I happened to be in Birmingham today and spotted a crowd gathering by the old Town Hall. They were staring at the old Central Library building which had two big demolition machines in front of it. I was surprised – I thought it was going to be preserved as a prime example of 1970s brutalist architecture but apparently not. We all waited around a while as there had been a delay with the paperwork. But eventually the water sprayers sprung into life and the big concrete “nibbler” tugged at one of the top panels until it fell to the ground, slowed down by the netting that had been wrapped around the building.  At the rate they’re going, I guess the whole process will take days if not weeks. Here’s a speeded up video of the first few concrete pieces being removed:

So what has this got to do learning to video using your phone?  Apart from it being a prime example of why knowing how to video on your phone is useful, what happened this morning gave me a few reminders of how to get the best from using phone video:

  • While we were hanging around, I filmed a bit of the scene but someone phoned me mid-video, which stopped the recording :-(
    • TIP: Put your phone into Airplane mode to stop this happening. I bang on about this on my video courses but that doesn’t stop me forgetting to do it in the heat of the moment!
  • The woman next to me ran out of battery power while trying to film it all.
    • TIP: Carry a battery back up pack with you. They only cost a few pounds and they’re small enough to fit in a pocket. You can video at the same time as you’re recharging and depending on their capacity, you can recharge your phone from flat several times before they need recharging, which is brilliant as videoing can quickly drain your phone’s power.
  • There were a few false starts where we thought the demolition process was beginning  but didn’t. So after about 20 minutes of intermittently hand-holding the phone, my arms were very achy.
    • TIP: If you haven’t got a tripod with you, improvise. I moved so I was next to a bit of scaffolding where I could rest the phone. I still needed to hold it, but it took the pressure off my arm.
  • Someone else ran out of space on their phone just as the demolition started.
    • TIP: Check on your phone’s free storage capacity regularly. If you like doing video, keep at least 1Gb free which should give you 10 mins+ of videoing time in high quality.  (You’ll need more free space if you’ve got a 4K phone camera). Free up space by deleting old photos and videos that you no longer need or you’re confident you’ve got backed up in a couple of different places elsewhere, not just in iCloud. For iPhones, check the “Recently deleted” folder – any photos or videos you’ve deleted in the last 30 days will still be in there. To free up space, you’ll need to delete them permanently if you’re happy that you won’t need them again.

If that’s inspired you to learn more about how to use your smartphone’s video capabilities, I’m running another “Making business videos with your smartphone” workshop soon.  More details here.

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