The performers in the show are phenomenal (and nice folks too) so as well as doing interviews and things I tried out a bit of trampolining and juggling with them. I also suggested they use me for one of the routines that trial biker Thibault Phillipe performs. We videoed it and the Hippodrome stuck it on their YouTube account the other day.

At the time of typing, the video’s racked up 157,00 views. It’s also been picked up by CBS News, The Huffington Post, The Daily What, ABC Eyewitness News and The Mirror so far.  I’m pretty chuffed with that.

Anyway, here’s a video of me putting myself in peril for your amusement:

A couple of weeks back Will Perrin put some thoughts down, responding to government plans to encourage the development of up to twenty new local TV stations by 2015. The general gist of his post (although I’d encourage you to read it) was that there’s no need, it won’t work and, besides, the web would do the job better.

Nick Booth has built on this and claims that Birmingham’s informal, fledgling network of local, mainly volunteer-led news websites shows that people are already delivering the kind of activity Jeremy Hunt says he wants to encourage using TV stations (see Nick’s post for details).

My generally unconsidered view on this is that establishing a local TV station wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing – if someone (and I think City TV are still looking to get involved) can make the finances stack up and run something that doesn’t depend on handouts then great. It just doesn’t seem to be a particularly forward-thinking thing to spend public cash on.

If money/time/effort/attention/whatever is going to be spent on local media, I’d rather it was spent on getting people using the web and using it better – helping them access local information and publishing it themselves. There’s no reason video can’t be part of that – see I Am Birmingham for an example of someone using a website with a free template and a YouTube account to do regular-ish video content.

Also in the web’s favour – costs and barriers to entry are lower and the skills required are more readily transferrable. It’s also relevant to the government’s current strategy of closing down public services and replacing them with websites (Jobcentre Plus, Business Link and so on).

The whole ‘more TV by 2015’ thing bothers me too. 2015 is five years off. Bear in mid that YouTube is only five years old and you get a sense of  how much things could change in the intervening years.

Anyway, I feel I’m starting to edge slightly further away from CiB-land now. If you want to get involved in the debate then see what people are saying on Will and Nick‘s posts.

Well, wonder no more, because those enterprising chaps at The Electric cinema have been busy making a fine selection of documentary videos which give a unique insight into the inner workings of the cinema, from the lost art of cinema organists, to the journey into the third dimension.

The clips have been lovingly crafted by the cinema’s owner and lead guitarist Tom Lawes, and I found myself absorbed by them, so set a few minutes aside to give them a watch. All the videos are on the cinema’s Youtube channel, but as a taster, here’s The Electric’s guide to 35mm projection:

What’s interesting is how he’s using a YouTube channel to upload little work-in-progress snippets so you can see how he works and how the piece is coming along. Hoping he can keep this up.

In other Digishorts news, three of the filmmakers are looking for producers for their commissioned films.

Now the trailer for their new piece ‘All Consuming Love (Man In a Cat)’ has been featured on the global YouTube homepage. That’s pretty impressive stuff – the online video equivalent of being hit by lightning twice, so congrats to them.

Here’s the featured trailer: