Full cycle for my Slow TV film at the Slow Media Conference

In March a particularly pleasing moment happened in relation to my studying of Slow TV. Not the submission of my film (which as much as I enjoyed making it, it was a huge relief to get it off my shoulders). It was the opportunity to meet three of people involved in developing what has become Slow TV, having interviewed them in Norway last year for my documentary.

Arriving at the wonderful Corsham Court campus of Bath Spa University on the morning of the Slow Media Symposium I stopped to enjoy the spectacle of the peacocks, and was soon followed in by three NRK employees attending the day of talks around Slow Media (most of which was not about TV).

Arriving at Slow Media Symposium - bumped into the chief
of NRK2 and commissioner for NRK. Photo by Thomas Hellum.

Reminiscent of Wayne Manor (or The Xavier Institute in the X-Men), initial greetings were exchanged and before I knew it a mobile phone snap had been taken, popping up on my twitter feed a short time later as the talks got under way. My perhaps slightly manic smile was maybe down to the fact that what for me had started as 'just a university project for my masters degree' had taken me to Norway, filmed professionals who had made Slow TV, gone to a Slow TV production in Trondheim - here I was, about to present my film to a conference and a further opportunity to meet some of the folk from Norway again.

Later in the day I got to show my 29 minute documentary about Slow TV, which was a pleasing opportunity. The icing on the cake was the comments from Thomas Hellum, one of the innovators of Norwegian Slow TV, who had been my principal NRK contact for Slow TV for about a year, and had always responded well to what seemed to me to be to be an irritating flow of questions and discussion in that time. At least that had been my worry.

"Can I just say, for us in NRK it's been a real pleasure having Tim's eyes on our mainly practical view - making TV for the viewers, and Tim's research and questioning our work has been making ourselves more conscious about our work, and it's a real pleasure, so thankyou, thankyou Tim."

Well, thankyou too, Thomas and the number of other folk from NRK and Norway I interacted with in that year - I could not have worked on the project or produced my film to the levels I did without your helpfulness. It was a bit like coming full cycle on the project - from inception to its first showing to a group.
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