Under the Dome Infestation Barbie Saves the Day (Recap/Review)
Under the Dome and its second episode Infestation had Barbie saving the day again and Angie finally exiting Chester’s Mill. The show seems to be struggling a little bit this season with viewer numbers declining, which seems to indicate that stretching the show into more than one season was a mistake.
CBS TV Pilot Participation: Shush Its Secret
One of the benefits of living in Las Vegas, Nevada is being close enough to Hollywood that the business end of the town bleeds over into the real “city that never sleeps;” CBS snuck into Vegas and advertised for TV pilot participation – as in audience members – but, shush it’s a secret. That’s right, although the studio was cram packed with members of the public eager to see the “inner” workings of this “under wraps” production, the punters (as they say in England) were threatened within an inch of their lives if they tweeted or posted on either Twitter or Facebook any information about this potential new program…
My daughter and I were talking about the reality television show The Family. I have never seen the program…Nor do I want to. If you look it up on IMDb, it states that this is the program that started the reality TV invasion. Well, IMDb didn’t say it was an invasion, that word was mine. I actively despise reality TV. And to think that the first iteration of this ‘reality’ show began originally in the ’70’s. But I digress.
What we were talking about was the idea of having cameras in your house. Not just a few, but as many cameras that can be placed without intruding (if that is possible) on your lifestyle. When The Family was re-done in 2008, the family themselves acted differently when they first started “living” in front of the cameras. Then as they became more accustomed to having them there, they relaxed and began to act more naturally. According to my daughter Meg, it was interesting to see.
We then started speculating about what we would do and how we would act if cameras were put in our home. The first thing we decided was that it would be a comedy. My daughter and I have a brilliant repartee. A lot of good natured piss-taking and a lot of amusing idiosyncrasies. We don’t clash very often, if we do we apologise and just get on with it. We laugh quite often and row very little, in essence we are very good at sharing our house, our space and our opinions.
But in reality (no pun intended) I would not like to live my private life in front of a load of cameras. Cameras that would be letting the world see me and my family going about our daily business of living. Both my daughter and I are very private people. We only let people ‘past the wall’ when we get to know and trust them. I can not imagine ever getting used to having the things in the house and I’ve worked in front of them.
Working in front of the camera is very different from living your private life in front of one. Working entails being someone else, playing a part; not being you but a different part of you. I even have trouble relaxing and just being me when I do my YouTube videos. I am getting better at relaxing and enjoying myself rather than feeling that I am working. But, again, I am choosing which part of my ‘private’ life I want to show while in front of the camera.
I would not want the world to see me at my worst. I have a cornucopia of bad habits, bad attitudes and other foibles that I am aware of and accept as part of my personality. That is not to say that I would be comfortable with the whole world knowing about them. In private when I act like an idiot and lose my temper or swear like a twenty-year sailor (no offence intended to those Naval folks out there) the only other person who observes this behaviour is my daughter. She knows who I am and generally laughs at such improper actions or tells me off. I may or may not listen. But, if I have been an ass, I usually apologise and then we can both have a laugh.
When I was in the USAF one of my jobs was to watch other people work. Not as easy or as much fun as it sounds, believe me. When I first entered the work centre everyone was very busy. There was not a lazy or unproductive person to be found. After I had been there for a while and the folks I was watching got used to me. It was a different story. All those lazy, unproductive folks came out of hiding and the people I was watching started relaxing and acting like they normally did. The old story of familiarity breeding contempt is true. And that is why I would never want anyone to film my private family home life.
I don’t want to discover any bad parts of my personality that I am not already aware of.
I eventually started uploading videos to my first channel because I like to talk about films. My daughter kind of nagged me into it. I also game so some of the YouTube gaming community sort of adopted my little channel. I started the second channel because my daughter and I have pretty much the same taste in films(with the obvious exception of Moulin Rouge, which I cannot stand). I say little channel because that is what it is and will always remain so. Why?
Well, as much as I enjoy doing my vids I don’t have the patience to keep editing and re-editing the videos because of the crappy capability of the Windows Move Maker software for one. Secondly I am a little long in the tooth to become wildly popular and thirdly I don’t feel I bring too much to the table. Like I said, I talk about films I like. I am not the next Ebert or Siskel.
Don’t get me wrong, I love doing my videos for my little channels. I get excited every time I get a new subscriber and another video view. I also shake my head and wonder who on earth enjoys my ramblings?
But I do love YouTube, even with all the irritating things it does (especially now that Google has control of it). I am always amazed at the amount of views that my daughter gets on her channel and the amount of subscribers. I’m not saying that she doesn’t earn these, she does, but I look at other channels and I scratch my head (metaphorically scratch my metaphorical head) There are a load of channels out there that have millions of views and millions of subscribers. I sub and watch them as well. But looking at those numbers I always think the same thing. Where do all these folks come from and why do they sub who they do.
The answer is obvious of course. The channels that get that kind of response are good (for the most part) although there are some that I am still mystified as to why they are so big. But we’ll forget about those, I just want to talk about some of the good ones.
The Community Channel, RayWilliamJohnson, Nigahiga, KevJumba, ShaneDawson; well the list can go on and on These talented folks work hard for their views and “subs” and it shows. My daughters channel, Kawaiiprincess01 is growing steadily(also quickly, I might add) and she works hard on her channel as well. But the whole thing has an unrealistic feel to it. I still look at her channel and the amount of subs and views she gets and always say the same thing. You’ve got how many?
I wrote in a previous blog that I felt that YouTube was turning into the new television. I still believe that to a degree, but I think it is in danger of getting boycotted by a lot of folks who just aren’t very happy with how Google is dicking around with the ‘Tube. They always say, “Don’t mess with success, If it ain’t broke don’t fix it…” You see where I’m heading with this, don’t you? Google wants to make money off their purchase (take-over) of YouTube, but they are screwing around with the subscriber counts and view counts on channels. It has now gotten to the point where I look at YouTube channels I am subbed to and think. “You’ve lost how many??
Still I am sure that once Google stop dicking everyone about, the growing pains and transition period will calm down and things will get back to normal. Until then I think I am going to have to do more vids so my “inactive” channel doesn’t get closed.
Mikes Film Talk 
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