Hollywood Reinvented is hosting an upcoming interview with one of the leaders in the nascent ‘crowdfunding’ movement, Danae Ringelmann of IndieGoGo. The idea is that the crowd helps fund your project and pays to see it made. You can do this with any kind of endeavor, including filmmaking. The event will be netcast on Thursday, January 20 at 8 pm (separate streams for East and West Coast — both at 8). Register and post your questions at HollywoodReinvented, Larry Jordan’s great new site, or go directly to the registration page.
Archive for the ‘Media and Society’ category
Crowdfunding
December 20, 2010Hacking Kinect
November 22, 2010
After some initial resistance, Microsoft is now permitting hackers to create novel applications for its Kinect hands-free game controller, and less than three weeks after the device’s release, some fascinating projects are already starting to appear. An article in today’s NY Times lays out some of the early ideas. This video gives you a small sense of what’s possible. The author, Oliver Kreylos, has extracted images from two of the device’s cameras — the depth image and the color image, as he calls them, and uses them to reconstruct video that can be moved and reshaped in 3D space. In this video, Mehmet Akten uses the box to do some crude in-the-air drawing with his hands. At in this one, designers Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille use the device (apparently connected to a Mac) to make a projected puppet track hand movements. Not bad for a couple of short weeks! This technology may or may not be precise enough for useful work, but I’d sure like to see somebody try connecting it to an editing interface.
Interview on Hollywood Reinvented
November 13, 2010My friend Larry Jordan, editor and creator of the new blog Hollywood Reinvented, has just posted an extended video interview with me. Topics covered include digital editing in general, Final Cut vs. Media Composer, the need for editors, and the future of post production. It’s all nicely edited into tasty, bite-sized pieces (if you let it play, it’ll move from clip to clip without interruption). The full post is here. I hope you enjoy it.
The Power of Editing
July 25, 2010
With all the coverage we saw last week of the Shirley Sherrod story, one thing stands out for me: the whole episode, the truncated video, the firing, the rehiring, the apologies — it’s all an object lesson in the power of editing, not just to change movies, but to change lives. And it’s a reminder, too, that media illiteracy knows no social or cultural boundaries. How many powerful people saw that snippet without thinking, “hey, maybe there’s a context”? We all want to believe that cinema tells the truth. And so we are constantly fooled by what passes for reporting. We hear a lot about improving schools and creating national achievement standards, but there’s precious little talk about media education, about teaching kids how to interpret the deluge of images they are assaulted with every day. If this episode tells us anything, it’s that the adults need some media education, too — starting with an understanding of the power of editing.
If you’re curious, here’s Sherrod’s full speech. And the edited version.
In the Coal Mine
June 16, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot about this crazy period we find ourselves in. I watched my musician friends get creamed by the digital revolution. People who had good steady livelihoods became salesmen to survive, or accepted big cuts in pay. We all celebrate the democratization of technology, but there’s a dark side. When everybody has access to the tools, the craft gets devalued. The film business used to be recession-proof. But something different is going on now.
What we’re seeing is the democratization of distribution. When live video from a spill-cam a mile under the gulf is more interesting than talking heads on CNN and Fox, you know the world has tilted on its axis. With an iPhone you can shoot, edit and distribute on a device that fits in your pocket. That is the wind that is blowing through out world. What will media look like when the storm passes? What stories will we tell? I’m sure I don’t know. But the ride isn’t over.
On that happy note, come on out to the LAFCPUG meeting tonight and take a look at Media Composer 5. I’ll be presenting, along with Steve Kanter, who will offer some Final Cut Pro tips for Avid-ites. It promises to be an ecumenical evening and a fitting way to celebrate the group’s ten-year anniversary. The raffle will include a copy of MC5 and a raft of other stuff, as well.
Tales Told Around the Campfire
June 13, 2010
Two articles in Thursday’s paper threw strange and contrasting light on the disruptions that are buffeting our media landscape. In the ’80s, established media professionals thought that the VCR was changing everything. But VCRs were a minor blip compared to the tectonic shifts that the internet, and particularly the mobile net, are creating today.
The first article looks at how mobile devices and social networking are disrupting parent-child relationships. The kids know their parents are addicted to their gadgets, just as they know when caregivers are addicted to alcohol. And when parents declare a time out from their iPhones and Blackberries, young kids don’t complain, they celebrate.
The second article reminds us not of how new all this is, but of how much we still fit into history. Thousands of years ago roving poets — “tellers” — went from village to village and recited their memorized songs to rapt audiences gathered around fires. Today, in Haitian refuge camps, where people live in tents and media is nonexistent, new tales are being told — soap operas produced locally and projected on screens outdoors at night.
Wherever our fascination with mobile devices takes us, stories — stories told by people to people — still have the capacity to keep us sane. When everything else is stripped away, that’s what we media professionals are hopefully engaged in — connecting to the depths of whatever it is that makes us human.
The details are here: Haiti’s Displaced See Their Stories on TV and The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In
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