BAVC Producers Institute...Day #2...Part Two!

Continuing with yesterday's panel and presentations at the BAVC Producers Institute. In part two I will cover the three presentations that followed the opening panel discussion. Click here to read part one.

The first presentation was by Jacob Colker and titled Mobile Web For Good. This was a very interesting look at how mobile devices are already being used to help promote social change and activism and how mobile technology will change the way organizations will reach large groups in the future. Jacob gave us several interesting examples of websites where mobile is being used for good. Here are some sites that are worth checking out...

www.mobileactive.com
www.ushahidi.com
www.ireport.com
www.txteagle.com
www.frontlinesms.com
www.theextraordinaries.org

The last website is Colker's own project where anyone with a mobile device can take part in completing microtasks and microvolunteering in their spare time. A boiled down description from The Extraordinaries website-- Our Theory of Change: Americans have spare time – billions of hours – but in small windows of idle moments: sitting in an airport, waiting in a doctor’s office, riding the bus to work, and more. If we can reach people during these spare moments we harness a huge pool of untapped human energy.-- so by reaching these people on their mobile device they can do a simple task during one of these idle moments like transcribe a few words of a subtitle for a human rights video. Add all the idle moments together and the whole film gets subtitled in no time. The idea of harnessing large groups of people to take action using a mobile device certainly had us all thinking of how this can translate to documentary marketing and distribution.



The second presentation was from Ken Eklund and Tony Walsh and was titled Changing The Game about how gaming projects are being built and utilized to help promote social issue documentaries. I'll admit, this is the one presentation that didn't hold a ton of interest for me...I'm not much of a gamer, but it still got me thinking-- a few interesting aspects...1.) Every social tool (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) has a gaming aspect to it and attracts certain people to this leadership board aspect (# of friends, # of followers, # of views). And in the end people participate in many of these social networks for the same reason they play games...the reward. Action = Reward is usually the engine that drives participation in many social circles.

The third and final presentation was titled The Future Of Social Networks and was a two-parter-- first Patrice O'Neill showed how she built a national movement-- www.niot.org -- to help communities fight against hate crimes, around her film Not In Our Town. This was a very impressive example of not just having a website to promote your film, but to really create a stand alone site and movement that takes off and becomes its own successful entity. This is really what the BAVC Producers Institute is all about, and what we hope to do ourselves this week. Patrice did just that two years ago, when she developed the prototype for www.niot.org at the very first BAVC Producers Institute.

And finally, Evan Goldin from Ning.com gave is a look at the website that allows you to build your own social network to find/reach audiences with similar interests. Having already explored Ning and developed a Ning site for "The Way We Get By" a few months ago, I was familiar with the basics of the website. What I found most interetsing was how much your Ning page could be customized. It seems Ning may be a great alternative to filmmakers hoping to create a clean, easy to use, classy looking website for their film, with just a small amount of money needed to pay a web designer to customize your Ning page. We'll certainly be thinking about that in the early stages of our next film.

Next up...we finally get to work on our projects!! Updates and blogging to follow...

BAVC Producers Institute...Day #2...Part One!

Day two of the BAVC Producers Institute was filled with information...a panel and three presentations by the some of the top people in the new media technologies industry speaking about what they are doing, what gets them excited, and what they see for the future of storytelling-- with all of these new media technologies at our disposal as storytellers.

It was enough to make your head hurt/spin/burst with exciting ideas. I think my head was doing all three at once. I think someone summed it up best at the end of the first panel-- We are in an awkward fragmented period right now. It is a hard and scary time for distribution, filled with a lot of trial and error on what works and what doesn't-- but it is also such an exciting time. When I think about ways to incorporate, from the start, some of the new media technologies into my next documentary, it truly does redefine what the documentary will even be. And while some of these technologies still need to grow into their own, I think if we ignore where we seem to be heading-- at a break neck speed-- then by the time you finish your documentary four years down the road, you'll be playing catch up in trying to connect to your audience instead of having your audience already built in and helping you distribute your film.



