Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 12:19 pm  

SmokeyTA wrote:

My only problem is the utter pointlessness of it, the images you get are uniformly terrible and you struggle to make anything at all out and the audio quality is equally rubbish.

If you were getting a snippet of the event I could kind of understand it. But you don’t, you get a mess of an image with terrible audio.

Nothing annoys me more than searching Youtube for, say, a Bruce Springsteen live recording to find that its been taken from row ZZ on a mobile phone, not only is the sound just a mess of sound, the picture just a haze of random pixels usually of the back of someones head, but you also get the video-ee talking to their mate over-riding what little of the music you could hear, and it doesn't help that they are also ALWAYS stood next to the same woman who insists on whooping every 30 seconds.

Having said that, and having mentioned Mr Springsteen, who must be the most video'd performer on Youtube, given that he hasn't stopped touring since about 1996, the best example of "amateur film from the crowd" is of him performing in Minnesota (search Bruce Springsteen "Thunder Road" St.Paul,Mn. 11/2/07) but then again, it is filmed on a handheld video camera and not a phone.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 12:20 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

You say this, but you could say exactly the same about the awful holiday photos that the vast majority of people take. The fact is, they actually honestly don't know they are producing utter crap.

We had stacks and stacks of old photos and holiday snaps and have now embarked on a ruthless crap-reduction exercise, sifting through pack-by-pack and chucking anything that's not evocative.
We are currently about 10% of the way through and I'd estimate that we are averaging about 3 photos per pack of holiday photos that are anything like worth keeping, the rest are just dross.

When you pick up a picture of a sporting event (e.g. athletics) and you can't tell which venue it is, never mind who the competitors are, well ...

I am reminded of a photo my Mother once showed me.
To me, it was a picture of a car park with a skip in the corner.
To her it was a picture of the Scottish highlands, just vaguely visible as a grey smudge in the distance.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 12:31 pm  

Christ this thread is like doing voluntary work at an old people's home.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 12:37 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

We had stacks and stacks of old photos and holiday snaps and have now embarked on a ruthless crap-reduction exercise, sifting through pack-by-pack and chucking anything that's not evocative.
We are currently about 10% of the way through and I'd estimate that we are averaging about 3 photos per pack of holiday photos that are anything like worth keeping, the rest are just dross.

When you pick up a picture of a sporting event (e.g. athletics) and you can't tell which venue it is, never mind who the competitors are, well ...

I am reminded of a photo my Mother once showed me.
To me, it was a picture of a car park with a skip in the corner.
To her it was a picture of the Scottish highlands, just vaguely visible as a grey smudge in the distance.

I think photography skills have got worse over the decades - I have two very large boxes (the very big filing boxes) full of family photos from the 1920s onwards, I seem to have nominated myself as the family depository for old cr@p.

The ones of my grandparents from the 1920s/1930s are few but are wonderful old photos of the whole family sitting on beaches in random resorts and there's always an old bloke in full three piece suit and (I kid you not) a bowler hat, with his shoes off and trousers rolled up, pipe in mouth looking for all the world like Jimmy Edwards, apparently he was an aging uncle of my grandparents who they dragged around everywhere with them.

I cherish those old photos (even though they are currently in the garage) but I also think there was more of a "special occasion" to them and the people who took them, for starters it was always just one of the fathers who could "use" the camera (and never a woman) and the film was probably so expensive to buy and then process that they made sure it was going to be a good photo before they took it.

Skip forward 50 years to my mother's efforts with her Instamatic camera and there's a dramatic fall in quality and subject but she was usually quite happy to take a photograph of her feet or the sky rather than what was supposed to be the subject.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 12:38 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

Nothing annoys me more than searching Youtube for, say, a Bruce Springsteen live recording to find that its been taken from row ZZ on a mobile phone, not only is the sound just a mess of sound, the picture just a haze of random pixels usually of the back of someones head, but you also get the video-ee talking to their mate over-riding what little of the music you could hear, and it doesn't help that they are also ALWAYS stood next to the same woman who insists on whooping every 30 seconds.

Having said that, and having mentioned Mr Springsteen, who must be the most video'd performer on Youtube, given that he hasn't stopped touring since about 1996, the best example of "amateur film from the crowd" is of him performing in Minnesota (search Bruce Springsteen "Thunder Road" St.Paul,Mn. 11/2/07) but then again, it is filmed on a handheld video camera and not a phone.

Im going when he opens the Leeds arena. I hope that it will be better than any of mobile phone recordings.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 1:37 pm  

SmokeyTA wrote:

Im going when he opens the Leeds arena. I hope that it will be better than any of mobile phone recordings.

Boy, has he p1ssed off Elton John

Poor old Elton was booked to do the opening gig, promoted as such, ego stroked as a VIP, then Springsteen - according to the venue manager - actually rang up and asked if they could fit him in before Eltons gig, which fortunately they could as its ready a little before schedule.

I'm very jealous, hope its a good night.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 2:05 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

I think photography skills have got worse over the decades

Of course, and it's because the whole history of the technology of photography has been the history of the reduction of the costs involved in taking a photograph. Large format -> medium format -> 35mm -> instant polaroids -> disposable cameras -> digital with reduced if any processing costs -> multi function phones with increasingly better cameras.

Once upon a time people paid for wedding photographers. All the weddings I've been to in the last five maybe ten years or so have included a request to bring some kind of camera with the invite and the couple will select the best from those submitted. And they want them all, thank you very much. Most of what they end up with is people taking pictures of people taking pictures. It's a faithful rendition of the experience.

They (or Malcolm Gladwell) say you need 10,000 hours of practise to achieve expertise in a chosen field. It doesn't follow that 10,000 people can produce a substitute for expertise within an hour, but for the majority of people it will be good enough.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 2:22 pm  

Aye, and on an associated point, back in the day the snotty teenager's dream was to have a proper decent hi fi sound setup that could demolish buildings and faithfully reproduce the footsteps of a moth. However nowadays sound quality seems to have died a death, tinny mp3 sound via a tinny mono speaker or £1 headphones seem fine. A recording of a concert on a mobile phone seems fine to them*. I reckon many folk wouldn't even recognise their chosen music if they heard it on a proper setup!

Each of course to his own, but they don't know what they're missing and probably never will.

* (But there is an internet service which will match the proper recording of your gig to your tinny recording so you can end up with your video and a "proper" soundtrack. I forget what it's called but vbfg will deffo know)

[Bullseye]

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 2:29 pm  

I don't think it's as big an issue at gigs as is made out. I saw the Foals (who are dead popular with the young uns) at a sellout at Rock City last month and there weren't many kids filming it on their phones. Mind you it was a heck of a crush.

There was one lass who tried to film the whole thing on her phone but it must have been pants since she kept getting jostled in the crowd. She was daft enough to keep giving the evil eye to people for unavoidably barging into her though.

Let's face it, if you hold your arm in the air for a long period it gets uncomfortable after a bit.

Re: Mobile phones at gigs/theatre : Fri Apr 12, 2013 3:02 pm  

Diavolo Rosso wrote:

Christ this thread is like doing voluntary work at an old people's home.

Show a bit o' respect, you young whelp.
In my day we respected our elders ... etc etc

Am I getting any visitors?