Hey, did I ever mention I’m a big screen film director?

Well, after making a little lunchbreak video with our office photocopier a couple of months back, it’s now been picked up to feature this month at the Washington DC Labor Film Festival, at the TUC/Philosophy Football’s Rhyme Rhythm & Reason event this Wednesday, and at the Canadian Labour Film Festival next month.

So if you want to check out the Director’s Cut version on the big screen (Disclosure to avoid disappointment: Screen size aside, you may find it hard to spot the difference from this YouTube version, and when I say “feature”, I mean “feature as a sideshow probably whilst people are finding their seats”…), then get your tickets now for London, DC or Toronto.

Now off to practice my acceptance speech for Cannes…

“Just another cog in the machine” has been on community telly in Australia, and used offline by union organisers in New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Pakistan. Of course, there’s something rather obvious this illustrates – Join LabourStart! The film featured on Labourstart’s email alerts and as a result leapt up from around 800 views to around 3,800 views overnight. No doubt the connections made through the list also resulted in many of the subsequent send-ons that took it even higher.

I’ve seen this happen first hand before, and whilst both my instances have been at the more trivial end of the spectrum, when this kind of whooosh happens at a key moment in an important labour dispute, the effect can be really powerful.

Also to big up that the newly upgraded UnionBook has a video channel, where you can share your YouTube favourites. It’s a great resource to swap what we’ve noticed and make the most of people’s video efforts. So to give a concrete example, check out this excellent new union video from UNISON Midlands. A little bit of Obama goes a long way, and there’s some great animation there too. It’s part of the TUC video contest, and if you fancy winning some video kit, you can have a go at that too!

…starring our photocopier, as it can act a whole lot better than me. Thanks to Moby for allowing me to use the splendid track “18″ on this, and to Lianne for clicking repeatedly.

BTW: As Mark Twain would likely have tweeted – had I more time, I would have uploaded a shorter video. If you do, have a go at the TUC 60 second video contest on YouTube, which I’ve missed by a mere 150%.