So up steps the Sony HVR-Z5. Almost identical, but with better optics, more considered ergonomics and additional settings in almost every feature it is a direct replacement and all of the Z1 accessories will still fit. This looked like the right piece of kit, but who to buy from? With almost every site in a google search for camcorders returning some price comparison or review site it is easy to find these things reasonably cheap (OK – £2,500 isn’t cheap, exactly). The thing is, they are mostly offered for sale with the standard one year warranty, and I had hoped for slightly more.

As usual, for all things video we call a select list of suppliers. Today we were delighted with the service from Jeremy at provisiondirect.co.uk. This company has an enviable reputation for great value and excellent product range. We have recommended them to clients looking to purchase kit, and indeed we have made one or two modest purchases there ourselves. Today was the day for buying again!

Jeremy is one of the most knowledgeable and friendly folk when it comes to pro and prosumer video gear. He is often very busy, but when you do get him, he finds the most brilliant pieces of kit for you, and tells you exactly ‘how it is’ with everything. After talking to Jeremy today I was satisfied that they still provide one of the best routes to buying kit, and the value he gives is second to none. So it was that we bought a Z5 with 2 year warranty at probably the most competitive price available. Not content with that Jeremy also added a few extras for us, which was brilliant… unexpected and not asked for. That’s the kind of person you are dealing with – full of information and very willing to help.

It is with great pleasure that I recommend to anyone looking to purchase a decent video camera, lighting, accessories, sound equipment, anything related to video, really provisiondirect.co.uk.

The concept for the main truck

One of the most delightful projects I’ve been involved in recently has been the redesign and recommissioning of the BBC Blast touring vehicles. In October 2008 Cleveratom were asked to put together a proposal and we were frtunate enough to be asked to undertake the work. This has been a huge undertaking, but ultimately incredibly rewarding. Starting off by reviewing the Blast trucks both from our experiences of them as facilitators in 2006, and by visiting them in Salford we were able to detail the various shortcomings and strengths, and work on how to improve the experience for young people.

Much of what I have been involved in has been the physical layout of the main truck, amending the spaces and changing the orientation and mechanics of what is possible. One of the more subtle changes was a realignment of the internal partitions to provide more versatile spaces. What we had noticed before was that the main workshop room was used as a throughfare and the constant interruptions were a real disadvantage. Additionally, the small circular tables being fixed in four locations really restricted the way the room could be used. By moving the main partition wall across the truck to reduce the workshop space, we removed the ‘corridor’ that was actually dead space. By rotating the space ninety degrees we re-orientated it so that the door in to the room became part of the back of the space instead of being at the front left. However, we also wanted to change the flow of people through that truck and introduced a small ‘porch’ which had access directly into the edit suite from the outside instead of having to go into the main workshop. This immediately calmed the flow of bodies in and out of the main area. We then moved the studio wall to enlarge the third space and this has had a massive impact.

The edit suite originally had the main server cabinet in it which considerably restricted what could be done in the room. By moving that out into the main workshop area, and positioning it as part of a large ‘storage wall’ concept we created a physical and virtual store in one place. This freed up the edit suite and has introduced incredible amounts of room in what was once a fairly claustrophobic facility. There is now a door through from the edit room into the studio, too. Previously, to get from one to the other you would have had to go through the main workshop. Now, that space is protected and can be a much calmer area.

Storage was a major consideration and much of the time in redesigning has been spent on creating storage where there was none before. The storage wall has been developed and will hold every last wire, connector, tripod and camera that is needed on the truck. In the studio space a new set of cupboards have been created and these are superior in every way to the previous ones.

Lastly, the main truck operates in two modes now – with three spaces as described, or with just two. The studio wall can be folded back to add to the main workshop space if necessary.

There are two other vehicles joining the tour this year. The first is a ‘Discovery’ space where visitors can drop in and sample some of the activities they

The Discovery vehicle concept drawing

will be able to undertake in the main  workshops. This vehicle also houses the tour office but must fold up into a major storage unit for hauling the kit to each location. This has been one of the biggest challenges – to provide an exciting and dynamic space for the young people and visitors, but to give as much storage for the tour paraphanalia as possible. I think we reached a suitable solution!

The third vehicle is an outreach van, which will visit schools and communities ahead of the main tour. It is a much smaller unit but has the capability to deliver as many workshops albeit for fewer numbers of people. The idea is for it to stir up the interest ahead of the main visit, and I think this will be a very busy bus indeed!

There are literally hundreds of other changes this year, far too many to list here for you. The flight cases that are now the main welcome desk (a great idea by Tony Kavanagh) and the new tables and chairs provided by MJF, the mood lighting, the rear projection windows… the technical infrastructure we have specified that should provide ample opportunity for creativity and much, much more!

The 'Advance' vehicle - a smaller truck for outreach work

You can get a feel for the space in these images, taken recently just as the last fit was being completed in White City:

http://homepage.mac.com/halgernon/BBC_Blast_2009/index.html

I hope that as the tour progresses many people will be able to enjoy and experience the BBC Blast programme. It’s a winner!

Of course, I am talking about blog posting.

