Foxvideo Productions

I edited a piece to camera for a good friend, it was about keeping the church graveyard grass mown and the relationship between us, and those who have passed before us and who lay under the ground that he was mowing. We couldn’t decide on a title for YouTube for the video so I threw the script into ChatGPT which then came up with around 15 different suggestions, we chose “A Cut Above the Past’. I could understand how ChatGPT managed to do that from what I supplied but, what followed was beyond my comprehension...

Peter asked if I could find a photo of a Husquvana ride on mower in a graveyard situation, mowing the grass...I did try my usual picture source, Depositphotos and found nothing, so I provided a descriptive prompt to ChatGPT and you can see the result!

Yes, it could have been achieved in Photoshop or similar but it would have taken considerably longer than the 2 minutes it did in ChatGPT!

Blackmagic Design just dropped Resolve Studio 20 Beta in time for NAB with an incredible range of new AI features, but for me the one I’ll use the most has to be the ‘AI Music Editor’ that automatically edits music to any desired length.

Ever since the early days when Adobe Premiere started to be taken as a serious NLE, Smartsound produced a Premiere plugin for their range of catalogue music that could be adjusted to any length to suit the clip or edit, I’ve often struggled to make a music track fit, my ear for finding a cut and duplicating the track to the length I wanted just never seemed to quite work!

I’ve just tried the new feature and it works perfectly, I’ve still yet to play with all the other new features but for me, just this one is a game changer!

A recent video shoot for New Start Cat Rescue to appeal for funds to replace the roof of their building.

A good friend of mine, who we’ll refer to as ‘Bob’, mentioned he’d just renewed his motor insurance for a 2006 Audi S Line for £648 from a household name specialising in insurance for older persons, I suggested that was a little high in my opinion and asked if he had used a comparison website, he replied he hadn’t, I also mentioned he had 14 days ‘cooling off’ period before his renewal was confirmed.

Bob is reasonably computer literate but did admit to never being bothered with comparison sites so I suggested we tried to see what results we might get.

We tried the ‘Meerkat’ one and the ‘Opera Singer’ one, both came back with results from around £300 to £1100(!), a good average to include all the usual benefits - Motor Legal, Breakdown Cover etc, and with an excess of £500, was around £420.

I suggested Bob went back home and talked to his original insurance company, and to mention other well known branded companies were quoting around £420 and that he had the documentation in an email to prove his point, within seconds his original quote was reduced to £420 with a refund of £228 on it’s way.......!