Steve Garfield spoke about the debates on television last week, Dave Winer opened up a chat that Steve participated in, 30-40 people chatting during the debates, they will be doing it again, Steve really liked it, check out Scripting News (Dave Winer’s blog) for info on joining the IRC chat. Chatzilla works if you don’t want to do IRC the old fashioned way. Steve will be at SXSW this week blogging, shooting video etc. so keep an eye out for that.

Steve also mentioned that the Independent Film Festival of Boston (which takes place on April 23-29, 2008) wants Boston media makers involved with the festival this year. They will be attending the April meeting to talk about that.

John Herman is launching Gravityland tomorrow, has been working on it for six months, first two episodes debut tomorrow. They will be posting episodes once a week and blogging five days a week.

Philip Kliger (unclephilms on YouTube) had a camera attached to his head and was shooting video of the meeting, which he’ll use in some way. He showed us the camera/recorder he was using, the Archos 404 Pocket Digital Media Player and Camcorder that has an internal 30GB disk for long recording times (limited to battery life, which is under two hours while recording). It can play a variety of video formats and records MPEG-4 (AVI 640×480 at 30 or 25 fps). It appears to work only with it’s own proprietary camera. Too bad it can’t record from any video camera. In addition to his YouTube presence, Phil is an actor working on Gravityland, does the Uncle Phil Music Show as well as Tune Buggy, kid-friendly rock music.

Alecia Orsini is a filmmaker (Combustible Russ), artist, and is currently working with the Miele Law Group which represents artists, entertainers, and inventors. They do a lot of free consulting, they share a lot of information with media makers, it’s good to say, “I know a lawyer” whenever you have to negotiate contracts with other parties. She started working with then when she was swamped in paperwork, they helped demystify the legal process.

Scott Lebeda is also working with the Miele Law Group, he does research for them, he’s a filmmaker, does graphic design work, and starting up a multimedia site for film, art, etc.

Also mentioned in the group was the Citizen Media Law Project and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

Yours truly talked about the upcoming 18th Annual Pro Video Show taking place at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts on Friday and Saturday, March 7-8, 2008. Read my blog post about the show for a description of the three seminars I’m doing at the show.

Brian Alves produces The DV Show, a weekly podcast dedicated to answering questions related to digital video. The DV Show has been running since March 2005 and has become a respected resource on the we. They will be streaming some of the free sessions from the 18th Annual Pro Video Show, very cool.

Jessica Burko does design and arts marketing for other artists, she encourages us to sign up for her mailing list, it’s one email a month with info on shows and art events. She’s also involved with Boston Hand Made, a gathering of colleagues who create a variety of handcrafted art and every spring they do an artisan fair in Jamaica Plain.

Steve Sherlock has a number of projects underway, including sherku, his form of haiku. As Dorothy Parker once wrote, “brevity is the soul of lingerie.” So here goes an attempt to write a haiku about the meeting (19 syllables):

media makers meet
each first sunday to share
knowledge, ideas, and cheer.

Joe Cascio is a software engineer who is currently working on SociaLogic, an experimental system devoted to research and development in social networking that among other things can help us manage our online social network memberships and identities, he’s also working on a better SPAM filter, a new email protocol, all sorts of cool stuff. This summer he’ll be sponsoring the Social Media BBQ (look for it on upcoming) at his house in CT. Some locals who are bummed they can’t attend SXSW this year have started up their own virtual experience, NONE (North by Northeast). Joe is also involved with two blogs, Start Rocket and Media Disruption

Reiko Beach of TRB Design talked about Stixy, an online bulletin board (which they call Stixyboards) that allow you to create tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes, and bookmarks organized in whatever way makes sense to you. You can share Stixyboards with friends, family, and colleagues. Are there other tools out there she should look at? Some folks suggested JotSpot (Google recently acquired them), Big Tent, and Remember the Milk. Another thing that works well for simple collaboration is Google Docs. Tom Beach mentioned they are looking for someone to help them put together a customized WordPress template for their new site.

Rick Burns working on a site called 9neighbors designed to feature locally created on a neighborhood level, they are currently covering the Boston area (including Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, and Brookline). You can add your feed and they will filter it. It’s a new way of surfacing content that has local relevance. Check out their site, they are currently looking for feedback as they refine what they are doing.

Rachel Happe is a technology analyst at IDC who leads research on the digital business economy, and she blogs at The Social Organization.

Ted McEnroe is an Executive Producer with New England Cable News. He’s looking around to see where broadcast television is going, he just moved over to work on the NECN web site, recently relaunched as a video-driven web site, and he hopes to take it beyond where it is now, do more aggregating of media from across New England as a whole, he’s thinking about the best way to bring in community voices from around the region.

Dale Cruse is a website developer who does Drinks Are On Me, a popular wine blog and he’s also the weekly drinks columnist for Bostonist (a blog covering news, events, bars, and restaurants in Boston).

Pam Rosenthal is a social media consultant helping companies use online communities to engage in meaningful conversations with their customers. She’s interested in connecting with folks who do video as she may need to develop content in the future along the lines of customer testimonials and training videos.

Mike Walsh is working on putting together another Barcamp at MIT or a similar venue soon, possibly in April.

Rekha Murthy is an interaction designer, radio producer, and graduate of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, check out her blog, Punctuated Equilibrium. Her research at MIT focused on street media in urban spaces, urban annotation practices, and more with a focus on Central Square in Cambridge, and this may evolve into a book, she’s open to people’s experiences and ideas in terms of book agents and self-publishing options.

Adam Weiss suggests we check out the Museum of Science exhibit on baseball coming in June put together with the Baseball hall of fame, in addition to his work at the Museum of Science, Adam does Boston Behind the Scenes, an excellent podcast. He’s is looking for new adventures in new media and podcasting if you have any ideas for him.

Nate Aune is working on Jazkarta an open source videos sharing application, your own branded YouTube, your own logo, commenting, rating, tagging, etc. Check out an example at plone.tv. He’s also working on BostonJazz.net, a site to showcase Jazz Music in Boston.

Matt Searles continues to work on Asymmetric Biz Cult, a fascinating podcast that mixes philosophy, art, business, new media, and provides unique perspectives on what is most commonly called convergence. Who else has managed to include Michel Foucault, Carl Jung, and Jack Welch in the same podcast?

And on that note, I’ll remind you that the next meeting will be on April 6, 2008. Boston media makers gathers once a month on the first Sunday of every month at Sweet Finnish Cafe in Jamaica Plain. We go around the table and people talks about what they are up, ask questions, announce events, and more. In addition, there’s plenty of mingling before and after the meeting.

It was another inspiring, interesting, and entertaining meeting of the Boston Media Makers , which has become carved in stone in my calendar for the first Sunday of every month. We meet at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain with founder and master of ceremonies Steve Garfield. This month Steve used Mogulus studio to stream today’s meeting. It’s a little TV studio on the mac, allows you to stream live, add lower thirds, on the broadcast site you can take comments, it’s all early software, it crashed a couple of times, but it certainly points to where web-based streaming is headed. We went around the room doing updates and show-and-tell.

I mentioned that on Art Film Talk (my audio podcast) I recently posted an interview with Marshall Herskovitz on the topic of Quarterlife, a “television-style” episodic on the web that’s been generating lots of buzz in both industry and new media circles.

