Question Time

Last night (Friday 26^th March) we put your questions to Andrew Selous and Jenny Bone who are two for the candidates in the general election. It went really well and looked good on camera and it was very interesting. I now have a better understanding of how the election all works; I am not ashamed to admit that I get a bit lost with it all but now have a much better understanding! We had some great questions submitted on development of Leighton Buzzard, Education, Commuting, MPs second homes and Buzzer Buses to name a few. All the answer very interesting and give us, the voters, food for though. As soon as the footage is edited we will be bringing it to you on this website. A massive 'thanks' to them and the LBtv members who gave up their time to help out.

I had to leave before the end of the interviews as I was heading to Leighton Buzzard Theatre to watch the LB Drama Group's production of Season's Greetings. I am literally downloading the content from the camera and my full review will be on Show 2 on the 7^th April. A little sneak peek: It was really good, very funny and entertaining! (The play, not my review!)

We are getting really close to show 2 and there is still so much to do. We have to work on promoting the show to make sure as many people as possible know it is on. We have produced some flyers which I have already spotted around LB. The LBtv Group have another meeting Monday so we will discuss it then.

LB Drama Group – Break a leg

I was delighted to attend the final dress rehearsal of the LB Dram Group's production of Season's Greetings last night. The whole cast made me very welcome and I managed to get some interviews before they all jumped into character for the final full rehearsal. I was very impressed with the set that was built by Nigel Carnell, who Chairman of the group, it looked fantastic and really wetted my appetite to see the play on Friday evening. To the whole cast for tonight: Break a leg!

We are all set to record the interviews with the potential candidates to represent us in Parliament. I may be wrong but as it stands now we still have not have a representative from the Liberal Democrat Party. This may not still be the case but at the time of writing this blog I am afraid it is. There is still time for you to submit your questions though. Check out the homepage: www.leightonbuzz.com

At LBtv we are always looking for ideas and suggestions of stories that we can cover. One of the latest suggestions is to find out about the tunnels that apparently run under the High Street. I must admit that I have never heard about them before but many other locals have and say they are shrouded in mystery. So have you heard about them? Have you been in them? Do you have any photos? If you know anything about them then we want to hear from you. Get in touch the usual ways J

Dress rehearsal

I am off tonight to meet the LB Dram Group and interview some of them before tomorrow night's first performance of Season's Greetings. I am really excited and can't wait to see the show. You will be able to see my review in Show 2 on the 7^th April.

The LB News published an article today about the upcoming interviews with the candidates from the main 3 political parties. If you have done so already, please submit your questions.

Meeting tonight...

The LBtv group met again tonight to prepare for show 2. Things are starting to come together for the show; there is still some filming to do and lots of editing. We have some really interesting items and I can't wait for everyone to see them!

One of the great things about our meetings since we aired show 1 is that we are discussing how to video, tips for filming and editing techniques rather than when, how and where to do the show. We have always said that once we get show one done and dusted, the other shows will come far easier. This certainly seems the case.

I am preparing for an item this week. I will be going along to watch and review Leighton Buzzard Drama Group's production of Season's Greetings. The show is on from Thursday 25^th until 27^th at the theatre in Lake Street. I am really excited, I know the group have been working really hard on the production and I am sure it will be really good. Of course, as a reviewer I will be completely honest but I just have a good feeling about the play. It will be the first time in over 10 years since I have done something "to camera" so I am quite nervous too.

We welcomed a new member to the LBtv family tonight. Leighton Buzzard resident Tom Daly joins the group after being introduced by our very own Mick Flynn. Tom has an interest in making videos and was telling us about some of the films he has done which sound great. We hope to get some on the website or on the show really soon.

 

Great support from the community

I spoke to Jessica Cunniffe from the LB News today about our election special. There is a chance this might be in the paper on Wednesday. I think the support we get from the community is fantastic. I know I am always going on about it and thanking different people but without this support we would find things very hard.

Talking of support...A while ago during an LBtv meeting it was suggested that we have a PayPal 'donate' button for people who want to help and donate. I have added this button to the home page of our site. Although we have done us best to keep costs to an absolute minimum there are times when we do/will need money. For example, if we want to borrow a location (say, a village hall) to do interviews then we would need to pay to hire it or buying batteries for the microphones or paying for some posters to be printed...although these are not huge sums they still would currently come from our own pockets. Maybe we need to do a telethon? ;)

If you have any suggestions how we can raise funds then let me know.

Yohan – The Tribute

In LBtv show 1 the public decided that Lee Malone should dress up and perform in Leighton Buzzard as a one man tribute to Yohan, the man known as 'The Guitar Man of Leighton Buzzard'.

