As we all know, the world is going digital.   Some of us are cheering and some of us are clenching our teeth.

Over the summer of 2009 we have seen funding opportunities to get documentaries made in Canada rapidly dry up as broadcasters struggle to deal with the economic times.  This has been a serious concern for Canadians as one of the things we are known for world-wide is our documentaries.

It is especially a concern for those trying to make their living as documentary filmmakers who have not made a lot of money following their passion to begin with.

The Canadian Media Fund is one avenue to apply for funding.  But now applications need to be more than a straight broadcast project.  A bit daunting for those long time industry professionals who’s focus has been on filmmaking, and not on digital story-telling.

Through ReBoot, the Documentary Organization of Canada is creating a great opportunity for select projects to get mentorship.  This is a great opportunity for documentary filmmakers who have had little experience creating cross-platform projects.

In addition, as part of ReBoot there will be a week long conference including caase studies and presentation in February for DOC members that the public will be able to follow via twitter and facebook for daily updates and insights.  More detail for the call for proposals below:

Deadline extended: Feb 4th

The Documentary Organization of Canada / l’Association des documentaristes du Canada (DOC) is pleased to announce a call for proposals for ReBoot, a 3 day project lab incorporating skills-based training, mentorships and presentations from leading experts in cross-platform production. DOC aims to assist its members in transitioning to digital documentary and to successfully position documentary filmmakers and producers in the rapidly changing broadcast environment spurred by the Canada Media Fund.

DOC is seeking proposals for cross-platform documentaries that are conceived for two or more media. Preference will be given to projects in the development stage incorporating an interactive, participatory methodology in additional to a linear/broadcast one-off or series. Selected projects will receive one-on-one mentorship from industry professionals over a one week period, culminating in an online pitch session during DOC’s ReBoot event in February. A jury of media professionals will select one project which will receive further mentorship for a three month period. The continued mentoring will be provided by the award winning team at EyeSteelFilm, as well as a group of industry professionals specializing in various aspects of new media production. Interested creators are invited to send proposals to info@docorg.ca.

Proposals should be a maximum of 2 pages and should include:

1. Name(s)
2. Contact Information
3. Project Title
4. Description of Project
5. Project Status
6. Short description of the platforms that will be explored.

Proposals should be for a multiplatform documentary and should describe the experience that a user would have on the website or digital platform, as well as a sense of the documentary or series that would be created in tandem. In writing the proposal, creators should address the following questions:

• Can your story be told in more than one way? Can it exist as a traditional documentary, as well as a non-linear story?
• Can your documentary have multiple versions? Can it be substantially different online, in theatres, and on television? How can you harness the strengths of each medium?
• Does your subject matter and approach lend itself to the opportunities of participatory / social media?
• Above all, how can your audience participate in the project? How is it an interactive experience that they can be an integral part of?

Please note that while we encouraging a linear component in addition to new media, we do not require a broadcaster commitment. DOC is actively encouraging members to produce for new platforms and new models of distribution.

Submissions are only open to DOC members. Without exception, selected applicants must be available for 2 hour sessions from February 16th to February 19th in order to participate.

Note: all participation will take place remotely via teleconference – selected candidates will require a web cam and high speed internet connection. Selected candidates should also be comfortable sharing their creative process and work in progress with the public.

Submission deadline is FEBRUARY 4th. Please send proposals to info@docorg.ca

For more information on the Reboot event, please visit here.

Supported By:

Madhusudan Katti who is a Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Ecology in Fresno in response to the video below writes, “Yosemite National Park is an enduring symbol of the American “wilderness.” But suggests that most of us visiting such wilderness retreats edit our view of them to exclude all the visitors. He challenges us to go back and look at images we have taken ourselves of wilderness trips. How much have we edited the experience to exclude our fellow tourists? It’s an interesting observation – I know I’ve done it myself.

It’s fascinating how our idea of nature does not include people, isn’t it? The very meaning of the word excludes humans. And we live by that for we have come to see ourselves as the polluters and exploiters of nature. Its no coincidence in the era of green awareness that the popular series of Mad Men ended an idyllic picnic scene in a green park with the family dumping the garbage off the picnic blanket and leaving it without a second thought. Just like its no coincidence that we want to remember nature without other people polluting our captured images. We just don’t like ourselves much in association with nature – or maybe more accurately, we don’t like others so much.