My show and tell this month was my Tram-50 Lavalier Microphone and its many accessories, including Rycote’s Lavalier Windjammer designed to reduce wind noise on Lavs worn on the outside of clothing. The Tram-50 delivers smooth, rich sound and was the first piece of audio gear I bought. Three video cameras have come and gone in the time I’ve owned the Tram. Good sound equipment is a worthwhile investment from which you will reap dividends for many years. If the Tram breaks your microphone budget, a good source of affordable, good quality, small microphones is Giant Squid Audio Lab.

I’ll be participating in the Web Video Summit coming up on December 10-11, 2007 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, on the Lights, Cameras, Sound: How to Get Great Results panel (1:00pm-1:50pm on Monday) where we’ll be discuss stratagies, tactics, and techniques for better video and sound that will not break your production budget. I offered a free conference pass to the first person who asked for it and Steve Albanese was the lucky winner. Congratulations Steve!

Len Edgerly showed us iYule on his iPhone, a 30-minute Yule Log video available for iPod, iPhone, and more. A holiday fireplace experience with crackling sounds for those on the go. Len is intersted in hearing about interesting uses of the web, video, and social media by artists. Some suggestions came up including a recent Wall Street Journal article about a visual artist using YouTube and Exit Art, an interdisciplinary laboratory for contemporary culture that explores the rich diversity of voices that continually shape art and ideas. Len has been documenting how artists and art organizations are using the web. Check out his podcast and video blog.

Bryan Person made a plug for Len’s podcast, saying “he’s a great storyteller.” Bryan is organizing monthly social media breakfasts that meets every 5-6 weeks in town or somewhere outside, network and talk, kind of on his radar are seesmic and utterz , how are these working for you? The next breakfast, Social Media Breakfast 4 will take place on Monday, December 17, 2007, from 8 to 10am at The Wine Cellar at the Mooo Restaurant in Downtown Boston.

Nate Aune from Jazkarta is building community media portals using open source software offering organizations a way to aggregate multimedia content including screencasts, he’s also recording bands, interested in promoting local boston based bands. They are building sites running on Amazon EC2, offering a scalable media cloud for your application.

Martin Freeth from Windfall Digital is a media producer from London who works on science videos, they are doing Choose Your Character, a museum exhibit project in genetics, visitors pick a card, and move through changes to your character, you learn through walking in the shoes of another person. They are also doing an IPTV story on genetics. He used to work in the BBC and set up BBC online and he dragged himself kicking and screaming into new media. Windfall Digital develops media for all platforms. He showed a wonderful one minute film titled “The Conundrum” from a series of short pieces were designed as instertitials between TV shows but now are perfect for the web. He often comes to the states where lots of good science work is being done. This is the third time Boston Media Makers has had a visitor from London.

Mark Hanser has a new web site, The Mark Hanser Show, different from his current sute, he’s getting into vlogging, exploring these woderful tools, coming to Boston Media Makers and Podcamp and learning to apply these tools as an artist and as an educator. Matt is doing the editing.

Rafael Lanfranco is working with John Coyne on Nuovomedia laboratory’s New Americans Web Site project for immigrants in the US, they are producing media for hispanic-americans, initial focus on Peru, with content on things like how to become an american citizen, how to manage personal finances, encourage them to create their own media, build this template and move to other hispanic groups, working on alpha site right now, should be live within the next week or so. In spanish. Their model public service, advertising and sponsor support. John Coyne and Rafael Lanfranco are building MixItUp, a database to bridge between talent and companies that need the takent by building list of peolle and groups of people interested in working on interesting projects with Nuovomedia.com. They also have a group on Facebook.

Bill Wendel, The Real Estate Cafe, is working on a Real Estate Unconference and has bought an Ice cream truck he’s turning into a mobile podcasting / mapping studio for use at events like real-estate open houses. Sounds really cool.

Zach Braker, Quiver and Quill, is looking to interview people on his blog. He’s working with a business partner who interviews people on management, they are interested in the intersection of life online and life offline.

Jack Hodgson has been doing uncontrolled airspace , a weekly podcast on general aviation, the podcast is literally hangar flying. It’s a very good podcast. He’s also working on Voxci , an alpha prototype that add spoken word to the web, literally word of mouth for the web. Bryan said that bookmarks become richer when there’s an audio description to go with them. Anyone can sugn up and play with it. The main thing Jack is asking for is feedback to help them improve the site.

Tom and Reiko Beach, TRB Design, need in setting up WordPress MU. They want to support multiple gymnastic coach’s blogs. It was suggested checking out WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, the book includes help on every aspect of installing and using WordPress and insights from bloggers who use WordPress. Steve suggests that the easiest way to learn about videoblogging is to click on the “Learn About Videoblogging” on his web site. For people just getting started, Bryan suggested the Flip camera, a.k.a. the soccer mom cam, a low cost alternative for shooting video. If your looking for a miniDV camcorder, David LaMorte and I sugggested the Canon Elura 100 becuase it’s an inexpesnive, small, easy-to-use camcorder that has an external mic input. Using an external microphone is critical for getting good sound. Len’s been happy with the Sanyo Xacti HD2, a tiny 720p camera with an external mic input. If you’re using one of the tiny digital cameras without an expternal mic input, you can always do “double system sound” (recording audio and video separately and synch them up in the editing), for example, Len suggested the Edirol R-09 and I suggested the MicroTrack II. The Samson Zoom H2 and Samson Zoom H4 are also popular choices for small digital recorders.

John Herman in the short
film The Future

John Herman has a show coming up on Thursday, he’ll be doing short-form improv with Gameboyz at the Cantab Lounge in Central Square. Also, starting on December 28 he has a new show starting, producing one man show based on the atoms in the void podcast with Sean Hurley. They have compressed 29 eposides down to a story, performed in character. Catch the show at The Player’s Ring in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it’s a small venue, so order your tickets now. John also started production last week on Gravityland, an 18 episode web show.

Bob Sherriff is an independent producer (without a web site) in the Boston area who has started to immerse one toe into the social media area, getting into corporate videoblogs, an area in which he would like to find someone to work with clients, determine capabilities, help them publish, help them put a lot of different things into their video blogs, get into different areas, right now he’s social media light, wants to become social media hevy, develop corporate blogs for mass publication, he thinks it’s an area that is growing. Most companies still just want to get their message out, they don’t understand the two-way nature of videoblogging, but other companies get it. It will be their competitive advantage.

Some book suggestions that came up in the discussion today include: The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls & David Weinberger, The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

Matt Searles is ediring Mark’s new video blog and he does Asymmetric Biz Cult (a.k.a. ABC), a fascinating podcast tagged, “a new philosophy of art, mind and business.” Matt’s been doing collaborations with Mark thinking business and new media from an artsists perspective, in his words, “a rich tapestry.”

As I cleaned up these notes I listened to ABC Episode 12 Out in Left Field in which Matt talks about how his new Zoom H4 recorder which allows him now to record in the field, he’s no longer limited to recording in the studio, so this will allow him to try some new things. The episode explores what is ABC about? In a nutshell the business of media in the social media space. Around 09:46 and 13:20 you’ll hear “intros” he recorded to help express what ABC is all about. Engaging in the world through both new and traditional forms of art. At 18:00 the Matt goes into who are you? What is your personality? What is your unique approach? How do you market somethign that is so unique that there are no established channels of distribution? This is a big question for Matt. At 22:00 he goes into “modes of being” and suggests that social media is reconfiguring society. Around 25:00 he goes into organizating principles, evolution of the language, the categories that we use to put things in, something to do with idea of custom in the Heidegger sense. Trippy, interesting stuff.

