Well I for sure am. Of course Brown is probably expecting this, hence the ending of the show where he joked his way through an elaborate method for rigging the machine.

Let’s look at the draw itself again. Brown deliberately riddled the broadcast with little droplets that could be woven into a conspiracy theory.

• The wide angle shot – that everyone thought would bring a huge reveal of a second person or locked off camera (not handheld as we were lead to believe)
• Introducing the idea that he legally wasn’t allowed to show you the lottery result – obviously at that point in time it was actually a prediction.
• The wobbly handheld camera work that almost seemed too wobbly to be true.
• The hand over the mouth during the draw – many feel he was mouthing the balls as they dropped to a third party to do one of the following..
• LED display balls, the numbers are programmed onto an LED display on the balls
• The numbers are projected onto the balls
• The numbers being burnt onto the balls via laser thru a mysterious black gap in the backdrop (which can be seen)
• The sudden static nature of the camera for a brief few seconds whilst Derren writes the numbers, before he walks over. This would allow a split screen to come into play.

So many routes to conspiracy, its almost as if all the seeds have been deliberately planted – with one of them actually being true. I do reckon its the latter.. check this great video showing even a chap could set it up in his living room.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then there’s the reveal show. The opening two thirds are loosely woven together under the pretence that it’s about predicting people’s choices – which has nothing to do with predicting lotto numbers. As Brown then pointed out, it was about predicting what a machine will do. He then suggests that will power may be able to play a part – as in the whole nation was willing the machine to choose his numbers. But he discounts this all himself, revealing the coin ‘trick’ he demo’d.

But look again, the first demo was about building fear in a woman who didn’t like mice, asking her to put her hand in three of four covered boxes, knowing a mouse is in one of them. Of course there was no mouse, it was about building a fear and belief that something was going to happen. Then a stunt with a knife under one cup in a grid, would this poor chap thrust his foot onto a knife. Of course not – there was no knife, a more extreme example of the same concept.

Then the coin film, I felt it had no place in the proceedings unless of course it was to continue with the theme of presenting something to the World that he wants you to believe, but actually isn’t. Could this have been a staged film?

And finally the big reveal. The concept of a group using their collective unconscious minds to successfully predict the next numbers in the sequence of the year’s numbers. But of course there is no proven deep maths behind the lottery sequence, it is completely random. There is an element of believability in the theory presented. But it also seems highly implausible. Were the members of the group actors? Were they duped? Was the bloke who couldn’t do automatic writing a stooge who led them to lead them to believe they were on course? Was this an example of getting the nation into a state whereby an idea or thought is presented and we all believe it, as with the mouse and knife/cup, whilst of course in reality it isn’t there?

I’m convinced that the reveal show was again designed to provoke questions and conspiracy from the viewer. But why would he go to this much effort if indeed it is the case?

The result of both shows is that we are all talking, blogging, flaming forums about it. This is pushing his name out to the entire nation and promoting the form of magic as entertainment once again – is that the reason for this? Or is this combining with the other events to lead to a huge reveal at the end of the series, after all the series is about misdirection. Or have we all already been duped – next weeks show is ‘how to control the nation’ – a subliminal film that will stick us to our chairs, but broadcasting subliminal messages is illegal, so is the trick that we were all glued to last weeks show? That the lotto stunt controlled the nation?

To me the questions raised set this up to be a great series of shows, real event TV. I’m convinced the whole series is linked, as suggested through the advert (lotto balls on the crossing post, something to do with football – manchesterunited.com on the billboard – rigging/betting on a match?, sticktoyoursofa.com on the bus stop and red and black on the truck – think casino) – the whole series appears to be about gambling, there must be a point to prove at the end of it all. Derren, bring it on!

Just seen Quentin Tarantino’s Basterds. Great film. Brilliant film. From the off I was thrown off-guard on what to expect, but still I loved every second of it.

From the slow aching tension building up over dialogue in chapter one through to the often hilarious and undoubtedly fun blood-bath in chapter five, QT once again manages to construct a thoughtful journey of narratives that twist and turn through each other, crescendo’ing  to the wholly satisfying climactic sequence.