And yet, we are nature. We are – at least in my understanding of things (it occurs to me that the more religious of you may not agree) just as much part of the universe as any other living thing in it. With all of our greed, thoughtlessness, arrogance and misery (and yeah, yeah, everything else glorious, come on, I’ve seen a block buster or two).

We have evolved to this. This is what humans do. We can hold onto the past, or attempt to live the way we think humans used to, but while it might provide meaning in our lives, then is no more valid or authentic than now is.

And before this starts to sound fatalistic, I believe the requirement for positive change is empathy. Empathy for ourselves. Let’s not deny our faults, but look at them and be gentle with them. And with that we can sometimes find empathy for others.

If nothing else, the next time you get down on yourself, or you rail against someone else, remember.

Anything that a human is capable of, we all have the potential for.

Happy New Year.

With the people, this is a really beautiful, thought provoking video:

People in Yosemite: A TimeLapse Study from Steven M. Bumgardner on Vimeo.

A friend of mine was in the process of exploring why the media doesn’t cover things that are important to people’s lives as the original public sphere was supposed to, such as why are kids starving in Canada, why do the poor still die younger, etc. and so many other important issues?

Of course media production is primarily a business and business needs customers, and what catches customers attention, catches the attention of business stakeholders, and then business then tries to duplicate.

But now that media is going through a rapid change, and we are all looking towards the digital space. It costs very little to publish on the web. So do the same issues exist in the democratized web space? Well, I think I could argue yes and no. But I would also argue that its like comparing apples and oranges. Different challenges exist on the web.

But arguments aside, the real question is: does the web offer a glimmer of hope towards making meaningful change?

What do people think?

For those of you who don’t know, you can watch films in semi-private viewing stations in at the NFB in Toronto for $2.00 a session (or for a $12 membership.  I went in to see the documentary, Hardwood.  After planning to submit a proposal to the NFB/TVO for their Calling Card program, I had wanted to see other calling card winners to get a feeling of how much documentary you could fit into a ½ hr.  I had seen Harvest Queens, Cheating Death and 9 months 6 blocks, previous Calling Card winners, but hadn’t the chance to see this one prior to submitting our own proposal.

Last week I saw it.  And I watched Hardwood twice in a row. But even more than it being a great film, especially for an emerging filmmaker, it is a great personal film.  The openness and the generosity that his family gave to him as they talked about events in their lives and how it affected them stayed with me later.

Of course we can imagine how much easier it must be to get good close personal accounts from your family – assuming you have that kind of family in the first place.  But what I sense in Hardwood was the family embarked on a new journey and one that I can imagine only came from love for the filmmaker.

The person that resonated the most for me was Hubert’s brother as he seemed so present and open. It confirmed my belief that characters are not necessarily more “interesting” because they look good on the page, because they are marginalized, come from remarkable circumstances or facing insurmountable odds. There are great stories in all of us, even the most psychologically healthy of us.  None of us gets through life unscathed.  The challenge of course is how to bring that out in a way that feels open and real, especially knowing the camera is there.  And I wondered what it would be like as a man to talk about the kinds of family experiences that brings men to tears.  And I think what a courageous person Hubert Davis must be.

It also made me think about the meaning we take from our lives.   Some naturally do it more than others. So I wondered if the film was a healing experience for all of them.  It seemed like it from the film.  But I also know that people don’t always choose make meaning from moments of their lives even when we expect it from them most.  Each moment, no matter how much it impacts us, could just be another moment in life.  That sometimes the intimacy and the vulnerability is too much, too laden with emotions that its better to leave it aside for those moments late at night when you can’t sleep.  Or sometimes the other baggage in life is still too heavy to let those precious moments have the impact we want them too.  Too much is still left unsaid, clouding the clarity of those experiences.  What was it like for these people? Did they later choose to make meaning and heal from it?  As I thought of this after,  I recalled again how responsible we are for our own happiness.  And films that can you lead you down these paths of thought are to be treasured.