Dave LaMorte is in graduate school and produces Teaching For The Future, a podcast for teachers about implementing technology education and media literacy.

Andrea Mercado is the blog co-manager of PLA Blog, the official blog of the Public Library Association She’s also the Reference and Techie Librarian at Reading Public Library in Massachusetts and author of the LibraryTechtonics blog. PLA Blog is the first blog sponsored by a library organization. She’s preparing a presentation on social media tools and came to the meeting to be inspired. She suggested checking out the Second Life Library System.

Steve Albanese, Tutorial Depot, is offering tutorials on the web available for a range of media devices. Content is geared to music technology, but he’s looking to branch out into other areas. The offer video podcast, some free and others paid. He’s also been doing a video show every Friday at 5pm called Friday Brew with friends, right now more of a fun thing, though it might go into a regular podcast at some point. He’s using the Adobe Flex player.

Well, that’s it for this month, whew. Lots of notes. First photo courtesy of Steve Garfield. Photo of John Herman courtesy of John Herman from the short film, The Future

Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University who studies the impact of new media on human interaction, said: “I watch students come to the realization that there’s an internal contradiction in their lives. They both want to be famous and they want to be authentic, and yet there’s something in their striving to archive their lives that’s inauthentic.”

One of his former students recently posted his own proposal photographs on Facebook, he noted. That site and others like MySpace “allow them to be their own publicists,” he went on. “Which ties in with the marriage thing. It really is a fascinating phenomenon. It’s almost like if it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t happen.”

I’m starting to wonder if we should produce less media, rather than more?

It’s been a media saturated weekend, first was at the Making Media Now Conference at Boston University on Friday and now its Sunday morning and I’m attending the monthly Boston Media Makers meeting held the first Sunday of every month at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain. The image to the left provides a link to my meeting photos in Flickr.

Steve Garfield was webcasting the meeting using Ustream.tv which is a great way to not only share your meeting with people via the net, it’s also great to have comments and questions come in from the online audience. Including requests for pastries. Now if only we could really share the delicious Pullas available at Sweet Finnish with the web audience.

I spoke briefly about MIT TechTV, I’ve been working on this video sharing site for the MIT community, which was recently launched. To kick it off and raise awareness, the School of Engineering ran a a video contest for MIT students. One of the winning films (Best Technical Achievement) was Media Lab at Night by Leonardo Bonanni.

Steve Albanese has been creating online tutorials, his site is TutorialDEPOT. He’s also been creating “Friday videos” as a way to keep in touch with old friends.

Grace Colby is a designer who has worked in the software industry and has become interested in Filmmaking lately, she has taken courses in Rockport, and she’s looking for a community to do her work with. She discovered Boston Media Makers through my blog, cool people are finding these notes useful.

Phillipe Lejeune has been creating some amazing video creations using Flash, providing interesting mosaics of events. He does not like to use a blog, so he learned Flash and does everything in Flash, video is linear, you don’t have too much freedom, but with his video collages, he has found the creative freedom to use video in an intersting way.

Tim White, formerly a journalist with the Boston Herald, has launched two community sites, one of the sites is dahubub.com and it has 10 volunteer contributors, he’s excited with personal publishing, the site shares what’s going on community by community.

David B. has been running the Boston Video Discussin Group, they’ve been meeting a couple times a month in Harvard Square discuss video production on various levels, for the summer they will be meeting once a month on the 2nd Wednesday of every month.

Nathaniel works with David on several projects, they are doing a WNBR live shoots on their weekly show and putting it on blip.tv, they are now starting the legal process to put it out as a formal project, you can see the videos at echoplanar.blip.tv.

Matt Searles does a podcast, Asymmetric Biz Cult, on “the new asymmetric business of culture creation,” which is basically about the business of creativity with an emphasis on trying to rethink the extistential relationships between creater, content, and the market place, in light of distruptive technologies. Very interesting stuff.

Reiko & Tom of TRB Designs are media makers who are looking for new creative services that will enable them and their clients better prepare for the future. They have have been marketing on the web and producing video for the last seven years with GymSmarts.com, a successful gymnastics instructional and training site with DVDs, articles, booklets, and books for sale.

Mike Walsh is on the uncommittee of Barcamp and he talked about the upcoming dev house in Boston on June 24th to be held in a home somewhere in Central Square. This is an events for programmers to get together and collaborate on an open source project.

David La Morte continues to work on his Teaching for the Future podcast, you’ll find lots of cool stuff on his blog. He’s been working on his masters degree and sharing some great stuff along the way.

Jamie O’Brien has a a web site that looks at humor as art. He is riding his bike across the country with some friends and videoblogging the trip. He does not have nearly as much press coverage of other people doing this. Check out the Crazy Guy on a Bike and Team Northern Tier 2007 web sites. He’s looking for people to watch the blog, this will make the trip more meaningful, alot of us are escaping, that’s the motivation, getting away for a while. Good summer viewing I suspect.

Fred White does Nashua Video Tours, web design and video tours for realtors, and he’s done over 200 video tours so far. Video, web, and real-estate strikes me as a natural mix, and I’m waiting to see how the internet can help reduce the transaction costs of real-estate sales. Delivering video tours can help attract a wider audience of potential buyers. What effect will the internet have on real estate commissions is something that comes to my mind. Everything that goes to the internet gets more efficient.

Laura Fitton teaches public speaking and business presentations, she’s got a blog, a blog, Great Presentations Mean Business, where she discusses her craft. She’s interested in exploring how she can use video in her practice, for example, clients can record themselves and play back and practice, using tools like Ustream she can work with her clients remotely and see how they look, how they sound, she wants to learn about new tools.

Josh Snider showed us his web site, Democracy Elevation Force, where he mixes entertainment and politics, he does short videos, and he’s working on a documentary on the internet and open source communities. In response to this, I suggested checking out opensourcecinema.org and Beth Kanter suggested checking out penguinday.org, which is about open source and non-profits and how to use open source for social change, it’s being done in association with the grassroots media conference in Lowel, Massachusetts on Friday June 22nd.

Josh (I did not catch his last name) has been producing short films, recently competed in the 48 Hour Film Project, his goals for this year include producing 10 short films, he’s done 4 so far, three in the fire, check out his site at screwdriver.tv. Josh is looking for the collaborator to make his creative life complete. He’s also working on a short sketch comedy program, with the goal of broadcasting on CCTV and beyond.

John Herman will be doing a stage show based on podcast content in Portsmouth, NH, between Christmas and New Years, an intersting time to stage the show, but if he’s involved with it, it’s time to plan a trip to Portsmouth over the holiday week week. Portsmouth is a charming place to have some dinner, walk around, and catch John’s show. His work on Primary Place is now on YouTune (search for the tag, “PrimaryPlace” to find it) and he will soon be shooting a music video for band Turnpike Blow, he’s looking for a collaborator with After Effects knowledge for this project. Also, John is hosting Energy Smack Down (you can find it on MySpace), a reality TV pilot being shot in Medford sponsored by National Grid in which families compete to see who can save the most energy.

Ravi Jain continues to produce Drive Time, a video podcast he records in his car on his commute to work. He will enter a summer phase, slow down, to make time for playing some video games with his new wii. Ravi’s day job is working on the interactive portion of the PBS show, American Experience.

Randy MacLowry and Tracy Strain of Yellow Jersey Films are currently working on a documentary they expect to be a multiplatform media project about the writer, activist and public intellectual Lorraine Hansberry. They are currently in the fun and exciting fundraising phase, the project will include as the centerpiece a feature-length documentary and a public engagement & education campaign.

