Well said! I did put my views across on there though
I hate politics with a passion and see it way to often in my other line of business. Have to be honest though, it can be funny at times!
urbex on radio 4
- Thread starter oldscrote
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Well said! I did put my views across on there though
I hate politics with a passion and see it way to often in my other line of business. Have to be honest though, it can be funny at times!
Well said! I did put my views across on there though
I hate politics with a passion and see it way to often in my other line of business. Have to be honest though, it can be funny at times!
Fortunately there are good people in majority numbers across the forums all trying to pull in the same direction. The odd few idiot commentators should simply be ignored.
krela
Well-known member
And this thread isn't having a very obvious dig at them? lol. Enough of the forum bashing please, it serves no purpose.
audi-adam
Well-known member
PaulPowers said:
Still a bit silly , nature of people i suppose
my bag of **** computer wont play it Grrrrr like its got the arse with my photoshop too double grrrrr time to get rid of this **** heap
Would you mind explaining your reasons for saying this as I don't really see a bad point unless your going there to break in or something
That depends entirely on who you speak to. The key before deciding whether to talk to the media (as it should be when deciding which media to browse/read/listen to/watch) is discretion.
If you talk to a sensationalist or 'low-brow' paper or broadcaster, you can expect poorly-researched material that jumps to conclusions without asking the right questions. A more balanced paper or broadcaster will tend to actually research their material and take the time to get things right. There are some exceptions, but for the most part in my experience, that's how it is.
Personally I think for a 15 minute spot this does pretty well. It's not easy to portray a mainly visual hobby through sound alone.
krela
Well-known member
It's always a good idea to ask for some previous work of the journalist before you speak to them too... it gives you an idea of the angles they use etc.
It is always a risk though, and there will always be people out there who will call you an attention seeking glory hunter.
Thanks both for the advice, not that I am planning on having any dealings with the media any time soon but you never know I suppose
Would you mind explaining your reasons for saying this as I don't really see a bad point unless your going there to break in or something
Well the good points could be:
Showing urbex in a good light;
Raising the profile of sites that should be secured or maintained;
Letting other people find out about the local history of buildings in their area.
The bad points could be:
Encouraging a lot more people to get involved in urbex;
Alerting vandals and pikeys to certain derelict buildings;
Causing sites to get tightened up.
So I think the bad points usually outweigh the good.
Last edited:
Explore with the BBC
Hi,
Well, Em_UX and I were going to do a full report on our explore, which the BBC happened to attend. However as a thread has already been started by a sharp eared urbexer, I’ll tag some commentary on the end here to explain how it happened.
I receive on average between two and five “contact from your website” emails a day. Most of them are silly: “How do I break in to X” etc. I always reply to every single one, as silly as they are - every day. However in June I received one that looked the same, but was different. The difference was that the email address ended in @bbc.co.uk
I was intrigued: as we had two or three general email exchanges about urbex, I was invited to have an interview with an executive producer at Broadcasting House in London: I talked to them for an hour, non-stop. They had clearly done their research, and were extremely clued up on urbex in general.
They stopped me after an hour and said “We absolutely love the way you talk about urbex. We’d be like you to be the sole subject of a radio show about urbex photography.
Err…
I asked for some time to think about it.
I know there’s a massive school of thought that urbex doesn’t need any publicity. I have even subscribed to it for years. I started to think seriously about it. Specifically I thought of how a public awareness had shaped other ‘out there’ hobbies, like Parkour: 5 years ago you’d have thought an asbo was jumping on you bin, now you’d appreciate the artful side.
I had a play on Google, not like I normally do, but with more simplistic terms that I’d expect someone new to the hobby would use. Two of the first results that came up were appalling. One features screen grabs of some ‘urbexers’ eBay accounts with objects taken from buildings, alongside screen grabs of the reports featuring the objects themselves. Another offered “A forum for UK urban explorers who also enjoy breaking up crap stuff”. No really.
I reluctantly decided to say yes. I didn't want these people to come close to representing what we do as a hobby.
The BBC rewarded me by adding a massive element of authenticity to the documentary. They could record an interview with me at their warm studios in London, and add the sounds in later. But no, they agreed to come on an explore with me, in deepest darkest Suffolk. The only stipulation was that we must have permission. Not something I’m used to doing, but I managed to source an email address and fired off an email outlining what we wanted to do. To my surprise the reply came 20 mins later, granting full permission.
“Peeling paint is better than porn”
The next three month was a torrent of several hundred emails, mainly involving the BBC legal department, along the lines of me not getting the Beeb’s best producer and presenter locked up. I spoke to Virusman26, who has posted some amazing reports on here, who done a BBC ’inside out’ episode a few years back to ask his advice, and how they portrayed what he actually said. It is also the second series of the programme, so I listened to the first series, to see how they portrayed the subjects.
