A welcome break tonight to see the splendid genius from some of my editorial colleagues.

I went to the famous Roundhouse in Camden to watch the premiere of the results of a unique experiment: the BBC’s rather splendid Shoot the summer – given its first showing tonight, the first night of the BBC Electric Proms.

Producer Hugh Garry, who’s a quiet-talking achingly-fashionable chap from the North West, gave BBC presenters, artists, and audiences some mobile phones: and got them to film stuff. He didn’t really tell them what to film, either – just something about the festival they were going to (whether it was Bestival, or the Proms in the Park, or the Cambridge Folk Festival.

The result is a mesmerising film – tremendously high-quality, emotional at times, funny at others, showing how attached people get to the music festivals that the BBC gets involved with.

For thirty minutes (we watched a cut-down version), we enjoyed the fruits of that labour. I was surprised at how excellent mobile video coverage is; really enjoyed the different views of the festivals like the splendid US orchestra conductor, or a very peculiar and frankly slightly drug-ridden man at one of the festivals, giving us almost complete access to these events. It’s a brilliant, brilliant thing. And all filmed on mobile phones.

The great news is that the film is available now, in its entirety, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/musicevents/shootthesummer/, where you can also watch little bitesize chunks (which won’t have the same effect, so don’t). Get the telly connected to the laptop, and enjoy.

Hopefully it’ll show the world that the phrase “user-generated content” should be removed from our lexicon just as quickly as “amateur video”. And it shows me that some of the people who work here are damn geniuses. I need to spend more time with them: close association with these people may well save my sanity.

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