Day: November 16, 2009

Dead Pan Comedy


You can’t get the staff

Now for Huliganov TV I’m writing different blurbs to each film than the ones I originally wrote. If you want the original blurb it’ll still be there if you click through on the film to the YouTube environment.

This was my second piece ever posted up to YT. It was a humorous sight to see the chef out on the street drumming up business with his saucepan, flagging in the cars.

The location was near Wroclaw, Poland. Just south of it on the road I think to Walbrzych. December 2004 was nearly 5 years ago now. Needless to say I can’t remember the food, but I do remember why I was there – it was an interesting assignment where I did an “internal due diligence” for someone who had just been appointed director of a company his group had bought earlier. He didn’t want to be blamed for anything that might only come out of the woodwork during his time as director, so he wanted me in there checking what assets and liabilities there were and also giving him a strategic game plan for how to turn it around a bit. The company was fairly hopeless, but I think we made the best of a bad job, and at least no blame fell on the new director that way when the thing inevitably went pear-shaped.

Bouquet Throw in San Domingo Barcelo

Nobody caught that one


This was the first ever piece of video I uploaded onto the internet – on 21st February 2006. I had just set up my YouTube channel and this went on as a test.

There are several reasons why this piece is important to me, despite the fact that it is of no particular technical merit and commentators on YT have complained about the lack of light or being able to make out how the bouquet was thrown or who caught it, although as I remember nobody caught it anyway. One main reason is that, just as the bouquet, thrown at a wedding, tells you what happens next, and who will be next to be married, so my “capture” of the bouquet throw marked the start of a hobby – amateur filming for the internet – that has been my companion now through four years (it was actually taken five years ago, in November 2004 – it was in the Dominican Republic in the Hotel barcelo in San Domingo) and taken me through hundreds of topics, and dozens of cities in various parts of the world.

And I’ve never stopped preferring films where something is going on and where there is interesting sound too, even if you can’t see everything.

Another reason I llike it is that it’s the only footage per se that I took in the Dominican Republic – I still had a tiny memory card and I discovered by accident only out there, after having the camera for about a year, that it could take video at all. I never planned to be a videographer when I bought the camera, but I did want to photograph the things I was seeing while travelling so as not to lose the memories. I was to discover that if a picture paints a thousand words, then a movie clip paints millions.

I also like to think that someone who was here that day will stumble upon it in the net one day, and recognise themselves.

The power of YT is such that even a humble clip like this still manages to average at least 10 new views a week.

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