I am pleased to announce that this will be taking place very soon and the footage will be show on Show 2 on the 7^th April at 8pm.

So if you happen to be round Leighton Buzzard High Street this week you may see Lee. If you do, feel free to say hello!

Also, if you have a suggestion or a challenge for Lee, let us know and maybe your suggestion will be put to the public vote!

Want to be an LB MP?

The LBtv are finalising details for a series of shows about the upcoming general election. In these show we are giving the people of Leighton Linslade the opportunity to ask the Parliamentary Candidates from the 3 main political parties in the area questions on local or national issues. The viewers are able to submit questions via the website, via Twitter @leightonbuzz or just email them to tv@leightonbuzz.com

The shows will be recorded next week and aired soon after.

We are still making preparations for LBtv part 2. The team are filming and editing and I have been working on new a new animated ‘contact us’ graphic.

The LBtv team meet again this Monday at the fantastic Ashwell Arms to continue working on plans for the show. We hope to have some posters out soon so look out for them!

Election special

The LBtv group are currently organising a very special show in preparation for the general election. We are still finalising details but we want your questions to put to the candidates for our area.

We will have more information soon so start thinking of those questions!!

A quick update...

Just a quick couple of updates....

The LBtv Team were out and about over the weekend recording some content for show 2. They spent time on Saturday at the Oxjam event at the High Street. From what I hear it was a great event, I look forward to seeing the footage!

Once again I would like to thank the LB-News for their coverage of the show. It was a great article and helped raised our profile a bit...which is always good! It is always interesting how the hits on the site always go up if we are mentioned in the press or on a forum etc.

The LBtv group are due to meet this week to share some skills. Between us we are going to have some mini-workshops on camera work, editing and web design.

We are about to arrange an interview with a former boxer who has been doing some work with a local charity. Not sure when this will happen but I will keep you posted.

In the words of Mick Flynn on his LBt(v) outtakes: “that’s all folks”

Are you watching this space?

The LBtv group met last night. It was the first time we had met since the live show and everyone still seemed to think it was a good idea to continue and make another show!

Now we have finally produced a show it makes the meeting much easier. Rather than discussing what we could do and how it will work we were able to get down to the important things like content and a date for show 2.

Show 2 will go out live on Wednesday 7^th April at 8pm.

The entire group had ideas and suggestions on how we can improve the show which means you guys, the viewers, are in for a real treat! One of the suggested ideas was to reduce then length of the videos and have a bit more ‘live’

We came up with around 14 suggested items for the show so we are now frantically working on those and making preparations. We will be making a video in Saturday at the Market Cross, our interactive presenter Hannah will be performing so if you are about, pop over and say hi! The event is part of the fantastic Oxjam.

Until we have insurance we are going to have to keep live content and the adventurous creation of videos/content to minimum to reduce risk. We are working on an editorial policy which is part of the requirements for getting liability insurance – All quite boring very necessary!

The group also decided that we are going to use the skills amongst us to help each other. We are going to get together soon and hold workshops on filming/using a camera, editing and web design. These skills are really useful and it is great we are able to share them with each other. The next plan is to hold a workshop and invite anyone to attend. Another opportunity for me to use the following phrase on this blog again: Watch This Space....is becoming a bit of a catchphrase!

I have finally edited the show using the back-up tapes. It seems to have taken forever! I now need to find a site that will host the video and allow us to embed it on our site. YouTube is the obvious answer but the show is around 45+ minutes, YouTube only allows a maximum of 10 minutes. I tried a site called MegaUpload.com but there are loads of restriction there too...I will look more closely to see if it could work. Watch this space ;-)

LBtv meeting tonight...

There is an LBtv meeting tonight at 7:30 at The Ashwell Arms in Leighton Buzzard. Top of the agenda is show 2 and preparations for it. I was out in the garden yesterday thinking how nice it would be to do one outside!?

I think the group want to look at the format of the show tonight and how many videos we put out, plus it would be nice to have some live guests...let's see what the others say.

We also have had a couple of suggestions for shows so watch this space!

I am still working on getting the video of show 1 online, it should here here/there soon.

An evening with...

I was in London on Friday, nothing to do with LBtv but I got the pleasure of commuting there and back and was very impressed by the trains and service. Ok it was very expensive but the train arrived on time and less than 30 minutes later I was in London and I even managed to get a seat. This is so different from when I had to commute every day between LB and London for work and was forever late or tired from having to stand all the time. Although yesterday I travelled off-peak it just reminded me of another great reason of how lucky we are to have a train line running from our ‘home’

While I was in London I had an opportunity to have a walk up Tottenham Court Road and have a look in some of the electrical shops. I cannot believe how expensive some of the broadcast equipment is! It makes the fact that we put LBtv show 1 on for a huge budget of virtually £0 even more impressive!