Lindsay Shah mentioned a gathering at the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday morning at 10am (June 5, 2007) to protest a bill that Verizon is supporting that will have an detrimental effect on community television. Save Access has posted a document titled “MA: Top 10 Reasons To Oppose the Verizon Bill” on their web site that explains their reasons why the bill is bad news. If you can’t come to the state house on Tuesday to protest, you can still contact your state legislators and those who are on the Joint Telecommunications Committee, and urge them to kill the bill.

Beth Kanter, a long time trainer who’s been involved with the internet for a long time, lead a discussion how we can use social networking tools to make our videos easiler to find and to reach our target audience. Some topics that came up include:

(1) work with existing associations and/or advocacy groups, this provides access to their audience (consider the synergy between moveon.org and the OutFoxed film, for example);
(2) Google Alerts, to see what’s up;
(3) Set up an RSS feed with watchwords on Technorati to see what’s going on, who’s linking to you;
(4) post comments on other people’s sites that are writing about realted stuff, these creates more links out there pointing back to your site;
(5) Capture email address from visitors to build a mailing list (be careful and be sure to make this opt-in;
(6) use FLickr inspector lets you see who has reblogged your photos;
(7) use Google Analytics to see where people are coming from and how your site is used, especially to see how long people are spending on your site and the path to your transcation page if you have one;
(8) Optimize your search engine search results by using all the right words in the right way;
(9) use tagging extensively;
(10) take advatage of blip.tv cross-posting to Flickr and del.icio.us.

I’m sure there was more discussed, but that’s what I caught.

It was another great meeting, a delightful mix of coffee, pastries, conversation, sharing, learning, community, all in one. Until next month, this is David writing from Sweet Finnish Cafe in Jamaica Plain.

Here are my slides from the Opening Remarks I made at the Making Media Now: Filmmaking in Transition conference held yesterday at Boston University. A special thanks to Jennifer Kaplan, Bonnie Waltch, and all the people and sponsors who made this lively and engaging event possible.

Some folks asked me what I used to make the slides, I created them using Apple’s Keynote, a beautifully designed presentation program, however, you can do the same thing with PowerPoint, it’s just more work since PowerPoint’s interface is so clunky. Image credits are on the last slide.

His big ideas are in summary:

1. a hybrid media space (as described in Benkler’s Wealth of Networks)

2. meeting point between a range of different grassroots communities involved in the production and circulation of media content

3. a site where amateur curators assess the value of commercial content and re-present it for various niche communites

4. value depends heavily upon its deployment via other social networking sites

5. operates (alongside Flickr) as an important site for citizen journalists

6. opportunity for translating participatory culture into civic engagement

7. helps us to see the shifts in the cultural economy

8. social networking emerges as an important social skills and cultural competencies

9. demonstrates that a participatory culture is not necessarily a diverse culture

Check out his post, his elaboration of each of these is interesting and reminds me just how much things have changed since I first saw YouTube in 2005 when it was a scrappy little video sharing site. And this speed of change, in addition to the speed with which we can share videos and post video or text responses, makes me think maybe there’s a tenth big idea that should be added to the list:

10. YouTube embodies the salient characteristics of McLuhan’s “global village”

the idea roughly that given the speed of digital (electronic in McLuhan’s words) communication (and post-internet we add to this the ease of building social relationships) our culture will begin to converge, and we will evolve into a way of life that has much in common with village life, and thus the term “global village” now I don’t think it’s all that simple, but it comes to mind. This relates, of course, to #9, as these tools work to homogenize culture. Interesting how it’s not just the broadcast topology that leads to homogenized culture.

Filmmakers Collaborative will present a full day conference at Boston University on Friday, June 1, 2007 consisting of master classes, panel discussions and keynote speakers focused on new technologies and the opportunities they create for film and media makers. A must-attend for cutting edge learning and networking opportunities for media, film, and video professionals throughout New England. Registration closes May 30, so register now! No walk-ins. For more information, call Filmmakers Collaborative at 781-647-1102 or visit the conference web site. Sessions include: Camera Seminar; Film Production Tax Incentives; Demystifying Digital Formats; Copyright Issues; Networking & Box Lunch; Welcome; Opening Remark; Where in the World Is Your Audience Now?; The Social Media Game; Making Content Interactive; Guide to resources on the web; and Case Studies.

On January 31, 2007, Wesch posted his video (about web 2.0 technology) to YouTube and sent the link around to some friends and an anthropology mailing list. Within days, the video became a YouTube “Top Favorite” and as of March 26th it’s been viewed almost two million times and elicited over 4,000 comments. This is viral video at its best, and this time it was not Saturday Night Live comedians or clever performers, but an academic publishing a video about the socio-technical phenomenon of our time.  

Just a few years ago, Wesch would have considered himself lucky to reach an audience of several hundred students over a period of years. Things have changed. The trade press is full of examples like this. Your short film could be next.  Because one thing is clear: today as a media maker on the web, you have direct access to an audience. You can bypass the traditional gatekeepers. The industry rules have all changed.  That said, whether or not you will be appropriately compensated is still up for grabs. It’s still hard work to reach out and connect with an audience.

The rest of this article can be found in “Deliverving Video on the Web” which appears in the April edition of New England Film.

The brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte and several colleagues at the MIT Media Laboratory, and based on the the “constructionist” theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and Alan Kay, the project aims to put low-cost ($100 or so) laptops into the hands of a billion plus children in the developing world. The mission is not merely to supply computer technology, but to build a social network around learning using the methodologies, ethics, and tools of the open source movement. This is the most radical and profound computer initiative ever undertaken, and one that could have far reaching implications. Rather than read what the press, pundits, and industry analysts have to say about it, this video provides an opportunity to learn about the project from someone very close to what’s really going on.

View the Video (from MIT World, Real Media Streaming, 1 hour, 10 minutes)

Today I attended another wonderful meeting of Boston Media Makers held at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, the first Sunday of every month. We go around the room and everyone talks about what they are doing, triggering interesting discussion, questions, answers, suggestions, and ideas. It’s an unmeeting much like an uncoference. Another thing that makes these meetings special is the mix of pros and amateurs, everyone is learning new things, everyone helping each other out, sharing pointers, tips, techniques, talking about their new projects, a really good vibe.

Steve Garfield talked about the start of Videoblogging Week 2007, so make a video every day for a week, and be sure to tag your videos with videobloggingweek2007 so people can find then. Steve also showed a demo of Joost, which I wrote about in a previous post. It’s a cool peek into the future of internet-television convergence.

John Herman talked about the RPM Challenge and the Nanoloop, a synthesizer and sequencer for the Nintendo Game Boy stored on a game cartridge, it allows you to produce interesting electronic music without additional hardware.

John Herman and I will be doing a session at Podcamp NYC titled, “Using cinematic language elements in your video,” for a long time filmmakers have been evolving a language for communicating efficiently using a stream of visual and audio elements over time, and this session will discuss some approaches applying this language to your video in order to increase viewer engagement.

My show and tell this month consisted of two books that I highly recommend reading, they both present some very important ideas. The first is Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. And the second is John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity.. This book offers a refreshing perspective on simplifying of the systems we design and the technology we develop, and even extends into business, and even your own life.

Joe Cascio continues to work on his email project that promises to deal with the spam problem in a manner better the solutions presented so far, he’ll be doing a session on email at Podcamp NYC.

