This year the event will mark Filmmaker’s Collaborative’s 25th anniversary and takes place on Friday, June 8, 2012 at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. The conference will feature sessions on: New models of funding, collaboration and distribution; Media-fueled impact; Kickstarter and other models of crowd funding; Speed dating for new strategic partnerships; and the ever-popular Art of the Pitch, an opportunity to observing media makers pitch their projects and listening to the feedback from the panel of industry decision-makers. If you’d like to pitch your own project, the deadline for submitting proposals is May 11th.

Visit the Making Media Now conference page for more information and to register for the event (you will save money if you register on or before May 11th).

If you’re an independent media maker working in New England, this is where you will want to be on Friday, June 8, 2012!

I’ve been contemplating the evolution of the documentary this summer and I was delighted to see that The MediaGuardian’s recent Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 coverage includes ten articles providing a refreshing perspective on how documentary makers are finding new ways to reach their audience. These articles provide a view into a crystal ball in which we can begin to see a vision of the future. Here are links to the articles, worthwhile reading and a good starting point for further reflection and discussion.

Social media influences documentary-makers
Social media have had a truly revolutionary effect, enabling film-makers and citizens to disseminate their own stories

Adam Curtis: happy to be different
The maker of classic documentary series such as The Trap and The Power Of Nightmares believes he is still learning his trade

New technology opens up documentary-making
Recording devices are always evolving – from 16mm cameras to iPad apps – offering film-makers the chance to innovate

Jay Hunt: Social media promotes a better viewer experience
Using multiplatform and social media is an incredibly important part of what we’re doing at Channel 4

Can you make a film and a profit?
Making money from documentaries is no easy task, but there are some business models that are generating revenues online

How the internet is galvanising support for social justice documentaries
Films that form part of a campaign for social justice are regularly appearing online – greatly increasing their reach and impact

Tools of attraction: creating multimedia content for games and TV shows
Audiences now expect stories to be told in new ways across different platforms, but commissioners often fail to produce compelling ‘transmedia’ content

The impact of Twitter on TV shows
For producers, posts on Facebook and Twitter are seen as indicators of success – but do they influence ratings?

BBC documentary boss wants programmes that do more than entertain
Commissioning editor Charlotte Moore favours quality and craft over feelgood and populist

Steve James hails a ‘golden age of documentary film-making’
Prior to his visit to the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, director says attitudes towards docs have changed

Image credit: Crystal Castles by Frogman (2008).

Among my favorite books is Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema, in spite of originally being published in 1970, it still offers a fresh perspective on the possibilities of new media art. Imagine a collection of essays that takes Youngblood’s book as a starting point. Well, here you have it! Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema, edited by Janine Marchessault and Susan Lord, is a collection of articles that takes Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema as a jumping off point and offers a variety of perspectives illuminating the shift from traditional “filmic” cinema to new “post-film” forms that include performative, interactive, and net-based media, which is part of a larger trend in which digital technology is transforming our visual culture. The articles present provocative questions of interest to both academics and practitioners: What’s new about new media? What’s different about digital aesthetics? How does the role of the viewer change? How does storytelling change? What are the political implications of these new forms? How does community production change the media? I read the essays with great interest, offering an opportunity to reflect critically on my own media making practice.

Today, writing with a camera has yet to achieve the expressiveness Astruc envisioned. Astruc would have loved MTV (at least back when they actually showed lots of music videos, I fondly remember watching MTV during its first three years, I thought I was witnessing the cinematic avant-garde going mainstream), anything that challenges mainstream film practice. Astruc writes the future of cinema will revolve around the director as auteur, which was an important idea behind the French New Wave. Fast forwarding to the present, personal documentaries–for example, Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich, 1990), Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003), and Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)–demonstrate how cinema might very well have surpassed the novel as the dominant narrative form of a new generation.

Astruc’s idea of film as a language independent of literature provides a theoretical and historical tie-in to what is happening today, as cinema is becoming more personal, a form of visual writing, perhaps (dare I say) even eclipsing the novel, as our current generation seems to be returning to a new form of visual orality, and possibly, eventually, abandoning (perhaps too strong a word) the written word. I shudder as I write this, for I love to read and value the written word, there are reasons this blog post is in the form of words, not a visual essay, I strive for a balance between written/verbal and visual communication, for they represent two modes of knowing, each with unique strengths and weaknesses (is a topic best covered in a book or a movie?), however, I observe with anxiety the decline in reading, and I wonder if it is inevitable, as our modes of communication become more visual, perhaps it is evolution and not decline I’m not sure, but Astruc’s essay helps to assuage my anxiety. For better or worse, we are rapidly moving into an age of visuality.

Photo from The New Wave (Edited by Peter Graham, Doubleday & Company, 1968, p. 17).

provocative.objects: the extradition is co-curated by lou suSi and yours truly, working with the Bureau of cyberSurreal Investigation. Together we have selected for you a collection of works by a diverse array of artists, designers, and performers. Come experience an immersive sound installation, interactive sculptures, live performances, a video loop, and music, along with an assortment of tasty snacks and beverages. this one-evening exhibition/event will close with live music by local rockers stereo soul future, featuring christopher field.

Exhibiting artists include: Phillippe Lejeune, Ellen Godena, Alberto Negredo, Alison Kotin, Chris Basmajian, Christopher Field, Colin Owens, Courtney Brown, Courtney Lockemer, cyber sir eel kolectiv, Daniel Buckley, Daniel DeLuca, Dwayne Butcher, Elizabeth Mead, Ellen Lake, Joseph ‘Puppy’ Wight, Joshua Dolby, David Tames, Laugh Foundation, Laura Amador, Lauren McCarthy, Leigh Wells, Lewis Gesner, lou suS, Mary Rachel Fanning, Mauri Lehnoten, , Scott Murray, Stacy Scibelli, and X Y.

The event is presented under the aegis of the Dynamic Media Institute (DMI) at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. DMI offers a creative environment wherein graduate students from many disciplines explore the evolution of interactive art and communication design through new media. Through events like provocative.objects: the extradition, students, alumni, faculty, and friends of the program explore interactive storytelling, documentary, dynamic media design, video games, performance art, musical composition, and more.

I hope you will be able to join us for this special evening, for more information, point your browser to provocativeobjects.com (the site is evolving and will become the exhibition catalog by the end of November).

Perhaps now, with the ability of everyone to “broadcast themselves” we might see some of the future that Younglood envisioned forty years ago. A media form in which the demands of commerce and narrative give way to personal experience, personal perceptions taking precedence over the demands of traditional narratives. As Youngblood challenges his readers then and now, we need to create new narratives that are authentic, based on our personal experience, and thus truly unique. We have the means of making, collaborating, and distribution in today’s internet-based mediascape to bring Youngblood’s vision of synaesthetic cinema alive.

The personal computer allows us to merge the traditions of photography, typography, graphic design, audio and moving image production, interactivity, interaction through sensors, and more, into an expanded palette of infinite possibilities that Lev Manovich refers to as “hybrid, intricate, complex and rich visual language” in The Language of New Media (Leonardo Books, MIT Press, 2006, p. 11), which I like to call computational media. It encompasses every conceivable media form in a computational environment, which essentially makes it a hyper-medium.

I prefer terms like computational media and hypermedia over multi-media or digital media. The important transformation in photography and cinematography has not been digitization, but the embodiment of the medium in a computational environment. Computation is what is truly new in new media. Now, forty years later, we are living in an environment that makes expanded cinema not only possible, but necessary. Youngblood suggests that artists are ecologist crafting the environment and that expanded cinema will bring art and life closer together. We have a ways to go before we achieve that vision. As the internet becomes a new space for commercial conquest and net neutrality is threatened, we must fight to preserve this brave new medium so we may see the vision of Expanded Cinema come alive in our lifetimes.

Anyone who makes or consumes media should read this book. It’s an essential component of our intellectual diet for a sane planet.

1. culture of oral communication,

2. manuscript culture,

3. the Gutenberg galaxy, and

4. the electronic age.

The start of each phase is marked by the emergence of a new medium. Writing enabled manuscript culture, printing enabled what McLuhan called the Gutenberg galaxy, electronic media enabled the electronic age of broadcast communication. What has electronic media brought forth?

We have now entered the fifth era of history: the era of communication, simulation, and the end of reality. In previous ages we communicated in order to preserve and pass on memories. We lived in a world in which we believed there was a reality we wanted to share, so we communicated. But the signs we use are tricky and layered, they are deceptive, and the more we used signs the more we became removed from day-to-day, one-on-one interaction, we lost sight of the real.

The principle of reality ended in 1983 with the publication of Simulations, Baudrillard’s most influential work. At first only a small number of cultural and media critics were aware of the end, as the world continued to function under the illusion of reality. Sixteen years later the concept went mainstream with the release of the film The Matrix (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999). This blockbuster turned Baudrillard’s esoteric notion into a meme of apocalyptic proportions. Baudrillard wrote,

“Simulation is no longer that of a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory” (Baudrillard, 1983).

If the Matrix didn’t exist, Baudrillard would have invented it.

Simulations became a prescient handbook for the end of Renaissance ideals, fast-forwarding us through modernism, and throwing us straight into the eternal simulated present of post-modernism, post-capitalism, post-history, post-reality, post-memory, post-insert-your-favorite-concept-here. We no longer need to remember, we no longer can remember, for there is no reality, only information at out fingertips. And what we do remember is not even real in the sense of reality before 1983. Perhaps it never was. We are wired into the Matrix. Connected. In a wired eternal present without history, there can be no memory. Only desire fulfilled through consumption.

How did we get here? We learned how to write. Socrates tried to warn us of the dangers:

“If men learn [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom” (Plato, quoted in Kabitoglou (1990)).

Like Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, we chose to write, we chose to read, we chose “external marks,” and thus we chose to put our reality outside of ourselves, and thus, we created the Matrix, and with the Matrix, the principle of reality came to its untimely end. As Neo says in The Matrix, “All these memories I have, these places I went…. None of it ever happened. What does that mean?” Welcome to the simulacrum. We are happy to serve you.

References

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations, Trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Phillip Beitchman, Foreign Agents Series, Semiotext(e), 1983.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, 1962.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, The MIT Press, 1994 (originally published in 1964).

Kabitoglou, E. Douka. Plato and the English Romantics, Routledge, 1990.

Image Credits

1. Marshall McLuhan, © Canadian Postal Service

2. The Matrix, promotional materials, © Warner Bros.

3. “Jean Baudrillard (Simulated),” © Bifurcaciones

Note: This essay was originally written February 16, 2009 as part of an assignment for Design Seminar II
 at MassArt. Some minor editorial changes were made for the blog version.

Check out this link: www.berwickinstitute.org/bri/bumpkinisland for more details and information about the special Art Encampment boat shuttle that will deliver you directly from Boston to the island and back to the mainland! If you’re thinking of going, reserve a space on the boat now, as it will fill up and the alternatives are painful for they involve changing boats, the direct ferry is the best way to get there and back!

I’m involved this year as a project fellow documenting the Encampment. I will make the footage accessible to both participating artists and the public, working with interested collaborators to develop a participatory documentary on the project. If you visit this weekend, please consider making media (sketching and/or taking photos and/or recording audio and/or shooting video and/or writing) of your experience and sharing it with me. Contact me if you would like more details about my project.

Update, October 12, 2010

Here are some of the photos I took at the encampment this year:

Photo: Kate Dodd, “Ebb and Flow, ” 2009 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment, photo by Patrick Johnson.

For a good basic introduction to HTML 5, see Dive into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim. Rich media and dynamic web content has outgrown the ability of HTML 4 to describe the content of web pages. Video, audio, and dynamic interfaces that rival desktop applications are now commonplace. By adding additional HTML elements, HTML5 will provide web developers with a better way to describe the content of a web page. Significant new features include <video> and <audio> elements, improved forms handling, a <canvas> element that allows image scripting on the fly, and new ways of marking pages to support user interaction.

Video, especially, should be shown with a video player that is HTML5 compliant in order to include the new generation of mobile devices like the Android, iPhone, and iPad. With the right HTML5 player you can support HTML5 for these devices and newer browsers but fallback and use Flash in the event the viewer is using an older browses. Two examples of video players capable of this include the JW Player for HTML5 and the Kaltura HTML5 Video Library.

Industry players are currently debating the merits of HTML5. Apple, with its large deployment of iPhones and the iPad growing in popularity, neither of which supports Flash, has taken a strong position in favor of HTML5. Even after you factor away Job’s famous reality distortion field, he still makes a compelling argument for embracing HTML5, although Adobe might disagree.

Image source: HTML 5 Video Element – New Open Video Format Tags by Mark R. Robertson.

Free distribution. Nina Paley has been pleased with the results of doing free distribution for her film Sita Sings the Blues, she has managed to generate revenue from the sale of DVDs, T-shirts, and donations. She writes on her web site, “My personal experience confirms audiences are generous and want to support artists. Surely there’s a way for this to happen without centrally controlling every transaction.” Why not? In the old days many filmmakers supplemented their income with grants from Arts organizations, why not go directly to your audience for support? Paley said that “Copyleft was the best decision, the audience is distributing [my film].” Thomas Woodrow (Producer, Bass Ackwards) suggests that even if you do free distribution, you should not offer it free forever, think of it more like a traditional release window, rather than perpetually giving something away. In the end, it’s not simply a choice of one technique over another, it’s about coming up with a portfolio of techniques that makes sense for your project.

DVD and what works. Steve Savage (CEO, New Video) suggested that “DVD is not yet dead” and remains as a robust revenue streams for filmmakers. And while digital revenues might be about 10% on the average of independent filmmaker revenues (compared to 90% for DVDs), this will most likely flip just as it’s going to do in music. 2010 is the year that digital downloads will overtake CD sales in the music business, so it’s only a matter of years before the same thing will happen with films. It’s easy to predict what could happen, it’s hard to predict when, and exactly how things will happen. Richard Lorber (CEO, Kino Lorber) said “we’ve entered the postmodern era of film distribution [in which] everything is possible and nothing is working.” Ira Deutchman quoted an article (don’t recall the titled or reference) that with unusual candor summed things up, “the film business has always been hobby” challenging the “content is king” mantra. Robert Bahar (Producer, Made in LA) said of indie distribution, “This is not easy, this is like being in a rock band…”

New models are emerging. Arin Crumley talked about his new project, OpenIndie, a “”Niche social network” with the goal of connecting independent filmmakers directly with their audiences, filmmakers make their films available, Open Indie helps potential viewers request screenings and entrepreneurs to host screenings, linking potential audiences with films, much in the same way he did with Four Eyed Monsters. Related discussion included the use of Gowalla and Foursquare to help drive audience to screening locations. While digital distribution was the Tsunami in the room, there ramains strong desire among independent filmmaker, and a culultral need, to screen films for an audience.

