"One-Take" Lisa!

"One-Take" Lisa!

Readers with long memories and short trousers may remember how we've recently fired up our old camcorder more out of curiosity rather than hope of it actually working.

But knock us down with a phoenix feather, it turns out to be in pretty good nick and after a quick codec download on the laptop, it proved to be Ready, Willing and Able ('Carry On England' reference!) to provide us with some moving pictures for YouTube consumption. (Which thankfully is not a reference to any popular historical diseases!)

We haven't really thought about editing software yet, so what we're uploading at the moment are definitely one-take affairs. But we've done enough of this sort of nonsense that we can keep going even if I do say "Best Witches" instead of "Best Wishes".

One thing I have noticed on playback is that it might be worth investing in a microphone as the sound is a bit hissy on headphones. Amazingly, the FS11 does have a microphone input socket, which apparently isn't that common on certain cheaper machines. But for the moment, we'll do our best to PROJECT OUR WORDS!!!

I don't think we felt particularly conscious of the camera being there. As Lisa said, she approaches it simply as though we're nattering to each other on the sofa, which is the whole style of 'Round The Archives' anyway.

We knocked off three videos on our first day, which may be a case of quantity over quality, but it's all free, folks!

First off, there was a general Welcome Aboard one which includes a glimpse of some of the pictures on the wall. We might return to this theme as some point as our collection is pretty ecelectic, with 'The Dinosaur Invasion' inches away from 'Hinge & Bracket'. ("Kklak, dear!!!")

Then Lisa got some exciting post in the form of two 'Porridge' books and a 'Dad's Army' one. We haven't had much time to cast an eye over them yet, but they certainly look most exciting!

Then at 9pm we got slightly more experimental. 'Dad's Army : We Know Our Onions' had just finished on BBC Two and it was time for us to have our traditional cup of tea. So I broke out my 'Dad's Army' whisky glasses (and some Asda pickled onions) for visual interest and we briefly discussed the episode as the kettle boiled. The viewing millions also got to see our infamous Tea Cupboard which is almost as wide-ranging as our DVD collection.

So, all good fun and no-one seemed to object too much to our improvised antics.

The video work, and indeed this blog, are not a replacement for the podcast, however. We're already getting rather overdue with Episode 20, so this afternoon we'll try and record some more material for that.

The fact that Lisa has got her 'Ace Of Wands' top on today shows where our priorities are.

But we're already thinking about future camera angles, so be warned! :-)

(By Andrew Trowbridge)