SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival

Described as the “pre-eminent US documentary festival”, the American Film Institutes Silverdocs Festival, in conjunction with the Discovery Channel, will be taking place in Washington DC. An outstanding opportunity to network with media and distribution outlets pertaining to the documentary world, attend workshops and attend technical workshops tracking trends in the doc world. Representaives and speakers from HBO, The Discovery Channel, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ARTE France, the HHK (Japan),Animal Planet, National Geographic Channels International and Women Make Movies will be presentaing and interacting with SilverDoc attendees.

Kodak to Build on Super 16 HD Film System for Television

Kodak will again be presenting a case for using Super-16 film for High Definition at NAB this year. From TV Technology, here’s the announcement.
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Filmmaking as a new form of literacy

A recent article in the New York Times Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.? quotes Elizabeth Daley (Dean of the USC School of Cinema-Television) as saying, “The greatest digital divide is between those who can read and write with media and those who can’t.” The article suggests that cinematic storytelling skills are becoming a new form of literacy, as important as reading and writing with words. I believe they are essential for widespread democratization of the media. Film school or at least including the study of film as part of a complete education is a good thing. The study of film should not just be for specialists who want to work in the industry. There is a trend: just as reading is fundamental, audiovisual communication is rapidly becoming fundamental and provides a valuable tool for people working in a wide range of professions in health care, business, education, technology, you name it. I’ve never wanted to work in “Hollywood,” however, my filmmaking studies have been an asset in my journey through a variety of positions including marketing at Apple Computer, media technology research at the MIT Media Lab, a web-based entertainment start-up, management consulting in digital business strategy, marketing, as well as a long list of creative projects and related endeavors.

Documentary Filmmakers on Documentary Filmmaking

I organized a session to be held on Satuday (March 12, 2005) as part of the Camera Company Show (see the March 1st entry) you might find interesting. I invite you to attend if you live in the Boston area. I just finished confirming the participants, so this line-up is not up on the Camera Company web site yet, but here it is here hot off the press.

Documentary Filmmakers on Documentary Filmmaking
March 12, 2005, 10:00AM - 12:00PM (More Info)

Panel:
Ziad Hamzeh (The Letter)
Laurie Kahn-Leavitt (Tupperware!, A Midwife’s Tale)
Cindy McKeown (One in Eight: Janice’s Journey)
Tim Wright (Conservation of Matter, Plastic)

A panel of local documentary filmmakers will discuss the challenges and joys of shooting their documentaries and the journey they took from idea to distribution of their films. The filmmakers will share their real-world experiences in terms of fund raising, interviewing subjects, evolving their films during the editing process, finding the audience, the festival circuit-and finding distribution. The session will be highly interactive-with questions and answers from participants and lively discussion among the filmmakers. Organizer and Moderator: David Tamés.

The Film Look

As part of The Camera Company Show (see March 1st entry) I’m doing the following session. I invite you to attend if you live in the Boston area:

The Film Look Demystified
March 12, 2005, 1:00PM - 3:00PM (More Info)

The Holy Grail for many narrative filmmakers is the film look. Today’s digital video cameras are capable of producing images that come very close to the look of film. In addition, postproduction tools are available to create a wide variety of looks. This workshop will deconstruct and analyze the many factors that contribute to what we have come to call “the film look” and demonstrate a range of techniques filmmakers can use in order to create the mood and feel that’s right for the story they are telling.

The Camera Company Annual Pro Video Show

Don’t miss theThe Camera Company’s Fifteenth Annual Pro Video Show coming up on Friday and Saturday March 11-12, 2005 at the Boston Marriot Quncy (Directions) near the I-93/Route 3 & Route 128 “Split”). The show features two days of seminars, workshops and exhibits which will be of interest to both aspiring and professional fillmakers in the Boston area. The show is better than ever with 15 professional workshops, 39 free seminars, and free admission to all exhibits. Registration is free. Check out the listing of free seminars as well as the very reasonably priced professional workshops on a wide range of interesting topics. It’s going to be a really good show this year. Hope to see you there. I invite you to attend one or both of the sessions I’m involved with: Documentary Filmmakers on Documentary Filmmaking and The Film Look Demystified.