Shooting and editing film has been democratised massively over the last few years, with all of the tools to make movies readily available to the amateur auteur. And now the iPhone 4 looks to take amateur film to a whole new level. iPhone 4’s camera is capable of HD video recording in 720p at 30 frames per second (so as good as a standard video camera). And with the iMovie function, its ability to shoot, edit, and share high-quality video all on a phone means there’s no need for a computer. A raft of brilliantly produced iPhone 4 videos have started appearing online, so much so that the guys at BBH Labs and Freedom + Partners have launched a competition The iOscars, to see how good the films can get. It highlights another example of the tools that were once the domain of the professional being put in the hands of everyone.


Thanks to Chris Gallery for this story. The Corrs have a tattoo of Chris Gallery on their left buttock’s.

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Rule Number 7 (the first 6 are obvious) of this amateur-loving world we live in, is, don’t piss off the amateurs. They have the power to make or break brands…and they wield this power without remorse. As we all clamour to harness the power of the novice fan and have them help create and celebrate our brand, we mustn’t forget that it is the amateur who is in control. This comes to light very quickly when a brand behaves badly and leaves itself open to criticism. And what brand has behaved more badly than BP of late? It didn’t take long for the amateurs to set up a Twitter feed parodying the oil company with the slogan ‘BP Cares’. Now to take the irony levels up a notch, a crowdsourcing logo project has been set up by some of them with the brief to ‘Help Redesign BP’s logo! They need a NEW Brand.’ It’s a reminder that for all the opportunities that the world of the amateur offers to brands, it is a world with new rules and unpredictable consequences.

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Did you enter a piece of film in the Life in a Day project this week? It all got a bit exciting last Sunday with people all around the world filming a snippet from their life that could make it into the world’s first user generated feature length documentary. YouTube has partnered with Ridley Scott and Slumdog director Kevin Macdonald to create the film that will premier at Sundance Film Festival next year. Life in a Day aims to create an intimate collage of life in a single day around the world, incorporating footage shot by YouTube users globally from last Sunday, July 24th. “Life in a Day is a time capsule that will tell future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010. It is a unique experiment in social filmmaking, and what better way to gather a limitless array of footage than to engage the world’s online community,” says Macdonald. Although he loves the fact he is in the hands of the amateur, the key creative guideline is that these clips are non-fiction and have a real sense of intimacy to them. You can follow the journey of the film on YouTube over the next few months and with professionals like MacDonald and Scott involved it will be worth watching.

Berlin’s Temporäre Kunsthalle art space has gotten a brand new face, sourced from the crowd. The gallery enlisted one of those Berlin-based artist/musician/designer’s Carsten Nicolai to design a new look for its exterior, and he in turn enlisted the help of passersby, turning the job into a live crowdsourced art project. Rather than hand over full creative expression to the amateurs, visitors to the gallery were invited to apply Nicolai-designed stickers onto the exterior. Aerial work platforms were installed at the location so people could go as high as they liked to decorate the building. The happy gallery has described this as a “permanently changing facade whose appearance is shaped by a dynamic, interactive process”.

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On March 3 1991, George Holliday, a bystander, videotaped Rodney King getting beaten by the LAPD. That video and subsequent case made history, and since then citizen journalism has swarmed, transforming the media. At every major event in the world thousands of regular people use the web to report what they see, and a global audience turns to Twitter for instant updates from people on the scene. The potential for the amateur journalist to make a report that can do some real good in the world has never been greater. Human rights organisation Witness hope to capitalise on this trend but add a dash of professionalism to proceedings. Witness has set up a training program where they teach amateurs how to make quality videos that can be used as evidence in court. It’s a great example of how amateurs can be used to great effect when guided by the pros.

They don’t get out much, local estate kids. Disadvantaged teens don’t venture too far or too often outside the estates they live in. It means they get locked into a very insular social dynamic with negative consequences that we’re all familiar with. Part of the issue is access to and perceptions of opportunity. There’s often little to suggest that they can affect the course of their lives. Horizons narrow, and the future looks like it will be entirely played out within their estate. So it makes sense to invest as much time as possible learning how to operate effectively in this environment. Why go outside when you’re not really going to stay there? Dovetailing into this are issues of control. Human beings (those from individualistic cultures at least) are often happiest when they feel that are in control of the narrative arc of their lives. For disadvantaged teens, this sense of control is very hard to achieve within broader society. They often lack awareness of the norms and codes that enable people to make personal progress. It’s much harder and more frustrating to play a game whose rules you don’t understand. Is this likely to change? There’s an argument that the twin forces of rising broadband penetration and better, cheaper smartphone technology will have a role to play. They won’t solve everything but they’ll certainly help. Teens already exposed to one or both of these technologies are not only more confident about navigating cities and other diverse social environments, they are also hungry for new experiences to use as content for social media. That means getting out more.

