreadful things. 

I could rant about my Virgin phones but to be honest, they did work up to a point. I found I could not get any reception where I used to work around Christmas. Where I work now I have to stand in the middle of the carpark to get reception with my new phone service provider. That's OK though as my new job requires my full attention and concentration whereas my old job did not. Generally, I found Virgin phones to be woefully inadequate for anything other than talking. The 3G wasn't that great. If you step through the video carefully, you can see that the logo at the top of the phone - which is where the phone's forehead would be is where the shot hits. It was shot a few more times later but the first shot was spot on.