Friday evening LBtv was invited to a very special event to get some footage. It was hosted by an amazing lady from Leighton Buzzard called Nicole Witts. Nicole unfortunately suffered from a brain tumour a few years ago and thankfully, now recovered she decided to raise awareness. Her first event was held at LB Golf Club in aid of brain tumour action and was a huge success and completely sold out. More information and a video will be posted as soon as we get some time to edit the video. Also attending the event was local MP Andrew Selous...LBtv got the chance to catch up with so look out for some news about an upcoming possible feature ;-)

LBplayer? BUZZi?

I am currently in the process of gathering the footage of the from the streaming site, which automatically records and saves it, and trying to get format it so it can be watch again on the site.

For some reason the recorded files are all over the place, one minute the show starts then its back to the countdown clock AND the entire footage is about 2 hours long. I am sure we only did about 50 minutes! Luckily we have the whole thing on tape. I just need access to a Macbook Pro so I can put the show together.

Another interesting thought - we are going to allow people to view the show again on the site. So what should we call that part? The BBC have the iPlayer, ITV have the itv player - what should we call it? BUZZi? LBplayer? Have you got an idea for us? Let us know.

We are still getting ideas coming in for new shows. I will keep you posted!

Ian

Video for the show?

Do you have a video for the this website? Do you have an idea for a video? Let us know and get in touch!

Show one is finally, as they say, is in the can!

Yesterday was a really busy day. I had a couple of videos to edit and needed to create some graphics for the show and set up the ‘studio’. There seems to be so much to do but luckily I just finished as they guys started to arrive for a rehearsal.

We were still rehearsing and making decision about the running order of the show right up until about 20 minutes before we went live. I guess that is part of the fun of live tv!

As we went live I was very nervous and was overjoyed that we could see we have 3 viewers! Knowing that someone was watching kind of made the whole thing worthwhile.

The show ran really smoothly and seemed to be over in a flash. The whole team did so well with everyone playing their part. What a feeling it was when we closed the show and went off air...one I will never forget.

We also learnt a lot about the show and have a meeting on Monday to discuss plans for show 2. One little thing I wish I had done was to add instructions to the live page letting people know they may need to refresh the page. Streaming a long show like that can cause the connection to get stuck (I am sure there is a technical term for it) I will make sure a note gets added to the page.

I am delighted to announce that we had around 170 viewers for the show which is amazing, so thank you very much if you took the time to have a look. This gives us a great foundation to build on and make show 2 even better.

This all starts tomorrow night when I am out filming at Leighton Buzzard Golf Club. A local lady called Nicole Witts is hosting a very special Spring Fashion/ Make-up Show in aid of Brain Tumour Action. There are lots of great things happening including a performance from X Factor contestants Voices with Soul. Look out for a full report on the website and the next show!

I mentioned in my blog yesterday that I had loads of people to thanks. Well I forgot one massive ‘Thank You’. It is to The Ashwell Arms in Leighton Buzzard. They have very kindly allowed us to use their back room for our meetings. Without them this project would have been very difficult so a massive thank you to them and if you happen to be passing – please pop in and buy stuff...!

Ian

Tonight's the night...

It has been months of preparation. There has been blood sweat and tears but we are finally launching Leighton Buzzard tv to to world tonight!

It is all happening from 8pm on Leightonbuzz.com – Tune in and you will be able to watch the show live featuring Elite Training in LB, Mick Flynn’s series – ‘In Search of Excellence’ with 2 episodes!! A fantastic local signer called Rosie Riley, meet LB’s Bike Club, local speaker and businessman Dale Rockell, fascinating interview with one of Leighton Buzzard Drama groups longest standing members and more!

The technical side of the show has proven to be hard than we imagined, especially as we have done this show on a very very very small budget i.e nothing. We have been very lucky and people have loaned us equipment or the LBtv group have used their own stuff.

There are so many people to thank in advance of the show. I need to thank the group for all their hard work and giving up their time to make this happen. I also need to thank Central Bedfordshire Libraries, The Culture Cafe, LB Drama Group, Ashtons Garage, Geoff Hutchins, Rosie Riley, Elite Training, Dale Rockell, Dillamore's Furnishers, DJ Services, Freecycle, Bike Club – Tejesh Mistry and many more so if I have forgot to mention you, I am sorry but thanks!

I hope you enjoy the show. Please let us know what you thought of it!

Ian