Cleveratom has been a really busy place to be around of late, with many things going on that are simply taking huge amounts of time. This is all good, but it does mean there isn’t enough time left to do things like write blog posts.

So what’s been taking the time away?

First up, BBC Blast are recomissioning their wonderful touring entourage, and extending it somewhat too. The amazingly innovative truck and marquee are to be joined by a further space on each location (where it is possible to fit it in) and have an advanced vehicle visiting locations in advance. It will all make sense when you see it, even if it doesn’t right now, but suffice to say the project continues to go from strength to strength and should be an astonishingly brilliant tour in 2009 – 2011.

Next, the NHS are developing a professional networking solution that should complement and extend the learning management systems, and provide greater opportunities for dialogue between all of the various parts that make up the health care provision we all enjoy. Creating a robust solution that meets everybody’s needs is quite a challenge, but with many years experience to call on, and colleagues from our old university too, we feel confident of getting it into shape by the deadline of 5th December.

The BETT show is fast approaching and as ever Cleveratom will be there, this time partnering with City Cllege Norwich to develop an excellent stand space and provide a rich insight into what happens in the college ‘RUGroom’ space which we helped develop. This development has been exceptiionally successful in providing a rich and creative experience for all of the RUGroom students. We are considerably proud of the fact that our involvement in Norwich has been over such a long time, and that one of the outcomes has been a ‘Beacon Award’ for CCN. Can we now say that we have helped develop an award winning space? I’d like to think so! In the mean time we have to prepare the space for BETT, design the stand, arrange for the hire of the necessary kit, organise merchandising and leaflets and generally get it all into a viable project. We will be on stand U130 (and U120) in the New Technology zone where we will be showing products such as ‘Spoke’, ‘Thought Park’ and ‘Mobi Stick’… all wonderful creations! There is more information about these tools on the Cleveratom Website.

All in all these things take time to get right, and with three major pieces of work like this it is no surprise to find a distinct lack of blogging going on. As soon as there is enough of a space I’ll report about each of these projects in turn.

Christian has been developing his work with Biomapping – essentially a small device which measures your reaction to your environment (an emotional response), a little like a lie detector. Combine this with GPS data and you can make a really engaging activity out of walking around a location and mapping your responses to it as you go.

Rob Skitmore, assistant director at the Science museum also  gave us some time and worked with the group to make a simple telegraph device – from the ultra modern biomapping to a two hundred year-old communication device… but the participants all really enjoyed it!

Sophie Higgs was great, too – she worked with us at the Serpentine Gallery and showed us around the Karen Kilimnic exhibition. I was a little dubious of the reactions we would get to the work, but it was astonishingly good, and when Sophie explained some of the deeper meanings it really helped embed the experience with everyone. I certainly didn’t expect to respond to the art in the way I did, and it was an enjoyable moment or two for me! I would urge you all to visit Karen’s exhibition there and see what you make of it.

My thanks to Katy Holbird from the BBC, who was a pillar of support, but also to Sue Dewey and Chiara Hall, who worked tirelessly through their time at the event. Finally, thanks to matt and Alex who started the week off whilst I was at Gillingham! I’ll try to put some images together as a web gallery and publish them here as soon as I can.

A number of partners made this stand exist. Apple computers gave their support with Alan Bennett from Apple Education Europe on the stand each day to answer questions and talk about the education market for Apple. Nick from AT Computers provided a stunning range of kit for us all to use (thanks Nick – really good!) and John from Reflecmedia provided a state of the art chromatte station with live chroma keying happening direct into iMovie. BBC Blast helped establish the stand and Learning Central were there to talk about innovative work with the BCS.

Matt from Cleveratom organised a group of children from King Harold School to be on the stand for four days to run the equipment and talk to the visitors. As ever, King Harold School pupils were brilliant! Their enthusiasm, infectious energy and determination to succeed meant that the stand never had a dull moment. Many thanks to Malcolm Burnett for organising the group and being there with them, promoting both their activities and our new company!

The image shows Matt giving (yet another) impromptu demonstration to some of the many, many visitors. We used iStopmotion from Boinx software to run some stop frame animation activities.

Both the stop frame animations and the chroma keying were used to create instant podcasts on the stand. It never ceases to amaze us how complex some pieces of software would have you believe a podcast is… don’t be fooled! With relatively little skill and only simple software everyone can be podcasting at will. Email or phone us to find out how we can get you podcasting like a pro! We will happily run sessions in your place of work or school and show you exactly how easy it really is.

In addition to the Create at BETT stand, I was also working on the ‘Tomorrow’s Learners Today’ stand, organised by Stephen Heppell of Heppell.net and situated in the middle of the Grand Hall on the main floor. This was a brilliantly interesting stand with a continuous flow of speakers all talking about building schools for the future. Some amazing presentations from people including Stephen himself, I was available to answer questions from the audience to follow up on the content and get people talking more about how to use the BSF programme in their own school. More about BSF another time – BETT was huge, and a great success!

More images from the stand can be seen by CLICKING HERE. This should open a new window with a web gallery in it.

