Norway Day 360 Slow TV from Ålesund

Courtesy TV2 Nyhetene Facebook Page

Gratulerer med dagen!

Happy Norway Day! Today Norway has a national holiday celebrating its Constitution Day.

How fitting that one of the national channels, TV2, is doing a Slow TV style broadcast via the internet.

Facebook and Norwegian broadcaster TV2, have created a Live 360 video experience from the top of a mountain, overlooking the beautiful fjords of Ålesund in Norway.

For the first time ever, people around the world can be transported to Norway and experience in 360 the calming water and sun over this beautiful mountain enclosed fjord for the whole day. All live and fully immersive.

With the sun due to set at 22:33 CEST (13:33 California PDT, 16:33 New York EDT), people can tune in to bring a relaxing moment to their day, no matter where there are watching from.

To experience this unique viewpoint of a Norwegian fjord you can go to TV 2’s Facebook Page on mobile, desktop or VR headset.

If you are viewing without a 360 headset of Google Cardboard type devices for mobile, the image will display flat, as in the inset picture.

The camera will continue to broadcast until 23:00 local time (22:00 BST, 17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT).

TV2 have previously produced a major Slow TV project, "Fly Med Oss" - Fly with Us in May and June 2014 - with helicopter journeys from every airport in Norway. 

Fly Med Oss was the first commercial Slow TV project and won the Beyond HD Achievement in Image Capture award at the TVBAwards in London in 2014, beating the BBC and two other nominees. A short taster on this YouTube clip below, more on YouTube.

If you want further livestreamed Slow TV style webcams outside of the TV2 transmission, the webcam from Fløyen, Bergen is a fantastic location for keeping an eye on people and the panorama there, or a dedicated birdwatching and northern lights channel from Norway at Zooom.

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Production Diary - 2nd London Visit - Part 1

This blog would not exist were it not for my doing a Masters Degree in Documentary Production at Salford University and choosing Slow TV as my major project. For this major project I am not just researching Slow TV, but doing some filming experiments to understand production methods and techniques, but also to make a documentary about Slow TV.

My production took me on a second filming trip to London last week for two interviews. Cue preparing paperwork, schedule, locations ahead of Thursday. Not to mention ensuring cameras are booked from university, correct frame rate set, resolution, region etc.

Arriving in London from Manchester around 12:30, I had to quickly recce a spot to interview at 1pm. I was to interview Ola Gråberg from Norway's main commercial channel, TV2. TV2 had undertaken a Slow TV project earlier in the year and were in town for an industry awards ceremony later that night. I'll write more about that project and the award another time soon. Ola was the project manager for that project.

An important question about Slow TV: could such an endeavour work on commercial television? Think about how TV is funded and how commercial channels rely on adverts a few times an hour to finance their existence and broadcasts. TV2's 'Fly med Oss' (Fly with Us) was the first Slow TV engagement by a commercial station.

The show had escaped notice by English speaking media - so even with carefully arranged research methods, Fly med Oss was entrenched deeply in only Norwegian speaking media; however I am quite a thorough chap when it comes to information gathering. It did not escape forever, Just a few weeks ago I discovered this commercial project and was able to arrange this interview in time. I need to explore the commercial broadcast question for my film about Slow TV.

I found a suitable cafe where I could set up equipment and film, mindful of health and safety and look out for the security of the equipment too. I met Ola at a hotel just around a corner and then had an interview over a good latte. What you see in the picture is the canon 7D mounted on a dolly trolly - which worked at the perfect height with the table. I recorded the interview on a zoom device, recorded with a dead kitten.

After a good half hour of conversation, I bid Ola good luck and farewell and headed off for my next interview in the Covent Garden / Trafalgar Square. Unaware to me, a camera error message en route at Trafalgar Square heralded a problem. The next morning I found that everything on the memory card before Trafalgar Square had been deleted. Mercifully the entire audio had recorded well, so the interview information remains and the necessary soundbites for the documentary can be used.

Next interview: the international distributor for the Slow TV.

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