The only points that I can pick on for improvement – based on one viewing – are that it is ever so slightly too long. I felt tired once we got into ‘Operation Kino’, and – without spoilers – maybe the dialogue in the bar could’ve been cut by five/ten minutes. That whole waiting section seemed unnecessary and could’ve really done with tightening up. Also – and this is a small also – Mike Myers just annoyed me. Thats just a personal thing, he didn’t work for me.

Otherwise, thoroughly entertaining… it got an enthusiastic round of applause as soon as the credits came up, and if you know my neck of the woods, that is anything but the usual end of film reaction – proof indeed that it’s possibly QTs best movie in yonks.

…now. If you’ve seen the film, then you’ll be aware of Hans Landa, the rather chilling and disturbingly likable Nazi Colonel played by Christoph Waltz. This actor steals the film, I do reckon he’s going to be a serious candidate for the Oscars. I know little about him, so in my googling, came across this article posted on Aint It Cool – the man himself discussing the part of a lifetime with the sites ‘Mr Beaks’ – http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42127

So last night I went along to one of the free previews that Fox had put on around the Globe to promote James Cameron’s Avatar. I met three of my friends at the BFI IMAX – without a doubt the best screen to have been watching this on in the UK – around 6pm. We exchanged our email printouts for actual physical tickets and headed to the foyer.

None of us had any real clear vision of what we were about to watch. Bar the online trailer released the day before, there was no real sense of what Avatar is, the style, the pacing, the story, the dialogue. Obviously this was the point of going about these unusual early previews – to draw out the initial buzz and guage an instant raw opinion from those who already have a vested interest in the project.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In our seats a clearly nervous suit from Fox introduced the footage we were about to see. He spoke of how excited they were to be involved in this project, how they thought it was going to change the way films were made and how it would set the bar in terms of what audiences expected. Glasses on, the footage began with an introduction from Cameron himself. “All the scenes are from the first half of the movie, so no spoilers for you!” he said. All good. We’re now in Avatar. Over the next paragraphs I’ll briefly explain the scenes we were shown. They all setup the story and the World created.

*********** START OF SPOILERS************

The first scene was a briefing from a colonel to his soldiers on a base on the planet Pandora. We’re introduced to the key character – Jake Sully – a paralysed marine. The colonel explains his mission is to keep them all alive as they make their way across the planet, but that he cannot succeed, some will fall. The scene is slow and precise, it sets a tone for the commanding character, his authority, focussing on elements such as his perfectly aligned, spaced, pressured march through the lesser ranks that surround him.

Second scene is in a medical bay. Sigourney Weaver’s scientist meets Sully, who goes into a pod where he’ll eventually have a psychic link bonded between his mind and that of his avatar body – designed to let him move around the planet, which humans cannot breathe on. The lab is full of science types, with the vitals of each subject being displayed on opaque, touch sensitive displays (think Minority Report). The displays can be swiped off and moved to a handheld portable device, “a beautiful mind,” one scientists comments of Sully. The end of the scene see’s Weaver following in a pod. This sequence is the first we see that wants to utilise some of the 3D elements. The camera pans around to give the depth of the lab, we see the pods moving.

This segues directly into seeing Sully’s avatar awaking with the bond to his mind intact. He wastes no time in getting on his feet and enjoying his new body, breaking free from his cables and breaking out into the compound on shaky feet – much to the horror of the scientists. In the trailer this is the point where he proclaims, “This is great!”

Into the jungle of Pandora for the next section. This is the first glimpse of the entirely CGI world that Cameron has created. Sully, along with Weaver’s avatar, come face to face with a creature that resembles a hammer-headed rhino. There’s interaction between Sully and the creature, a standing of ground. They then encounter a less-favourable creature and a high-octane chase ensues. At no point was I thinking ‘this is computer generated’, the scenery is quite breathtaking and the avatar bodies look quite realistic in three dimensions, opposed to on the trailer where I felt they looked quite cartoony in a ‘clone wars’ style. It’s in these scenes that the technology is really starting to be employed, the depth and detail being used to both enthrall and scare – with a moment that involves a hostile creature slowly creeping up behind Sully.

