Fri Sep 25,
2009,
18:30 GMT

Reality Bites - morsel #1

Posted by: Jet

Tags: production, Video sharing, Voyeurism

So we’re in Los Angeles today shooting some b-roll to set up our visits with Reality TV prez David Lyle and Sheila Conlin from Conlin Casting (who cast for Hells Kitchen and other reality shows) AND our shoot thus weekend at the Reality TV school!
Turns out they’ll be a news crew from Sweden, a Uk news team, possibly another doc crew and a doc series pilot crew shooting as well! With us too-there’s going to be more cameras than people and the soundbites will be snapping through the air!

Tags: Reality TV school

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Sun Jul 26,
2009,
15:01 GMT

Hollywood - Here We Come!

Posted by: Jet

Tags: production, Video sharing, Voyeurism

This week it’s time for Hal and the documentary crew to go to Hollywood!

Look out for some livecasting from LA – their first port of call will be FOX Reality http://www.foxreality.com/ – premier destination of unscripted programming! – and its president David Lyle.

We’ll be chatting with him and then going to the set of Solitary – http://www.foxreality.com/solitary3/.

Then it’s some filming round LA looking at the origins of celeb and then time with casting agents Conlin Company http://www.theconlincompany.com/ who cast for reality shows.

Wonder if Hal cuts the grade to make it on TV reality?

Watch and see!

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Sat Jul 25,
2009,
0:33 GMT

mobile livecast is a go!

Posted by: Jet

Tags: production, Video sharing, Voyeurism

so I spent most of last Friday on my hands and knees with everyone else, putting in webcams, hooking up computers, and installing surveillance cameras. And my other speciality – shopping for equipment and trying to label everything!

This week’s gone fairly smoothly and the peepcast is looking good after a few minor hiccups early in the week – the chat screen too far away from the livecast, cameras not behaving, motion sensors not working, the DVRS (that we use to record the motion separately from the webcams and Justin.tv) misbehaving, and various cables lost in transit.

The past few days have been for me an exploration into bluetooth, 3G tethering and mobile livecasting. Finally we have Hal’s netbook rigged up with his Nokia N95 and 3G plan, and the logitech camera.

I’ve been experimenting with Qik, Mobila, and Wwigo – interesting direct livestreaming/mobile camera apps for the N95 camera – but they’re not as smooth and reliable as webcams.

I think Hal is ready now to livecast and watch his peepcast for some roving peep!

(I hope it works).

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Fri Jul 17,
2009,
3:59 GMT

Re-installation and next steps in the live lifecast

Posted by: Jet

Tags: production, Video sharing, Voyeurism

So we had these great cameras from Dlink (Thanks Brian!) but they ended up not being compatible with streaming up to Justin.tv (boo hoo).

So now, we’re installing webcams into Hal’s place and putting up the feeds to 6 separate Justin.tv channels, and the Peepcast will pull in those feeds and we’ll have all 6 to watch on our new Peepcast page – Watch for that tomorrow!!!!!

Meanwhile, we still have to record the feeds except the quality of the webcams is really low – around 360 x 120 and we will need a much higher resolution for the film – SO! we’re now getting some surveillance cameras in that will record to DVRs. This has all been last minute as the quality issues on these have been challenging – especially since the budget is limited.

Eddy from Securitystore.com has stepped in and has sourced us some mediasonic DVRs that should take care of the recording and we can use some of our old cameras we had from Cat Ladies. Then the webcams will sit just above the surveillance cameras and broadcast to the Peepcast.

We’re installing tomorrow morning – if you get a chance check out justin.tv/thepeepdiaries channel (there maybe thepeepdiaries1,2,3,4,5 & 6) and you can see the trouble we’re getting into.

Five people in Hal’s tiny basement – hope everyone has had a shower!

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Fri Jun 26,
2009,
0:24 GMT

Hal 24/7

Posted by: Jet

Tags: production, Video sharing, Voyeurism

We’re just about there in figuring out how to put Hal under intensive scrutiny. We’re going to put cameras in his house – in his basement, his bathroom, the kitchen, living room and dining room. Come July 16^th Hal should be “Hal.24/7”.

We put in two more DSL internet connections (dry loops) and a cable internet connection – so he’ll have his own Bell service, our two Bell internet services and a Rogers one on top. We put in all these services to get as much upload bandwidth as possible – apparently up to 1Mbps per internet connection – so 3 Mbps maximum.

We had a great conversation with d-Link about their surveillance cameras and we’re doing a special rental deal on a VPN Firewall DFL-800 and about 5 DCS-3410 cameras. We’ll also have a webcam camera for the can.

Each of the cameras will link to a computer – the computer will both store the feed for us to use at a higher resolution in the edit suite, AND send an adapted resolution feed to the DFL-800 for upload. The DFL-800 assigns the cameras to a set internet connection so we’ll have at least 0.5Mbps picture quality.

That’s the input, and the output will be serviced through Justin.tv.

We want to put each camera feed up to Justin.tv – who uses a flash server. They will then host the multiple camera feeds and offer a chatroom. Our website thepeepdiaries.com would then gather the feeds and the chat room using various APIs for you guys to watch and comment.

As a beta I’m going to set up the Chocolate Box Entertainment reception area under a livestream tomorrow afternoon. Watch the tweets!

I hope you do watch and comment, because we need you to participate!

I also hope it all goes smoothly…

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Jeannette Loakman

Jeannette Loakman is an award-winning producer with over 12 years of experience in the television industry. Jeannette was recently nominated for a Gemini for “Spam: The Documentary”, a critical and ratings hit, “Spam” is the story of one man’s comical search for the origins of bulk unsolicited email. Pitched at TDF 2006 and produced with CBC Newsworld, Court TV USA, Knowledge Network, Canal D, YLE Finland and SBS Australia, it is distributed by Films Transit, and is selling worldwide - putting “Spam” on the map.

Recent other productions include the series “Groomed” - with world famous butler Paul Hogan – for W Network and Wedding TV (UK). This entertaining male makeover show was called “Surprisingly endearing”, by the Globe and Mail, “Just short of magic!” by the Calgary Sun, and featured on Pick of the Week by The Guardian in the UK. Jeannette produced “Annie Ong: Lost and Found”, “Moc Docs”, “Hot Shots”, “The Last Seven Days of Annie Ong” as well as directed “Slippery Blisses: What’s in a Kiss?” with the NFB.

Jeannette’s experience in the industry includes a stint in programming at Vision TV, general reporter for CityNews on City TV, and host of WTN’s first show: POV Women. Her work in the business was preceded by a decade in IT traveling the globe as a software consultant.