I also really wondered about the process for the filmmaker himself.  There is a unique and intimate process when you edit a film.  Hubert Davis edited this one.  That meant he reviewed the footage countless times always thinking of how it would tell a story, how real, how succinct, but inevitably he would have been reviewing it from a personal viewpoint, watching them over and over again with all the baggage and memories of the past that went with it.  He needed to sacrifice some parts for others, even if they were precious, important, because only those moments that can tell the story in a half hour can stay, regardless of how attached the subjects or even the director may be to certain material.  The chosen moments start to become raised, and change as things that stand on their own. Like viewing a photograph they becomes separated from reality, weightier as it becomes the symbol for more.

Watching the pieces he kept over and over, in the rough cut, in the fine cut, in the mix, in the score, etc., I imagine he would have seen more and more with each viewing.  Different nuances would have surfaced all though his own filter, things perhaps others would not have seen.

And then he had to sit through approval sessions with people who know little about his family except what he chose to share, and deal with criticisms and comments and recommendations.  Was he exhausted from the film later, tired of watching it, ready to put it down?  And what about his family?  Did it change their relationships?  If I had a chance to talk to Hubert, it is the meaning of this personal process that I would like to explore with him.

My only disappointment with the film is that it wasn’t longer.  I wanted to know more and I think the film could have supported an hour.  If you are downtown in TO and have a ½ hr or so, check it out at the NFB.

I came across this video unexpectedly and really enjoyed it.  And it made me want to drink pop.

I mean, I am actually on the website, thinking about ordering some rose petal pop – online.  Like, isn’t the first thing that you think about when you think of ordering pop online, is broken glass, sticky cardboard and a bunch of your smirking friends shaking their head at you?  Well, let’s just say we once ordered sea monkeys off the back of a comic book, and guess what?  They arrived.   I have faith.

What is it about this video that works for me?  The clue is probably in this one line: “I don’t work.  I just play all day long.”  He genuinely loves what he does.  Of course, good casting never hurts.

Another really interesting and talented animated short.

Stories that don’t need dialogue are viewed as being particularly filmic. But the fact that dialogue is absent from this one makes it seem curiously mute. But, I think it works for the nature for the characters’ struggle.

Red Rabbit from Egmont Mayer on Vimeo.

I really feel for this rabbit…

I love this.  Completely bizarre, but accessible and entertaining at the same time.  That takes a special talent.

Synesthesia from Terri Timely on Vimeo.

I don’t think I ever told anyone that I once secretly hoped to make music videos. Not that I completely understood it to be “music videos”, but did imagine moving images to music. Music is probably one of the biggest source of inspiration in my life. I pretty much feel it is one of the most sophisticated arts, the complex blend of emotion, mathematics and mystery. And this is despite my attachment to deep house.

There was a lot of classical music in my house when I was growing up and there were two records (omg, just revealed my age) that particularly had an impact on me as a young kid. One was Carnival of the Animals.  One magical piece inspired a dark film while I was in film school that turned out to be one of my favourites.  The other was this bizarre record given to one of my siblings, “Everything You Always Wanted to Hear on the Moog* *but were afraid to ask for!”

The picture of this album was particularly fascinating to me partly due the fact the conductor’s hand was backwards. A backwards hand right on an album cover. I couldn’t imagine it was an accident. It was an adult thing after all. But why? And then there was this bit that you can’t see in the picture, but when you had the thing in your hands you could see was clearly painted over. It was something that defied resolution. These are the things you mull over as a child like worrying at a loose tooth.

The album described on this site as classically bad, was apparently created one note at a time (I believe this was in 60’s). But it was the music itself that drew pictures in my head. It was probably the only version of these classics I had heard at the time and I was entranced by the drama of them.  I remember dancing around in a fantasy of impressions and complex emotion to both sides of the record, vaguely plotting one day to bring it live for other people some how by whatever illusion a six year old imagines.

When Much Music first arrived on the scene, music videos were interesting to me, but of course, it was 3am-saucer-eyed-viewing-while-waiting-for-Chinese-food-order-to-deliver-me-the-only-cigarettes–available-at-that-time-of-night kind of interesting (I quit a few years later, thanks).   In the 80’s the music videos had these huge budgets.  The videos were fascinating for their excess and randomness. And of course that they satisfyingly earned the mistrust and suspicion of older adults.  I later worked for one of the companies in the UK that made these monsters, MGMM, which later went into receivership as the 90’s approached.

But arriving later at film school there was a kind of disdain for music videos, and it’s a disdain that still lives among some of my friends and colleagues.  By then visions of music videos no longer danced in my head,  although music was still important and I developed an appreciation for experimental cinema.  But of course experimental cinema is a labour of love that would lay locked in the galleries, theatres and minds of intellectuals.

