January

After rather unbelievably reading a Tweet from someone within my social media sphere who stated that he believed in the Mayan Prophecy (you know, the whole 2012-the-world’s-going-to-end-nonsense). I felt compelled to write a post about my take on the whole end of the world scenario.

It’s now the most popular post on my blog with an average of around 2000 visits to that page alone per week. At times it’s been as high as 15,000 per week. It’s also been the reason for some disturbed individuals sending me nasty messages because I don’t believe in their crazy fantasy world. Hey ho.

Some outtakes from Brian’s Horizon on Gravity were put up on YouTube.

I also found out that I was going to be working on the new X-Files movie. Some of my Tweets from that time (1, 2, 3, 4) are pretty obvious about that fact, but only really in retrospect…

February

February was really all about our trip to San Francisco and the TED conference where Brian spoke.

I was also working on the very fabulous film Water Lilies.

March

Brian was made Professor while we were still in San Francisco, just after his 40th birthday at the beginning of March. That was pretty cool!

My mum came to visit for a bit and during that time we went beachcombing on the Thames and found some cool stuff.

April

This was the coolest month! Right after visiting CERN with both Phil Plait and Chris Morris, I was delivered the super top secret X-Files script. I had a terrible cold and, I learned later in the year, had asthma which was making me very ill. That is my excuse for looking so utterly terrible in this video. :)

May

OK, wait, THIS was the coolest month. Apart from Brian going off to film his Horizon on Time, it included getting my hair cut and dyed like Dana Scully, then flying off to Cannes to ‘interview’ Harrison Ford and having a chat with X-Files’ producer Frank Spotnitz.

June

June was X-Files-tastic!

Excitement was definitely building for the X-Files film and I was caught up in it all. Towards the end of the month, I went to LA for the LA Film Festival to attend a special screening of a couple clips from the film, along with a Q&A with David Duchovny, Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter.

July

X-Files! X-Files! X-Files!

The film premiered at the end of the month and Chris, Frank, David and Gillian attended the London premiere. The day after the premiere Chris and Frank did a signing at Forbidden Planet.

August

Brian and I went to SciFoo in Silicon Valley and had a fabulous holiday in LA being touristy.

September

This is where things start getting a bit weird for me as I found out I was pregnant so had a bit of a awful time over the rest of the autumn dealing with morning sickness and anxiety over scans and blood tests and the like, all the while being unable to talk about it with anyone.

September was also when CERN swtiched on. Along with all the excitement of the whole build up to it came all the nasty emails from the idiots who thought it was going to destroy the Universe and who thought that Brian was somehow the Sith Lord in charge of the destruction of the human race. All that wasn’t too entertaining. Honestly, it’s just not fun at all to be newly pregnant and then receiving emails calling the father of your unborn child the ‘Black Hand of Death’.

Brian on Newsnight the night of CERN’s switch on reminded me exactly why I love him so much.

October

The main things I was thinking of in October were morning sickness. Obama and Jonathan Ross.

I started keeping a pregnancy diary in October as I wasn’t blogging about it, but after a few entries it was pretty much just, “Nauseated. Constipated. Tired. Fat.’ so I decided to give it up. I realised that even in retrospect it would be boring.

My obsession with Obama, of course, was not unique to me. I mainly kept out of the whole election thing on my blog this time around as the Rightwing Christian Republican Dumbshit Bush-lovers (yes, for long-time readers, I mean Amy Proctor, Bull-headed Donna and the other one) caused me such grief before, during and after the last election (did you know that one of them tried to get me fired from my job on Sunshine?!), I wasn’t up for a second round. I was just hoping that they’d get their reward in November when Obama won. And they did. The twunts.

Now, Jonathan Ross.

The whole Daily Mail-fuelled madness just confirmed to me that most people are absolute illogical fucktards and that includes MANY people in positions of ‘power’ in the media. This whole episode has given me LESS hope for the human race than ever before… Thank Christ Obama changed that in November.

November

OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

This month I was up for a new job on telly. I’ve not done any telly for a few years now, mainly because all the web producing I’ve been doing has been keeping me busy. Also because I was enjoying using my brain, being creative, being able to make decisions *myself* which is pretty much unheard of for most TV presenters.

This job, however, seemed different. Not only was it a ‘tech’ programme, but it was a retro tech programme AND it wasn’t a presenter’s role, but an on-camera expert role. So I did the meetings and the screentest and crossed my fingers that I’d get it cos it sounded like it’d be a lot of fun. I had to wait until December for a decision.

This month was also the most stressful pregnancy-wise. Along with waiting for scans and blood tests looking for chromosomal abnormalities in the baby, I also had to have blood tests for various diseases. Having an HIV test- no matter how sure you are- has this funny way of making one become highly illogical. ‘I wonder what the chances are of it turning up a decade later? Two decades later?!! Maybe it DOES and they’ve just not figured that out yet!!! Oh. God. What will I do when they tell me I’ve got HIV?! Oh. God. I’m feeling a bit ill. It’s HIV, I know it.’

Not fun.