Glen Cooper, a photographer who teaches photojournalism at New England School of Photography will be working on the new Boston Now coming April 17th. Publications on the net offer more room for video, text, and photos, Boston NOW wants citizen journalists to be featured right along professional journalists. They will not edit blogs except for profanity or slander.

Jack Hodgson is a new media producer, writer, and web-developer and the host and producer of the Uncontrolled Airspace, a general aviation podcast. He’s been flying since 1989. His goal for 2007 is to help his clients to use more audio and video on their web sites, move away from text web pages, and towards more audio and video. I say, “bravo.”

Adam Weiss, who does the Museum of Science Podcast, is now blogging for O’Reilly Digial Media Blog, very cool.

Phillipe Lejeune did a great video collage covering the recent Barcamp that gives a nice sense of what went on for people who missed the event.

There was lots more, but I’ve got to cut this short and begin preparing for my shoot tomorrow. Check out some of the photos on Flickr.

Click To Play

Beth Kanter also blogged about, the meeting, and her post also includes a video she made.

If you’re interested in exploring this topic further and you live in the Boston area, I’m doing a session called “Champagne Production Values on a Beer Budget” at the 17th Annual Pro Video show on Saturday, March 10th at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. More info is available in my previous post about the show and the two sessions I’m doing there.

Colophon: I made this video from video fragments shot with a Canon PowerShot S410, digital photos shot with the Canon 10D, and audio recorded with an M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 and a pair of Conference Grabber boundary microphones. The video was edited in Final Cut Pro 5.1.x on a laptop on the train down to New York. I also grabbed some images from Flickr when I had a hole and no material to fill it. I recorded continuous audio, but only shot short video segments. In editing I had to sync up the video shot with the S410 with the audio track. Becuase the S410 records audio, it was easy to sync things up, using he S410’s audio as a reference. It’s a pain, but since the boundary microphones were closer to the speakers (one at each end of the table) and are also better mics than what the S410 offers, the better audio made it worthwhile to do what is called in the industry, “double system sound,” recording image and sound in separate devices.

This was one of the largest Boston Media Makers meetings yet with so many people talking about so many fascinating projects. The group meets the first Sunday of the month at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain starting at 10:00 a.m. I always get a lot out of hearing what everyone is working on and all the amazing discussion. We went around the room and everyone talked about what they were doing, then, after a short break, we got into a discussion on the topic of production values, do they matter?

Regina OBrien talked about BostonNOW, a new daily newspaper in Boston that is developing a compensation plan for successful bloggers/citizen-journalists posting on their web site. They are holding a Bloggers’ Summit on March 10th in order to get feedback from the community. Regina is the Web Content Manager for BostonNOW.

Rick Berlin is working on Jamaica Plain Spoken, a documentary exploring American community through Jamaica Plain. The film integrates “plain spoken” interviews, historical perspective, a dynamic soundtrack (produced by Jamaica Plain residents), and cutting-edge animation. He’s currently looking for animators to help him in the endeavor.

Matt Searles, Evan Pew, and Mark Hanser, spoke about their business Asymmetric Biz Cult and their podcast on the Asymmetric Business of Culutre Creation, which includes thinking from Jungian Psychology.

Randy Mann would like to see VloggerCon 2007 happen here in Boston and is curently looking for a venue.

Beth Kanter talked about the many things she’s involved with including her blog, Beth’s Blog where she writes about about technology for non-profits, educational technology, and much more.

Susan Walsh, Executive Director of The Center for Independent Documentary talked about her organization and how they are embracing change and thinking about the role of feature length documentaries and their involvement with the Alliance for Independent Motion Media and the upcoming Making Media Now: Filmmaking in Transition event hosted by Filmmakers Collaborative scheduled for June 1st at Boston University.

Steve Albanese talked about Tutorial Depot, which includes tutorials like How To: Digital Performer and How To: Record Drums. He uses Snapz Pro X for capturing screencasts on the Macintosh and Camtasia Studio on the PC.

I spoke about the upcoming Camera Company Pro Video Show on Friday and Saturday, March 9th and 10th, it’s a good show for checking out camera, lighting, and editing, gear at the vendor expo and learning new things at the many workshops and seminars (some are free, some are paid), I’m doing two sessions on Saturday: Delivering Video on the Web and Champagne Production Values on a Beer Budget. I also talked about the latest episode of MIT ZigZag.

Phillipe Lejeune talked about how he’s using his blog and wiki to improve his teaching of drawing.

Dave LaMorte gave us an update on his Teaching for the Future podcast, which started out as his thesis project and he’s continuing to do it. It’s a really interesting blog and podcast. The group got into a discussion of copyright and fair use and David mentioned (and had several copies to share) of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use document that was written by veteran filmmakers to help other filmmakers understand the situations in which using copyrighted material without clearance is considered fair use. Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. It is a crucial feature of copyright law and what keeps copyright from being censorship. You can invoke fair use when the value to the public of what you are saying outweighs the cost to the private owner of the copyright.

David Dahl (an editor) and Emily Sweeny (a writer), both from the Boston Globe, talked about how the organization is slowly figuring out how to meld with the world of blogging and were asked when they were going to incorporate comments right there as part of their articles rather than sending people off to a discussion section.

Fred Light talked about his work as a web designer in the Real Estate market, his web site, Nashua Video Tours, provides high definition real estate video touts for the Nashua, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Boston metro areas.

Chris Brogan talked about the Network 2 Contest. They are looking for producers to create a post to their videoblogs or make a clip that shows people “How to Watch Internet TV”. If you mention Network2, that would be appreciated, they are offering $25,000 in cash prizes. The deadline is March 9th, 2007 and the prize will be awarded on March 20th at Spring 2007 Video on the Net in San Jose, California.

Ashley Hodson just got back from her road trip, she’s documenting the continuing exploration of the ’sustainable’ movement. On her road trip she visited various places around the country where average people are grappling with global climate change, increasing populations, peak oil, threats to biodiversity, etc. There is a lot to chew on these days when it comes defining and working towards sustainability.

Steve Garfield talked about his “allow or deny” experiences with Windows Vista, as well as some of the curious list of choices the operating system presents to him now and then. I wonder if he’d be using Vista if Microsoft had not sent him a free laptop to use. Steve is currently working on Spices of Life, a new videoblog by Nina Simonds about food, health, and lifestyle.

Bryan Person is working on getting JobCamp happening, it’s like PodCamp but for people who want to learn how to use Web 2.0 tools to help then in their job search and building their online persona and reputation.

I’ve missed a few, but my notes are sketchy. Adam Weiss talked about using Google applications to set up a web site, Elisa Mintz is doing freelance videography and editing, Nate Laver is doing hoorayforfunn, and Serra Shifflet is doing headsoff. Justin White and Tim White are in the Real Estate business.

Production Values Discussion

After everyone spoke about what they’re up to, I led a discussion around the question, “Production Values, Do They Matter?” All techniques (whether intentional or not) are part of our vocabulary as visual storytellers and communicators. When is it best to “shot and get whatever” and when might we want to worry about “production values” like “good” lighting, sound, framing, etc.? There are aesthetic and moral issues at stake in this issue. When should we use the aesthetic conventions and tools of industry professionals and and when should we “do our own thing”?

It’s often a question of what is appropriate vs. what is inappropriate for a given message. Much videoblogging is intimate vs “professional” media which is often “detached.” We spoke about low quality vs high quality, and discussed the examples of the “mistakes” in Jean-Luc Godard’s Dreathless in the form of jump cuts were actually an excellent aesthetic technique for creating a particular mood or feel.

