The bloody realities of self publishing

Posted on

Self-publishing is a grind. Don’t kid yourself that you can just kiss off that bestseller, throw it up on line as an eBook or paperback then lay back and count the royalty cheques as they roll in, particularly if you forgot to put in the teen vampires chapter. Here in the grunt room at Fraudcast News, […]

Uploading smartphone videos to multiple sites

Posted on

I have been volunteering with visionOntv for the last few weeks, helping out with their project to encourage the widest possible distribution of video for social change. That has involved me doing and learning ultra-light video shooting and publishing techniques that I hope to be able to share with other citizen journalists working to transform […]

Undercurrents – advice from the veterans of radical video activism

Posted on

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7AbVs6_fwA&w=420&h=315] Paul O’Connor of Undercurrents gave an inspiring, enlightening and entertaining talk about the potential of radical video film-making at the Bristol Radical Film Festival 2012. This animated film is a neat depiction of the why in all this. It’s all about trying to break up the effects of corrupted government and their collusion […]

Activist Video training in Bristol’s Stokes Croft

Posted on

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0bTIh5hqmo&w=420&h=315] I shot this brief, smartphone film this morning using a visionOntv video-making template, warming up for a day at the Bristol Radical Film Festival in Stokes Croft. This week-long event has a hoard of film treasures, meaning the 15 or so participants in today’s training workshop didn’t need any explanations about why our […]

Smartphone video reports – the dirty reality

Posted on

http://youtu.be/omHU59vR5M4 Having learned my reporting skills as a print journalist, before the internet got big, I have been trying for years to bolt on some video skills to take account of the new realities of news. This can be an expensive and time-consuming process – which means my output of video reports has been far […]

It’s out there

Posted on

After much huffing and puffing, Fraudcast News has finally made it into paperback form – what I have to confess is still my preferred reading medium. Self publishing – whatever people might write  about the death of conventional publishing etc. etc. –  is damn hard work. You can get a copy here.      

Democracy, journalism and film nights

Posted on

It’s never been easier to complain about our politicians and our journalists – neither species has covered itself in glory over the last little while. The big challenge is what to do about all the problems they leave unresolved. Rather than railing against the failures, it’s far more uplifting to investigate alternatives. This post, which […]

No jobs, no money – ordinary Afghans pay the costs of war

Posted on

(Photo: Traditional market in Herat Afghanistan. 25-5-09 Copyright © Guy Smallman. All rights reserved.) I spent a fascinating evening in London on Thursday listening to two men who have stepped away from mainstream political thinking and policy on Britain’s military adventures in Afghanistan, both of them having experienced the place for themselves. The first was […]