An old tapestry in Romainmôtier

AI, Film, and Social Media

Byrichard
Reading Time: 4 minutes

I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often.

DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.

The lazy Editor

Film and television are art forms, as should social media, but the problem with social media is that it is made by amateurs with no background in film or television. They break plenty of rules, which is what creative people are meant to do, but not because they want to go against cultural movements. They break the rules out of ignorance, out of amateurism, and out of laziness. It isn’t that social media has democratised video content, but rather than social media has destroyed film and television. Now we’re stuck with what I like to call User Generated Crap, but we’re also left with YouTube being a shadow of its former self.

In the days when it was going to be sued for unauthorised use of copyrighted material it was interesting, because it was about creative people being creative, before the social frameworks were in place for that creativity to be legal. I filmed the LakeParade more than once, and then spent hours editing my footage. I posted it to YouTube and the sound was removed due to copyright violation.

Today people are doing absolute crap on TikTok with music, and yet it’s legal, because copyright rules have changed, but when it’s too late for conventional editors to bother. If we invest hours filming, and then more hours editing, then YouTube will just mute the videos.

Algorithms and the Feed

I would love to enjoy using YouTube but I don’t. I don’t enjoy YouTube because it’s focused on the lowest common denominator, rather than topics and themes. The videos that are promoted have sensationalist headings, that are clickbait, rather than solid content. The wrong content is being promoted. The wrong things are being valued.

The result is that even without adverts YouTube has become unusable for me. “But you can block and dislike what you don’t like”. Sure, but I’m fighting against a gaggle of people with different audiovisiual values. I will lose.

If I don’t pay for Premium, I need to watch awful ads, but if I pay for Premium I have to sort through a jumble of crap before getting to something interesting. More than once I have spent an hour looking for something to watch, and found nothing.

The Film Industry

Studios Quietly Go on Hiring Spree for AI Specialist Jobs Amid Picket Line Anxiety

Even AI Filmmakers Think Hollywood’s AI Proposal Is Dangerous

Around 2002 I lived in Weymouth and going to the cinema cost 2 GBP so I would go to the cinema, once or twice a week. In the process I saw at least 90 films, but in that same process I learned of the formulas the US film industry use, and I have never enjoyed American films since. The problem with the US film industry is that it’s based on formulas, rather than humanity. It’s based on set plot lines, where names and locations are changed, but the story is the same.

As I said a few years ago, I prefer to watch television series, to films, because television series are still creative. Each television series is different from the other, so we still want to know what happens. With films I lose interest within ten to fifteen minutes. if not sooner. I love the film medium, but I hate what Hollywood produces.

More CGI Than Story

One of the weaknesses of almost new hollywood films is that they forget that they are a story telling medium. They forget that we go to the cinema to be told a story, not to see computer graphics. As I have said more than once, if I want to see computer graphics I can watch gamers play GTA V and other games on YouTube. If I watch films it’s because I want to be told a story that has depth and value.

BrotherHood – A Korean Film

One of the films that most impressed me when I was going to the cinema two or more times a week was Brotherhood because it had a real story, about real people in a real situation where we felt real emotions about the situation. Of course I mean a genuine story, rather than real. It’s a fictional film on what could have been real. It’s a powerful film, without too much CG, just good story telling.

AI and Special Effects

In one of the articles I shared I read about how they want AI to replace all extras. In the other article they show how kitsch is simplified by AI. In the scenarios described by those articles AI would be used to replace humans by AI, replace locations by AI, and replace everything else. Just one actor, acting by himself, surrounded by virtual people.

AI, Media Asset Management and Restoration

I do think that AI has a place in film, for media asset management, for film restoration and for tasks that are time consuming and boring for humans, but good for machines. I enjoy Media Asset management but I believe that as a person works through digital assets machine learning tools should pay attention and learn from humans. Rather than transcribing by hand, AI can transcribe and then humans double check the accuracy of what was transcribed, as with Project Gutenberg.