Using social media. There was a great deal of discussion the use of social media platforms (especially Twitter and Facebook) for promoting your film, but given the panel structure of the conference, there was not a lot of time for tactical nuts and bolts, the level of the discussion remained, for the most part, strategic, but the strategic insights were valuable nuggets:

• Focus on aggregating passionate followers and don’t worry about those who hate your film.
• Online communities moderate themselves and take on a life of their own.
• Participate online speaking in your own human voice (the advice of Seth Godin and The Cluetrain Manifesto comes to mind), authenticity is currency. And modulate the frequency of your interactions with the characteristics of the community you build, we don’t want to replace the old push advertising model with the same beast in new clothing.
• Nina Paley suggested that attention is scarce, while information is plentiful.
• If you make a film for a niche audience, it’s quality, not quanitity that counts. Angel Aviles-Clinton mentioned the film, At Home By Myself With You as an example of successfully raising $46,000 using Facebook and Twitter with a modest number of followers.
• Thomas Woodrow suggests that for content creators to stand out they need to create stories around their stories.
• And many others (search on the #convonyc hashtag for more insights).

New forms? Davin Hutchins of ITVS IndiesLab and I combined our lunchtime discussions, “MicroDocs: What They Are and Why You Might Want to Make One” and “20 is the New 90: The Future of Not-So-Long Form Content on the Web,” respectively, which led to a lively conversation. I’ll write about the discussion in a future blog post, after some synthesis and post-conference discussion with the participants. Stay tuned…

It’s an exciting time to be a storyteller. Lance Weiler’s words during the closing session wrapped things up, suggesting these are “exciting times to be a storyteller” and in spite of the internet being a disruptive force, “a creative class is going to emerge.” He added that “we’re all trying to figure out how to fund, create, distribute, and exchange.” I hope Lance’s optimism wins out over the concerns over free culture and Web 2.0 voiced by Jaron Lanier in his new book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, a very thoughtful critique that can’t be dismissed lightly, written from an informed perspective.

It’s up to us to create the new landscape. One thing is for sure reading between the lines at this conference: nothing is predetermined at this point and collaboration among independent filmmakers is crucial if we’re going to develop an alternative way to build and connect with audiences and develop a healthy distribution ecosystem, the mainstream mechanisms are breaking apart and we have an opportunity to fill the cracks with a vibrant alternative way to fund our films, find an audience, make our films, find collaborators, deliver media, and engage in a two-way conversation, but we have to do it, we being independent filmmakers. The media technology is in our hands. What will we build with it? How will we build it? In the process of distributing our films, we also have to reinvent the ecosystem in which we distribute our films. A good place to start thinking about this is with the resources gathered in The Workbook Project, started by Lance Weiler.

Shout-out. Kudos to the organizers for assembling a wonderful group of people to discuss, in a productive and meaningful way, the tectonic shifts in communications technology and social media that are rapidly redefining the independent film marketing and distribution landscape. The conference was organized by Scott Kirsner (CinemaTech; author of Fans, Friends And Followers: Building An Audience And A Creative Career In The Digital Age), Tiffany Shlain (Filmmaker; Founder, The Webby Awards), and Lance Weiler (Filmmaker; Editor of The Workbook Project) and hosted by Ira Deutchman (Managing Partner, Emerging Pictures; Professor of Professional Practice, Graduate Film Division, Columbia University School of the Arts).

Donath developed this installation with students Alex Dragulescu, Yannick Assogba, Aaron Zinman and other collaborators. They describe their piece as an installation about “living in a world overflowing with information and non-stop communication.” After spending some time walking through the piece, one thought that came to mind was Jean Baudrillard’s The Ecstasy of Communication meets the Ambivalence of Information. In The Ecstasy of Communication Baudrillard goes beyond his earlier discussions of “simulacrum” and takes on our state of pervasive digital technology, which he describes as an orgy of pure communication. He takes Marshall McLuhan’s mystical ideas to their logical conclusion: just as the medium is the message, communication is what is communicated. We are floating in a sea of information without grounding, and thus, we have constructed an environment that leads to an ambivalence of information.