So the big day came, and due to the unique way the BBC is funded I had to pick them up and give them a lift. Inevitably I got lost on the way (it was Suffolk). What I didn’t realise is they were recording from the moment I picked them up, and I was surprised this was included in the final piece. We arrived at the site and done a couple of pre-prepared questions.
We carried on round, although after a couple of buildings, they decided we should return to the first one for a sit down interview. “Just sit on the floor Adil” the producer barked, it’ll be more relaxed” But he was not happy at that “I’ve got 3 days in London in these jeans” I managed to find him an old PC tower to sit on, and pulled myself up a barrel. We done probably an hour interview about urbex, some nice easy anecdote, some harder questions on ethics (all of which were included!). Unfortunately throughout the interview my barrel was slowly deflating, this must have been about 20 mins as I’m not completely on the floor.
The site wasn’t actually that great, and it was stiflingly hot, so we called it a day and all set off. Somewhat relieved it was all over Em and I were casually chatting in the front of the car, when Em winked at me and looked down, and I knew that she’d seen the producer flick the mic back on, so we shut up.
We then had to put our 100% trust in the BBC to edit it. We wouldn’t get to hear it, or authorise anything until it went live. They recorded us for around 4 hours, and had to get it to just 15 mins. I spent more than 15 mins “Umming and arghing” and swearing, so just hoped they’d use my wittiest charming self. In the end it was somewhere in the middle. I'm glad they included bit's like me replacing the board etc.
I know there’s still a large proportion that will hate me for agreeing to do it, maybe even think I should have let them go with the 'smashers', but theres no way I'm going to apologise, or defend my decision.
EDIT: I caught the Lorraine Kelly show 2 days later by err..accident (ahem) and can confirm Adil was still wearing the same clothes, whilst reviewing the papers
Hi,
Well, Em_UX and I were going to do a full report on our explore, which the BBC happened to attend. However as a thread has already been started by a sharp eared urbexer, I’ll tag some commentary on the end here to explain how it happened.
I receive on average between two and five “contact from your website” emails a day. Most of them are silly: “How do I break in to X” etc. I always reply to every single one, as silly as they are - every day. However in June I received one that looked the same, but was different. The difference was that the email address ended in @bbc.co.uk
I was intrigued: as we had two or three general email exchanges about urbex, I was invited to have an interview with an executive producer at Broadcasting House in London: I talked to them for an hour, non-stop. They had clearly done their research, and were extremely clued up on urbex in general.
They stopped me after an hour and said “We absolutely love the way you talk about urbex. We’d be like you to be the sole subject of a radio show about urbex photography.
Err…
I asked for some time to think about it.
I know there’s a massive school of thought that urbex doesn’t need any publicity. I have even subscribed to it for years. I started to think seriously about it. Specifically I thought of how a public awareness had shaped other ‘out there’ hobbies, like Parkour: 5 years ago you’d have thought an asbo was jumping on you bin, now you’d appreciate the artful side.
I had a play on Google, not like I normally do, but with more simplistic terms that I’d expect someone new to the hobby would use. Two of the first results that came up were appalling. One features screen grabs of some ‘urbexers’ eBay accounts with objects taken from buildings, alongside screen grabs of the reports featuring the objects themselves. Another offered “A forum for UK urban explorers who also enjoy breaking up crap stuff”. No really.
I reluctantly decided to say yes. I didn't want these people to come close to representing what we do as a hobby.
The BBC rewarded me by adding a massive element of authenticity to the documentary. They could record an interview with me at their warm studios in London, and add the sounds in later. But no, they agreed to come on an explore with me, in deepest darkest Suffolk. The only stipulation was that we must have permission. Not something I’m used to doing, but I managed to source an email address and fired off an email outlining what we wanted to do. To my surprise the reply came 20 mins later, granting full permission.
“Peeling paint is better than porn”
The next three month was a torrent of several hundred emails, mainly involving the BBC legal department, along the lines of me not getting the Beeb’s best producer and presenter locked up. I spoke to Virusman26, who has posted some amazing reports on here, who done a BBC ’inside out’ episode a few years back to ask his advice, and how they portrayed what he actually said. It is also the second series of the programme, so I listened to the first series, to see how they portrayed the subjects.
So the big day came, and due to the unique way the BBC is funded I had to pick them up and give them a lift. Inevitably I got lost on the way (it was Suffolk). What I didn’t realise is they were recording from the moment I picked them up, and I was surprised this was included in the final piece. We arrived at the site and done a couple of pre-prepared questions.
