Making Media Now: Filmmaking in Transition conference on June 1, 2007
April 30, 2007
Mark your calendar now and join me and other filmmakers at the Making Media Now: Filmmaking in Transition Conference to be held Friday, June 1, 2007, from 9:30 am to 6:30 pm at the Photonics Center at Boston, University. This day-long conference will include master classes, seminars, panel discussions with experts in the field, a plenary session, networking opportunities, a box lunch and refreshments, all focused on the opportunities that new and emerging digital technologies create for media makers. Tomorrow (May 1st) is the deadline for the $65 early-bird registration fee, after that the fee goes up to $85 for regular admission. Discounted rates apply to AIMM, MPC members, and students. Register now.
Delivering Short Videos on the Web
April 25, 2007
Back in early February I was sent a link to the The Machine is Us/ing Us video on YouTube by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of anthropology at Kansas State University. This video is among the most recent examples of the viral video phenomenon. It follows in the fine tradition of the Chronicles of Narnia Rap, which exploded on the scene in December of 2005, introducing millions of people to YouTube and viral video for the first time. And of course, who has not seen (or heard about) those Diet Coke and Mentos videos?
My random walk through Podcamp NYC
April 12, 2007
Podcamp NYC was an exciting podcasting event organized around un-conference ideas, with something like a hundred sessions and an amazing group of attendees, and unlike some expensive industry conferences, where you end up paying to listen to sales spiels, the unconference format strives to be different, to bring together a community of people sharing ideas, but the scale of Podcamp NYC compared to Podcamp Boston showed signs of stressing the model (can unconferences scale? That’s a discussion for another day).
Podcamp NYC in 60 Seconds
April 11, 2007
Using Cinematic Language Elements in Your Video (session notes)
April 8, 2007
As promised, the Session Notes from the “Using Cinematic Language Elements in your Video” session that John Herman and I did at Podcamp NYC on April 7, 2007 have been posted as a public Google Document. Thanks to everyone who came and participated in the discussion. If you prefer, the notes are also available as a PDF document: PodcampNYC -Cinema_Lang_Notes.pdf
Mac Coolant Leak (video)
April 7, 2007
Walk to 32-155 (video)
April 5, 2007
A walk through the MIT Stata Center to room 32-155 (video).
Walter Bender talks about One Laptop Per Child
April 4, 2007
In a recently conversation with an MIT Museum audience, Walter Bender (President, Software and Content Development, One Laptop per Child and formerly Executive Director, MIT Media Laboratory) described the philosophy behind the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project and the progress to date.
NEFilm: Unravelling web media distribution and viewing
April 4, 2007
In a series of articles to appear over the next few months, I will be unravelling web media distribution and viewing from the perspective of independent filmmaking. The first article in the series, “Delivering video on the Web” appears in the April 2007 edition of New England Film. Check it out.
Embedding Flash Video into Web Plages
April 4, 2007
For those who like to create web pages from scratch, I’ve put together a demo of embedding a Flash movie into a web page using The Flash Video (FLV) Player by Jeroen Wijering. It’s also a quick and dirty encoder test using ffmpegX to encode a 16×9 DV QuickTime movie with material from various sources (DV, HDV, DVCPRO HD, 16mm reversal, 35mm interpositive) into three different sizes of Flash movies in order to examine both image quality and playback performance over various net connections. I suggest reading the Embedding Flash article by Jeroen Wijering for instructions on how to embed the player into your web pages, it does a good job of covering common pitfalls and their workarounds.
