BBC Blast

What an event! This was the last of the tour for this year, and it was a big one!

We were located in the middle of Birmingham, in Victoria Square. Since it was so ‘public’ there was a huge number of people visiting each day. As it happens, schools were reluctant to send children, but other institutions were more than willing!

We had a great time – best workshop for me was the stage make up one, where we had ten or so ‘tough’ cases who really didn’t want to learn about make up. Once we got to creating the blood and gore bullet wounds and knife injuries, we had them hooked! Fair play – most were very capable of applying the wax and some were very good… it was a real eye opener for me, and I hope for them as well.

Other workshops were all as good, really, with music, song development, dance, Flash animation and of course me running clay animation, short movies and photography sessions.

I worked out that over the course of the summer we have produced somewhere around 90 unique DVDs this summer, and duplicated seven times that! Phew!

So that is it for this year, BBC Blast on tour has gone back to Acton to be re-fitted, and we have to go over the events one by one to understand what went well, and what needs more thought for next time.

One thing is for sure – if I am fortunate enough to get asked, the answer is YES!! I WILL DO IT AGAIN!!

The truck arrived in Bristol on the 24th July, and ran workshops over the Wednesday and Thursday of the week.

One of the main activities was making a video for up and coming star DJ Swift. I worked with BBC editor Julian Langham who, to be fair, basically ran the gig! We filmed DJ Swift and his posse all over the town centre in different locations and Julian helped cut it together. The film crew were all Blast participants and each helped make their own version of the video which we hope DJ Swift will place online at YouTube.

The amazing thing about Norwich was that we were located right outside the Forum. The BBC Studios in the East are here, and they were full of old Dr Who props. Yes, we had Tom Baker’s Tardis, and a couple of early versions of Daleks for company. Wow. I’ll try to get a few images uploaded when I can, but as you can see I’m writing this very much ‘after the event’ having fallen very behind in the blogging stakes!

It also rained in Norwich. Very hard. Fortunately it was only during the evening and not the day with the young people, but it came down in sheets. Unfortunately, much of the truck electrical equipment was on the floor and by the time we got to it we were a) soaked and b) wading through four inches of water trying to rescue the kit. My wristwatch still has a misty dial from the rain that night.

The truck rolls onwards… in fact, as I write this, it has gone all through the tour and now sits being cleaned and rejuvenated somewhere in Acton!

White city was an enormous event. Located in the car park outside the media village, the truck hosted dance workshops, animation, video, singing, photography and all manner of creativity.

We started at 8am each day, finished at 8pm and went home quite tired in between! The Anglia Ruskin Summer School crew arrived at the truck on the Wednesday (better late than never, although it was *very* late) and we had a lot of fun creating animations to fulfil part of the work we started at the university. The crew left tired but elated and pleased with what they had achieved.

The dance workshops were brilliant and several of the young people made it on to the TV on the Saturday night to dance at the national dance festival (with Bruce Forsyth). Several world records were attempted (and broken) on the night and we were over the moon to have worked with these folk!

The Sunday was spent in Trafalgar Square, hosting more freestyle dance and even some juggling… there was a scary picture of me learning to juggle, but it is probably best not unleashed upon you poor unsuspecting people 😉

Needless to say, creativity in spade loads, and plenty more to come!

Well, I have just got back from four brilliant days on the BBC Blast truck in Sheffield!

Throughout the time there I was working with the BBC Newsround team, helping young people put together news bulletins. They were filming with Sony Z1 cameras and editing in Final Cut or iMovie, depending on their prior experience. The editors would pick up the basics of editing, then have to deal with the camera tapes from the crews as they came back in from filming. Deadlines were very tight, and a studio links tape was added in as well!

By and large it went very well – the bulletins were cut in time (only just!) and the young people were left with a good product. Over the course of the days we learned a lot about how to do this and refined the process as we went.

Of real note was the kit provided by Reflecmedia (www.reflecmedia.com) for the chroma keying. This is a seriously good system to do any kind of chroma work, and we thoroughly enjoyed firing it up for the first time…

Also of note was the fact that BBC News and Sport were also in Sheffield running an event. They were based in the city centre but needed to use the BBC Blast truck for their editing. The man for the job was Robin Marks, and a nicer bloke you couldn’t meet. He was also a dab hand at using Final Cut Pro, despite being an avid Avid user! I certainly learned a great deal by watching him work, and was pleased to be able to add in a few tips of my own to help speed his work up. I’ll definitely be taking up his invite to go and see News 24 being broadcast, as soon as I can get an opportunity!

The truck support team are legends, every one of them… what a great experience! I can’t wait to get back on board and do the London leg, then Norwich, then Bristol and later in the year, finish it all up in Birmingham.

If you haven’t yet seen it, head over to www.bbc.co.uk/blast and check it out on the web site!