We carried on round, although after a couple of buildings, they decided we should return to the first one for a sit down interview. “Just sit on the floor Adil” the producer barked, it’ll be more relaxed” But he was not happy at that “I’ve got 3 days in London in these jeans” I managed to find him an old PC tower to sit on, and pulled myself up a barrel. We done probably an hour interview about urbex, some nice easy anecdote, some harder questions on ethics (all of which were included!). Unfortunately throughout the interview my barrel was slowly deflating, this must have been about 20 mins as I’m not completely on the floor.
The site wasn’t actually that great, and it was stiflingly hot, so we called it a day and all set off. Somewhat relieved it was all over Em and I were casually chatting in the front of the car, when Em winked at me and looked down, and I knew that she’d seen the producer flick the mic back on, so we shut up.
We then had to put our 100% trust in the BBC to edit it. We wouldn’t get to hear it, or authorise anything until it went live. They recorded us for around 4 hours, and had to get it to just 15 mins. I spent more than 15 mins “Umming and arghing” and swearing, so just hoped they’d use my wittiest charming self. In the end it was somewhere in the middle. I'm glad they included bit's like me replacing the board etc.
I know there’s still a large proportion that will hate me for agreeing to do it, maybe even think I should have let them go with the 'smashers', but theres no way I'm going to apologise, or defend my decision.
EDIT: I caught the Lorraine Kelly show 2 days later by err..accident (ahem) and can confirm Adil was still wearing the same clothes, whilst reviewing the papers
A fantastic post and to be honest, you shouldn't apologise for taking them out with you or even talking to them. Yes I suppose it's a risk but at the same time, if people understood what we do, maybe less people will have guard dogs on their arms, security chasing them down and things like that.
Again, well done for doing this ( a little defending on the other forum from me) and it really was a good listen.
Again, well done for doing this ( a little defending on the other forum from me
) and it really was a good listen.
Normally when UrbanX asks me out on an explore I say yes straight away but this time was different.
I kept changing my mind for weeks & only said yes a few days before the explore.
We both did the research & decided to go for it.
It was something I would never normally do & really took me out of my comfort zone!
Thanks to UrbanX for asking me along.
A few shots I took on the day.
I think UrbanX answered the questions well & I seeing how quickly the questions kept coming my mind would of gone blank & I wouldn't of known what to say!
Thanks for all the supportive replies from Em who doesn't say much!
I kept changing my mind for weeks & only said yes a few days before the explore.
We both did the research & decided to go for it.
It was something I would never normally do & really took me out of my comfort zone!
Thanks to UrbanX for asking me along.
A few shots I took on the day.
I think UrbanX answered the questions well & I seeing how quickly the questions kept coming my mind would of gone blank & I wouldn't of known what to say!
Thanks for all the supportive replies from Em who doesn't say much!
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Great stuff, really enjoyed that!
Just what was needed while I'm lying here, recovering from an inpinged nerve in my back!!!!
NB
Just what was needed while I'm lying here, recovering from an inpinged nerve in my back!!!!
NB
Couldn't agree more. The main reason I do occasionally talk to the media is for damage control - you can get a feel for whether they're going to run the story anyway, and if I can skew it so there's less talk about vandalism, "breaking in", "urban Thrillseekers" and all the usual cliches, then that might be a good thing.
In general, coverage is bad - it makes the police pay attention, it gets local papers talking about it, it gets MPs and councillors with an eye on elections jumping on the bandwagon. The more we can operate under the radar the better.
Don't get me started, I was recently told that I should be happy a website stole my images as it gives me coverage... There is a reason you don't see my face in pics I don't want bloody coverage!
they didn't find it funny when the official warning about copyright infringment turned up
Well done UX
In me own humble opinion, I think that you've done absolutely no harm at all. In a way -"Urban Exploration" means different things to different people, and with the obvious Trespassing issue as a given (though not applicable in the case of where you visited), fair play for you to go "on record". I don't believe for one minute that you've taken part in this for your own glory etc, but merely to get across to the less well versed peeps out there, to show that true "Urban Explorers" do not break & enter, are not metal theives, chavs etc. etc., and visit places perhaps for the main reasons to record & document, or simply out of curiosity, or for a change of scenery / environment?
A well put together Interview me thinks
In me own humble opinion, I think that you've done absolutely no harm at all. In a way -"Urban Exploration" means different things to different people, and with the obvious Trespassing issue as a given (though not applicable in the case of where you visited), fair play for you to go "on record". I don't believe for one minute that you've taken part in this for your own glory etc, but merely to get across to the less well versed peeps out there, to show that true "Urban Explorers" do not break & enter, are not metal theives, chavs etc. etc., and visit places perhaps for the main reasons to record & document, or simply out of curiosity, or for a change of scenery / environment?
A well put together Interview me thinks