And Finally

From factories to film sets, AI has a simple goal: Making things cheaper

Although the title of the article quoted about is to make things cheaper, it isn’t. It’s about cutting corners to maximise profit. It isn’t about making films cheaper to see at the cinema. It isn’t about making films more cost effective. It’s about not paying human beings because AI is “good enough”. It’s about dehumanising the film industry and making it even more uninteresting than it is. If you replace humans with AI, then you lose that humanity, that makes humans relevant.

if you over-use CG and forget about story, then you might as well be making computer games rather than films, because, at the end, a lot of modern films are just computer games, that you watch as films.

I lost interest in Hollywood decades ago, so AI doesn’t change the unlikeliness of me watching Hollywood films. It just confirms the reasons for which I lost interest in the first place. The story being told isn’t interesting, and AI driven CG are a distraction, rather than justified.

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Foursquare and evolving electronic social meetings

Byrichard

We’ve all got smartphones. Some of us are using Nokia,  others are using blackberries and yet more are using Android and Iphones. As a result when we interact with people we are not interacting with them from a desk somewhere in a building. We’re interacting with them from the middle of the street or on public transport.

As the shift from computers to mobile devices gains momentum we will be meeting more and more people this way. For the past decade it was reserved to geeks through many different sites. At first it was all about protecting your identity and being anonymous. That changed. From Geocities, through myspace and to facebook we have grown more accustomed to sharing more personal information about who we are and where we hang out. As a result of this increasing familiarity, and as more people grow to understand the advantages and pitfalls of online interaction so a new type of activity is taking form.

From twitter where avatars were used to facebook where profile pictures are used our digital identity has evolved, become more open, and more open. On twitter we used to use avatars but more and more people use pictures of themselves. As a result of this the level of trust has improved.

That’s where brightkyte and other websites are starting to become the norm. Recently I have been using Foursquare. I can follow as more and more people locally, in Geneva check in to different places. If I’m at Geneva airport for example I check in and I can see who else has checked in at this location. It’s an international location so there is a good chance of not meeting people there. In other locations though, as more people from our physical group of friends, and by this I mean non geeks, use these services so they gain relevance for “normal people”.

Mix this in with the Iphone and the ease of use of the mobile apps we have some interesting new tools and services by which to meet new people. If I go to Les Brasseurs in Lausanne, Geneva or Nyon so I see who else has been there and could decide to meet them and see whether we enjoy their company when meeting face to face.

Foursquare has a feature that I find interesting, we can share our phone number with those whom we trust to be friends and so we can exchange a few messages before meeting them in person, building trust and assessing the character of the person before meeting. Over a period of a few weeks as trust builds up so we can discuss whether to meet in person.

For those of you reading this on my blog the idea is old. You’ve already been to 20 tuttles, tweetups, seesmeetups and other events and you’re a veteran of this type of meetup. For others, who are more used to glocals and facebook though the idea is relatively new. You might feel uncomfortable about this way of doing things. To you I say one thing. As more of your friends use these services, and as your network of trusted friends grows on these services grow so your motivation will grow to meet others.

Take the frontline club in London as a case example. If I went there once and checked in only that time, never to come back then you would know not be so inclined to see about meeting me. If you see someone else checks in often to this place then your motivation to meet them may increase. As a result of several people checking in to that same location a number of times so the cluster of people may increase and become more important.

As an example think of the independent cinemas that may be close to where you live, the City in Pully in Lausanne. As four or five people check in more often and through the common interest finally you may decide to meet.

The key advantage of services like foursquare is that these sites are local. That is to say that you are kept aware of what those around you are doing. You are not inundated by the irrelevance of what the international community are doing but rather the local. The benefit of such services is they are providing you with local more relevant people to meet, without the effect of isolation that other types of services may make you feel.

The drawback of services like twitter is that you are given a lot of irrelevant information. You don’t need to know who chats with who, what they are doing. Instead you simply see where they’ve been and how often. That’s where the relevance of the badges and mayorships come in. For different type of activities so you get a unique type of badge. If you check into a gym for example, you acquire the gym rat badge. It is unlocked for going to a venue with the tag gym. If you go ten times in a month, so people will know that you enjoy going to the gym. As other badges are created, for going to the cinema or the pub so you can see which people are most active in those forms of activities, hence learning of the relevance of their interest in similar activities.

