Scott Kirsner: Inventing the Movies

In this video I interview journalist and author Scott Kirsner about his new book, Inventing the Movies: The Epic Battle between Innovation and the Status Quo in Hollywood. The interview covers an example from the book and takeaways for innovators in any field. Scott blogs about the movie industry and technology at Cinematech, which is among my favorite blogs.

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Note: if a video player does not appear in your browser when you click the play button, visit the blip.tv video page to see the video.

Archival Image Credits: Kinetoscope Parlor, Publicity or news photograph of San Francisco Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1894–95, British Film Institute; Publicity photograph of man using Edison Kinetophone, ca. 1895; Serpentine Dance (1895), produced by the Edison Co., part of the Open Source Movies collection; Thomas Edison, half-length portrait, facing left and looking down into glass, experimenting in his laboratory, United States Library of Congress; The Edison Home Kinetoscope, 1914, Thomas A. Edison, Inc.; Advertising photo, Net#Work BBDO, South Africa, Graeme Jenner, Julian Watt (Creative Directors), photo by Brian Gibbs, 2007, copyright material used under industry best practices guidelines for fair use; iPod video en la palma de mi mano by Pedro Aznar, 2005, copyright material released under the terms of a creative commons license; Viewing iPod by Michael.M, copyright material released under the terms of a creative commons license; Half Nelson audience at IFFB, courtesy of Adam Roffman, Independent Film Festival of Boston, copyright material used with permission; Pixar Lobby by Elia Diodati, 2007, copyright material released under the terms of a creative commons license; Technicolor Camera, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Photographic History Collection.

New Media Expo 2008 Discussion

To wrap up New Media Expo 2008, I sat down with Steve Woolf (Epic Fu), Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu), Steve Garfield (SteveGarfield.com), and Walt Ribeiro (Ustream.TV), here’s the unedited conversation. Recorded on Saturday, August 16, 2008. We discussed topics such as what was best about the show, issues as the big-players enter the space, and Net Neutrality.

 Play Video (19:01, Flash Video, note: if a video player does not appear in your browser, visit the blip.tv video page to see the video.

Special thanks to Steve Garfield for providing me with the video he shot with his Nokia N95. I had originally planned this to be an audio interview, but when Steve Garfield gave me his video of the discussion, it became a video. When I combined his video and my audio, I was impressed that the audio sync drifted less that a frame from start to end. Many of the little cameras drift a lot (like my Canon TX1). The N95 is an impressive little camera.

Slava Rubin of IndieGoGo at New Media Expo

I met Slava Rubin, co-founder, chief of strategy and marketing of IndieGoGo back at Making Media Now 2008 and was pleased to catch up with him again at New Media Expo in Las Vegas. IndieGoGo is an online social marketplace connecting filmmakers and fans to make independent film happen. Here’s a short video interview with him. Shot with my little TX1 for extra noisy video goodness.

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In the video Slava mentions Mark Gill’s statement, “The Sky is Falling,” see the article Gill wrote, Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling, which appeared on June 22, 2008 in for IndieWIRE. At the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Financing Conference, Mark Gill, CEO of The Film Department (and former President of Miramax Films) declared provocatively, “Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling.” He detailed many challenges currently facing independent film. Here’s a quote from the article: “If you want to survive in this brutal climate, you’re going to have to work a lot harder, be a lot smarter, know a lot more, move a lot faster, sell a lot better, pay attention to the data, be a little nicer (ok, a lot nicer), trust your gut, read everything and never, ever give up. If you’re looking for a cool lifestyle, you’re in the wrong business. If you want work-life balance, go get a government job. But if you really want to make movies–even after all the unvarnished bad news I’ve dumped on you today–then by all means do it.”

Theme music by Colin Owens.

Philip Hodgetts of Open Television Network at New Media Expo

I spoke with Philip Hodgetts at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas and asked him about his new venture, the Open Television Network which I blogged about several weeks ago.

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Music by Colin Owens.

