Home » Posts tagged 'hugo dixon'
Tag Archives: hugo dixon
Oxford University taped 1982-1984: Forty hours of video of undergraduate life and activities
From early 1982 to graduation in June 1984 I used a Sony Betamax kit to video undergraduate life at Oxford University.
The 18 tapes and some 40 hours of content I am digitizing includes:
- The Oxford Union Debating Society (featuring Hilali Noordeen) The day I was in the Union Chamber I was sitting next to Susanna White and Steve Garvey who were shooting a documentary about ‘Women in Oxford’.
- The Oxford Theatre Group at the Edinburgh Fringe (Featuring all the plays: 13 Clocks, The Hunger Artist, Edward II, Titus Alone directed by Patrick Harbinson, produced by Nicky King and the Oxford Review)
- I shot this over three weeks while helping out behind the scenes at St. Mary’s Street Hall (the OTG venue) and kipping in a Free Mason’s Lodge by the Castle. Nicky King and Matthew Faulk edited in my Balliol Room (now the Oxford Internet Institute) cum edit suite the following term.
- The Oxford Student Union elections.
- The Lightweights Boat Crew in training with David Foster et al (11th March 1983)
- Torpids (various)
- Romeo & Juliet (in which I played Mercutio and lost my pants during the fight scene)
- The Taming of the Shrew: an OUDS production (in which I played Baptista) And the rehearsals.
- Abigail’s Party (directed by Anthony Geffen)
- Various other plays and boat crews
- The May Day Celebrations 1982
- Training for the Oxford Students Union president
- Oxford Television News (Various episodes of OTN in which Hugo Dixon does a Jeremy Paxman and we are introduced to the Chicken Pal Society at the Gate of India + TCG, PWG and CJP) (9th May 1983)
- OTN. Visit of Prince Charles (18th May 1983) + ‘Exter guy in glasses’ or is this in fact a Jesus guy doing a ‘party political broadcast’.
- Oxford University Boxing
- A workshop on how to shoot video (10th February 1983)
- A corporate promotional film for the language school ‘Speakeasy’
- Windsurfing
- The Oxford & Cambridge Varsity Ski Trip to Wengen
- perhaps a play produced by Tessa Ross directed by Clive Brill
- perhaps Andrew Sullivan directed by Alex Ogilvie in ‘Another Country’
- and perhaps the Women’s Eight.
and various other antics around Balliol College and the university that will reveal themselves in the course of being downloaded, graded and digitized.
I believe my aim should be to use this as the foundation for a documentary.
I need to raise £2000 to digitize/archive this content and am therefore looking for backers.
P.S. It is six weeks since I was behind a camera. I may be about to shoot some swimmers for a swimming e-learning app but if you have anything immediate let me know.
The phases of becoming a blogger
It’s rare for me to miss a few days but the simple truth I am too wrapped up in the rebuild of one ‘storyline’ in the OU Business School website.
This and preparing another presentation, this time on ‘blogging’ having opened what will become a series with ‘Social Media’ last week.
I see three necessary phases in becoming a blogger:
- Listen
- Comment
- Create (and collaborate)
‘Listen’ as in reading loads, being led wherever someone appeals to you, ‘listening in’ on the conversations that are being started and saving these sites to peruse regularly.
There were over 150 million blogs the last time I cared to seek out the statistics.
How do you even begin to find those few that you are prepared to read on a regular basis?
Clearly you cannot read everything; even in your own field of interest, unless it is the tightest niche, might have thousands of commentors.
I go for ‘like minds’, authors with whom you feel you could converse, those you wish to emulate, whose thoughts maybe like your own, but fully fledged.
I am currently following Andrew Sullivan a bit, but some of the many other bloggers he lists a lot. Andrew is British born and raised, though now living in New York, somewhat right-wing (has always been wedded to the Conservative Party), gay (he played the lead role in Another Country at Oxford though took a while longer to come out – at Harvard I believe.
Is his background relevant? Probably not, this is about intellect, confidence, informed opinion and a degree of early precociousness and desire to be heard.
His intellect and presumption took him to Oxford (Modern History) and then Harvard.
By all accounts, with 1,000,000 page views a month Sullivan has many followers.
He does this by
- being well informed
- being willing to express an opion
We look to commentators for ‘breaking views’, as another Oxford graduate of this same era puts it; though Hugo Dixon, a grandson (or great grandson) of Winston Churchill has a somewhat different background to that of Sullivan.
Irrelevant? Both men are a product of their intellect, so more nature that nurture in this case.
What they had in common as undergraduates was a precocious desire to express their opinion. Is it any wonder that we are drawn to what they have to say ? Even more so now than in previous eras we are in desperate need of people to filter the overwhelming deluge of information and offer some path through-out, in their different ways these too do it. All I need are other minds like these across other fields.
They make a convincing point succinctly.
I’m clicking through the 60+ blogs Andrew Sullivan lists in his blogroll and find it hard not to click the ‘save bookmark’ option with every one of these. Nice when someone has done it for you, though I am yet to come across the UK equivalent. The idea that these are read but Sullivan regularly is also daft; look at my own blog roll (somewhere needs to tear a few off for me).
Any suggestions for the most informed bloggers to follow?
Stephen Fry is of the same ilk as the two given above, though more embedded in the performing arts than Andrew Sullivan.
In search of the perfect blogroll. Any suggestions?
It’s rare for me to miss a few days but the simple truth I am too wrapped up in the rebuild of one ‘storyline’ in the OU Business School website.
This and preparing another presentation, this time on ‘blogging’ having opened what will become a series with ‘Social Media’ last week.
I see three necessary phases in becoming a blogger:
- Listen
- Comment
- Create (and collaborate)
‘Listen’ as in reading loads, being led wherever someone appeals to you, ‘listening in’ on the conversations that are being started and saving these sites to peruse regularly.
There were over 150 million blogs the last time I cared to seek out the statistics. How do you even begin to find those few that you are prepared to read on a regular basis? Clearly you cannot read everything; even in your own field of interest, unless it is the tightest niche, might have thousands of commentors.
I go for ‘like minds’, authors with whom you feel you could converse, those you wish to emulate, whose thoughts maybe like your own, but fully fledged.
I am currently following Andrew Sullivan a bit, but some of the many other bloggers he lists a lot.
Andrew is British born and raised, though living in New York, somewhat right-wing and from a modest background. His intellect and presumption took him to Oxford (Modern History) and then Harvard. By all accounts, with 1,000,000 page views a month he has many followers. He does this by a) being well informed and b) being willing to express an opion – we look to commentators for ‘breaking views’ as another Oxford graduate of this same era puts it, though Hugo Dixon, a grandson ( or great grandson) of Winston Churchill has a somewhat different background.
What they had in common as undergraduates was a precocious desire to express their opinion.
Is it any wonder that we are attracted to their words, if only to disagree? They make a convincing point succintly.
I’m clicking through the 60+ blogs Andrew Sullivan lists in his blogroll and find it hard not to click the ‘save bookmark’ option.
Nice when someone has done it for you, though I am yet to come across the UK equivalent.
Any suggestions?
Mind Bursts 