Everyone I’ve told about my HIV test worries who has had an HIV test themselves said they went through EXACTLY the same thing. Every. Single. One. So glad to know I’m not the only lunatic… (For the record, I don’t have HIV, nor do I have Hep C or Syphilis. w00t!)

Also, this month Jonathan Ross surprised me by asking me to be his Neu Meeja advisor (or whatever). First thing I did? Got him on Twitter. He’s been Tweeting up a storm!

December

I found out I got the TV job. It’s called Electric Dreams and will be on in April on BBC4. Right before the Christmas break I did the first bit of filming and it’s been good fun.

Brian and I also found out that we’d got a book deal to write a kids’ book on Physics. So that’s going to keep us busy…

This month, generally, has been good mainly because I was finally able to announce my pregnancy. It was getting increasingly difficult for me to hide it as I was getting pretty big fairly early on. This is me a couple days ago.

The other day Brian and I went off to Llandudno in Wales to visit our friend. I got a lovely snap of Brian and Peter talking politics whilst walking along the beach…

And today, the last day of December and 2008, I’m looking forward to an exciting year ahead. I hope you all have a good year!!

If you want to keep track of what I’m doing, check back here over the next few days.

Video from the Premiere:

Video from the Forbidden Planet signing:

The creators of the X-Files have encouraged fan participation since the very beginning. This is why getting hit with a copyright infringement notice from Fox for hosting an X-Files trailer on my YouTube site irked me so very much. There are thousands upon thousands of X-Files fans all over the world who are doing things that can ONLY help promote the film. Everything from fake film posters, to Lego I Want To Believe posters, to diorama’s based on one of the episodes, to the hundreds, thousands of videos on YouTube, to the Gigabytes of fanfic. The internet, creativity and the X-Files go hand in hand.

At the LA Film Festival, there was a very interesting exchange on stage when David Duchovny talked about watching a fan-made video on YouTube which influenced him and made his see Mulder and Scully from ‘the outside’.

Here is the video they watched.

I have told Fox about that video and asked that it not be deleted. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are mentioning that video in loads of the interviews they are doing for the release of the film. I think it would make Fox look incredibly bad were they to get rid of it for ‘copyright infringement’.

I hope they listen to me.

Now, this video gives an idea of what kind of fun was had by all at the X-Files Sneak Peak at the LAFF. It was made by the lovely Mya. Music: Walking in Memphis by Cher. (More below the fold)

Find more videos like this on Big Light

The sound is a bit low on this, but put some headphones on to hear… David Duchovny… talking to me from stage… *sigh* Video by Kate.

Find more videos like this on Big Light

Last week, I received a copyright infringement notice from Google because I have the X-Files teaser trailer on my YouTube account. I am working for Fox, to promote a Fox film and I got served with a copyright infringement notice.

OK, so Fox’s legal department didn’t know I’m working for Fox, therefore I was treated like ‘any old schmo’. They reported me to Google, Google told me they were removing the trailer. Unlike ‘any old schmo’ I was able to get in touch with Fox and was put on a whitelist to protect my account. Fine.

The X-Files trailer in my account has had over 160,000 views. It’s the most popular one on YouTube. A quick guesstimate, however, is that there have been 300,000 views of both the X-Files teaser and the new theatrical trailer on all of the YouTube accounts hosting them. That’s coming up to half a million views of the X-Files trailers. All of them on ‘unofficial’ YouTube accounts.

The demographics available on the teaser trailer in my account:

68% of viewers are male
32% female
23% are 35-45 years old
19% are under 18
18% are 25-35
17% are 18-25
16% are 45-55
7% are over 55

45% of the views have come directly from within YouTube
55% have come from either embedded players or external links

I’m going to assume that the statistics for the trailer are the same on everyone else’s channel. First, that means that the trailer is reaching *exactly* the gender and age demographics that the film industry goes after for a sci-fi, action, thriller. It also means that over half of the views are coming from OUTSIDE YouTube- on blogs and websites which have embedded the trailer. By allowing huge numbers of people to host the trailer on their own YouTube channels, and allowing the trailer to be embedded, it is reaching far more people than from inside YouTube. Also, people viewing it within YouTube are *looking* for it, the people viewing it from outside YouTube are more than likely not searching for it, instead are watching it at one of their regular sites.

So, what might the rationale be for Fox’s legal department to attempt to remove the trailer from YouTube?

1. Maybe they think that Fox should have its own ‘official channel’ and all views should be through that. Well, they *do* have an official channel except, they only put the X-Files theatrical trailer up 3 days ago *and* they labeled it wrong:

Consequently, they’ve got a low rating and a comments page filled with things like:
“this is the x files u noob”
“WTF THIS ISNT THE HAPPENING RETARD”
“whos the stupid fuck who posted this,such fucking ignornace that i want to kill myself”
“It’s the X-files 2 trailer, not the Happening… Be more professional, you are representing your studio on You Tube.”

And so on.

It’s got 25,000 views, but I suspect 100% of the viewers were expecting to see a trailer for The Happening, not the X-Files. Hence the negativity in the comments. What’s most interesting to me is that it’s been three days, yet they’ve not fixed it.