I actually have no idea what the music video world is up to these days beyond the occasional project I find online so I can’t pass judgment either way. But I can imagine those rushed production meetings throwing a few ideas around with the focus on promotion and an eye on budget efficiencies.   Not the best foundation for art.

But I just came across “Wood” (see below) and it reminded me that music videos, if we must call them that, still have the potential to actually deliver real art to the masses.  While I am not sure that “Wood” is the best example, I think people simply need a framework to understand it, and an anchor  that can make film art accessible, i.e. culturally accepted music by up-and-coming or known bands. We only need to remember how Radiohead’s, House of Card’s music video was shot without cameras or lights to put that idea into context. The band association informs the audience on how to view it.

I am not sure that the music will provide that anchor for “Wood” or not, but the music video genre itself sort of does.  The music is ok.  But even though the creators were involved in both,  I think the animation was far more rich and interesting. There is something deliciously creepy and compelling about it .

For me, it was reminiscent of the oddly disturbing graphic novel that I read years ago, called The Wild Party, written by Joseph Moncure March in 1928 that apparently made William Burroughs want to be a writer. The version I have is illustrated by Art Speigelman who was co-founder and Editor of avant-garde comics magazine, Raw, and contributes to the New Yorker.

It’s the kind of work that stirs up some excitement, and judging by the responses on Vimeo, I’m not the only one who feels that way.

WOOD from mc bess on Vimeo.

And here is another thing that got me thinking about interactive video.  I loved this.

If you can stand the length of time it takes to load, what I really like about it is that it’s boiled an idea down to its essentials. It allows you to turn off/on each musician track as well as swap musician styles/instruments, allowing you to simply mix different variations of the song. It’s a simple idea, but engages our natural sense of play and allows us to take the song apart and rebuild it. At the same time it highlights the skills of each band member.

It doesn’t need to be more complicated because its all about the music. It’s a great idea for a great song that might need a few listenings to like.

Although having said that, I’m finding it hard to get the tune out of my head.
Cold War Kids » I’ve Seen Enough (Interactive Version)

Recently I have been talking to a few documentary filmmakers about how video lives in the interactive space.  As people are increasingly wondering if the web will supersede television, naturally filmmakers are looking to the web to understand how video projects and stories can work online.

Over the last few years it has been incredibly exciting to see the development and exploration of interactive video.  Technology made so many things possible that were impossible before:  bandwidth increased and was more widely distributed; more sophisticated codecs (compression/decompression software) enabling delivery of smaller file sizes without compromising quality; and faster computers facilitating the decompression of those video files fast enough to be watchable.

At the same time, Flash programming (the majority of animated and video material you see on the web) grew in leaps and bounds for the first time making it possibly to interact with video in a different way than you could with television.

Beyond simple video players that you can start and stop, programming capabilities now allow you to treat video pieces as objects.  This means you can now make those pieces do things and respond to actions you might do with your mouse.

For example, imagine three layers of video sitting on top of one another.  The two top layers are each of a person shot on greenscreen, so we are able to make their backgrounds transparent.  The bottom layer could be a different background altogether.  To the average viewer looking at it, you would see two people in a room as if it had been shot all at once in the same shot.

Depending on how you interact with the video objects – in this case the two people, you could potentially make those video pieces do different things.  Click on a person once, he suddenly jumps, click and drag the other person and he walks in the direction you are dragging him. It is even possible that if you caused the two video objects to overlap, a new kind of unexpected action could be programmed to happen, such as they start to dance together.  And that is just the simple version.

While it would be complex to plan, you could potentially have a really rich interactive experience blending the best of both worlds: the richly emotional and human aspects of video with the more interactive “learn forward” aspect of the web.  People no longer would have to sit and passively watch, but could actually interact, and direct their own experience.  This is what is so exciting about the web and why people are drawn to it.  People are in control and can make things happen. Ultimately this is the final goal of marketers in particular: Engagement.

But I have been thinking about the experience of content of video itself under the different conditions.  People often equate television watching with a passive experience.  This has been the main differentiator between television and the video experience online. But in fact, while watching a television series or a film in a cinema, our minds are active and engaged.  We are often predicting what will happen next, trying to interpret the meaning of a look, or trying to piece together elements of a story to make sense of it.  Storytelling can be a shorthand version of a world that compels our participation in order to fill in the gaps and make meaning.

