Via Andy Riga, via MakeZine, via Create Digital Music, a 10-minute documentary piece about Montreal’s Foulab hackerspace, which is actually more of an electronic workshop.
Category Archives: Video
Dans les petites boites y a les meilleurs biscuits
Because I’ve been a bit serious lately, here’s a kid with cookies.
Pause Kit-Kat du matin qui commence bien
Ah, Montréal-Matin…
How to win Eurovision
- Get a pretty person to sing a happy love song in English. Bonus points for constant smiling and similarity to Sanjaya
- Have dancers in the background, wearing black, do lots of crouching and jumping
- Use tall, pretty, female backup singers
- Involve string instruments, especially violins and/or cellos
- Include lots of sound that clearly does not come from any instrument on stage
- Exploit screens, fireworks and coloured lights in the background
Am I the only one to have expected a bit more from a pan-European talent competition?
Journal Weeklyish Digest: Péladeau speaks
Today was the annual general meeting of Quebecor shareholders, so Pierre-Karl Péladeau had to come out of his cave and answer questions about how he does business. Lesaffaires.com has video highlights of Péladeau’s press conference.
When asked about the Journal de Montréal lockout, Péladeau’s minions at Quebecor gave the usual response about how the unions don’t understand the seriousness of the financial situation the company is under thanks to the various economic crises it faces (which is forcing it to consider shutting down newspapers).
Of course, that’s not stopping Quebecor from wanting to buy the Canadiens.
Needless to say, locked-out Journal workers were protesting outside,
30 ways to lead your lockout
The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec magazine Le Trente explores the Journal lockout in its April issue, with an article by Hugo Joncas that talks a bit about the months leading up to the Jan. 24 lockout. It’s mostly union accusations, since the Journal and Quebecor aren’t talking, but it’s clear that Quebecor was planning for a lockout for a long time. Among the things that happened, the Journal:
- Hired more managers, ensuring most of them were journalists
- Started up new columns by freelancers who could still write in the event of a lockout
- Created Agence QMI, a wire service the allows Quebecor-owned media outlets to share stories
- Setup a system so page layout could be outsourced to another company under Quebecor control (it’s believed this is on the floor above the Toronto Sun newsroom)
Another piece by Florent Daudens looks at Rue Frontenac, the centre piece of the union’s pressure tactics.
Carbo (the other one) soldiers on
Claudette Carnonneau, the head of CSN who is suing the Journal de Montréal over a misquote related to the Caisse de dépôt, isn’t dropping her case. She’s seeking $250,000 in compensation from the newspaper.
Big advertisers fleeing
The Institut de coopération pour l’éducation des adultes pulled a lucrative ad contract from the Journal because of the conflict (as it did last year for the Journal de Québec) and spent more money having their speecial section printed as part of La Presse.
Similarly, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste has moved a contract to print Fête nationale schedules from the Journal to Transcontinental-owned Metro.
Neither of these are surprising (both had previously expressed support for locked-out workers), but it highlights some of the advertising pain the Journal is facing. The question is whether the money they save from salaries offsets the loss of ads.
Having to pay a $10,000 fine (for a story that appeared years before the lockout started) doesn’t help either.
In other news
- A study shows that – surprise, surprise – the size of the Journal has plummeted since December, leaving the paper less than three quarters of what it was, even counting the usual seasonal variations after the Christmas shopping season.
- Is Rue Frontenac sexist? No, argues J.F. Codère in the comments – their columnists are all male because the Journal’s columnists were all male, because there are few femals journalists with columnist-level experience.
- While the Journal’s journalists were locked out, Quebecor merged Canoe into Sun Media. That decision changes just about nothing of interest in terms of employees or readers, but does involve a bunch of title changes for senior executives.
- The Journal had an “EXCLUSIF” report that there won’t be a Bye-Bye on Radio-Canada next New Year’s Eve. Except apparently RadCan has made no such decision. (Sadly, news websites that copy the Journal didn’t update their stories to make it clear this information had been debunked).
- The special Journée des musées buses will not be departing from the Journal de Montréal building as they have in the past because of the conflict.
- The STIJM protested for ICI, not that it changed anything, sadly. But I’m sure the sentiment was appreciated.
- More petty whining at Rue Frontenac about errors in the Journal. Amazing nobody puts a byline on this stuff.
And at Le Réveil…
Not much, other than getting some moral support during the fête des travailleurs.
It’s been fun, Don
Sorry to see you go, Don Newman.
More Don from the Air Farce: Don and Justin, Don Newman’s Situation Room, Don and Stephen Harper, and Don explains HDTV. There are dozens more where that came from, especially in seasons 11 and 12 and a running gag back in 2000, all of which unfortunately use RealVideo.
Victoria Bridge: The 8th Wonder
From the National Film Board’s archives, a cute little 1987 film by Michel Choquette about the history of the Victoria Bridge, starring the voices of Terry DiMonte and Patti Lorange on a pretend radio show for a fictional Montreal station.
And as a special related bonus, the 1972 Barrie Howells film Trafficopter, which follows CJAD traffic reporter Len Rowcliffe high above the city.
