No work of art is ever finished, only abandoned. I read that years ago, so long ago I can’t even remember who said it, but even though my blog posts and videos can hardly be described as works of art, I still can’t leave them alone.

While sorting out my box room this week I came across yet another box of old VHS video tapes. One was marked WFA original footage.

Back in 1992 I went on a video production course at the WFA, (Workers Film Association) in Manchester and during the course I made a film about taxi drivers in Manchester. I didn’t make it myself, I was part of a team of three and we didn’t have specific roles. Although the taxi idea was mine, I wasn’t the director, we all were, so you can imagine that the final film was one where compromises were made. All three of us I can imagine, if left to our own devices as director or editor, would have all have created a different video.

The original footage ran for over two hours and was shot on super VHS. My video player actually supports super VHS and I was able to digitise the tape and copy it to my laptop. A lot of the footage was not used because of course we were all pretty new to what we were doing. There were plenty of wobbly shots, plenty of blurred ones and even some with bad sound. There is one almost entire interview without sound until the end where someone, I hope it wasn’t me, remembers to either switch on the microphone or plug it in.

I did hope to be able to add a link to this blog post for my new edit, however, an editor needs time to acquaint himself with the footage and get an idea of the finished project in his head. As I am that editor and as I like to edit in a careful organic kind of way (some might say slow) that re-edit, alas, isn’t quite ready yet so I’ll add the link to the old version below.

One of my best videos is one about the graves and cemeteries of World War I and II in northern France. It’s a sad video but the visuals are good and I put together what I thought was a pretty good narration based on some blog posts I’d written previously.

One big mistake was when I edited the video, I started with a shot I’d taken at the beginning of our trip to France. It was shot of a really huge motorhome with a trailer and then I panned over to our much smaller model, thinking at the time I’d add some jokey comment on the lines of what a fabulous motorhome -but this is ours over here!

Anyway, I added the comment and put everything together then uploaded it to YouTube. It seemed to do pretty well getting a lot of views but when I added it to a Facebook page for YouTubers and video producers, expecting a certain amount of praise, one reviewer mentioned that the jokey stuff didn’t really go with the overall tone. Looking back at the video I realised he was completely correct however by then the video had pulled in a few thousand views and I was reluctant to substitute the re-edited version as then I’d lose all those views!

Oh well, there is a much better and substantially re-edited version on Vimeo, alas without so many views.

One video that I have gone back to time and time again is a video about my home town of Manchester. Although I haven’t been into Manchester much lately, in the old pre-Covid days I used to always make time to visit the city. As a matter of fact, I’ve always enjoyed spending time in Manchester. Many years ago, I’d go into town and work my way through various second hand book shops in the older part of the city and then spend far too much time in the old HMV store on Market Street. The store there was huge with sections for CDs and music and another area for DVDs. There was probably a gaming section which is something I’ve never been really interested in but usually by the end of the afternoon I’d have a stack of books, CDs and DVDs to take home and enjoy. I mustn’t forget the other delights of Manchester too, the huge array of pubs, bars and eating places which I always tend to visit.

The narration for that video was adapted from my book Floating in Space and various blog posts I’ve written about the city over the years. In the video I’ve tried to compare the Manchester of 1977, which is when and where the story told in my book takes place, to the Manchester of today. Every now and then I go back to the city, shoot more video and add or exchange a video clip for a better one. In fact, there are probably three versions of the same video over on YouTube. Recently I made a brand-new version but I thought it might be better to perhaps leave my YouTube page as it is. Well, for now anyway.

You might wonder then why is it that TV and motion pictures never get re-edited? Actually in some cases, they have. In 2006 CBS announced that the entire original series of Star Tek was to be digitised and enhanced with new CGI effects. Even the theme music was re-recorded in digital stereo. Star Wars was re-mastered in 1997 using new digital effects and once again in 2019 and a lot of the latest Doctor Who DVD releases feature enhanced special effects.

There are plenty of films that are untouched of course. I’ve always hated the cumbersome model shots and effects in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Pity Hitchcock isn’t around to go back and add some better ones.

My blog posts are another creative adventure that are open to a bit of re-editing. Most of my posts come to a successful conclusion but there are plenty of occasions when I realise I could have taken the post a little bit further, especially my early posts from 2014. Back then my posts were substantially shorter. In 2014 a post on my blog was on average 639 words long according to my WordPress stats page. Today, in 2023, my average post length is 1,627 words. Some of my favourite posts I have occasionally used again with the addition of new text and new images and even sometimes a link to an appropriate video. Sometimes, I’ve combined similar posts to create an entirely new one. I actually thought that I was doing something pretty revolutionary in the blogging world but in fact a quick search on the internet will reveal plenty of ‘how to’ posts on ‘repurposing’ content. There is nothing new under the sun.

For quite a while I’ve been trying to flog one of my film scripts over on Inktip, which is an American website where writers can offer their work to a variety of producers who are looking for screenplays. I’ve had a few nibbles and a number of producers have looked at my script. None however have gone as far as actually buying my work and offering to produce it which is a great pity because seeing my work as the basis of a feature film would be a big thrill for me. Anyway, when the renewal came up for my pro membership fee, my inner tightwad denied access to my credit card and my membership was terminated.

What could I do now with my screenplays? Well, one way of using that material has been to make them into something else, in fact I’ve repurposed them into short stories. I don’t tend to publish fiction over here on WordPress although quite a few times when I’ve been wondering what to write about for next week’s post, I have considered it. However, I’ve saved my fiction for my page over on Medium. Click here to take a look.

That’s pretty much it for this look at repurposed content. Just writing this post has made me realise I’ve not done much on my podcast for a while. Perhaps I could make this post into a podcast and then I could use the audio as the narration to a video version. Then I could write a blog post about how I did all that! Wow, that’s proper repurposing.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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