I’m With The Band, TV Channel?
Like I mentioned the other day in the Lucky The Cat post I’m pretty well ready to reveal the project I’m working on. Without any further delays, I’m With The Band is launching a video news section…
Each fortnight on I’m With The Band we’re going to present a 5-10 minute news type segment reviewing all the bits and pieces from the previous fortnight along with a short review of a live show or something. If time permits we’ll also be doing a bit of live coverage and interviews from gigs around Newcastle and the Central Coast.
So how are we doing all this? Well for the video hosting we’re actually avoiding all the big guys like YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler and instead we’ve opted for Blip TV (you might notice the big blank spot on the front page here with My Blip TV on it, I’m using here for testing purposes as well). The main reason that I chose Blip TV is because of the channels setup that it has, also it’s really easy for people to subscribe to them with iTunes, another reason is that each time we add a new news segment it will automatically hit the front page on I’m With The Band.
Camera wise I’m using a JVC HD-7 (see below) that I bought around 8-9 months ago. It’s got a 60 Gb hard drive in it so it’ll have a ton of room for recording at live shows, I’ve got a higher capacity battery coming as well as a wide angle lens in the next week or so.
Audio wise I’ve got a directional mic that sits on top of the camera which should be adequate for face to face interviews, I’ve also started investigating lapel mics for the ‘news presenters’ once we get a little further down the track and the budget actually allows us.
The software I’ve been using so far has only been the combination of iMovie HD and iMovie 7.x. iMovie HD is what I’m using to download the video / audio from the camera to my Mac Pro, from there it’s currently being moved over into iMovie where it’s edited and exported. I’ve just picked up a copy of Final Cut Express 4 in the last couple of days so that workflow will change a little once I get used to using it.
The rest of the production bits and pieces are pretty simple, seamless white background, work lights from Bunnings, reflectors are mostly just bits of white foam from the local art suppliers, and everything else is just assorted bits and pieces picked up from around junk shops and what not.
So there you have it, all the background information on the Web TV channel we’re launching and how it will all kinda work, or fall into place. Hopefully it will come together without too much hassle, we’ve got a good crew of people keen to be involved, and we’ll have our first episode up and live in the next week or two, meanwhile I will actually have my own channel up and running some time tomorrow up on the front page here.
Anyway, that’s about it for now, any questions?
I’m With The Band - Gig Guide
Those close to me and my I’m With The Band project know the frustrations I’ve had with re-instituting the gig guide when we moved cms platforms from Joomla to Wordpress.
I’ve tried about 5 different calendars, none of which would embed in a page without some form of pain be it in the form of database corruption, javascript conflicts, and a myriad of other dramas. I was all set to give up when I stumbled upon Google Calendar.
My .mac subscription recently expired and I was about to renew it as I find it very useful for syncing iCal across my 4 macs but I wasn’t really keen on coughing up the cash to re-subscribe so I started looking for other services that could just provide a calendar syncing service. Enter Google Calendar!
Basically Google Calendar is your typical online calendar that can be shared amongst other users and what not, with one difference….it gives you the ability to make a calendar public and then provides you with the code to embed that into ANY webpage.
And Bingo was his name-o!
After spending an hour this morning putting all the dates in the calendar for April I grabbed the code and created a new page on I’m With The Band, paste the code into the html editor and voila! It really couldn’t have been any easier.
Also, as part of the calendar setup you can share the administration of it with other people so I’ve setup the guys at Reverb Street Press with access so that they too can help update and maintain the calendar. And because I’ve setup the calendar as a public calendar it also appears in Google’s search for public calendars, so people who are searching for a Newcastle or Central Coast gig guide our calendar becomes available….hrmm, I better make sure I put a link back to the website in it though..
So if you’re looking for a calendar solution in Wordpress then give Google Calendar a go because it works and is dead simple to setup!
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