Phillipe Lejeune remided us that what’s most important is passion, the desire to do what you’re doing. I have to say this is one reason I find this particular group (which has a mix of everything from novices to professional media makers) more interesting that most, everyone here, regardless of their skill level in media making, is driven by something that’s important to them. Phillipe’s words really resonate, especially in the current context.

Beth suggested we come up with a priority list in terms of what components of production values are most important for effective communication/sharing/conveying what we want to say, we came up with something like this:

• 1. Story, message, passion, you have something to say;
• 2. Record good sound (this is the basis of your viewer’s emotional response to your piece;
• 3. composition and camera work (some rules of thumb that make expression more efficient includes: the rule of thirds, which is based on the golden triangle/mean/spiral;
• 4. Editing, including basic rules about eye-line and eye-level match (related to rule of thirds), making cuts seamless or noticeable, depending on your intent; and
• 5. Shoot for the edit, shot in a way that makes it easy to cut things together, for example, get coverage (alternative angles) of what you’re shooting. Now cutting makes things less “truthful” so how you cut involves a moral dimension. Uncut footage subliminally feels like you were there and can sense the “truthiness” but on the other hand, seamless cutting does the same thing. This goes back to the old argument in film theory between Andre Bazin (who favored little cutting and wide shots) and the more formalist filmmakers who were really into expression, form, and editing.

In the end, “technical resolution” is not what is really important, what’s important is “emotional resolution”. Most of what you need to do to communciate effectively is not expensive. Some books I recommend reading if you’re interested in this issue of production values and media aesthetics include: Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics by Herbert Zettl, The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV and New Media by Bruce Block, andIn the Blink of an Eye (Revised 2nd Edition) by Walter Murch.

At the end of the meeting Steve demonstrated some truly interesting technology: Shooting video with the Nokia N95 phone and then edit the video right on the phone itself including adding a soundtrack and then uploading the video from the phone via WiFi to his blog. He shot and edited a video while riding on the T. Steve has posted some good notes and images on the Boston Media Makers blog.

On Saturday I attended the Beyond Broadcast 2007 conference held at MIT. The theme of the conference was “from participatory culture to participatory democracy” and well over 400 people attended. The live face-to-face discussion was paralleled in Berkman Island in Second Life and in Teen Grid too.

The conference web site set the context for the conference with this description, “For 50 years broadcast media have played a powerful role in shaping political culture and mediating citizen engagement in the democratic process. Now a participatory culture is putting the tools of media creation and critique in the hands of citizens themselves.” Here are some of my notes and impressions of the day.

The conference struck a balance between structured presentations and informal discussion: rather than simply have panels where the experts speak and the audience listens and maybe asks some questions (rarely is there enough time for discussion because most moderators don’t keep speakers to their time slots), this conference was well structured and run in a manner that optimized participation and discussion.

The morning started with opening remarks, followed by a keynote and two panels, at lunch time we broke into working groups and towards the end of the day we came back together for reports from each of the working groups, which was then followed by closing remarks. The evening was kicked off with a reception and demos at the MIT Media Lab and then participants went off in small groups to gather at a series of birds of a feather dinners.

Opening Remarks

Steve Schultze (MIT Comparative Media Studies) said the hypothesis this year has to do with connecting last years theme, the future of public media, and what it means in a participatory culture, as we move from broadcast technology, one way media, to something more participatory and two way, asking what it might mean to allow the audience to make the media themselves, to construct their own meanings and their own news. Is the internet the new public? Maybe, and lots of ideas came out of last year’s conference of how to do that. For example, WNYC has been experimenting with call in radio and ways of making it more interactive.

This year the conference focused more on the issue that now that we’ve seen this new participatory technology develop, what does it mean for citizenship and the public, juxtaposing it with participatory culture, and you get participatory democracy: can this reinvigorate the age old value of democracy? Is this a new opportunity? Does it cross boundaries? Public media and non-traditional media / commercial and non-commercial / fun and serious work. Does it have the potential to break new ground for working on political issues that are not inherently partisan? This is the hypothesis, and many attendees hope this is true and we there are some success stories to discuss and explore, some of which were discussed on the panels and demonstrated during the reception.

Keynote: Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkins (Director, MIT Comparative Media Studies program) posed the question, “what does participatory democracy look like in the 21st century?” And he discussed the topic in the context ideas from his new book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Henry started off with the story of Dino Ignacio, a high-school student who created several Photoshop collages of Sesame Street’s Bert along with Osama Bin Laden as part of a “Bert is Evil” parody on his web site. One thing led to another and in the fall of 2001 someone used Ignacio’s images on a poster used in an anti-American protest and the image was picked up on CNN. Children’s Television Workshop attorneys responded with threats to take legal action. Henry painted a humorous picture, you can imagine where that goes. Ignacio finally took his pages off line, stating “I got too close to reality and had to step back.”

The controversy brings into sharp relief the clash between new media and old media and highlights the top down power of big media entities like CNN and the new bottom up power that participatory media affords individuals. Ten years ago it was inconceivable that a collage made by a teenager like Ignacio would spark controversy and gain international attention. Henry asked, “what does it mean to get too close to reality” in the context of parodies like this? The local flare-up here in Boston over the Aqua Teen Hunger Force signs is a clear indication that governments are out of touch with popular culture and unable to act in a responsible manner.

Henry criticized both the right and left for relying on the same set of images of “what pop culture does to us,” ad busting images by left-leaning media activists are using the same set of tropes as the right. Weapons of mass distraction. Left concerns about brand culture does not grant any power to individuals, we’re self defeating the moment we hold pop culture in contempt, it alienates us from the people that we’re are trying to understand. Henry argues (quite persuasively) that we can’t build participatory democracy assuming people are dumb and uncritical. We need to develop a better understanding of how people use and relate to media.

Henry also argues against the idea that convergence can be understood primarily as a technological process. Instead, convergence represents a shift in cultural logic, whereby consumers make connections between dispersed media content.The term participatory culture stands in contrast to older notions of broadcast media spectatorship. In the new convergence culture, media producers and consumers are transformed into participants who interact with each other according to a new and evolving set of social codes which no one yet fully understands.

In a networked society, people are forming knowledge communities, for example, Wikipedia. Participatory culture presents low barriers of entry for creative expression and political engagement. YouTube is shaping political discourse, citizens are putting up “stolen” media, critique of speeches, recording things that otherwise would not see the light of day, for example, the video of the UCLA student being tasered by police in the library.

What should our politics should look like? 1. Free expression, 2. Fight how copyright is being used to restrict speech, 3. Guarantee everyone has access to right to participate, 4. Look at those spaces in which we come together, 5. Mobilize fan organizations, be careful not to trivialize what they do, 6. Fight for net neutrality.

State of the Union: Internet and Democracy

John Palfrey of the Berkman Center suggested there were two “must read” books right now, Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom . John examined the state of things from an academic perspective and in terms of what’s been discussed at other conferences. In terms of the question, “does participatory media lead to participatory democracy?” John presented his analysis in terms of Pro and Con arguments in three categories: Participatory Democracy, Economic Democracy, and Semiotic Democracy.

Participatory Democracy: Pro: 1. open information environments, 2. new networks, 3. tools that enable activists, 4. help attract new participants. Con: 1. too much information, 2. fragmentation (”The Daily Me” phenomenon), 3. watered down participation, 4. limited to those with access, 5. can be used as a tool for censorship. John suggested we might want to jump forward to a post-democratic structure.

