A Finished Script and Some New Kit | The Friday(ish) Update

Welcome to the Friday(ish) Update!

Read on to hear more about my upcoming video!

FYI: In the final section of this week's Friday Update, I briefly discuss an instance of police violence. While I don't go into much detail about the event discussed, if that's something you'd rather not read about, you might want to give this one a miss.

What have I been up to this week?

This week, I'm delighted to say that I finished the script for my upcoming video about YouTube propaganda and driverless cars. It still needs one final read-through—and for me to add the all-important final section where I thank some of you lot!—but that should only involve making a minor tweak or two.

Tomorrow morning (that's Monday now!), my plan is to do that final read-through and to make those final additions and then I'll begin to arrange the various bits of furniture and set-dressing which will adorn the video itself. This time round, it will involve a set and costume which may look familiar; although with a couple of minor adjustments I'm sure!

My hope is then to film the video either late on Monday or on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the house I live in now is by a big road and only has single glazing so I have to try and avoid filming during rush hour!

In preparation for that filming, this week's tasks also involved ordering a new camera. Some of you will know from previous posts that I've been looking to upgrade my camera for a considerable amount of time now. The old camera was very much a consumer device built for taking the occasional holiday snap and therefore involved a lot of workarounds in order to get semi-decent quality video out of it. Whilst I'm very proud of the videos I made with it, it was often really frustrating to use. The new camera, however, is much more capable and so I'm hoping that, as I learn to use it to the full extent of its abilities over the coming months, there might be a step-up in the visual quality of my stuff!

And outside of work?

In last week's Friday Update, I mentioned that progress on writing the script had involved some ups and downs. I was pleased to have surmounted the various challenges I'd come across by Friday, but, on Saturday, benefited greatly from a long cycle ride with friends.

Every month or so, myself and three friends (and one very small friend who's still in nappies) pick a trail and go on a bike ride somewhere in South West England. Generally, we'll find somewhere around an hour to ninety minutes drive away and, after a year or so of being trapped indoors due to COVID, it's been really refreshing to find some nice bits of countryside to enjoy.

None of us are particularly fast (or, at least, I'm not and they're too kind to mention it!) but we do manage to get some miles under our belts. Last weekend, we managed to cycle a whole 40KM—although it was very, very flat. A lovely change of pace after a week sat at my desk!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

I'm going to keep it to one recommendation for this week, and it's going to be a new YouTube channel I recently discovered. It seems relatively big, so it may be that I'm just not cool enough and am late to the game.

The channel is called Climate Town, and it's run by comedian and climate policy grad student Rollie Williams. Like many other channels that I'm sure many of you enjoy, it aims to explain various aspects of the climate emergency in a fun and irreverent way.

I've not watched anywhere near all of their videos yet but am currently laughing and learning my way through their back catalogue!

What have I been thinking about?

My thoughts this week have been with a couple of large-scale political events in the UK. In particular, the police officer who killed Sarah Everard was handed a whole life sentence, meaning he'll spend the rest of his life in jail.

Several of the details which emerged during the course of the trial reignited debates surrounding the role of the police in our society, the limited extent to which they actually prevent crime and the dangers of the state giving the green light to some to inflict violence on citizens—violence which overwhelmingly ends up being inflicted on women and marginalised groups. I have few well-formed thoughts about this topic, but have found many of these questions (along with a broader sense of injustice and anger at the horror of the incident) tumbling around my mind this week.

That brings us to the end of this week's Friday update! By next week, I should be telling you all about how the filming of my next video went and how the editing is going!

See you then and, as ever, thank you all for your generous support!