Inventing the Movies

Some of the things I love about summer are weekend trips to the Berkshires, taking time off for a vacation, and all that means more time available to read books. On my summer reading stack this year was an advance copy of Inventing the Movies, a new book by Scott Kirsner that takes you on fascinating romp through the movie industry’s hundred-year love/hate relationship with technology and innovators. The book is an entertaining read with fascinating historical research and fresh insights from interviews with a long list of contemporary luminaries including director Peter Jackson, computer graphics pioneer Ed Catmull, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

With a keen attention to multiple perspectives, Kirsner presents the view of industry executives who are reluctant to innovate, and contrasts their views with the innovators who have advanced the many technologies like projection, color, sound, non-linear editing, digital projection, internet distribution, etc. that have transformed the industry over a century of change and revived it over and over again for many generations of audiences. Inventing the Movies is a lively book of interest to innovators in any field, as well as people who love movies and want to take a look at the business and technological machinations behind the many screens in their life: cinema, television, home theater, personal computers, portable media devices, and video-enabled phones.

Last week I did an interview with Scott Kirsner about the book, how the project got started, and what he plans to do next. The interview is currently being edited will be posted on this blog sometime before September rolls around.

The book is now available from Amazon.com. The book is also available as an e-book from LuLu. Scott Kirsners blog post on the book is here.

Intimidad

Intimidad is a documentary film that weaves together a mix of home movie, cinema verite, and informal interview footage to present a portrait of Cecy and Camilo Ramirez, and their daughter Loida, a hard-working, young family living in Reynosa, Mexico.

This weekend I interviewed David Redmon and Ashley Sabin for my podcast, Art Film Talk, after their New England premiere of Intimidad at the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Ashley and David made Intimidad made over the course of five years. In the story Cecy and Camilo Ramirez dream of buying land and building their own house. The film presents an unflinching view of living on minimum wage with very little infrastructure and the sacrifices and hardships the family must endure to survive.

I really liked the film, and I think it points to an evolution in documentary form, a new genre in which subjects are able to take on more of the process of making the documentary since filmmakers can give their subjects inexpensive cameras to shoot some of the film themselves. In Intimidad Ashley and David use it to good effect, as Cecy and Camilo captured some intimate moments amongst themselves that the filmmakers could not capture. While this raises lots of interesting issues in terms of ethics, subjectivity, authorship, etc., I see it as a positive evolution, part of the macro forces we’re experiencing in our culture as we move out of the era of auteur filmmakers and broadcast models of media distribution and into an era of more collaborative authorship and social network-based models of distribution. This is very much part of the decentralization of media structures that McLuhan wrote about in the 60s.

Are websodics the future of episodic entertainment?

Is the growing genre of websodics the future of episodic entertainment? I’m not sure I answer this questions in my Art Film Talk interview with Gravityland creator John Herman, but it’s interesting to ponder.

Slides from 18th Pro Video Show Seminars

Here are my presentation slides from the three seminars I gave this weekend at the 18th Pro Video Show.
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18th Annual Pro Video Show

The 18th Annual Pro Video Show (hosted by the Camera Company with the participation of the Boston FCP User Group, SMPTE/NE, and NPVA/NE) will be held Friday and Saturday, March 7-8, 2008 at Stonehill College (Sally Blair Ames Sports Complex) in Easton, Massachusetts. This popular annual event provides two days of informative workshops, seminars, and equipment demonstrations, with lots of opportunities to check out the latest gear. I will be presenting three seminars at the show you might be interested in attending:

Web Video 2.0: Delivering Your Video Online (Friday, March 07, 1:00PM - 3:00PM, $25.00)

Art of the Interview: Strategies and Techniques for Better Video Interviews (Saturday, March 08, 9:00AM - 11:00AM, $25.00)

Interview Lighting: Professional Results On A Tight Budget (Saturday, March 08, 1:00PM - 3:00PM, $25.00

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A Conversation with Les Blank

While I was at the Woods Hole Film Festival this summer I had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with documentary filmmaker Les Blank. We spoke about his new film All In This Tea, his experiences with Werner Herzog, why he self distributes, and which of his films he considers his favorite. The interview, titled A Conversation with Les Blank, appears in the newly re-launched Independent (the publication formerly known as The Independent Film & Video Monthly, which ceased publication with the demise of the AIVF).

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