As the chase continues the pace quickens, the edits speed up, the ‘camerawork’ gets jerky. This really wasn’t suited to the medium, it took longer to process the dimensional  information and I felt that I was both becoming slightly dizzy, but also lagging behind the understanding of what I was watching.

Next sequence, in the forest at night. Sully is struggling with fending off more creatures. Enter a female warrior of the same body as Sully, native to the land. She fends off the enemy with her bow, arrow and knive at blistering speed, then lambasts Sully for attracting the attacks to him – those creatures didn’t need to be killed, she says. This scene annoyed, whilst the introduction to the native tribe is going to be important to the story, this just reeked of ‘boy meets girl, girl despises boy, boy is captivated by girl and her aparent dislike…’ It’s leading to a love story. I don’t mind romance, but I feel it could become an integral part to the film and general gushyness doesn’t mix well with (what I was hoping was going to be) a serious Sci-Fi/fantasy. Sully makes his way through a landscape of firefly like creatures and glowing plants, the 3d is incredible here, giving a sense of depth to a scene like I’ve never seen before. Sadly at the same time it’s a little too cutesy.

The final part of the preview sees Sully with the native tribe trying to mount and take control of a dragon-like winged creature. If he succeeds, the creature will be his for life, if he fails the creature will be likely to kill him, “You only have one chance,” the female says. After some initial suspense where he’s thrown off and over the side of a cliff, Sully re-engages and takes the creature. Now being his master, they fall off aimlessly down the side of the cliff until a comedic instruction to ‘fly straight’ kicks his control of the beast into full flight. Flying over the jungle, the 3d obviously comes into it’s own.

***************** END SPOILERS****************

The footage ended and what happened next summaises pretty much my initial reaction. There was a pause and then a light smattering of applause. NO geeky WHOOPS, CHEERS or PUNCHING OF FISTS. In my mind Cameron has been wise with his use of the tech – the was no gimmicky flying out of the screen with a directors *nudgenudgewinkwink*, instead the steroscopic 3D is used to give depth, richness and a greater understanding to the scenes – albeit (as previously noted) in scenes of high octane close-up action, where confusion reined. I’m certain that in a flat render of the film, it’s going to look like a cartoon, but given the extra depth the imagery comes to life and seems to give extra detail to everything.

My fear is that Fox continue to play the 3D card in promoting it. I think anyone that goes along with the view of what 3D is, thinking that’s what they’re going to get (especially if it’s hyped), are going to be greatly disappointed. This will not jump out at you, instead it has the promise to pull you in – thats the revolution in what Cameron’s done. So long as Fox don’t ramp up these dimensional expectations, the audience will discover that what’s been written with Avatar is a film-makers instruction manual for mature use of the technology, providing a richer experience of the story. In that respect, I sure hope the story is pretty darn impressive. What we saw today was certainly interesting and well paced, I hope the narrative drives like this when pieced to the remainder of the film and doesn’t meander.

We decamped to a nearby restaurant and compared notes. We all had some mis-givings and all had things we loved. Just as that initial reaction in the screen, we all felt as though we definitely wanted to see this film, nothing dissuaded us, it looks stunning. But at the same time not one of us thought that we must see it tomorrow, there was no instant buzz, no internal ‘wibble’ of excitement. Strangely we all agreed with my friend Jeff’s opinion on the look of the film, that it’s the film that Halo will want to be. It really does look like the game, the military bases, the environments, the pace, the sound.. just minus Master Chief! All in all, the experience seemed to ground and make us rethink  our expectations.