The opening panel discussion was called The Future of Visual Storytelling: Content-Driven Technologies and the New Documentary Movement ...just the title of the panel is a lot to chew on, and I could probably blog for a week about what was discussed over the 90-minute panel. The panel was moderated by Scott Kirsner, editor of the great CinemaTech blog and author of the new book Fans, Friends & Followers and made up of B. Ruby Rich, Lance Weiler, Tina Singleton, Mark Gibson, and everyone in the audience-- right from the start it was a pretty open Q&A complete with people tweeting their thoughts on the panel with a #pint09 tag and having them pop up on a big screen at the front of the room. The future of panel discussions?

I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow recap of the day since BAVC had two cameras recording the whole time and I'm sure you'll be able to watch the entire thing yourself in the next few days, if you choose. What I will do is highlight some of the discussion that tweaked my brain the most. In this opening panel, the three main topics they tackled were 1.) What do they envision the storytelling landscape looking like 5 years from now? 2.) What existing technology has the greatest potential for changing storytelling in the future? 3.) What will be the biggest behavioral changes to society as a whole? So what tweaked me the most?...

1.) What do they envision the storytelling landscape looking like 5 years from now?

Multiple platforms and layers of distribution all mashed together, and in real-time. They talked about the future of storytelling being more and more in real-time...everything seems to be heading that way, and if it continues towards real-time then cell phones will need to play a major role in all of this. What role will cell phones play in distribution? What this should mean is documentary filmmakers should have the opportunity to break out from the distributor enforced time limits-- the 52-minute, 82-minute, feature-length, film festival friendly etc. lengths that everyone decides their film needs to be whether it should be or not. This seems exciting but scary. Exciting to think you can make your film the exact length it should be, and you won't need to trim or fill to reach some magical number. Scary to think everyone may only want to watch bite-sized 3-minute YouTube friendly content on their cell phone. And if everything is moving to these new technologies, then who becomes the new "Gatekeepers"? In a perfect world there would be none, but obviously companies like Google will play a major role in future distribution. And how will this affect the storytelling? Will the quality of the content be the first thing left behind? But the big question looming over it all is "how will money be made?"...how will this all be monetized because so far nobody has figured out how to make significant money through online distribution.

2.) What existing technology has the greatest potential for changing storytelling in the future?

Many were already dropping Google Wave as the next big thing to watch. The other existing technology that had a lot of people in agreement was Second Life (never been interested in it myself) and how it has the ability to give users a personal connection to a situation they may never actaully be in themselves, and how this can be an invaluable learning tool. There was also talk of bit torrents and how they are currently used for pirating etc. but could they by used for proper distribution methods in the future. This also led to a discussion on pirating and how there are many examples of pirating not hurting and even helping a film/music/TV show take off and succeed, and that pirating should not be feared and maybe even embraced.

3.) What will be the biggest behavioral changes to society as a whole?

Think of how much more time people spend looking at their cell phones in any given day compared to 5 years ago? They will certainly be a significant part of future distribution. It will still be about figuring out how to get people to take action. People will already spread content digitally (I'm sure someone tweeted and re-tweeted this as it was said), but can these technologies be used to get large masses of people to do something physically like come out to a movie theatre? And can we drive meaningful social change? What technologies will stand the test of time? Is Facebook already heading on the same trajectory as MySpace? And if so, do you constantly have to re-build these audiences if the platform fizzles? One thing that I'm already facing is how do you keep up with updating all of these platforms and social networks? At times you need a team of people to keep up with all of the various technologies you are juggling to try to get the word out about your project. Will any of this become more streamlined and effective? And if the trailer for your film is on your website as a Quicktime movie or flash movie change it today. Embed and spread...make your trailer easy to share and spread. I use Vimeo and couldn't be happier. Our trailer is easy to embed, email and share and has at times spread like wildfire when it's been embedded on other people's blogs/social networks/websites.

Overall, it was one of the most interesting, and thought provoking panels I'd been a part of in quite some time, and I think Australian video artist Lynette Wallworth made a great observation while bringing it all back around to storytelling...We are uncomfortable when we think about all of this because the story isn't over. The action is leading the story, and we want to know the ending, but it hasn't been written. It is still playing out.

This ends part one of my mega two-part blog post. Later today, I'll post part two covering the three presentations that followed the panel.

