I did an unusual job last week for the South Wales Evening Post. They were running a story on a woman named Vanda Lewis who had been accused and convicted of benefits fraud. Most of the evidence had been gained from the CCTV system installed at the Neath Civic Centre, and the SWEP wanted to include excerpts from the footage as a video podcast.
I received a couple of CDs that included the CCTV footage. This isn’t actually video: the system is simply taking stills once a second. These are then played back within a proprietary software package that shows two camera feeds simultaneously:
The software appears to have been created by a company called Neurodynamics, but according to their website they’ve been bought out by a company called Virage (who in turn are owned by Autonomy). As you can see from the screenshot above, it’s just a basic utilitarian PC package. Aesthetics just don’t come into it. Beneath the generic transport buttons you can see the list of images: this list scrolls as the ‘footage’ plays.
The question was: how do we turn this stuff into video? There was no obvious way to do it from within the software: the images were all contained within a proprietary file, and the export button didn’t seem to do anything useful. I opted to simply to use some screen capture software, and in the end used Camtasia Studio 4. I’d never used it before, but with the help of their online tutorials was quickly able to get some usable output. Although I didn’t need it for this project, I also noted that it allowed you to output video in a custom Flash player—which is neat—and also allowed you to export SCORM-compatible e-learning materials! A well-thought out and very useful piece of software.
Quite an unusual little project, and one that gave me some insight into the rather clandestine world of these corporate surveillance companies. Of course issues of privacy and the state-sponsored monitoring of our activities are highly topical now, but I’m not sure I’ve got anything original or informative to add to the debate. However:
Because of the potential for being watched we begin to internalize the constraints of the system into our own behaviour patterns and our consciences: we in effect adopt the goals of the system.
A few days ago I was asked by the South Wales Evening Post to record an interview with Lord Sebastian Coe. I met up with Post reporter Shaun Greaney at the Liberty Stadium and was ushered into a rather soulless reception room where the interviews were to take place. After giving speech elsewhere in the building he emerged (with small entourage) for interviews, and fortunately we were first up. I just set the equipment up and lounged on the sofa, from which vantage point I took a couple of photos with my N70:
From left to right we have Coe’s PA (I think), Lord Coe himself, Shaun Greaney with his back to the camera, and Neath Port Talbot council leader Derek Vaughan. On the table you can see the Audio Technica 4050 used for the recording, with a nice yellow mic lead snaking down to the Marantz PMD 660 sitting on the chair. The recording quality was fine, only slightly spoilt by the hum from the air-conditioning. Here’s the recording as it appeared on the podcast:
The podcast has disappeared from the Evening Post site now, but you can read Shaun Greaney’s reports here and here. Subjects talked about include business opportunities offered by the forthcoming 2012 Olympics for businesses in Wales, participation in sport, his feelings about his involvement in the 2012 Olympic bid, his ties with Swansea, and of course the already infamous £400,000 logo:
What nuggets of wisdom can I pass on from this little experience? Well:
Always check and double-check your equipment before you go.
Be nice to people. Know your place in the scheme of things.
You never know what you’ll be up against, so be prepared to be flexible and adaptable.
Get there on time.
Keep record levels on the conservative side. You’ll lose a bit of quality, but you need to ensure you don’t get any overloading (which in this context is just plain fatal).
When submitting your work, provide as many formats as possible.
Yes, I really enjoyed it. The beauty of this kind of work is that it’s live: there’s no room for mistakes and no going back. You need to be alert and thinking on your feet…