When you first walk into the piece you are surrounded by a sea of rectangular shapes, perhaps a virtual city. On these objects are projected changing patterns of information, you can recognize words, names, numbers. The soundtrack is etherial, sounds could very well be from the same space at another point in time, mixed with computer generated voices reading what might be random pieces of information, even some personal data. From where does this data come from? As you wander through the space you come across three flat screen displays, each showing a different view of an information landscape. You are literally transported into an ether, a medium, along with its anesthetic effects. The sounds and visual imagery incorporate live and recorded data ranging from personal updates and private information, some of which apparently are from a search engine that invites you to type in your name or the name of someone you know. It comes back with all the characterizations of the person it can find on the net and then draws a spectrogram-like display showing various colored bands with labels like books, sports, management, family, committees, education, domestic, illegal, music, legal, social, religious, art, design, etc. A curious way to map an identity. Visitors who spend time immersed in the piece may eventually realize their data has become part of the exhibit, their images captured by surveillance cameras, their names entered into databases, their voices recorded and played back by in the echoing soundtrack.

Metropath(ologies) provides a perfect companion to the writings of McLuhan, Baudrillard, and their ilk, for it brings the ideas of a world overflowing with information and non-stop communication into the realm of experience right in front of you, and all around you. It places our post-modern information ecology right in front of your eyes, like helping a fish better understand water. We swim in media every day, we take it for granted, much like I imagine fish take water for granted. Can we imaging a world without constant news, mobile phones, information devices, our lives a constant broadcast and reception of text messages, tweets, emails, information. All of this we’ve begun to take for granted and Donath and her students present us with a new perspective from which we can reflect. The search piece in the installation allows you to type someone’s name and it comes back and shows how that person is characterized based on information available online. The data is easily misunderstood or misconstrued. When I typed in my own name it said I was all sorts of things that I might have been in the past, but I’m no longer those things today. It shows us as a sum total of net-accessible information, rather than the ephemeral pattern we, our friends, our family, imagine us to be. This search engine had no personal context, no input from the wetware, it only knows what data is out in the net, the matrix perhaps. Lots of old stale jobs were front and center. Nothing about my current life and work. Information about information without personal context, without filtering by rapidly becoming obsolete carbon based life units. Another visitor typed in his name. He was disappointed, having a common name, the search engine came back with a composite of people, but not him. He was lost in the sea of information. He had no way to specify his unique id/entity.

Among the abstracted city of information columns in the installations, I felt a constant information flow, without consciousness, without a life as I know it, but pulsing with another form of life, bringing to the forefront the challenge and impossibility of controlling the information about ourselves, as machines, agents, bots, databases, etc. take on a life of their own, making their own conclusions, or perhaps occlusions. Data patterns collected by software agents become a new form of truth. There is a fascinating ambiguity in the piece, the mapping of the data and the space is not clear, how is the information mediated? Is there such a thing as computational understanding? As the search engine is given names, it make sense of that “name” but not the “person,” later I learned that the name is sent to the soundtrack, part of music like, some from the news, computer generated voices read key words. The most fascinating component was the appearance of “data ghosts” in the central monitor in the space, which at first looks like an ordinary surveillance camera view, you see yourself and other visitors on this monitor, but then the screen is occupied by data ghosts, are these real people or data? What is floating in space? Metropath(ologies) is a garden of pure information, de-contextualized, re-contextualized, So what’s missing in our contemporary communication landscape that leads to ambivalence of information? What is the ecstasy of communication? Is it anything akin to Werner Herzog’s wonderful phrase, the ecstasy of truth? Perhaps it is the narratives that ground us in specific human experiences, a synthesis that resembles our lived experience. And that’s the story we seek to find. It may be that the way out of ambivalence lies in ecstasy, but one of human truths, not just communication.

Notes
1. This post was originally posted on the MassArt Design Seminar II Blog, Spring 2009. It is re-printed here with minor editorial changes.
2. Clicking on images will take you to the image photo page on Flickr

Register now for this must-attend event, and do it now to avoid higher last-minute registration fees. I plan to be there on June 5th, and I hope you’ll consider joining me for this wonderful day. The event is organized by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization that has been serving independent filmmakers for over two decades and Making Media Now has become the premiere New England independent film conference.

Bard’s work is the kind of machine-assisted participatory filmmaking that brings Vertov’s vision into the new millennium and enabled by computers and the net. I’m sure Vertov would have loved it. Man With A Movie Camera was Vertov’s mechanical vision of a new socialist society with Vertov as auteur, Mikhail Kaufman as the cameraman, and Yelizaveta Svilova as editor, and with Soviet society and the machinery of the industrial age as the protagonists. Bard’s project presents a global social reality in the new millennium. Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake, or as I like to think of it, “People with Video Cameras” brings the machine and ordinary people into the process of movie production and delivery, providing a collective vision consistent with Vertov’s futurist masterpiece of the modern era but remade in a postmodern setting with the media and tools of our generation: participation, camcorders, the internet, and computation. The perspectives of multiple contributors is consistent with Vertov’s philosophy, Joseph Schaub wrote in his essay, “Presenting the Cyborg’s Futurist Past: An Analysis of Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye“, “Kino-eye, then, is a cyborg construction that contains multiple positions for the production of film meaning.” OK, I’m stretching a little, but ideas are fun to play with, I see them as guides to possible worlds.

Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake provides a crisp example of the first, second, and fourth characteristics that Janet Murray suggests in her book, Hamlet on the Holodeck, make new media a powerful vehicle for literary creation: 1. Procedural, 2. Participatory, 3. Spatial, and 4. Encyclopedic. The site does not make use of the spatial dimension (except for some aspects of the interface, which traditional cinema lacks completely), however, It’s pretty easy to see how the project could become more spatial in an interesting manner by adding geographical information related to the video when it is uploaded to the site, underscoring the truly global nature of the effort. Regardless of being light in the spatial dimension, Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is one of the most interesting participatory video projects I’ve had the pleasure to experience and points the way to the future of cinema. While theater owners worry over sagging ticket sales and studio moguls fear the audience’s move to net, as creators and participants we can move beyond the industrial practices of the past and look forward to a re-invented, participatory, global, postmodern, Kino-Eye.

This post is based in part on a post written for my Design Seminar II class at MassArt in response to Scott Kirsner’s Media Tech Tonic presentation, “Inventing the Movies.”

1. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee presents a detailed account of the origins and evolution of the web, and who better to tell the story than the inventor himself, who is currently Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (the organization responsible for setting web standards) at MIT. In the 1980s while working at CERN, Berners-Lee defined the core standards and wrote the first web server and browser that began the growth of the Web, which transformed the Internet into a document universe (similar to Ted Nelson’s docuverse but much simpler in design) by allowing users to hyperlink between documents that can reside on any computer connected to the Internet. The design of the Web balances decentralization and centralization in a manner than retains simplicity and allows for unrestricted growth and innovation. Berners-Lee’s writing is clear and concise, which should appeal to a wide audience. A lot of books have been written about the web. You have to be very careful when reading histories of the Internet and the World Wide Web, there are many articles, and even books, that present misleading histories. For example, Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business by Robert Reid gives much of the credit for the development of the World Wide Web to people who did not actually invent it and fails glaringly to properly credit, and sometimes even ignores, those who played key roles in the design, development, and evolution of the Web. For example, Tim Berners-Lee receives very little space in the book and other important figures are completely ignored. On the other hand, Weaving the Web is written with tremendous humility and grace and helps to set the record straight.

2. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler might at first appear to be a dense academic tome best left on the shelf, however, don’t let that stop you from making the effort to read it cover to cover. It will reward you with a comprehensive and insightful perspective on the networked information economy. The book passionately discusses how the Internet empowers individuals and groups working outside of the market economy to become (in some contexts) more productive than for-profit organizations. Examples include projects like Wikipedia and Linux. The production of information, knowledge, and creative works outside of the market system has profound implications for democratic discourse, culture, and justice. There are serious dangers posed by government regulation that protects old-world information companies, for example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Benkler makes a persuasive argument that non-market production and innovation is a good thing that should be allowed to exist and thrive alongside the industrial information economy. The book provides a clear picture of the state of the internet and shows the Internet enriches peoples lives and has become an essential component of a free and open society. If we want to remain a vibrant liberal democracy, we must push back the dangerous encroachment of corporate interests that want to restrict the free flow of information on the Internet which is critical for the proper functioning of an open society and continued technological innovation. Benkler demonstrates a clear understanding of the information economy worthy of the title which is evocative of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Lawrence Lessig wrote that The Wealth of Networks is “the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years.”

3. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web by David Weinberger provides a fascinating definition of the Web as an idea rather than a technology and discusses how it is challenging fundamental concepts of our culture. Weinberger writes: “If the Web is changing bedrock concepts such as space, time, perfection, social interaction, knowledge, matter and morality–each a chapter of this book–no wonder we’re so damn confused. That’s as it should be. A new world is opening up, a world that we create as we explore it.” The book provides thoughtful answers to questions such as: Why do we perceive the Web as space when it’s not? How is the Web threading and weaving our concept of time? Why does Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, say it will always be a little broken? How does the web resolve the contradiction between viewing ourselves as members of a mass culture and as unique individuals? How does the Web change our concept of knowledge? How can the Web be so social and meaningful while traditional notions of technology has been that it’s alienating? How does the hyperlinked architecture of the Web reflect the structure of morality? David Weinberger answers these questions with clarity in a manner that will delight readers from both technical and humanistic backgrounds.

4. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins explains how media convergence is changing the relationship between audiences, producers, and creative work in the context of the emergence of participatory culture. Jenkins stresses this is not a technological revolution, but instead it is a cultural shift from a focus of literacy as individual expression to a process of community involvement. Jenkins presents examples like Survivor and The Matrix to demonstrate how participatory culture can be harnessed by big media who up until now have not been able to capitalize on fan-generated content, which has flourished outside of commodity economics, but is now in the sights of big media.

There are lots of excellent books on this and related topics, but this is my short list as of 2008. In future posts you can expect me to discuss more titles worth a read that cover specific applications and issues related to the Web and Internet.

Note: If you plan to purchase any of these books, I would appreciate it if you start from the links to Amazon on this page, as this will provide a small commission to Kino-Eye.com that goes towards hosting and production costs. Every little bit helps to keep this blog going. Thank you!

Who should attend? Anyone who makes creative work: film, video, music, games, especially if you would describe yourself as an independent filmmaker. The day consists of both structured and free form activities to encourage open discussion and the opportunity to break into groups and get everyone talking to each other. Register now, the event is free but space is limited due to the size of the venue, designed to encourage an active and participatory discussion among participants.

This conference, inspired by the success of “unconferences” in other professions, is quite special because it’s being organized by filmmakers and supported by generous sponsors, hosts, and volunteers, rather than driven by vendors. It started last year when filmmaker Lance Weiler (Head Trauma, The Last Broadcast) reached out to Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and Mike Belmont (We Are the Strange) with the idea to create a virtual conference and festival. After a series of discussions they decided that the virtual event would be a way to connect filmmakers directly with audiences and the event itself could become a model for open content distribution, one which allowed filmmakers to have a say in how their films were reaching audiences. It also enabled them to take concepts from the Workbook Project (an open source project for content creators) and to put them into practice. To make a long story short, the virtual event evolved into an online and real world event in two parts: (1) The From Here to Awesome festival which is playing out in theaters, living rooms, online and via mobile devices and (2) a series of live conferences with participatory discussion know as DIY DAYS.

The organizer’s goal is to create an open discussion and debate that will evolve as the conference travels around to several cities. At the end of the process, the organizers intend to share the results and then go back to the drawing board to plan for year two. I’m excited that this conference is coming to Boston, and being hosted in such a wonderful location. See you there!

Anna Pinker works for a multimedia production company producing museum exhibits and blogs at stillindie.com which is building an interesting collection of posts of interest to independent filmmakers.

Julie Donnelly is a journalist with eight years of experience in radio and television, mostly with public and international broadcasters. She hopes to transition to a public affairs or media relations role. She is trying to learn as much as she can about new media and interested in fun video and audio projects. On Twitter she’s djcitymaus and she’s also can be found on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Steve Garfield is now teaching at Boston University and did a recent blog post on trying to mail in his Boston Absentee Ballot that got quite a few hits after he submitted it to CNN iReports. It’s quite a story. Check it out.

Steve mentioned that Bre Pettis has a new show pilot for the History Channel called History Hacker. Looks pretty cool (there’s a trailer on his site at the moment).

Yours truly mentioned that DIY DAYS is coming to Boston. How do independent filmmakers sustain themselves as filmmakers in this day of shifting film distribution systems? How do filmmakers monetize their work and get the word out without mainstream distributor support? DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of panels, roundtable discussions and workshops. DIY DAYS will be held in Boston on Saturday, October 4th, along with a screenings of From Here to Awesome films the night before on Friday, October 3rd. Both events take place at MassArt.

We’re looking for suggestions and/or volunteer presenters for upcoming Media Tech Tonic sessions, this is a series of monthly demos/seminars on media technology topics for media makers and artists held the third Wednesday of each month at MassArt which allows us to go into more depth on a specific topic than we can during Boston Media Maker meetings.

John Herman is a web video producer, artist, and teacher. He talked about the various web serial productions that he is working on. First looks at ‘Odd Noggin’ and ‘Thomas in Wonkyland’ are on his blog. He is also working a second season of interactive web series Gravityland and the energy conservation reality show EnergySmackdown. Apart from his web video work, he asked for support in promoting an exciting bipartisan grassroots Voter Registration Night that his brother Justin Herman is hosting at the Washington Nationals Stadium. Also John is the host of New Hampshire Media Makers and invites everyone to attend.

Chris Herot (blog | twitter) is an entrepreneur, consultant, working in the digital media space, video conferencing, digital video, digital music, etc. who is currently in the process of starting a company, something in the area of digital media, television, and the internet. He’s looking for creative people to collaborate with.

Jennifer Goodwin runs InternetGIRLfriday.com, a group of virtual assistants that will do your work (administrative, bookkeeping, marketing, websites, shopping carts, project management etc.) so you can have your free time back to do whatever you want with it. They can provide administrative assistants, graphic & web designers, bookkeepers, travel/event planners, marketing & PR gurus, receptionists, computer organizers, lead generators and partners of many business vendors. For freelancers and growing entrepreneurs, just-in-time personnel can help you remain small and nimble as you compete with “the big guys” delivering better quality and lower cost with more efficient resource allocation.

