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Since LugRadio Live a couple of weekends ago, I’ve had lots of questions about whether the documentary I produced will be available on-line, whether I’m planning on selling it on DVD or whether it was an exclusive for that weekend. Well, all those options were discussed, but given all the work that went into it, I want as many people as possible to see and enjoy it. It also seemed unfair to directly charge for something which others had given time towards. So, if you want to see “Don’t Listen Alone: A documentary about LugRadio”, you can now do so.

• High quality OGG Theora video (2.6GB): http://www.archive.org/details/Dont_Listen_Alone
• Low quality OGG Theora video (250MB): http://www.archive.org/details/Dont_Listen_Alone
• Windows users will need to install VLC from here to watch the above.
• Online stream (Flash) part one: http://blip.tv/file/2801438
• Online stream (Flash) part two: http://blip.tv/file/2801474

If you’re interested in the background to the project, read on.

It started in 2007 when Jono suggested I follow the gents around behind-the-scenes at LugRadio Live that year, to get an some footage of what the weekend is like for them. There wasn’t really enough useful footage to create a story, so what Laura and I shot that weekend ended up in the trailer for LRL 2008 USA. The gents worked out that they could afford to sponsor me to go to LRL USA and, again, video the trip for posterity. Oh, and to run the crew for the weekend too. The result (I avoided using “outcome” or “deliverable” there) was to be a documentary about the trip, which was such a big thing for “four idiots from Wolverhampton” to have spawned that they wanted there to be a lasting record.

Laura and I flew out to San Francisco with the gents and spent the long weekend videoing and photographing them. I also spent about half an hour interviewing each of them about the trip and about LugRadio in general, each in a different location around the venue. (My favourite is Chris in the basement. It just looks so grimy!) The stills I shot were ostensibly for a redesigned LugRadio website but that was project was shelved when the gents cancelled the show. I am pleased to have been able to use some of them in the documetary.

Within a month or so of us returning from the US, before I had the chance to do anything with the video footage, the gents announced they were cancelling the show. At this point producing a documentary just about the US trip didn’t seem as important, so I discussed the idea with the gents of turning it into a documentary about LugRadio as a whole, and specifically the last year of the show. They were up for this and I started to plan it all out. We arranged to record extra footage: Laura and I went up to Wolverhampton to record the last ever studio recording of LugRadio at Jono’s house. I arranged to interview some members of the community at LRL in the UK about LugRadio, what they like about it, what their memories of LRL events are.

At this point I should add, if it’s not apparent enough already, that I’ve never attempted a project like this before. I’ve never made a documentary, I’ve never tried to tell a story through video. Mostly I’ve videoed talks at conferences, which is a lot easier: The content is someone else’s responsibility, you just have the technical task of capturing it on camera.

I started off editing the US segment, as I had everything I needed for that. I showed it to the gents and they liked the direction the documentary was going in. I also arranged to meet up with Ade to interview him, which we ended up doing stood in a concrete courtyard at FOSDEM this year. (This interiew footage looks the best of them all, I think.) I then began to cut together segments, bearing in mind that I hadn’t yet interviewed Matt. It was handy having an interview later than the rest, especially at Matt was there right at the beginning of LugRadio. When I was interiewing Jono and Aq in the US, we didn’t talk very much about the early days because that wasn’t the focus for the documentary at the point. So interviewing Matt later than everyone else meant I could work out what parts of the narrative I didn’t have the right footage for, and tailor the questions I asked Matt to ensure I got them, as well as asking him to talk generally about his time on the show. It was especially pleasing to interview Matt in the Lighthouse, venue for two LugRadio Lives.

There then followed much reviewing of footage, making notes, editing, writing linking narration, tweaking and backing-up. The process was fairly iterative, cutting out bits, moving the order of clips around until the story was coherent. I hunted through photos from the early days of LugRadio, finding ones which illustrated the point being made then generating the pan and zoom clips. I exported the audio from each track and mixed it all separately before re-importing it as I needed to be able to apply quite a lot of audio compression at times, as well as cheating bits of audio in from other places. There’s no way to quantify precisely the amount of time this all took, but it would have been weeks of work even if I had been doing it full time. But this was the part of the process from which I learnt the most. It showed up the shortcomings of how some footage had been recorded, but also gave me a better insight into editing technieques and how they are “hidden” in professional work, as well as showing me the power of the editor to shape the story being told.

