About Me
More than 30 years’ involvement in video and educational TV production, with the vast majority of those spent as a freelance in an uncertain business has meant that I’ve always striven to learn new things, new techniques and new technologies.
I’ve been freelance on and off since 1984, having left Chef & Brewer (then part of Grand Metropolitan PLC), where I’d worked as the company’s Video Production Manager and overseeing corporate video production for training and general corporate communications, and I was keen to attract freelance business as a corporate and educational video writer / producer.
Corporate video production services
During the late 80s and early 90s, I undertook a number of video production assignments from companies large and small – all of whom had a requirement for enhanced communication to either employees, clients and potential clients. Clients included Volkswagen Group, Rover, Kraft General Foods, Kodak, Guide Dogs for The Blind, Department for Trade and Industry, Daler-Rowney, Alliance & Leicester, Burton Group and many more.
My video production experience subsequently led to my being asked to devise and deliver training workshops for complete newbies to video; to that end I ran workshops for staff in local authorities (teachers, librarians, archivists, social & youth workers, etc) and also in some start-up SME’s (small / medium-sized enterprises).
Writing for camcorder magazines
I’ve been contributing digital video hardware and software reviews and Masterclass tutorials for several prominent magazine publishers since the mid-90s and continue to contribute to this day. I’ve written over 450 tutorials, how-to features and in-depth reviews for all of the UK’s leading camcorder and home video magazine titles.
My monthly column – Colin Barrett’s VideoView – for Camcorder User (later Digital Video) ran for almost three years until I ran out of steam in 2004!
New Media projects management and training
After spending 4 years as a training and support manager with The Open University, in which I oversaw a specialist 9-person team on the ground-breaking CLUTCH Club project. This was funded by The National Lottery Millenenium Commission. Since late 2007 I’ve been co-presenting Lives in Focus – a series of training workshops on how to use video to capture people’s life stories for the British Library and Oral History Society in London. I’ve been doing these with Roger Kitchen, a long-standing professional associate and well-respected oral history expert.
A published author, too!
On cessation of my contract with The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, I was lucky enough to have a project to jump straight into. Ilex Press, a UK publisher renowned for their superb books on the graphical arts and media production, commissioned me to write what turned out to be my first book. Four months solid work resulted in Digital Video for Beginners (Ilex Press and Lark Books), which was published late 2004.
SimplyDV: Camcorder Reviews, News and much more
My camcorder news and reviews website, SimplyDV, now rates in the top three UK websites on Google searches for Camcorder Reviews in the UK and sits well within the Top 10 for similar searches in Google in the USA. The site is all of my doing and, as founder/managing editor and chief writer, it’s been a very useful shop-window for my skills – both in terms of my writing commissions from magazine and book publishers, training workshop assignments and various other miscellaneous consultancy assignments.