Movie/Show Night at OS

[Paul Mc]

I've stumbled across a few really good movies/shows about orchids recently. I was thinking about presenting a "Show" night to the OS organizers. Instead of paying for a speaker, we could do a "Movie" night where we just all gather around and watch shows on the big screen. I'd still hope they would be somewhat factual, helpful, etc... After all, it is an OS meeting! But, I wonder how much technology could assist us in bringing down the costs a bit and also bring us some interesting documentaries or shows that would still satisfy our need for learning.

Any ideas of things I could take to them?

I've already got the YouTube video of the Chinese New Year orchid growers on the list and "The Black Orchid" movie that I just posted about. But any other really helpful ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[quiltergal]

How about Adaptation with Meryl Streep? Based on the book The Orchid Thief.

[Discus]

I would certainly steer clear of using the internet to acquire interesting copyrighted content; depending on the uploader, even showing a youTube video clip in public may violate licencing conditions.

I believe technically you're supposed to get some kind of license for showing a movie in "public" - who you get this from or whether you need it probably depends on what you're showing. A hollywood movie would pretty much require this (indeed, if you pay attention to the wording on a DVD/BluRay you've bought, you'll notice you're not allowed to show it "publicly"). Whether or not an OS meeting is considered "public" is one for the lawyers, but I suspect it would be interpreted as so.

Annoying legal issues aside, a good projector and fairly decent sound/PA system are a good idea. If you have a small local movie house and a large enough OS, you may be able to persuade them to arrange a showing of something which will keep you in the clear wrt the copyright police, and can be turned into a pretty cool function.

You could almost certainly pull together a perfectly legal show using only youTube clips; just contact the uploader for permission to use it/them in that manner first.

Use one of the youtube downloader sites to grab the clip and store it on your computer's hard drive, rather than attempting to load the website on the night; this invariably goes wrong or is a bit too slow when used like this (damn you Murphy!).

Another thing that is tech related is showing them useful sites like the RHS hybrid database and monocot database for keeping up to date with all the annoying name changes. I have a blog post about this inspired by a 20 minute "add on" to an OS talk last month.

[Paul Mc]

Thank you for the thoughts!

WOW, Discus, I never considered all of that. Thank you for sharing. I will personally contact them if the OS committee thinks it's a good idea. Again, thank you very much for that because I had not even considered it (obviously, lol...).

[Discus]

You're most welcome. The chances of anyone actually finding out that you've shown a bunch of their youTube videos in public and then objecting to it is miniscule, but I think it's common courtesy to let people know - most will be more than delighted that you think enough of their clip to actually take the time to show it to others!