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Did digital imaging throw documentary into an ontological crisis?
Written by David Tames on August 20, 2010
Filed Under Art, Camera, Critical Theory, Documentary, Featured, Photography
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Scholars have long discussed the ambiguity and subjectivity inherent in photographic representation with its seductive verisimilitude. Bill Mitchell’s The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (The MIT Press, 1992), the first book-length critical analysis of the...  Continue Reading...

Expanded Cinema: Still fresh after forty years
Written by David Tames on August 17, 2010
Filed Under Art, Books, Featured, Filmmaking, New Media
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A few months ago I pulled Gene Youngblood’s classic Expanded Cinema (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1970, available online) off the shelf and read it again. The pages in my well worn softcover edition were falling out, the glue having dried over the two decades I’ve owned the book....  Continue Reading...

Four under $300 audio recorders for double-system sound
Written by David Tames on June 18, 2010
Filed Under Featured, General, Media Technology, Sound, Tools, Video Production
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With the rising tide of small cameras shooting spectacular HD video suitable for documentary work, along with D-SLRs like the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 7D whose images rival much more expensive (and heavy) cameras, I’ve observed a spectacular rise in gorgeous video, but good sound...  Continue Reading...

Thoughts on video on the web and HTML5
Written by David Tames on June 3, 2010
Filed Under Featured, Media Technology, New Media, Sound, Tools, Video on the Web, Web
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If your web site has video on it, I believe the time has come to take into consideration viewers using mobile devices if you’ve not done it already. The desktop is no longer the only platform for viewing video, and Flash, long dominant as the web video standard (at least as far as web...  Continue Reading...

Pearls of wisdom
Written by David Tames on April 23, 2010
Filed Under Art, Books, Design, Featured, Reviews
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Back in February I attended a conference “Who’s Afraid of New Media” held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Wendy Richmond, who has recently published a book, Art Without Compromise* (Allworth Press, 2009), was one of the speakers. During a break we had a delightful conversation...  Continue Reading...

Sennheiser Evolution G3 100 Series
Written by David Tames on February 18, 2010
Filed Under Featured, Gadgets and Devices, General, Reviews, Sound, Video Production
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If you want to go with a wireless microphone system, and you’re trying to balance between performance and price but don’t want to compromise too much on performance, I would suggest taking a close look at the Sennheiser Evolution G3 Series. I’ve been using the previous G2...  Continue Reading...

Transcriva 2
Written by David Tames on January 13, 2010
Filed Under Documentary, Featured, Filmmaking, Reviews, Tools
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Back in August of 2005 I wrote a post, Transcriva makes transcribing (almost) fun, in which I reviewed the first version of Transcriva from Bartas Technologies, a delightful Macintosh application I’ve been using since then for transcribing audio and video interviews. Last year Bartas...  Continue Reading...

Seven RSS feeds of interest to New England documentary filmmakers
Written by David Tames on November 7, 2009
Filed Under Documentary, Featured, General, Web
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Here are seven RSS feeds that I think will be of interest to New England documentary filmmakers. These suggestions come out of the discussion that took place today during theSocial Media Boot Camp for Film Professionals with Sean Fitzroy held at MassArt. There are many good feeds out there,...  Continue Reading...

Flying takes documentary form to new heights
Written by David Tames on August 27, 2009
Filed Under Documentary, Featured, Filmmakers, Filmmaking, Films
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Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman is an amazing six-hour, six-part, documentary of epic proportions by Jennifer Fox in which we follow the filmmaker as she travels around the world asking her women friends how they construct and imagine their lives as she struggles to figure out her own....  Continue Reading...

Using both channels (an audio channel is a terrible thing to waste)
Written by David Tames on August 13, 2009
Filed Under Camera, Documentary, Featured, Filmmaking, Sound, Video
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Practically every camcorder records two channels of audio, which allows you to record in stereo (Left/Right) or two discrete channels (1/2). Lately I’ve been using the Sennheiser Evolution G2 wireless a lot and it started to bother me that I was only recording one channel from the wireless...  Continue Reading...

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