Watchmen creator Dave Gibbons on Doctor Who

Managed to catch up with the always-sociable and chatty Dave Gibbons, co-creator of Watchmen at the weekend and spoke about the book, the film and his other work, including Doctor Who.

It was a nice chance to say hi – I first met Dave a few years ago at the outrageously funny Hypotheticals panel co-run by Dave and Lee ‘Budgie’ Barnett – as Dave was in Borders Glasgow to promote Watchmen and his Watchmen book ‘How to get paid for drawing a 50-foot blue penis‘ (OK, it’s actually called Watching the Watchmen but how often do you get the chance to write blue penis unless talking about naked eskimos?)

I mentioned the fact that Dave was in town to the online editor of the Daily Record Iain Hepburn and he thought it might be a nice interview. When he mentioned he planned to record it using the Flip Mino camera, I asked if I could come along as it’s a bit of kit I’m interested in (especially after seeing it used for reporting in Afghanistan), though I’ve had my doubts about how it would compare to a ‘proper’ video camera.

Now, Iain’s going to put the full interview up at the Daily Record soon, but he’s posted a little teaser where Dave talks about his work on Doctor Who – and some scripts that were written by other comic legends like Pat Mills. Have a watch if that’s your thing and after the box, I’ll talk about what I thought about the Mino.

It’s hard to judge the colours and so on because the codecs involved in getting it onto YouTube may have stripped some detail (Dave’s shirt was definitely more colourful than the video suggests), but it looks as good as any other YouTube video I would say.

The sound on the other hand is a little bit different. Iain was asking the questions and even though he was about a foot to my left hand side, he’s hard to hear. Dave comes across perfectly fine though.

In use, it seems fairly simple – though I don’t know if I would trust the digital zoom on it – and we did have a heart attack at the end when I tried to stop recording by pressing the big red button and it frooze. Iain had a heart attack that the video would be lost. Fortunately that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’m still not convinced that the original footage would be good enough for TV, but Iain’s going to pass on the footage so I can judge for myself (he claims it is), but for web events/web-only video I would certainly say this is a decent piece of kit. Sadly I never got the chance to compare it the N95 (T in the Park footage here) but I think they would seem similar.

The sound is the only thing, but having a slot for an external mike would defeat the purpose of this being an all-in-one/point and shoot camera. I’d say papers and PRs should be picking these up at the earliest opportunity because they are cheap and easy to use. It’s certainly easier to lug about than a full ‘proper’ camera kit.

Of course, with video, shooting’s only half the battle. You still need it edited…