BAVC Producers Institute...Day #1

WOW...a day filled with creativity and collaboration. It's tough to get too specific as to what exactly we are doing at the 10 day BAVC Producers Institute because our project is still evolving with all the creative input, but basically we are here to develop a stand alone website partnered with "The Way We Get By" film website that will be an amazing social community to bring together troops, friends and family of troops, and troop supporters in exciting new relationships.



In this photo Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming at BAVC lays out the entire 10 days to us and kick starts our creativity. The thing you should know about Wendy is her energy is infectious. She could be explaining to us how we were all going to be digging ditches all week, and we would have been clamoring for shovels. If this next 10 days is a fraction of what she has planned for us all... it will be amazing!

The most exciting part is, as I said, yesterday our project idea was still evolving...by this coming Friday we will be pitching a prototype of this website to potential funders. Knowing that in the next six days we will be designing and building a working prototype of yesterday's idea and building a presentation to pitch this website to funders is pretty crazy. Yes, I will be drinking a lot of Starbucks coffee conventiently located on the first floor of the BAVC building.

Today (Day #2) is all about getting our minds thinking of the future. Where are documentaries heading? What will a documentary look like in 10 years? And how will it be distributed with all the new media technology changing at such an incredible pace? We have the opportunity to sit in on some incredible panels today with some of the most cutting edge people in the new media technology field trying to answer those exact questions. If they come up with anything solid, I'll pass it along tomorrow. And then Sunday the real fun begins.

More blogging, photos, and video to come...

Blogging BAVC...

"The Way We Get By" team of director Aron Gaudet, producer Gita Pullapilly and Bluehouse Group Senior Art Designer Josh Turner depart tomorrow for 10 days in San Francisco at the BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies.

The intensive 10 days will be spent building a prototype web component for "The Way We Get By" that the team has already been brainstorming and developing for months. Make sure to check in every day as we will be blogging about our adventures at BAVC.

Win #8 for THE WAY WE GET BY

Just a quick update -- Friday night, THE WAY WE GET BY won Best Documentary at the Little Rock Film Festival! Another screening today in Little Rock at 2:30pm!

http://www.thewaywegetbymovie.com/little-rock-film-festival-2/

THE WAY STF GETS BY

Read Raphaela Neihausen's blog about THE WAY WE GET BY!

THE WAY STF GETS BY

• by Raphaela Neihausen, April 29, 2009

Winner of the audience award at Full Frame and a special jury prize at SXSW, THE WAY WE GET BY had its first New York sneak preview at Stranger Than Fiction last night and won over yet another sold out crowd. This moving film tells the story of an airport in Bangor, Maine where senior citizens volunteer and greet soldiers that are flying to or returning from war. A strength of the documentary is that it steers clear of political trappings and instead focuses on the importance of supporting soldiers as fellow Americans who are serving their country. The film also succeeds in shedding light on the many obstacles facing the elderly, demonstrating how volunteering at an airport provides them with a vital sense of purpose and community. Director Aron Gaudet and producer Gita Pullapilly (photo) joined us for a Q&A in which they shared many entertaining anecdotes about the film’s protagonists. My favorite is that at the Cleveland Film Festival, audiences were so moved by the film that they showed up at the airport to send off film subject Jerry. Now that’s the power of a documentary!

The evening was copresented by the Camden International Film Festival (a wonderful Maine event now in its fifth year) and the highly esteemed PBS strand POV (that will broadcast THE WAY WE GET BY this coming fall).

Here are also some additional links about the Stranger Than Fiction screening:

http://stillinmotion.typepad.com/still_in_motion/2009/04/stf-and-camden-film-fest-host-the-way-we-get-bys-new-york-debut.html

http://agnesvarnum.com/2009/04/27/the-way-we-get-by/

http://flavorpill.com/newyork/events/2009/4/28/the-way-we-get-by

"The Way We Get By" Hijacks The P.O.V. Blog...

Why write a new blog entry when there is a perfectly good one for the taking over at P.O.V.? ...P.O.V.s own Andrew Catauro blogs about the day we spent with him in NYC beginning with an afternoon of filmmaker interviews and ending with a DANCE PARTY!! With a screening of "The Way We Get By" sandwiched in between. Here you go...

P.O.V. HIJACKED BLOG ENTRY

Enjoy!