Almost the final part was to get the narration recorded. I knew I wanted a female voice as a contrast to the mostly male voices in the video. Even this part was a learning experience, as I had to direct the session and try and explain to Jenny (who very kindly let me talk her into doing it) what it was she was narrating and how I wanted her to say it.

Even the realtively simple process of sticking it all together and mastering it into a single file took a few evenings of work, due to the time it takes to process large amounts of audio. (The whole project was 13GB of Raw DV.)

But the end result of all this was seeing the documentary projected on the large screen. It was immensely satisfying, though I only got to see the first half as I had to run off and give my talk! Though it’s not a comedy documentary, there were laughs in the right places and it was gratifying to see the six large gents I had interviewed all watching from the audience.

I used completely Open Source Software to make it. Kino for capturing the DV, stills2dv to generate the pan and zoom photos (but it only does 4:3, not 16:9 sadly), kdenlive for editing and ardour for mixing the audio. I am proud of having done so, but it did mean enduring quite a few crashes from kdenlive. (I was using an older version, because I didn’t want to upgrade part way through the project!)

I learnt a lot and there are certainly things I would do differently if I were doing it all over again, for example:

• Slow down and take time to check everything before recording. You can’t go back. Clean the heads.
• Pay close attention to framing the shots.
• Avoid windy places, or have a big wind gag.
• Lock the white balance on the camera.
• Have someone operate the camera whilst you interview.
• Pay closer attention to audio levels (preferably have someone else do it.)
• Use one video track for each video source in the editor.
• There’s a weird tilting effect on the interview with Matt which I think is due to the image stablisation system in the camera playing up, but which I couldn’t do anything about.
• Some of the audio edits are a bit harsh, but needed to be to cut out clicks or other unwanted background noise.
• Allow the narrator time to get warmed up, get familiar with the project and then get them to record each bit as many times as it takes to get it right.

Overall, I’m immensely proud of the documentary. I hope it is a fitting reflective tribute to LugRadio. I’m very grateful to all those who helped make it happen, in particular all those who gave up their time to be interviewed, and Laura who not only videoed lots of stuff, but supported me through the editing process by reviewing segments and doing lots of stuff around the house that I should really have been doing.

This blog post is later than I would have liked, but its tardy arrival reflects the maelstrom that has been the past couple of months. This autumn always looked like it was going to be busy, and that was without the added upheaval of changing jobs. Which is my way of implying that this post may be rambling and not very well polished in places. Anyway…

Two weekends ago was the last LugRadio Live. Definitely. They promised. Friday night was the usual meet up in the Hog’s Head. In some ways this is my favourite part of the whole weekend. The anticipation builds throughout the day as people tweet their journey into Wolverhampton, the City of Dreams (if only for Adam Sweet.) By about nine a substantial portion of the pub is full of geeks. It is great meeting up with people with whom one mostly interacts online, sharing a few beers and quite a few jokes.

Shrunk to one day this year but with all the character and atmosphere of previous years, this LRL was one of the best. As ever, I was in charge of the AV crew, a job made a lot easier by the very helpful technical staff at the Newhampton Arts Centre. It was great to see a number of people returning to help out on the crew as everyone had a reasonable idea what was expected of them. I’m proud to say that, barring a few minor glitches, all the preparation paid off and the day went smoothly.

My other duties on the Saturday were something of a departure for me. Firstly, the “secret project” I have been working on for many months (actually, it runs into years now) was presented to the public: The premiere of “Don’t Listen Alone: A documentary about LugRadio” took place over the lunchtime slot in the main room. More on that in another blog post. Secondly I gave my talk, “Podcasting for fun and, erm, fun” based on my experiences working on the Ubuntu UK podcast. I’ve never talked at LugRadio Live before and I had no way of ascertaining what the audience’s expectations were, so I was fairly nervous beforehand. That said, it seemed to go down well and the room was certainly pretty packed.

As usual I didn’t get much of a chance to see other people talk during day, but I enjoyed the caricatures of the speakers on the main stage being drawn by Chris Hayes. This is simply a great idea, though a lot of work for the artist. Aq had also hacked up a twitter display for the main stage, which displayed any tweet appropriately tagged but anonymised. There was much discussion later in the weekend about whether the anonymisation was a good idea, but it certainly gave rise to a lot of good jokes.