Economic Democracy: Pro: 1. emergence of a strong middle class able to use this technology gives them the ability to agitate, 2. Doc Searls’ ideas on Vendor Relationship Management (he suggests that instead of suppliers advertising what they want us to buy by spamming our attention, we advertise what we want and suppliers make us offers) I don’t recall any Cons here.

Semiotic Democracy: Pro: More YouTube, more Second Life, Less Disney, control of cultural goods and the making of meaning in the hands of the many, this is a spin on the original meaning of semiotic democracy, making new meaning, Cons: How many people are really participating? Is this really is a transformation? Look at how many people see activist videos (tens of thousands) vs. pop stories seen by millions, is that going to transform how meaning is being created?

This phenomenon is about power at the edges, much of it is happening outside of the United States, big media companies are struggling with participatory culture, legal and political battle over the future of the internet is where a lot of this is going to play out, there is a battle over the institutional ecology of the internet and the outcome is not assured (cf. Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, David Isenberg), and Beyond Broadcast 2007 is where the theory meets practice, the outcome is in the hands of people who are participating on the internet today.

There’s more I’ve not written about like the panels, working groups, and wrap-up. You should also check out photos tagged with beyondbroadcast on Flickr. as well as items tagged with beyondbroadcast on del.icio.us.

If you live in the Boston area you will not want to miss the 17th Annual Pro Video Show sponsored by The Camera Company to be held Friday and Saturday, March 9-10, 2007 at Stonehill College, in Easton, Massachussetts (Exit 17B off Route 24). This annual event provides local media makers with the opportunity to check out new equipment, talk with fellow media makers, and attend a wide range of workshops and seminars. Yours truly will be presenting two of the seminars, “Delivering Video on the Web” and “Champagne Production Values on a Beer Production Budget.”

Here’s a description of my seminars:

Delivering Video on the Web
Learn how to make video available on the web, earn money with it, take a look at how it can be delivered to devices and web browsers, and examine the opportunities and challenges it presents. The launch of the video iPod, availability of video on iTunes, the explosion of viral video, Google’s purchase of YouTube, and the amazing quality of shows on blip.tv are all part of a tectonic shift in the media distribution landscape. Television producers, independent filmmakers, communications specialists, advertising executives and entrepreneurs will all learn how to benefit from the tremendous opportunities made possible by delivering their video on the web. Cost: $25. Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 12:00 NOON to 2:00 p.m.

Champagne Production Values on a Beer Production Budget
Video production budgets are tighter than ever, and the increasingly saturated media environment demands that your video must stand out from the rest. In this seminar, you will learn about the strategies, creative elements, and production tools that together deliver what viewers and clients often describe as “high production values.” Practical discussion and examples help you apply cost effective methods right away, resulting in champagne production values on a beer production budget. Cost: $25. Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Other workshops and seminars scheduled at this time (subject to change) include:

• Audio for Video (Sennheiser, David Missal)
• Planning a Production (Teja Arboleda)
• Editing Aesthetics (Eric Scott Latek)
• Apple Final Cut Studio, a Complete Workflow, (Alex Kaloostian)
• A Practical Comparison of DV, HDV & DVCPRO HD for FCP Editors (Alex Kaloostian)
• Docudrama (Eric Scott Latek)
• Final Cut Pro—The Next Step (Ed Krasnow)
• Lighting For Video Film Style (Tom Musto)
• Making History! Profiting from Biography and Same Day Edit Presentations (Hal Slifer)
• P2/Apple Work Flow (Bill Kennedy and Raj Lad, Panasonic Broadcast)
• Meeting of The Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE)
• HD Outdoors (Trevor Gowdy)
• Digital & HD 101 (AJA Systems)
• Adobe Premiere Pro Basics “Crash” Course (Eric Scott Latek)
• Digital Asset Management & Workflow (Focus Enhancements)
• Reflecmedia (Bogen Imaging)

Please keep in mind that all workshop attendees must check in at the Sally Blair Ames Sports Complex (main exhibit location) at least 15 minutes prior to class.

For more information call 781.769.7810 or visit The Camera Company web site. Seminar listing subject to change.

In Episode 16 of Art Film Talk I talk with Steve Garfield about video blogging. It was pure serendipity, I was driving to MIT to record an interview with Henry Jenkins, Steve called, and we ended up having lunch at the Stata Center, recording an interview, and then videotaped two promos for Podcamp Boston, one of which might appear on Rocketboom next week and the other is on Steve’s video blog. That was a fun afternoon.

One of the films is a short to make up for the epic length of another one of the selections. Ask me tomorrow and my answer will be a different, ask me next year and it will be really different. So here’s the list in chronological order:

• Man with the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
• Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
• Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967)
• Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (Les Blank, 1979)
• Notebook on Cities and Clothes (Wim Wenders, 1989)
• Dialogues with Madwomen (Allie Light, 1993)
• When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996)
• Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders, 1999)
• A Kalahari Family (John Marshall, 2002)
• Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)

There are so many amazing documentary films, choosing ten is impossible. Here are some notes on each of the films:
 

Man with a Movie Camera
Dziga Vertov, 1929, Russian title, Chelovek s kino-apparatom
 
This classic avant-garde documentary shows a camera person traveling through post-revolution Russia capturing images of everyday life. The protagonist of the film is the collective Russian people in an attempt to show the new socialist society. The film is loosely organized around the cycle of a day with music and editing moving the story along. The film makes explicit the kinds of cinematic manipulation and serves as an encyclopedia of all the techniques Dziga Vertov and his fellow filmmakers had access to at the time including time-lapse, superimposition, cross-fade, etc. The film was way ahead of its time and films like Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982) are very evocative of The Man with a Movie Camera in terms of the techniques used. I was very much inspired by this film in graduate school and fascinated with the parallels between the way the film was assembled and the research I was doing around multiple point-of-view documentary, it was as if Vertov was telegraphing the future of documentary as well as reflecting the state of cinematic art of his time.

Titicut Follies
Frederick Wiseman, 1967
 
This film provides a scathing look at the poor treatment inmates were receiving from guards, doctors, social workers, and psychiatrists at a prison hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. John Marshall’s handheld camerawork provides a very intimate portrayal of the events. The film brings up issues of access, privacy, the right-to-know, the role of documentary film in society, you name it. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts sued Wiseman and the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the film constituted an invasion of inmate privacy and ordered its withdrawal from circulation. Was it really about Privacy? Or was it the nature of the exposé? The ban on Titicut Follies in Massachusetts was not lifted until 1992.

Don’t Look Back
D.A. Pennebaker, 1967
 
Pennebaker’s camera follows Bob Dylan on his 1965 tour in England. One of the best examples of Direct Cinema (a.k.a. American cinéma-vérité) offering a glimpse into the private life of Dylan at a time when he is gaining popularity and transforming his style. It’s amazing that the agreement between Dylan and Pennebaker to work together to make this film was sealed with a handshake and continues to this day. These days the legal fees required for such an agreement would dwarf the production budget of most cinéma-vérité films.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Les Blank, 1979
 
A short documentary film in which Blank meets Herzog at the San Francisco airport and then follows him to Chez Panisse where Alice Waters helps Herzog cook his shoe in duck fat. The next day Blank is at the U.C. Theater in Berkeley where Herzog eats a piece of shoe in front of an audience. Why did this happen? Years before Werner Herzog had been talking to a U.C. Berkeley student and encouraged him to be a filmmaker with a unique challenge: he said that if the student ever succeeded in making a film that was shown at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, he would come back and eat his shoe. The student was Errol Morris who eventually made Gates of Heaven, a documentary about the moving of a pet cemetery. True to his word, Herzog came back to Berkeley and ate his own shoe. In 1982 Blank followed Herzog again, this time to the Amazon jungle to film the making of Fitzcarraldo, which became one of Blank’s most popular films, Burden of Dreams.

