http://kino-eye.com "Everybody who cares for his art, seeks the essence of his own technique." -- Dziga Vertov (1922) Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:51:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Maria Agui Carter is teaching an excellent course this summer at MassArt: MPFV208-1 Producing the Documentary (runs Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm, June 22 through June 26, 2009). You should consider attending this class if you're planning to direct or produce a serious documentary in the future. Check out ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/06/14/producing-documentary/ Judith Donath recently spoke at MassArt. In anticipation of her talk I went to see the Connections exhibition of works by Donath and her Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. I was particularly taken by Metropath(ologies), an immersive installation that is at once beguiling and enchanting. The exhibition ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/05/23/metropathologies/ Making Media Now 2009 is a full-day conference that will take place on Friday, June 5, 2009 at Bentley University. The event will bring together filmmakers from all over New England with national industry experts for lectures, workshops, and panels confronting the most daunting challenges facing independent filmmakers today. Last ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/04/21/making-media-now/ I'm teaching two courses this summer through MassArt Professional and Continuing Education. Interested in documentary video? Documentary Video Boot Camp will give you the foundation you need to get started. Is there a documentary you'd like to make this summer and you've already got basic production experience? Documentary Project ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/04/12/documentary-classes-this-summer/ This week I had a chance to read Scott Kirsner's new book, Fans, Friends & Followers, which provides a fresh guide to building an audience in the new media landscape. The book starts out by painting with broad brush strokes the challenges artists have faced finding an audience for their ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/04/02/fans-friends-followers/ Video artist Perry Bard's Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is a participatory project made with contributions from people around the world who upload video clips interpreting Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera (1929), a film that is still fresh today in surprising ways. With this remake, ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/03/29/postmodernist-remake-of-a-futurist-classic/ Canon HG20I recently taught a class at MassArt, Documentary Video Boot Camp, and one of my students, Adam Weiss, used his new Canon VIXIA HG20 camcorder in the class. As a result of seeing the video Adam shot for his assignments, I think I have to say that the Canon ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/02/13/canon-hg20/ LED lighting is changing the way we light, especially run-and-go documentary. There are several units on the market including lights from Zylight, Litepanels, and the new Blender light, designed by Tom Robotham. Several months ago Tom came to visit me at MassArt and brought along his new light. We spent ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/02/09/blender/ The Camera Company's 19th Annual Pro Video Show, an annual Boston-area gathering that includes a show floor and a variety of demos and seminars of interest to media makers, will take place this year on Friday and Saturday, March 20-21, 2009 at the Dedham Holiday Inn Hotel & Conference Center ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/02/04/19-pro-video-show/ David Leitner is blogging from Sundance again (this marks his fourth year) once a day, Sunday to Saturday. Leitner is known for his informed, sometimes irreverent perspective on the art, technology, and business of independent film, so check out his posts, which he describes as "more essay that tweet." ... http://kino-eye.com/2009/01/21/david-leitner-is-blogging-from-sundance-again/ For many years I've been using two pairs of Sony MDR-7506 headphones (one lives in my camera kit and the second lives in my sound kit) and the original plastic ear pads had started to fall apart. These are outstanding headphones for monitoring audio, however, the pads are their achilles ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/11/16/beyerdynamic-velour-pads/ Steve Garfield purchased the cute little (OK, not so little, it's larger than many competitors) Kodak Zi9 camera recently and brought it to the Boston Media Makers meeting. And while this $179 camera is not going to enter my short-list of favorite documentary cameras (on the list are Panasonic's DVX100 ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/11/15/kodak-zi9-quick-test/ These are the photos from the recent artist encampment on Bumpkin Island (a Flickr slide show). The Berwick Research Institute joined with the Island Alliance and Studio Soto to present the 2nd Annual Artist Encampment, a "homesteading" experience on Bumpkin Island, Boston Harbor Islands, on Labor Day weekend, August ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/10/21/artist-encampment-photos/ Back on April 25, 2008 I had the opportunity to talk with filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin after the screening of their film Intimidad, at the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Their new film presents a beautiful and intimate portrait of a struggling family in Mexico. It observes ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/10/18/intimidad-interview/ If I had to pick four relatively current books that will help readers develop a better understanding of the World Wide Web, I would suggest the following books. It was hard to narrow down the list to four, but sometimes less is more. This particular list stems from a recent ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/10/14/four-books/ This post concludes my coverage of DIY Days, a conference held in Boston at MassArt on October 4, 2008. Please visit part one and part two if you've not already read them. Do keep in mind these notes do not necessarily represent the views of the various speakers at the ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/10/13/diydays-boston3/ This post continues my coverage of the DIY Days conference in Boston which I began in a previous post. Please keep in mind these are my notes and do not necessarily represent the views of the various speakers at the conference, sometimes it includes my own parenthetical thoughts, which are ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/10/09/diydays-boston2/ The DIY Days Boston conference was held at MassArt on October 4, 2008. The conference drew a full-house of both seasoned and emerging filmmakers and media artists who came to learn about online tools, techniques, and strategies for building and sustating their audience. DIY Days follows an open source model, ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/10/04/diydays-boston/ I'm impressed with how many people registered for DIY DAYS before the agenda was published, but now the agenda is online, check it out. I think you'll agree with me, this is an excellent lineup, I expect this will be among the best filmmaking events this year in Boston, hope ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/09/29/diy-days-boston-agenda-for-sat-4-oct-08-is-now-online/ Readers in the Boston area are cordially invited to attend a free screening of my short documentary, Smile Boston Project, part of a special Boston screening of selected films from the From Here to Awesome film festival. Artist Bren Bataclan, the subject of my documentary, will be in attendance. Here ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/09/28/smile-boston-screening/ In this video I interview journalist and author Scott Kirsner about his new book, Inventing the Movies: The Epic Battle between Innovation and the Status Quo in Hollywood. The interview covers an example from the book and takeaways for innovators in any field. Scott blogs about the movie industry ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/09/27/scott-kirsner-inventing-the-movies/ Maria's Story (1990, Monona Wali & Pamela Cohen, 53 min.) is a documentary portrait of Maria Serrano, a 39-year-old woman who is a peasant, mother, and guerrilla leader who at the time the film was made, had spent over a decade of her life fighting in the hills of El ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/09/20/marias-story/ The DIY DAYS conference will be held in Boston on Saturday, October 4th at MassArt, along with screening of From Here to Awesome films the night before, also at MassArt. This traveling conference, recently held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, explores how independent filmmakers can sustain ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/09/13/diydays/ Pierre-Loic Assayag, who I know from the old Viant days (at one point we both worked for this digital business consulting firms that rose and fell during the era of irrational exuberance) is now working on Traackr, a fascinating start-up which tracks and compiles social media data and produces a ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/09/07/bmm090708/ To wrap up New Media Expo 2008, I sat down with Steve Woolf (Epic Fu), Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu), Steve Garfield (SteveGarfield.com), and Walt Ribeiro (Ustream.TV), here's the unedited conversation. Recorded on Saturday, August 16, 2008. We discussed topics such as what was best about the show, issues as the ... http://kino-eye.com/2008/08/18/new-media-expo-discussion/