This is not a dating site, and it’s not a place for geeks. Unlike yelp and trustedplaces you do not need to give your opinion of the venue, it’s a three second “this is where I am and this is how many times I’ve been there” type statement. As the number of users increases so the opportunities to meet people with similar habits increases.

Of course you can add tips and what to do at these locations, which others can see. As different types of personalities go to different places so the recommendations will increase. As you see what people recommend you do, at different times of the year so the wealth of ideas will increase.

The foursquare app on the mobile phone allows you to arrive in a place you have not visited, click on what’s near me, see what venues are already in the database, see what people recommend you do and for you to go to those places and add yourself to those places and acknowledging that you have done what others have suggested. It’s an interesting idea that will come of age within the next few months as more and more users pick up these new habits on sharing local information and experiences. This is in effect part of the social medial lifestyle that some of us have been discussing for a number of years by now.

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The Kendra Party – Networking Event and Party

Byrichard

Last night I went to the Kendra event not knowing what to expect from the event. It started at 6pm and ended by 9pm and i had the opportunity to meet with a few people of which Brendon Kenny of VK media and the Jummp project.


A large amount of metadata is currently being discarded without understanding its value! JuMMp aims to promote interoperability for metadata and signalling information exchange. This will enable contextual navigation within live and recorded content for users of digital devices such as PVRs, games consoles, mobile phones and computers – providing value to end users and to all stakeholders in the content chain.


It’s an interesting project and you can participate in the conversaton and learn more through their facebook group. It’s an interesting project with some very interesting backers so I look forward to seeing how they implement this in the wild.


Other people I met with are Mark and Alex of Astream – a streaming service provider, Darren of Ioda, an independent online distribution Alliance and Dennis of zzizzlfilm – short film distribution for filmmakers by filmmakers. I was also introduced to Nick, product development Director for Bsky and a few more people.


It was a good event with many interesting people to meet and whenever the next event is organised I will make sure to turn up.

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The podcasting demographic

Byrichard

Whilst listening to a conversation between several podcasters in their debriefing they were asking the question of how to involve a different demographic in the process of podcasting. This is an interesting question. As one participant pointed out the demographic seems to be for white males over 30 years of age to create content whilst younger people seem not to be active.

If that last statement is true then I am an anomaly to the rule since I have over four years even to reach that age.

What is the strength of podcasting and how does it differ from mainstream media?  What is the difference between the mainstream media and podcasting What makes a documentary a documentary rather than a podcast? Are podcasts and amateur pieces of work because the person creating that content has less experience? If so does the habit of podcasting turn them into professionals and do they as a result lose their identity.

Is podcasting about content on demand and fed automatically to the player? In that case how long do we wait before the mainstream media do the same thing? It’s an interesting topic and I’d like to see what people have to say about this.

I know that some people at the Podcamp complained about people talking about podcasts in podcasts but there are some important questions to be answered. I don’t see myself as a podcaster because I’ve spent so many years in Uni studying this that I believe I deserve another label. I’m a television producer, or at least I aim to be one.

There’s something that has really changed from my childhood to now. When I was no more than ten years old I decided that I wanted to do video and that I wanted to edit but I had no access to any hardware that would allow me to do anything. There were two reasons for this. The first of these was cost. At the time two beta sp decks would cost 30,000 CHF a piece. Now for 3200 CHF you get yourself a portable edit suite. Add a small camera and you’re doing ENG.

What growing up when I did meant is that I had to content myself with books on the subject. I bought books about editing, about basic camera work, basic betacam work, theory books by Eisenstein and still more books. What this meant is that although I had never been able to edit the material I had shot I had the chance to think about shooting and editing style. It was nothing more than an intellectual pursuit.

As a result of the time I spent daydreaming about having the facilities to produce television programs it meant that finally when I had the equipment I was in a much better place than young content producers are today. Most people pick up a camera and film something without thinking of sequences of shots, story telling and more. Instead they do anything and put it together. As a result there are some products that are hard to watch.