And therein lies the real reason as to why Fox have staged this Worldwide ‘Avatar Day’. Sure, they want to kick start the buzz. But at the same time my personal opinion is that they probably don’t have a clue what to do with this film. They know what they have, but they’re probably have no idea what and how they should do with marketing it to the general public. After all, there’s little point in having a game changing movie from a technical production perspective, if they can’t fill more 3D seats than 2D. The way they handle the build up to release will undoubtedly make or break the format that the industry so doesn’t want to be a gimmick.

Still not feeling great. Supposed to be doing U2 at Wembley later today, really can’t see me doing that now… it’d be the worst place to be with an ill tummy.

Still in bed and I’m staying here.

I’m not the happiest bunny today. Forth week of the summer, and the third bug. A stomach bug, resulting in me.. well… y’know. Spent the day in bed, quite a lot of pain.

The friend I caught this off phoned with advice to help me through, which made me think that I was only with him for a brief few minutes on Tuesday night and now I’m contaminated. So I’ve pulled out of a small drinks do with my fellow theatregoer reporters at Whats on Stage, it would be awful if I passed this onto the entire team in one swoop. Saying that, I’m not happy about this, the work I’m doing with WOS has become one of the most important things to me in recent months and I’m keen to meet everyone! There will be other opportunities, I’m sure.

I now invite all germs to hit me in one go.. c’mon, lets get the antibodies in my system for everything coming my way when I go back to work at the school..

This afternoon I witnessed a friend go through one hell of a ride, all remotely via twitter. Having spoken to him privately, I know that he will not be blogging or tweeting on this subject anymore and that he’s happy for me to tell his tale. I wont mention his name – he’s happy about this! For the purposes of this tale, I’ll call him Mr Yellow.

This afternoon at around 3pm there was a shooting in Southwark, the shooting involved a pursuit with police and open firing back at them in public. Full info on that event can be read on this BBC news page.

Mr Yellow works in a building adjacent to where this was all happening. It was evident that something not quite right was going on below as they were asked to stay in the building and away from windows. Rumor spread in the office so Mr Yellow turned to twitter for some information. As part of this he innocently filmed the police presence and commotion below, from the office window and uploaded it to twitvid. Here is that video..

This is quite a normal reaction for someone who’s into Twitter. Take a pic or vid, show what’s going on, see if people have any more info.

Within ten minutes of posting this a rumble began. Mr Yellow saw his iPhone 3GS footage on Sky News (I’m presuming they have it onscreen in the office.. its a big company). He went onto the Sky News website, his video is the first thing he sees, posted in their Breaking News box. Clicking through to the article his video has been embedded into the news page, with the credit ‘footage from twitter user …….’. Shortly after this I saw the video on the big screen in Liverpool Street station as I journeyed home.

Sky did not ask his permission to use this video, nor did they inform him of the use. By searching communication, I can see that a Sky employee did message him ‘Great fast work, Mr Yellow’, as if he was posting this on their behalf. Heads in the office started to turn. Had their colleague just sold some video footage shot in the company office to sky news on work hours? Thats the fear now running through Mr Yellow’s mind, he works for a fairly well known company, easily identifiable from the location of the video, will he be slayed over the coals for this? Thousands upon thousands have now seen what he shot.

When Mr Yellow gets home he finds that the London Paper are also using the footage on their website. I advise him to delete it from twitvid, cutting the news outlets at their source – none of them are hosting the video themselves, all embedding from twitvid instead. So he does. Five minutes later the video has reappeared. So he deletes again. Guess what, the video is reinstated.. this goes on. Eventually he gets a message from the founder of twitvid asking why he’s deleting the video? They’re reinstating it due to the high traffic volume.. its the hottest video on their site, getting over 11k views in a couple of hours…

Obviously Twitvid are keen to keep this video on their site, they’re getting traffic, people are discovering their service and the video is being used by major news agencies, proving their worth. Its notable that in the last hour they’ve added a twitvid logo to the corner of the embedded videos.