We were located in the middle of Birmingham, in Victoria Square. Since it was so ‘public’ there was a huge number of people visiting each day. As it happens, schools were reluctant to send children, but other institutions were more than willing!

We had a great time – best workshop for me was the stage make up one, where we had ten or so ‘tough’ cases who really didn’t want to learn about make up. Once we got to creating the blood and gore bullet wounds and knife injuries, we had them hooked! Fair play – most were very capable of applying the wax and some were very good… it was a real eye opener for me, and I hope for them as well.

Other workshops were all as good, really, with music, song development, dance, Flash animation and of course me running clay animation, short movies and photography sessions.

I worked out that over the course of the summer we have produced somewhere around 90 unique DVDs this summer, and duplicated seven times that! Phew!

So that is it for this year, BBC Blast on tour has gone back to Acton to be re-fitted, and we have to go over the events one by one to understand what went well, and what needs more thought for next time.

One thing is for sure – if I am fortunate enough to get asked, the answer is YES!! I WILL DO IT AGAIN!!

One of the main activities was making a video for up and coming star DJ Swift. I worked with BBC editor Julian Langham who, to be fair, basically ran the gig! We filmed DJ Swift and his posse all over the town centre in different locations and Julian helped cut it together. The film crew were all Blast participants and each helped make their own version of the video which we hope DJ Swift will place online at YouTube.

The amazing thing about Norwich was that we were located right outside the Forum. The BBC Studios in the East are here, and they were full of old Dr Who props. Yes, we had Tom Baker’s Tardis, and a couple of early versions of Daleks for company. Wow. I’ll try to get a few images uploaded when I can, but as you can see I’m writing this very much ‘after the event’ having fallen very behind in the blogging stakes!

It also rained in Norwich. Very hard. Fortunately it was only during the evening and not the day with the young people, but it came down in sheets. Unfortunately, much of the truck electrical equipment was on the floor and by the time we got to it we were a) soaked and b) wading through four inches of water trying to rescue the kit. My wristwatch still has a misty dial from the rain that night.

White city was an enormous event. Located in the car park outside the media village, the truck hosted dance workshops, animation, video, singing, photography and all manner of creativity.

We started at 8am each day, finished at 8pm and went home quite tired in between! The Anglia Ruskin Summer School crew arrived at the truck on the Wednesday (better late than never, although it was *very* late) and we had a lot of fun creating animations to fulfil part of the work we started at the university. The crew left tired but elated and pleased with what they had achieved.

The dance workshops were brilliant and several of the young people made it on to the TV on the Saturday night to dance at the national dance festival (with Bruce Forsyth). Several world records were attempted (and broken) on the night and we were over the moon to have worked with these folk!

The Sunday was spent in Trafalgar Square, hosting more freestyle dance and even some juggling… there was a scary picture of me learning to juggle, but it is probably best not unleashed upon you poor unsuspecting people

Needless to say, creativity in spade loads, and plenty more to come!

Throughout the time there I was working with the BBC Newsround team, helping young people put together news bulletins. They were filming with Sony Z1 cameras and editing in Final Cut or iMovie, depending on their prior experience. The editors would pick up the basics of editing, then have to deal with the camera tapes from the crews as they came back in from filming. Deadlines were very tight, and a studio links tape was added in as well!

By and large it went very well – the bulletins were cut in time (only just!) and the young people were left with a good product. Over the course of the days we learned a lot about how to do this and refined the process as we went.

Of real note was the kit provided by Reflecmedia (www.reflecmedia.com) for the chroma keying. This is a seriously good system to do any kind of chroma work, and we thoroughly enjoyed firing it up for the first time…

Also of note was the fact that BBC News and Sport were also in Sheffield running an event. They were based in the city centre but needed to use the BBC Blast truck for their editing. The man for the job was Robin Marks, and a nicer bloke you couldn’t meet. He was also a dab hand at using Final Cut Pro, despite being an avid Avid user! I certainly learned a great deal by watching him work, and was pleased to be able to add in a few tips of my own to help speed his work up. I’ll definitely be taking up his invite to go and see News 24 being broadcast, as soon as I can get an opportunity!

The truck support team are legends, every one of them… what a great experience! I can’t wait to get back on board and do the London leg, then Norwich, then Bristol and later in the year, finish it all up in Birmingham.

If you haven’t yet seen it, head over to www.bbc.co.uk/blast and check it out on the web site!

Several good things happened at the event, but one superb piece of technology was Alexzander Blanc’s SMS Stickies tool. This application allows people to send a text message via mobile phone to a central number and have it displayed on a web page. The underlying database this uses is the same as that developed for Tim Ellis’s ‘UltraSMS‘ application. Both Tim and Alex are part of the Ultralab team and are busy developing applications for us to make learning more delightful.

Matthew managed to get a few spare moments to photograph the event using his mobile phone – but don’t expect superb clarity of image here!

Two clear messages from the BBC, one from Mark Thompson himself, were that BBC Blast is probably the most important thing that the BBC are doing at the moment and that BBC Blast will be running a roadshow in the summer to get young people involved in creative events. This will involve a converted truck touring the country and stopping off in city centres all over the UK. We hope to be supporting that roadshow in some form.