What about duration. In broadcast when you’re a beginner you’re given one or two minutes for the video you want to create. As you prove your skill at short items you progress to longer, more informational and more interesting pieces. Of course those are documentaries in the Griersonian sense of the word rather than podasts.

You see documentaries are the creative treatment of actuality. They are built as a means by which to document what happens in real life rather than something setup. These are actualities, Actualié in french. Find the means by which to make them about current affairs and you have a documentary. Dziga Vertov with “The Man With the Movie Camera” played with this idea. So did Flaherty before him with Nanook of the North. John Pilger, Nick Broomfield and documentaries after them have also experimented with different styles. All of them were broadcast.

Now we’ve come to another era in factual production. This is the personal era of video production. If you think of early literacy you may have seen the same fears as there are now. If everyone can writ then what prevents them from writing their own books and no longer buying material by those who do it for a living? Time, for a start. Producing high quality content takes a lot of time and thought. What is the difference between a podcaster making a documentary about the steam railway and Fred Dibnah? Contacts, budget and organisation. Fred Dibnah is in front of the camera telling you so much about what he knows but how much information did the researcher  go through before providing the right amount of information. How long did the script writer take. How many shots in a professional production are handheld and whom do they have access to. Did they spend three days to get the shots they needed. Of course they did.

As a documentary maker you’ve got the pitch, the proposal and getting it agreed, the budget and getting that agreed, the shooting schedule and then editing. You also need to understand the demographic you’re providing content for. Podcasters do it as a hobby and they’re surprised when people watch their programs. It fills them with joy and pride. I saw many people and the passion they had for their productions as podcasters. They’re filled with ambition and this is what makes their programs interesting. They give us their point of view and it’s great.

I think teamwork may be what’s lacking from podcasting. Lot’s of people want to create content yet when you meet them you see that many of them do so alone. If that is the case then the reason to have Podcamps is to encourage people to create networks and teams. As the teams grow and as a variety of people with specialist knoweldge join together so their product increases in visibility.

What makes Leo Laporte such a great podcaster? The people he involves in his work. He recently stated that he has at least two podcasts a day to record and that he gets other people to do various things he needs help with. He’s got one or two guests to speak about law, a few more to speak about Macs and yet more for This Week in Tech. As a result he’s got a “Twit Army” to help with content creation.

With more Podcamps and greater participation  there is a greater chance of teams being formed and creating nice networks of podcasters to produce compeling content. Europe as a whole needs to provide much more content so that we get a European take on all these topics. Better still, involve a variety of people. Get women involved. Mention the name Allie (sp?) and see how many of those at Podcamp remember her. Why aren’t more girls involved so that we may remember and interact with a team of them.

I’ll see what others have to say about this

ExFat Stability Issues
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ExFat Stability Issues

Byrichard

Yesterday a drive failed to mount so Photoprism and Audiobookshelf failed to work. The server was up and running but the files were not accessible. For this reason two of my services have been unusable for several hours. I believe that the issue came from using an ExFAT drive rather than EXT4 or another journalled file system.

The reason for which journalling is important is that Pis and other systems crash, and when they crash, read write cycles are not completed. The consequence of this is that the drive that had been fine before the crash becomes corrupted after the crash and needs to be fixed. Most of the time this is quite easy. I use disk utility two to three times, and eventually the problem is fixed long enough to backup the data.

Why This Matters

The rational thing to do is to think, “I’m using these drives for something that NAS drives are designed for so it’s normal that external drives would fail.” The reality is that the file system has a bigger role to play than the drive type. If the drive keeps track of what it was doing, and what was interrupted then it can quickly resume from where it left off. Without a journal the drive just sees missing data and asks for repairs to be done. By “asks for repairs to be done” I mean that it fails to mount until the issue is resolved.

Looking Forward

From now on I will use ExFAT as a temporary solution for when I move data from one OS to another but once the move is finished I will use APFS for mac, EXT4 for Linux systems and NTSF or equivalent for windows when flexibility is not needed. It’s easy to format a drive to a more resilient file system.