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Mother is helping to bring to life an exhibition that looks at the changing culture of our home turf. The East End Promise exhibition, which launched to press last week and goes public in October, will explore the ‘cultural migrants’ who have made this their home. This includes the wave of artists and squatters who moved into the derelict East End of the 80’s and 90’s, starting the warehouse rave scene, urbanising galleries, and spreading a DIY ethos that’s made it a creative capital and home to the mullet/legwarmer/tattoo on neck look. East End Promise manager Ernesto Leal says he’s astonished at the calibre of real deal artists, musicians, movers and shakers from the East End’s heyday who are coming out of the woodwork to take part in the exhibition. Many offering to exhibit work that has never been seen before drawn by a desire to tell people what the area means to them. He refers to the project as important cultural ‘re-mapping’, a bid to expose preconceptions, and to showcase a side of London that has never before been seen altogether. There are plans to show elements of the exhibition in Mother’s gallery space and of hosting East End Promise youth culture events towards the end of the year. We’ll keep you posted.

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Over the last few years, local independent cinemas have started screening “Then And Now” archive films, showing local people and places from bygone years. Outside of London, these screenings are becoming wildly popular, and it’s not your usual Art-House crowd, but families, grandparents with their grandkids, and people that would normally steer clear of all that pretentious foreign muck. Local cinemas are using these screenings to engage their local communities, forming profitable creative partnerships with local government, schools, youth clubs, libraries, and museums. It’s a lovely way of bringing together local neighbourhoods and connecting people through a sense of shared history. And yet, amidst the blizzard of transience that often passes for community in London, this trend has largely passed us by. Last year the Independent Cinema Office pulled together The Big Smoke, a peripatetic programme of archive material showing London between 1896 and 1945. These films are currently doing the rounds of London’s boroughs, although the audience seems to be the rather closeted and self-regarding Art-House crowd. The screenings don’t seem to have attracted the same diversity or engagement of audience that has been seen in the regions. New strategies will need to be developed to engage with these new audiences in an urban context. A festival of Edwardian Shoreditch anyone? Well, until then, enjoy these films from a lost London.

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Images like this anti-Tesco demo are real brand nightmares. But is Tesco really all bad? What about the Tesco Community Awards? Computers For Schools? The Race For Life? A recent Demos report argues that the big supermarkets can make a positive local contribution – reducing stigma, boosting community morale and bringing low-cost quality produce into the area. It’s a positive view but many people think supermarkets are tax avoiding, farmer-hating monopolies that drive local businesses out of communities. The New Economics Foundation responded that supermarkets “spell the end of civic life”, and Andrew Simms, author of Tescopoly, said that supermarkets don’t help communities, but “hoover money out” of local economies. But why are local people so anti-Tesco? It’s about community identity. The latest Citizenship Survey shows that 77% feel they belong strongly to their neighbourhood and this number is rising. Even more, 85% feel their community is cohesive. People fear that losing their local shops means losing some local identity. Some brands have learnt this already. As Forum For The Future puts it, Corporates go local. It’s the big idea behind Starbuck’s turnaround: to individually design each store so that no two Starbucks will look the same. A big rethink for a company synonymous with corporate homogeneity.


Image Credit:
Stokes Croft

There’s an “unprecedented intensity” of innovation right now, according to a report by Morgan Stanley. Much of it is driven by a sudden boom in “location-based services” – applications that allow you to post your physical location to the web. Why would you want to do that? According to an article on ReadWriteWeb, there are a few reasons. One is to allow chance connections with people that you know (Foursquare) or people that you don’t know yet (Grindr). Another is to get local news and information (Google’s NearMeNow). Or it may just be entertainment, such as Gowalla or OK magazine’s new celebrity stalker app. There’s even an application called ASBOrometer that displays dodgy hoodie behaviour in your vicinity (Dan Broadwood, Shoreditch House alert). So what’s driving this sudden explosion of innovation in location-based services? It’s all down to rapid advances in smartphone technologies, especially access speeds, battery life and always-on functionality. And where will it all lead? If you believe the hype, location-based services aren’t just part of the future of digital – they are the future. We think it’s likely they’ll take over social media, but we don’t think brands have really begun to exploit the potential here. Nike’s TrueCity is a good start, but there’s plenty of opportunity for more.

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