UK parent blogger, Clare Macnaughton, A Modern Military Mother, last year separated from her husband, a serving officer in the RAF, and moved out of military quarters to begin a new life in an old damp rented house in the Wiltshire countryside. She has no idea what she is doing but her long-term goal is to live more self sufficiently.
The advent of the Internet has created a broadcast platform for anyone with a creative need. It provides an opportunity for the person on the street to put themselves out there and really, there are no rules. But of course, you take your chances and in the alternate universe that is the Internet there is a band of folk that range from trolls to fairy Godpeople to create a rollercoaster journey of trial and error.
There is blogging, which is the written word with still images. Vlogging can be done with a web cam, where the blogger vlogs one off by recording themselves speaking about a topic that interests them and publishes the shorter single camera content. But I wanted to know could I go to the next step could I create a pilot TV show and see if I could entice investors to take my blog to the next stage and so AMMMTV was born.
Do you remember the film Waynes World? A film about public access cable tv which was the 80s answer to self broadcast possibilities. Today, we have IPTV, which is Internet TV where companies can host your homemade programmes for all to see.
Internet platforms such as You Tube and Vimeo enable wannabe filmmakers opportunities to share content and IPTV is the next step. With IPTV you can create your own channel.
I wanted to make a magazine show and include in it the colourful characters that populate my life. It was based loosely on the 70s magazine show Pebble Mill at One but it’s the Internet and I wanted it to be edgier, like blogging; more honest and real. I watch Nigella Lawson and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall effortlessly stuff an organic mushroom and advocate this aspirational lifestyle of self-sustaining fabulous home entertaining. I want to know how simple is it really to just rustle up a Lemon Drizzle Cake. They make it look so easy on the telly.
I am not a chef or a gardener or a farmer – I am just an ordinary state educated mother of 2 young children. Can I just art direct my life into some haven of homeliness like Hugh or Nigella?
Quite frankly, it would appear not. I will confess that after 15 years in PR I have been involved with making some telly. I oversaw the production of 12 part documentary series about solo ocean racing so producing content and ideas isn’t new to me but obviously this was done with somebody else’s money!
Make no mistake TV is expensive and even our rough cut AMMMTV pilot episode cost me £300 and I had to tap into a contact that sponsored me on the equipment hire to the value of around £2000. I did this show on mates rates as I pulled in a cameraman and editor, who did it for a very good price. Plus my friend at the agency KifiCreative very generously rustled up a re-designed logo to reflect the new offer.
We had no time to lay down the format either so it was literally a one-take show. There were a couple of outtakes but the more outtakes the more edit time it would consume that I couldn’t afford.
I managed to rope in The Shire folk. The people in my hood who enrich my life and they all very kindly donated their time:
The guests were:
Ant Clarke
Musician and music producer – worked with Rick Astley on his world tour in the 80s
Stuart Taylor
A&V engineer for Maclaren (F1 team) and is small holder has 25 pigs
Mary Ann Seighart
Columnist in The Independent and Radio 4 presenter
The slots are:
Intro:
What’s it all about
In the Veggie Patch:
A place where I will be keeping pigs and veggies.
In the Living Room:
A guest spot for a chat with someone from my local community
In the Kitchen:
In the pilot I tried to make a one-take cake with amusing consequences
Dining Room Debate:
We discuss whether self sustainable living is even possible. I say no!
Jamming Out:
Ant Clarke sings us one of his tunes to finish the show
The subject was how easy is it to live a more self-sustaining lifestyle. And so the show was made. A local punk band The A Heads and a musician called Volatile Headspace did the music for me so I don’t have to incur any rights fees on broadcast.
At the moment the show is in edit just having the music samples to be added and then I will broadcast the teaser working with an IPTV provider called SimpleStream who have agreed to support me.
I think in a few weeks time I will be ready to go. I have a 10 part series in plan but the bottom line is it takes money and if I had to pay everyone who helped I think it would be a minimum of £5000 per episode. Now how you make money doing this is another article altogether.
More details about the making of the AMMMTV Pilot Episode can be found at my blog.
Press release!
FIRST UK PARENT BLOGGER TV PREMIERE
UK Parent Blogger, Clare Macnaughton, A Modern Military Mother Launches Pilot Episode Of AMMMTV
Premieres on:
Controversial TV
(Sky Channel 200)
9pm, Saturday 9th June, 2012
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