I’m in New York accepting a Webby award for the work that we did with First Light Movies - an organisation that enables young filmmaking all across the UK.
I hadn’t actually realised how seriously these awards are valued in the states, because in the UK we don’t often get many people winning them and it can seem a little USA-centric. We’re one of only two Film and Video winners from the UK. But now that I’m over here, it’s suddenly dawning on me that this is actually a very prestigious thing. It’s not exactly the Oscars, but it seems along the lines of the Emmys. Wow.
The ceremony last night was very smoothly run, and to keep it snappy each winner is only allowed five words with which to make their speech. It’s called ‘the Webby fives’. So I’ve been trying to work out how best to use that short length of time - it’s more difficult than it sounds!
The event format was ‘watch a short piece of video about each nominee site, then announce the winner, and repeat’.
“Please don’t recount this vote” was Al Gore’s famous ‘Webby Five’, so I took a leaf out of his book.
My speech was pretty simple:
“Please don’t discount these voices”.
Here’s a little video taken from the front row by my neighbour for me:
I also spent a lot of time using the Nokia N95 that the Webby people kindly sent me to play with during the event and film things. Here are a few videos I’ve posted as a result. A shame the battery only lasted until half way through the ceremony!
We Shot the Webbys
The project is called We Shot the Webbys and I’m supposed to be uploading to Ovi, but I can’t for my life manage to get anything to upload from the phone there, so I’ve been using a mixture of services from my laptop:
Qik.com - live streaming but handily cuts out after 30 seconds and doesn’t tell you. Thanks.
Vimeo.com - I love this site, but I’m currently ‘waiting in line’ for 60 minutes before my videos are encoded.
Viddler.com - I’m uploading some content here because it seems like there’s less delay encoding.
Youtube.com - I’ve put one video up on there but I dislike the way it all works and looks, but it seems appropriate to put a Youtube star on Youtube…
Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain fame sings the American National Anthem
Me in the taxi talking about five word speeches complete with a big pause…
Me about to go into the event and complaining about my suit in hot weather. Fascinating.
\
2 Comments
Congratulations again! We’re loving the little video clips. Try and speak a little bit slower though please. Think it will help to hear what you’re saying.
The little one gets so excited that she can see you that she squeals Dada for the whole length of the video and then realises she’s missed it so asks for more!
Belated congrats! See, I knew when I sat next to you at SXSW that you were up for an award. It was just a year in the future and a different event.
–Brian