And Finally

Once I have backed up the data I will reformat the drive to EXT4 and copy the data back. This should make the drive more resilient.

Thoughts on Masto.host

Thoughts on Masto.host

Byrichard

For up to three months I was running my own instance via Masto.host and the experience was good. Setting up an instance is easy. Within a few minutes you can set up your own instance, post and perform administrative tasks such as accept trending hashtags and more.


No DevOps and No Code Required


Masto.host is great for non-technical people because it doesn’t require any specialist knowledge. You create a Masto.host account, and then you choose the cheapest server option. Bring up the instance it and you’re ready to go. It’s as easy as ordering a pizza, or in fact easier, because the choice is “Give me the cheapest option”.


During this time I followed more and more accounts and eventually I got a message that I was going to run out of media storage space so I changed the media retention options before continuing with my day. I had a limit of 20 gigabytes and I did move to change the number of days for which data was retained a first time. It said “Don’t do this”.


Eventually I got an e-mail that said “either upgrade or change the settings”. I changed the settings and the issue was resolved. To be fair I was using 20.05 gigabytes and the limit was 20 gigabytes. This is hardly the ocean to drink, as the french say.


Why Would You Want a Simplified Solution?


If you want to install ClassicPress, WordPress or other solutions it’s a simple matter of adding the files, following a few instructions and your WordPress or ClassicPRess site is up and running. With Mastodon it’s more complicated than that. You need to prepare the environment within which Mastodon can run and that’s complicated, even on a local machine. I know, because I have tried more than once, and failed.


The other issue is that it requires a hosting solution that provides you with the freedom to install the required elements and tools. Not all servers allow such freedom, especially on shared hosting, which is why Mastodon and Fediverse instances, other than WordPress, are harder to setup.


Administering Trending Hashtags


It’s interesting to have the power to approve or ignore trending hashtags. You can be as liberal, or as true to yourself as you like. I accepted some trends with joy, and chose to ignore others. Of course I felt bad for rejecting some trends, although in the grand scheme of things on a self-hosted instance I was the only person affected.


It is easy to backup your data every few days, or when you just think of doing this. The most recent backup was right before I terminated my instance. Since writing this blog post I learned that the backup is worthless. I expected it to backup the user account, following, follower, blocked and other data. It doesn’t. It just backs up media files. I lost the list of people I was following. If you delete an account and an instance backup the individual user files first, and then backup the server files.


Shortening the Experiment


I terminated my instance for two reasons. The first reason is that these servers have a monthly cost, and I had learned what I wanted to learn.


I did not have as much flexibility as I wanted. I thought that by setting up my own instance I would be able to set the character limit and other things with ease, but then quickly noticed that this is not possible. I got a first experience of managing a Mastodon instance and soon I can take that experiment a step further. Before doing that I want to get a mastodon instance to work locally, using docker. After that I intend to get an instance working via Linode.


The second is that the trolls found me. People insulted me. When I am insulted I leave a social network. I have dumped three to five Mastodon instances now, due to trolling. I use social media to find conversations, not fights. When people troll me, and when a lynch mob is forming, I delete the account. In this situation I deleted the instance.


If I had not been trolled I would not have spontaneously taken down the instance. My concern, when being trolled, is that prejudiced people will develop a negative bias against me.


And Finally


If you’re looking to setup your first instance with ease then Masto.host is a good place to start. Other solutions offer hosting from 25 USD and up per month, and up. If you’re curious about setting up a server, for one user then masto.host is a simple solution that you can upgrade as your needs grow.

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Touch typing on the N95 8GB

Byrichard

Whilst at a number of concerts I had to type fast, very fast on a mobile phone keyboard. Within a very short time I began touch typing. I can type whilst looking around. That’s a useful feature of certain phones. It’s useful because it means the keyboard is well designed.

Are there many mobile devices that you use and can you touch type on them. Do you touch type on your blackberries, iphones or other devices or do you see that as the preserve of computer use?

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