Now Mr Yellow has no problem with the video being in the public domain and with people using it, the only thing going through his mind is the repercussions of it being associated with him. He’s likely to be facing a verbal warning at work, at the very least. His bosses probably don’t understand twitter – as far as anyone can see he sent/sold it to sky, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

The debate that this causes in my mind is two fold:

1. Should news agencies have carte blanche free use over anything posted onto twitvid/twitpic without permission? One does understand that these services put videos into the public domain, but does that mean a company like sky can just take it and credit the source? Should twitvid/pic put basic CC licensing into place for its users? Should media outlets pay to use such material?

2. News broadcasters have all jumped onto the twitter bandwagon. Maybe they should think through their editorial policies a bit more thoroughly. At the very least they should contact the poster asking;

a) if they can use the material
b) if and how they should credit the owner

The result if they don’t is that someone like Mr Yellow could find themselves in a whole heap of trouble that could dramatically alter their life, all because a newscaster rushed to get some exclusive pictures without concern as to where they came from or how they should be presented to the World.

Links to the articles:
On Sky news On The London Paper

Twitvid have come to an arrangement where the video stays but Mr Yellow has no claim to it, it’s now a video posted by twitvid admin. Fair deal I say.

If causal twitter users are to become the new breed of citizen journalist, then maybe we should all think twice before posting something about an event thats in process especially when it could become a news story.

What do you think?

Whilst I’m still putting the blocks of this new site together, I feel comfortable with the CMS now and am wanting to blog my many rambles on here now.

So I just redirect all hits on my main photography website onto here. So a big welcome to anyone reading who’s slightly confused. As I’ve decided to stop working as a live music photographer I felt it silly to carry on blogging my wares on a site that predominately was designed as a photography site. Hence, my new online persona, domain and site.

Sure, I’ll still talk about ‘tog, but also other things that interest me, video, film, web and technology (especially the fruity kind). The old photography website is archived in glorious HTML here – www.ianmilleruk.com/OLD-IMP – for anyone that wanted to see what it looked like. Alternatively just hit to Photography link on the top right on this very page.

Simples.
x
ian

Everything’s still super-busy. Massive amount of work at the dayjob, setting up this site still and planing my photography exhibition – just over a week to go! The work on the next set of What’s On Stage films starts soon too. So haven’t had time to blog – not the best of starts with a new website.

So on here I’ve just setup the photography page, if you click on the link at the top right of this page you’ll see the high points of my ten years working as a live music and press photographer. Alternatively, I’ve archived my old asp site in glorious HTML here – ianmilleruk.com/OLD-IMP

Spent most of the weekend working on the photo album for the exhibition. My friends have been mounting the main pics, they sent me an MMS and they’re going to look beyond amazing. All the labels have now been written and printed, I’ve a rough idea of what I’m doing for finger foods and drinks too. Just got to sort out the remaining invites and write/print a welcome note before boarding up all the prints at the end of the week.

I’m also working on a surprise for the evening, not even 50% certain it’s going to happen, though it would be lovely if it did. So obviously won’t say any more!

Getting there.. slowly. Here’s to the week, I hope it’s going to be a darn sight cooler.

So I’m in the process of setting up my new site – the pages, plugins, widgets, the static pages, the categories…

It’s taking time, but I’m getting there with every random five minutes I find. I’d like to think I’ll have everything ready by the end of the week, but I’m in the middle of what’s been one of the busiest most intense few weeks work I’ve had at the dayjob… add onto that the current heatwave and I’m a very very tired person.

If  you’ve stumbled upon here before I’ve gotten everything ready, apologies… lots of test posts will follow as I work things out.

The weekend will therefore be very sweet indeed.

I thought it was strange we were awaiting an ‘announcement’ about ticket refunds.. after all.. most will be processed automatically by a computer.. no…

Then a press release came, embargoed until 5am this morning.

Chief executive Randy Phillips said: “The world lost a kind soul who just happened to be the greatest entertainer the world has ever known.

“Since he loved his fans in life, it is incumbent upon us to treat them with the same reverence and respect after his death.”

RIGHT. If you really treated them with respect, you’d offer to send the tickets out for free or a small service charge.

The only question I ask myself is do I really want to pay £85 for a piece of paper?