Notebook on Cities and Clothes
Wim Wenders, 1989
 
An unusual documentary in which Wenders is invited by the Georges Pompidou Centre to make a film in the context of fashion and the result is a mix of 16mm and video materials exploring the work of Yohji Yamamoto, a Japanese fashion designer. Wenders follows the designer from Tokyo to Paris as the designer prepares for his latest showing. Through dialog with the designer and solo musings, the film offers a mélange of reflections on the ephemeral nature of fashion and the essential differences between shooting on film vs. video. Today this film vs. video discussion may seem tired, but it was a serious ontological concern among filmmakers in the late 80s when the film was made.

Buena Vista Social Club
Wim Wenders, 1999
 
A poetic documentary of guitarist Ry Cooder gathering together twelve legendary musicians and resurrecting the music of pre-revolutionary Cuba for a series of recording sessions and performances. A variety of performances and observational footage are inter-cut with interviews of the musicians reminiscing in a backdrop of a decaying but colorful Havana. The lush and colorful images were captured using a mix of miniDV and Digital Betacam in the PAL format, helping to de-stigmatize the use of video for films destined for theatrical release.

Dialogues with Madwomen
Allie Light, 1993
 
This highly personal documentary explores the idea that a woman who speaks her mind and acts in her own interests must be insane is a myth that goes way back in our society. Light and Saraf present seven “madwomen,” including Light herself, describing their experiences with schizophrenia, manic depression, euphoria, and recovery. Interviews, reenactments, and home movie footage combine to tell each woman’s story and reveal the abuses they experienced under the care of their doctors. The film challenges us to consider that what we sometimes perceive as “madness” is actually a women’s self-expression. Allie Light said, “A lot of people think that madness, so-called, comes out of nowhere. But the film links it up with their environment.” In the same interview she later says, “Somebody once said to me, women are in mental hospitals, and men are in prison.” (quotes from an interview by Gary Morris in Bright Lights Screen Journal, Issue 14, September, 1995).

When We Were Kings
Leon Gast, 1996
 
This film offers perspectives on the complicated story of Muhammad Ali and the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Ali and George Foreman in Zaire that included a concert featuring musicians like B.B King and James Brown. Fight Promoter Don King contracted the two fighters offering each five million for the fight. Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko put up the prize money, hoping that hosting the event would help him create a better image of his dictatorship. Gast provides a contemporary perspective on the fighters, the dictatorship in Zaire, history, politics, Black identity, and the fight through interviews with George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, and Spike Lee. A superbly crafted documentary film.

A Kalahari Family
John Marshall, 2002
 
A five-part, six-hour series documenting fifty years in the lives of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. This ambitious film of epic scope presents a story of how once independent hunter-gatherers experience dispossession, confinement to a homeland, and the chaos of war. Then as hope for Namibian independence and the end of apartheid grows, Ju/’hoansi fight to establish farming communities and reclaim their traditional lands. The series challenges stereotypes of “Primitive Bushmen” with images of development projects initiated by the Ju/’hoansi. Tsamkxao, a Ju/’hoansi, states in the film, “There are two kinds of films. Films that show us in skins are lies. Films that show the truth show us with cattle, with farms, with our own water, making our own plans.”A Kalahari Family documents the Ju/’hoansi’s struggle for self-determination and access to land and water as NGOs, foundations, and aid organizations conspire against them with other ideas that would blast them back into a “plastic stone age.” The film consists of footage that Marshall shot starting in the fifties on family expeditions to the end of the millennium, and it’s interesting to see how Marshall’s camera work, style, and voice evolved as time went by, the technology changed, and his relationship was transformed over time from friend of the Ju/’hoansi in the 50s to an activist helping them fight for land and water rights in the 80s. A rich, deep, and complex story about a group of people and their struggle for self-determination and basic human rights.

Bowling for Columbine
Michael Moore, 2002
 
An exploration of the relationship between guns and violence in the United States. Moore travels around the United States and Canada talking with a variety of people including NRA president Charlton Heston, James Nichols (brother of Oklahoma bombing accomplice Terry Nichols), and members of the Michigan Militia. The film draws the connection between America’s violent society and its role in the world. But more importantly, this film provides a focal point for discussion of documentary filmmaking ethics, as the film is full of deceptive editing that twists and stretches the truth, yet through his storytelling skills, Moore, like a good magician, hides the mechanisms behind the tricks, resulting in a compelling argument that appeals to the emotions, but falls apart during the fact checking process. This film is not a documentary in most senses of the term, but it’s certainly entertaining.

This page was revised on October 18, 2008 (images and slight edits to the text were added)

We would not describe a collection of short “exerimental videos” as films, on the other hand, most people would describe The Celebration as a film, yet when they rent it on DVD, they’re more likely to call it a DVD or video. The medium used in production and distribution has a strong influence in terms of what we call something. I wrote an essay titled “Film is dead… and we have killed it” about the transition of film as a medium for making films giving way to video and digital as a medium for making films. You might find it interesting, amusing, or ridiculous.

I use the word “film” and “filmmaking” to describe any practice of making movies in the cinematic storytelling tradition, regardness of the medium used for image acqusition, it does not matter. There is a “film” look and a “video” look that is based on a combination of technology, language, conventions, physiological response, and I’m sure most viewers can tell the difference between a “wedding video” and a “film” about a wedding. Is it simply semantics? Is it elitism (video=amateur/home, film=professional/art)? Something else? Words are laden with meaning.

My use of terms like “film” and “filmmaking” over “video” and videomaking” is simply motivated by a desire to demystify and contribute to the democratization of filmmaking. I use “film” and “filmmaking” to describe any practice that involves using motion images to tell a story, regardiness of acquisition medium. The social practice of filmmaking has always involved much more than the medium used to record images, filmmaking represents a tradition of storytelling deeply rooted in the means of production, cinematic language, means of distribution, and a culture of distribution and viewing in terms of film festivals, film societies, film publications, film reviews, and the social and cultural practices of viewing and discussing films.

On the other hand, many experimental video artsts have preferred to use the term video to differentiate their methodology and tools as they want to break away completely from the cinematic storytelling tradition. Experimental film and experimental video refer in most circles to very different bodies of work, as their choice of medium, especially when working experimentally, has a profound impact on what can be done. Stan Brakhage scratched and painted on the film itself (Mothlight and Dog Star Man come to mind), while Zbig Rybczynski’s work with compositing was only possible with the goundbreaking electronic cinema tools he did his work with (his Steps based on the Odessa Steps sequence of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin comes to mind). Each of these experimental artists were clearly bound to their medium, Brakhage as a “experimental filmmaker” and Zbig Rybczynski as an “experimental videomaker” so the terms get complex, again, laden with meaning.

Is there in fact a difference between a “wedding video” and a “wedding film”? Possibly a wedding video is more along the lines of reportage, while a wedding film might take more a storytelling approach? In summary, the tools, techniques, and social practices surrounding “video” and “film” are converging. Is something a film or a video? It depends on what you mean.