2. Maybe they think that they are losing money by allowing users to host the trailer on their YouTube accounts. Fair enough, they want to earn some money, they are a business after all. Well…

Number one, they need to sort out their official channels first (see above).
Number two, they need to accept that official channels get fewer views (They do, trust me. People would rather embed a video hosted by ‘any old schmo’ than the film studio. Why? That’s an essay in itself.).
Number three, restricting people from using your stuff in YouTube isn’t going to stop them from putting it online anyway.

If a person has an X-Files trailer on their YouTube account and has AdSense, the likelihood of them earning any real money is minuscule. Very few people earn decent money from AdSense. But let’s say like Break A Leg (thanks for the info, Colin!) someone gets 2 million views of the X-Files trailer on their YouTube account and earns $1600. That’s enough money to keep an X-Files fan college student in beer for a while at least.

That works out to be $.80 per 1,000 views. Let’s say that only 1% of the people who watch the trailer end up going to see the film. The film industry earns about $6 per person going to the cinema. That works out to be $60 per 1,000 trailer views on YouTube that Fox earns from ticket sales. So, is Fox more interested in earning $0.80 from AdSense or $60.00 from ticket sales?

Surely, they should be spending time and money thinking of ways to encourage *more* views of the trailer and encourage *more* people to go to the cinema rather than spending that money on the wages of their employees who trawl around YouTube and issuing copyright infringement notices day in and day out removing their own promotional material, making people angry and not earning them any friends.

When TV audience figures are down which affects the number of people viewing TV ads, when the cost of marketing films is going up (because they WASTE huge amount of money imo), does it honestly make sense to try and prevent the number of people seeing the trailers advertising your films? That is what’s going on here. They can try and spin it to say that it’s ‘copyright infringement’, but in reality it’s just shooting themselves in the foot.

Of course, I’m not the only one who has received copyright infringement notices – loads of X-Philes have and not only on YouTube. Some have had their YouTube accounts closed because they had committed the terrible crime of making ‘fan videos’ of the X-Files (clips from the programme cut to music). One of them had over 300,000 views. 300,000. That’s a lot of people interested in a Mulder and Scully shippers video… And now, it’s gone… along with all of those thousands upon thousands of people who would have stumbled upon that video and thought, ‘The X-Files, I loved that show! I wonder what’s going on with the X-Files now…?’

Whereas I think it’s perfectly acceptable for studios to remove full films and programmes from the web (though I honestly don’t think they are losing any money to people who would be satisfied watching a small, pixelated version of a tv show divided up into 10 minute chunks on YouTube, I mean, that viewer isn’t going to be buying a DVD anyway… but… I’ll give that one to them cos of bit torrents), but to go after people for copyright infringement of PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL is stupid. Equally, going after people for fan-made music videos is stupid as it’s “PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL” of another kind.

The X-Files is a brand. Fox needs that ‘brand’ to be spread as far and as wide as possible within the next month. Attempting to restrict that because of ill-thought-out financial reasons will hurt their ticket sales.

Come on Fox, sort out your legal department and quick.

*EDIT* Fox’s official YouTube channel has now re-labeled the trailer as the X-Files.

This is being released as a ‘primer’ for the new film. You don’t need to watch these in order to understand the film, but if you want to remind yourself of the X-Files or if you never watched it in the first place, this DVD has an excellent selection of episodes which will give you a good taster of what the X-Files is all about.

The episodes are as follows:

Disc One:

• “Pilot” (from Season 1)
• “Beyond the Sea” (from Season 1)
• “The Host” (from Season 2)
• “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (from Season 3)

Disc Two:

• “Memento Mori” (from Season 4)
• “Post-Modern Prometheus” (from Season 5)
• “Bad Blood” (from Season 5)
• “Milagro” (from Season 6)
• Bonus features: 2008 theatrical trailer; Wondercon talent panel session

As I was typing those out, I was going to do a little review about each episode and kept thinking, “Oh, I love this one!” “This one is sooooo great!” “This is my favourite.” “No, this is my favourite!” “THIS one!” “This one’s excellent…” So, I’ve just put a plain old list. :) The episodes they’ve chosen for this DVD really are the best of the X-Files without even really delving into the mytharc.

I’m going to start an X-Files Episode Chat thing where everyone watches the same episode on the same day and gets together online to talk about it and meet other people over the following few days. The aim is to try and get the RIDICULOUSLY HUGE number of X-Files fans out from their fan sites and into the world (so everyone can see just how many there are!). I’m going to work out a schedule for it – I want to start it soon, but the damned DVD doesn’t come out until the 14th of July! :(

But what I’m MOST interested in is getting non-English speaking fans on board to run episode chats in their own language. There are HUGE numbers of fans in Germany, Russia, Italy, France, Spain, South America, Asia… X-Files fans are EVERYWHERE! So, if you’re a non-English speaking fan and you want to do this, please email me (look on the righthand side of this blog page for my address or if you’re reading this on BigLight or in Facebook, PM me.) and let me know!

(*ahem* For the latest leaked X-Files photos have a look at XFN)