The live show wrapped up the day, reminding me of the first ever LRL back in 2005. As ever there was piss-taking, japes and laughter. Jono inexplicably wanted to wear the raccoon outfit for the recording, sat at the middle of the action like a rotund sweaty meatball. Andy Stanford-Clark won the auction for the LRL banner, complete with signatures from all seven LugRadio presenters. The hard-working Ron was given a meal out with Mrs. Ron in recognition for his efforts over the years. I was presented, totally unexpectedly, with a laptop, which left me gobsmacked and even more sure that the LugRadio community and the presenters in particular are wonderful and lovely people (depsite the impression they try to give on the show. ) They also said that if someone organises an event next year, they will turn up and do a live show at it (professional commitments allowing). More of which later.

The climax of the show was getting all seven LugRadio presenters, past and present, on stage together. Adam, Ade, Sparkes, Chris, Aq, Matt and Jono deserved their standing ovation. LugRadio was a big part of my life for the last few years and yet the novelty of hearing those first episodes has never worn off. I used to listen to them on my 128MB MP3 player over and over again, walking around the streets of Shirley chuckling away to myself and trying to interpret what they were saying. There simply was nothing like it at the time. So thank you, all of you.

After a karaoke party in the basement of the Connaught Hotel, at which I was made to join three of the four gents in singing YMCA, (there is a video on the Internet somewhere, but I’m not linking to it), it was time for…. OggCamp.

At some point, around June, it seemed like a really good idea to organise an event on the day after LRL. After all, we thought, lots of people will already be in Wolverhampton, and several had already expressed disappointment that LRL was only going to be one day long rather than the two days it has been in recent years. At no point did I really anticipate that organising two separate events in two different venues is a lot more work than organising one event over two days. I had undoubtedly learned a lot from the LRL team over the years, but the effort to pull together a one-day conference over three months (alongside all the real world demands of a job etc.) was huge. The resulting event was OggCamp, a joint effort between the Ubuntu UK Podcast and the Linux Outlaws. It was great being able to play to everyone’s strengths, with Dan providing a lot of the PA kit and Fab working on the hosting and design elements (including the fantastic advert in Linux Format).

We had no idea how many people would turn up. As an unscheduled conference, we also had no idea how many people would turn up with something to talk about or do. Having lots of people is no good if there is nothing for them to participate in. 70-odd people had said they would attend on the Facebook event, but I knew that was no guarantee. Equally there are people in the FLOSS community who don’t use or like Facebook. OggCamp was being held in the official LRL hotel, so it would be easy for people to get to. But if they were hungover from the night before, they might just stay in bed. So it was all guesswork. In the end, I think we got it about right, as 150 people turned up and the schedule filled up quickly. The second time I was gobsmacked in one weekend was walking past a queue of people three storeys long round the stairs to the main room. Exhilerating and scary at the same time.

Forunately the event got off to a good start, with Andy Stanford-Clark talking about his twittering house after a brief introduction from the six podcast presenters. Thanks to some teamwork between Dan and I running the PA, I was actually able to chat to some attendees and see parts of some talks. It was great to have quite a variety of subjects being talked about, pig analysis probably being the most random but very suited to the barcamp atmosphere.

Before I knew what was happening, it was nearly time for the live show. The Linux Outlaws and Ubuntu UK presenters had decided to combine their efforts for an hour to record in front of an audience. We had a raffle and everything. It was a very different show from the LugRadio one the previous day (though all four LugRadio presenters managed to grab the radio mic at some point during the recording) but that was a good thing. You can get the different resulting podcast episodes from Ubuntu UK (family friendly) and Linux Outlaws (with all the naughty bits left in).

Before long it was all over with, everything packed back up into cars and hotel rooms. I was left with a new appreciation for the efforts of the crew at events like these, this time from the outside. The OggCamp crew carried boxes, collected signs and did all that was required of them, usually before being asked. They made the event happen, really.

We were left with the overwhelming demand to run another event next year, especially in light of LRL ending. We have had some suggestions, including having it over two days, having a scheduled track, having the LugRadio presenters do a live show, doing it somewhere other than Wolverhampton and more. We appreciate all the feedback and will start discussing what shape the event will have in the new year.