Similar Posts
Electro-dance yodelling and other Valais videos
This yodelling video is currently the number one trending video on youtube. I am unclear on whether it is for Switzerland or a bigger region. A small tractor is driving up a Swiss Alpine road with a group of yodelers sitting in a trailer. A car with Ma Cherie playing on the radio overtakes and the yodelers start to yodel the song. This video is on the Canton de Valais Youtube account.
Hydroelectric Power
Sixty percent of the of hydroelectric power produced in Switzerland comes from Valais with its 26 dams of which La Grande Dixence is one. They have French, English and German versions of this video.
From one side of the lake to the next by Pedalo
To keep the theme of renewable energy we have another project, to cross the lake in a solar powered Pedalo. It’s in French. I thought it was a project with an environmental goal at first.
Flying over Valais
Continuing with the theme of environmentally friendly activities Parapente is another. It’s a nice way to see such a pleasant landscape, especially if you find ascending air currents that prolong the flight.
Skydiving without the parachute
A few weeks ago after the Via Ferrata de la Farinetta near Saillon, I posted an image or two to Instagram and RealFly Sion liked the image. They’re the first indoor Sky diving simulator in Switzerland. It provides people with the opportunity to try skydiving without freefalling thousands of metres. This is an experience I would eventually like to try. I’m used to having the sensation of flying in a similar position underwater so trying it in a strong current of air would be fun.
Day Twenty-seven of ORCA in Switzerland – River Walking
My shoes are wet and my socks are wet because today I tried river walking. If a child was to do the same it would be called immature and irrational but when an adult does it then it’s adventure, and trying something new.
My motivation to river walk came from the pandemic, or more precisely from how people behave during a pandemic. When I walked yesterday I had a runner pass right by me and then spit on the ground a few meters ahead of where I would have been going. When I walked through the woods yesterday I could hear groups of people so I avoided walking along the same routes.
That’s why I placed both feet, and the shoes they were in, into the river and walked. I didn’t get that far. In fact I was only able to walk a few dozen meters before finding that the river would have required wading. I wasn’t prepared to do that. We’re not in a heatwave yet.
Although you can’t really see it in the image above grooves have been worn into the rock strata. As a result you shouldn’t spend all of your time looking forward because you’ll be caught out. River walking requires you to look at where you’re placing your feet. In the image below you can see these erosion patterns more clearly.
I’ve walked along the routes so much that now I’m starting to get to know the details. Now I know that the river is beautiful and that if you’re willing to get wet you can see some nice features. There are a few places I need to return to, and document through photography.
This morning I was looking through to see if Thru-hiking had started and to see whether people would still try to thru hike any of the main trails in the US and from what I see most people have not started and those that did have postponed their hikes for now.
As a follow up to this I listened to this episode of the Hiking Thru podcast. It’s about Chris Smead going for a lesser known Thru hike with eleven lenses, seventy five batteries and a monopod to document a hike with a group of people. The hike sounds like an interesting experience. It also makes a nice change from listening to so many news and current affairs programs. A moment to dream.
I will keep exploring. To a large degree I treated today as if there was no pandemic and that was refreshing. I still washed my hands as soon as I got home. I just didn’t stay cooped up indoors without treating myself. Exploration is a treat.
Objectified – A Design Documentary Split Into Individual Interviews.
Objectified is a documentary about industrial design that has been divided into interviews with individuals about a diversity of designs, from the casing of the Mac Book Pro to chairs, a CD player that behaves like a fan and much more.
On Linkedin, this documentary has been cut up and split into chapters so that you can either watch the documentary in its entirety or you can watch it as video on demand with the designers you’re interested in or familiar with. It’s a contemporary implementation of the documentary genre because it assumes that you have five minutes at a time to devote to this documentary.
You also have the option of reading the transcript instead of watching the videos if desired. Some interviews are in French, German, Dutch, Japanese or English so you are not obliged to listen to an actor dubbing the interview or read the subtitles. You can simply lesson.
The reason for which I thought this documentary was blogworthy is that once you have watched the final edit version of the documentary you can watch the rushes. You can watch the interventions that were interesting but that was too long-winded or not compelling enough to make the final cut.
I like this. As an editor, we often work on videos and we rough cut to a video that’s three or four times longer than it should be and we listen, and we remove a phrase, and then another before we finally end up with the short version that is youtube or Instagram worthy. We feel that other sentences were interesting but because of limits with time and attention stay in the rushes bin.
In these clips we see the adjustments in shot size, we hear the person ramble and repeat themselves. We also see the video without cutaways or other embellishments. This lends a cinéma verité/direct cinema feel to the documentary. It’s easy to get half an hour to an hour’s worth of interview with each artist or designer and be forced to keep just the two most relevant minutes for the documentary.
Luckily with platforms like Linkedin Learning we can follow the course, i.e. Objectified, in this case, and call it a day, leaving the rest of the videos unwatched. We also have the option to expand and to learn more. I’m using Objectified as the example but there are plenty of topics and documentaries that would benefit from this approach to film making.
Plenty of Linkedin videos are of people reading from a prompter and you can see their eyes moving across the screen, and you can see that they’re pretending to be spontaneous rather than natural.
Documentaries, and Linkedin Learning are well suited, and more documentaries should make their way onto this platform.
Digitising Old Videos
I have spent a few hours this morning and part of this afternoon digitising videos from a few years ago and it’s a time warp. I have one or two fashion shows on tape. I have at least ten theatre pieces. I have two or three field weeks and I have the 2000 graduation trip to Crete on tape. Those are moments that are not just static, in an album. They are alive. They are moving and they are nice to keep.
I would often spend weeks and weeks with the camera on me all the time, whether in a pocket or a bag. I would film life as it happened. I have a pre-show video of the Ramayana. I have a video of post-Ramayana drinks when the characters are still in character. I have some of the best nights I’ve spent in geneva on tape. I also have conversations.
Does anyone remember the suction pump s****tal scratcher? Do you remember why people were perplexed? I do. It’s on tape and I want to digitise and share them with the people concerned because they are nice to have and there’s a guaranteed laugh that would ensue. There are about 22yrs of my life on video and the past decade is shot mainly by myself.
At one party I was busy and someone filmed me whilst I was occupied with what I was doing. I can see how I appear to other people. I can also see how other people interact. It’s from a barbecue video that was had at home. That video won’t be going online anytime soon, in fact, there’s little chance of others seeing it.
It’s great to go through your own video archive, seeing your life as it happened whilst still a teenager. I’m going to go through some more tapes now, to find some footage that may have relevance to my showreel. It’s the turn of the Tanzania footage now.