Month: August 2021

King Thrushbeard – Russian Version

Original YT playout date: 14 February 2010
Duration: 1:27:05

This was made in Slovakia under socialism, but is extremely popular in Russia and the Russian version comes almost into the canon of Soviet filmography.

This is based around the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, which bears the number 52 in the list of Grimm’s tales.

A beautiful, but spoiled and shallow princess criticizes all her suitors. The last of her suitors is a young king with such a thick beard that she dubs him King Thrushbeard. The young king leaves in anger. Her father, exasperated and angry that she has scorned all her suitors, declares that the first man who comes to the palace the next day will become her husband. Meanwhile, an unknown stranger overhears the conversation…. (rest on Wikipedia)

This upload dedicated to my wife of course, for Valentines Day, and also to Gina (“”zina1078dbb””) and “”Velikaya Rus””. Both these ladies have done amazing work in YouTube to keep the old Russian and other socialist era cinema alive and easily available throught the world. I recommend subbing to both their channels if you like this.
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Original Song for Valentines Day – in the Shade of the White Plum Tree

Original YT playout date: 11 February 2010
Duration: 3:59

I was helped along in the lyrics by Wufwufwufwuf and MikeCut777, so thanks to those guys, on comments to an earlier video. Here’s the working release of the song in time for Valentines Day. Those who can perform it better, are welcome to go ahead. The mp3 of this is available on this blog. It is the same song as the one in the footer of this blog and is probably my favorite of my own compositions to date.

I am inviting collaboration or covers, and in order to ease the process, I’d like to say that there are only 5 chords necessary to play this song.

The ones I used were C, e, a, F, G7. The e a e a transition gets repeated a few times in the refrain and the chorus part also. Obviously you can doll it up all you like, but basically those 5 are all I used.”
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Cold Train

Original YT playout date: 8 February 2010
Duration: 7:22

The train from Gdansk to Warsaw crosses the floodplain of the Vistula between Tczew and Malbork.
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Unboxing Creative Vado HD

Original YT playout date: 7 February 2010
Duration: 22:17

“This is not your usual unboxing video. Firstly, as you’d expect from me, it’s far more idiosyncratic and chaotic, and I didn’t bother really to cut out the superfluous stuff. Secondly, I had to post produce and render using HD throughout, of course, or the difference in the two cameras would not have shown up. Hence this film is 1002 MB. That’s when I sent it, probably they’ll compress it for the flv, even in HD.

Please note that if you want to go into the field and take the full 8 hours that VGA quality offers, one battery won’t do that, you’ll need probably a couple of batteries, so that you can recharge them on an older Vado while working with the new one. They can only be recharged off a USB source in the Vado.

The video shows the quality differences between the two cameras in a fairly low light setting. The difference as I now know is more pronounced in a full daylight setting. If there is continual very low light, I’d say the old Vado actually seems to show the action more clearly. The HD Vado kind of gives up at a very low light setting, which would be about half the amount of light in this setting.

I hope that this helps gadget lovers to get a good idea of what they’ll be getting for their money if they invest in one of these. On balance, I recommend it, but it still has room for improvement.

BTW You can produce much nicer stills in the on-board software than you could in the old Vado, so I’m no longer moaning about the absence of the stills option. If you want to take someone’s photo, take a few seconds of film and pick the best frame in the Vado software or other post-prod software.”
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The World According to Irina

Original YT playout date: 7 February 2010
Duration: 1:26:04

This was the footage on my sister-in-law’s mobile phone after she needed to clear it off after having it with her all the time and taking photos and films with it from time to time. It includes our family here in Warsaw, my wife’s and her family in a small farm in deepest Belarussia, and some footage from her final class at school in Warsaw and the fun she had with her classmates then and also on New Year’s with fireworks. In the main it’s Christmas 2008- Summer 2009 footage. I did a tiny bit of post-production and added some music on, but in the main it’s not my film, it’s the world according to Irina.
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