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.
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As I’m looking through some old pictures and graphics I thought I’d add some completely random pictures into this post. Here’s a self portrait I used to use on my Flickr page where I showcase my photography. I’ve always liked this picture, it was shot in a mirror and then reversed.
Despite having nothing in the pipeline, I’ve actually done a great deal of writing this week. I always have lots of ideas floating around in my head about all sorts of things and I make mental notes about them but converting those ideas into a novel is a pretty big undertaking. A better idea I thought would be to perhaps make those ideas into short stories. I could even put together a book of short stories and poems and maybe even some selected blog posts.
Images are important to blog posts as well as social media posts. It’s a statistical fact that social media posts perform better with images and better still with video content. I tried the face app that I found when researching the Manipulating Images post but naturally, being the tightwad that I am, I declined to pay for the version that does the best effects. I tried another app recently, one that creates avatars for use in your social media pages. An avatar is essentially a picture, a stylised image that people use on the web. Sadly I found that once again, this new app required me to pay money which naturally, I wasn’t happy about. However, rather than subscribe to the app it was possible to pay a one time fee of £2.99 for 50 avatars. This required me to upload a shedload of pictures of myself, the minimum required was 15 so the app could give the best results. The results weren’t instant, I had to wait most of the afternoon for them to appear and some were a bit naff, in fact there was even a feminine version of myself but there were a couple that made me look like the real tough hombre that I’m actually not.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It’s a desire that I suppose came from reading a lot of books. Someone had an idea, wrote a book and I read the book and in doing so the author transmitted his thoughts and ideas to me through the book. It’s only natural, at least it seems so to me, to want to do the same, to not just receive the thoughts of someone else but to transmit my thoughts and ideas, in the form of a book, to others.
Right, I thought, that’s it. I’m finally published. Now I can just sit back and wait for people to buy it. The thing is, who would know about my book? How would readers even realise that a new novel was available? Yes, that’s the thing. Writing a book isn’t enough, nor is actually publishing it. This is where marketing comes in. To sell your book you need to advertise. You need to use all your social media channels to tell everyone and his dog, here is a new book, come and buy it. You need to start an author page at Amazon and one at Goodreads too. Then you need an author website which is where this page comes in. How can you keep people coming in to read your blogs? Well, you need more social media and more blogs and for more blogs you need more and more ideas. How can you make your social media posts more interesting? Well you might want to add some graphics. Then you might want to add some animated graphics and even video so now you might find not only have you written a novel, you’ve written over 500 blog posts and graphics and made over a hundred videos, all to bring in more blog readers who may, or may not, buy your book.
Well, I’ve had the Big 500, that was last week so time to move on and get on with Blog #501. Things are the same for every content creator whether it’s me and my blog or Martin Scorsese and his next film. One project finishes and we move on to the next one. It’s great to put together a creative piece of work but I’ve always felt a little sadness leaving a completed blog or video behind and moving on to the next one. In fact, I wonder if it’s a feeling experienced by all creative people? In the movie The Bad and The Beautiful, Kirk Douglas plays a film producer who goes into a deep depression every time a project is finished. Was the author or the director putting his own experiences into the film?
WordPress is pretty good at showing you how many posts you’ve done but finding the 100th, the 200th and so on meant having to count back to blog number 1. I have to admit here that I made a big cock up looking back and after a recount I think my 200th blog post was actually one about photography. It was called 
A few weeks back I was asked to test some new editing software for a company whose software I used to use regularly. They were trying something new, in fact a feature that I had advocated a few times on one of their forums. It was a surprise to be asked to test the new feature but also rather nice. It’s always nice to be acknowledged so anyway as soon as the feature was enabled I set out to make a test video.
I’ve had my YouTube channel for quite a while now but unlike this, my WordPress blogging page, I’ve always found it rather hard to create regular video output. Don’t get me wrong, I like making videos, I really do although the best part of making a video, at least for me, is the editing. With virtually every one of my videos there are multiple versions to be found in the video folder on my laptop. Yes, videos are just something I cannot leave alone. Every time I rewatch one I start to think didn’t I have a better clip for that scene? Why have I put that scene before this one? Wouldn’t it work better if I swapped them round? Why did I say that in the narration? I should have said this! And so that’s when I start tinkering and re-editing.
As I’ve mentioned in a number of blog posts, it’s not enough to simply write a book, you have to get out there and start to sell it. Marketing is the bane of any self-published author’s life. Videos, Tweets, Facebook posts and WordPress blogs; I’ve done them all endlessly trying to bring my two short books into the media spotlight and flog a few copies.
I heard nothing back but while I was shopping at Asda, I saw a stack of the free paper The Local Voice and picked one up. To my surprise there I was, beaming at the camera on page 8 proudly displaying A Warrior of Words to the unsuspecting reader. If that small article will get me any new sales only time will tell. Until then I’ve put the order for my new Ferrari on hold. I have to say though that seeing my picture in the paper did give me a sense of pride, just like whenever someone presses the ‘like’ button on one of my posts. Writing gives me a sense of accomplishment and like everyone, the occasional pat on the back – or picture in the newspaper – gives me that feel good factor.
I’ve been looking through my poetry work lately and I started to think that I could write a blog about writing a poem. Now I’ve started I’m not sure how this is going to work out but anyway, let’s give it a shot.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 