It lead me to wonder whether the experience of relating to a story that simply plays from beginning to end is quite the same as an interactive video experience. In long form film, story elements are what attract our focus.   We hardly notice the edits from one shot to the next, we rarely think about the 20 or so people behind the camera waiting for the director to call cut at the end of the take.

Any time we are distracted from the illusion of the story world, whether it’s a hole of the logic of the narrative, or something technical that doesn’t belong, the integrity of the story breaks, and we develop distance to the story world. Historically, some filmmakers have used this technique to “wake up” the audience from the “spell” they are under.  Jean-Luc Godard was famous for this in his films when he challenged our expectations of the traditional narrative process at every turn.  Some documentary filmmakers highlight the filmmaking techniques as a way to remind us that we are watching a film and encourage objectivity.

Of course, emotional engagement is not black and white.  We are capable to switching back and forth. Even within traditional storytelling, some narrative forms draw us in more tightly than others.  Comedies for example, by their very nature, are more distancing.  We don’t expect a character to get truly hurt despite being put through seemingly painful situations. But the more we are broken from the world of the story itself, the less relevant the emotional experience is to us, the weaker the spell.  Some filmmakers say that when they start to notice the technical aspects of the filmmaking, the film is not working as it should.

The interactive world, then, forces this break on us.  The simple act having to reach for your mouse, of seeing and directing the cursor on the screen breaks the illusion and reminds us were are no longer in the story world.  The story world becomes distanced, and the figures more like puppets than archetypal reflections of ourselves and the people we know.

It can’t help but bring us crashing back into our own worlds, sitting at our computers and interrupts the emotional experience that the “passive” experience of watching a story provides. Without the emotional experience – which may be a central reason why people see films in the first place, we don’t gain the satisfaction of emotional closure.  Emotional closure be key.  Narrative helps us make sense of life and reassures us that there is a purpose to all the struggle and conflict we experience.

I’m not suggesting we should avoid the combination interactivity and video.  But we might want to more clearly understand what engagement really means rather than blindly accept that the interactivity means engagement.

We might look at under what circumstances interactive video works best.  Storytelling through film delivers a particular kind of emotional experience, but obviously is not the only kind of experience there is. Interactive films experiences might lean more towards a gaming model, for example.  Empathy with the characters may take a back seat to the play experience, discovery, testing of skills, creating, winning and so on.  Interactive video might be a great vehicle for delivering information in a more engaging way such as with teaching modules.

But how does this address questions for filmmakers looking to create dramatic narratives or documentaries?

I think even if IPTV were to entirely highjack television, I think there will still be a market for long form storytelling itself.  And the computer may not be its only destination.  Television may be losing some of its dominant ground, especially where advertising is concerned, I am not at all convinced its going the way of the dinosaurs.  Cinema took quite a beating, but despite a predictions to the contrary, television, videos and DVDs did not entirely eliminate movie theatres as was predicted.

Maybe interactive video just depends on the nature of the project and exactly what you want the user/viewer to experience and the extent that interactivity fits within the experience.  I haven’t quite decided.  HBO’s Voyeur online campaign was so compelling that people got frustrated when there wasn’t more.

However, it might be interesting to consider that the story world as experienced through the narrative, and the world in which the user may hold in his mind later (or earlier) as being separate.  The ideas that resonate stay with us.  That mind-world of the story might be expressed or matured more completely through a variety of online experiences.  As an example, I wish the web was in the state it is now when the X-files were around.  I would have loved to follow Scully or Mulder on Twitter.  I would have loved to read more deeply the official “cover-up” tactics in a “press-release” blog, or discovered the smoking man somewhere on a forum.  None of this would have detracted from the tv series.

More exciting, is how suited the documentary project is to live through social media. It is always a challenge for filmmakers to leave parts of their films on the cutting room floor, or to not have the opportunity to film the most remarkable parts of the story.  Documentary projects might be considered as more than one-off projects, but movements that are embraced by their audience and can continue to live on and develop, whether through forums or through videos responses to the initial project.

It may no longer be how film lives online, so much as how the entire experience of media can work together to develop a richer world of the story.