Matt Searles makes ultra modern super awesomeness type experimental electronic music. He also blogs on philosophy, archetypal psychology, comparative myth, music production, composition, aesthetics, new media, guaranteed to creep out a few of your brain cells, as I can attest after listening myself several times. You can keep up with him on Twitter too: mattsearles. Some people are x-axis or y-axis off center, but Matt is z-axis off center (that’s a good thing).

David DeBlaiso (dm Design started doing graphic design, moved to web design, 3D rendering, store redesign, hands-on work with owners, he’s now working at APC as a production designer, he’s interested in where television and the web is going. He suggested that MosaicGlobe is a good place for artists to place their portfolio sites with multiple pages, galleries, blogs, audio, and more.

Sean O’Connor is a filmmaker who made a short mockumentary which is in the festival circuit and is now in the process of writing a feature length feature, he wants to discuss issues of independent filmmaking, DVD release, and alternative distribution. He also wants to get his hands on a Red. So do I, but I’m actually waiting for the Scarlet which I think will be as significant to documentaries today as was the Eclair NPR forty years ago.

Cort Johnson is co-founder of goSwoop, a site that helps international students accomplish their education goals to study in the United States. The site started in Madrid and moved to Boston and now most of the team lives Dhaka. The site seeks to connect international students to students and institutions here and to talk with admissions counsellors, etc. They just launched a newsletter/podcast series, interviewing college counsellors, high school counsellors, and getting this information to interested to students around the world. They are interested in learning how they can get their word out more effectively to students.

 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.

 Play Video

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.

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.

 Play Video

Music by Colin Owens.

Online video has become a vibrant part of our everyday communication landscape and an important component of political discourse. Increasingly, video creation and sharing depend on the ability to use and circulate existing copyrighted work. As more and more video is being shared on the web, financial stakes are raised and the legal status of inserting copyrighted work into new work has become an important issue for online video makers, video hosting providers, and content owners to understand the legal rights of makers of new culture. What some people claim is “piracy” in the online environment might be lawful use protected under the fair-use doctrine of United States copyright law. Mashups, remixes, and parodies are part of an important cultural practice: recycling of old culture to make new, and this process of copying other author’s works is woven into the social bargain at the core of copyright law in the fair use provisions, which are not well understood by most online videomakers. This new document should go a long way in helping to narrow this gap of understanding among online videomakers.

This document provides a long-awaited and much needed code of best practices that will help online videomakers, copyright holders, hosting providers, and other interested parties in developing a better understanding of the copyright doctrine of fair use in the context of online video. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances. What are these circumstances? Most often it is acceptable when doing a parody, or making a critical comment or appropriate quotation. Many of the uses you see online are acceptable, many are not. This code of best practices does not clearly define the limits of fair use rights (that’s determined by the trends in case law, quite complex), however, it does provide much needed guidance to what are currently acceptable practices and draws upon actual activities of media creators as discussed in the study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and backed by the judgment of a national panel of experts. It also draws upon the professional judgment and experience of documentary filmmakers, whose own code of best practices has been recognized throughout the film and television businesses and is described in the document, Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use.

View slides (on Slideshare): Cinematic Language PC3

Download slides as a PDF document (from SlideShare): Cinematic-Language-PC3.pdf

Related to this presentation, see also my previous post, “Notes on the Interview” (January 23, 1006). This is a set of notes I’ve collected that I use to remind myself of things to think about when I’m preparing to do an interview.

View slides (on SlideShare): Art of the Interview PC3

Download slides as a PDF (from SlideShare): Art-of-the-Interview-PCB3

List of example clips screened and discussed (year, description, roles):

“Student Activities Midway” (2006, video podcast story segment, MIT ZigZag Episode #10, Co-Producer, Director, Editor)
“MIT Freshman Experience” (2007, video podcast episode, MIT ZigZag Episode #14, Producer, Director, Editor )
“Journey to MIT” (2007, excerpt from series produced for 2007 MIT pre-commencement show, Co-Producer, Director of Photography)

Some of these clips can be viewed at: kino-eye.com/about/reel/

If you’re interested in blogging, podcasting, video on the web, social networks, and how you can get the most out of Web 2.0 and new media, PodCamp is the event for you with two days of great conversations, knowledge sharing, and insights into the leading edge of new media.

Check out the schedule, you’re sure to find something of interest. Yours truly will be doing two presentations on Saturday morning following the Opening UnKeynote: “Improve your video using cinematic language technique” (10:00 – 10:45 am) and “Art of the Interview: Strategies and Techniques for Better Video Interviews” (11:15 am – 12:00 noon). I’m also participating in the “Project Reviews” session with Larry Lawfer on Sunday morning. Hope to see you there!