There, isn’t it good to learn something?
Remember kids, sexism is wrong
Some more selections from the Quebec advertising archives from Johnnys96 and ladyjaye27:
Auto-Tune the News
Here’s one that’s been making its way around the viral Internet (especially since a mention on Boing-Boing): Auto-Tune the News. It’s pretty much that: taking stuff from TV and applying Auto-Tune to it to make it sing. Add a bit of remixing and editing and you got yourself some music videos.
Other speeches that sound better with Auto-Tune:
Count on Jimmy Kimmel to kiss ass on cue
I don’t do this often, but this time I actually find myself quoting a YouTube comment:
wow, jimmy, why didn’t you just get down on your knees and finish the job?
And another, an official one from Qtv executive producer Arif Noorani:
As we’ve said, there were no preconditions with Billy Bob Thornton about the interview.
Oh Snap! Epic pwnage
I laughed at least three or four times watching this. It is most excellent.
You know, the parts that aren’t gay.
See also: The Internet Stars are Viral, another Billy Joel parody.
My 10 seconds of kinda-fame
Last month I got a visit from Concordia journalism student and real-media freelancer Dominique Jarry-Shore, who wanted to interview me for a TV piece on the future of the media.
The interview (which wasn’t very long) mostly ended up on the editing room floor, leaving a 10-second sound bite and some B-roll. (I don’t feel too bad, The Monitor’s Toula Foscolos got six seconds.) The entire 22-minute news broadcast is here, but you can skip to 7:30 to see just her report, or 8:52 if you just want to see me.
The piece is preceded by another interviewing CBC’s Geeta Nadkarni (and more importantly, her cats) about the corporation’s cuts. She blames the government for not supporting private broadcasting enough.
If you haven’t seen the TV shows produced by Concordia’s journalism department, they’re worth a look. You can see a food-themed show or one centred around a Mythbusters parody.
Not the slickest productions (certainly better than it was in my day), but the stories are real, and in many cases you won’t find them anywhere else.
I wanna know what I wanna eat, you know?
This is a promotional video for Montreal-based Web startup Orderin.ca, which is sort of a one-stop online delivery shop. It’s a good idea, especially for smaller restaurants who don’t have the money to setup complex websites, but the video …
Cyberpresse is hit-and-miss for video
We’re in the middle of a revolution in the newspaper industry, and even though I’m caught up in the middle of it, it’s kind of fun to watch everyone try to muddle their way through.
Photographers are learning how to shoot and edit video. Reporters are learning how to blog. Editors are learning how to link. And managers are desperately trying to come up with new ideas that will help save their industry and their jobs.
At Cyberpresse, they’re pumping out videos. Newspapers are jumping on the multimedia train, creating videos, audio slideshows, photo galleries, podcasts and other things they couldn’t do on paper.
Part of me doesn’t quite understand why newspapers are trying to compete with television and radio on their own turf. TV has been producing three-minute packages much longer than newspapers have, and it shows.
On the other hand, some videos I’ve seen demonstrate that newspapers are capable of reaching a level of depth you won’t get on television outside of PBS or the occasional NFB documentary.
Cyberpresse and its producing partner Top Multimédias offer some good examples for newspaper videos, but unfortunately a lot of examples of what not to do.
Bad: Rudy Le Cours
In the latter category, you’ll find this sleeper from La Presse business columnist Rudy Le Cours. He’s standing in front of a bright window (which is one of the first things you learn in photography school not to do because it makes the subject dark) and for three minutes and 27 seconds talks into the camera about … I think it’s unemployment or something. I had to be resuscitated a few times while watching it and I don’t remember much. There are no graphics, no charts, no pictures, no numbers. Nothing to make it worth setting up the equipment to have this guy speak text into a camera.
This video from Mali Ilse Paquin in Italy is also a head-scratcher. The audio is clearly taken over the phone or a really bad voice recorder. And the video is just a series of pictures. A blog post or story with the pictures attached would have made much more sense.
Good: Marie-Christine Blais
On the other hand we have Marie-Christine Blais and her “Week-end chaud” entertainment preview. She too is talking to the camera, but it’s clear she and her camera operator are having fun (something I’ve long argued is sorely lacking in a lot of news media these days). Not only is she adorable, but she piques my interest enough that I’ll click on that play button when her face comes up. The videos also put up web addresses of bands that she mentions (although displaying show times would be useful).
Cyberpresse still has a long way to go. There’s no way to add comments to videos or embed videos on other pages. And there’s no related links on any of the videos like you can find in YouTube video descriptions. All you can do is go to this page and navigate your way through the various videos in a giant Flash application.
Here’s hoping Cyberpresse (and others) move quickly toward having more fun (if not effort) and way less talking heads standing in front of windows.
Take your mask off
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled there’s no expectation of privacy in trash put by the curb, people who aren’t police officers are going to have to come up with innovative ways of protecting their privacy.
I like the way Ann Bruno does it in this attempted ambush interview. (via @CraigSilverman)