Ira Glass, producer and host of PRI’s wonderful radio program, This American Life, gives some wonderful, inspiring and reassuring advice to media makers in this YouTube video. Whether you’re a newcomer to media-making or have been producing your own show for years, this is incredibly valuable advice…
Lately Glass and the TAL crew have taken their show to TV, and are now in their second season of This American Life on Showtime. The cable show presents some of the finest short-form documentary filmmaking happening right now. The first season is available on DVD.
“Starting at 18:00 GMT on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.
The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person’s eyes. Details on the Pangea Day films can be viewed here.
The program will also include a number of exceptional speakers and musical performers. Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova are among those taking part.”
Check out Rebecca Kopycinski’s opening credits for her new show Burly Song. She designed them using Adobe’s CS3 here at the VCAM studio and in the process she has rapidly become quite skilled at After Effects. Burly Song will feature performances by musicians from our local independent music scene as well as special guest appearances from touring musicians performing in the Burlington area. You can look for Burly Song to premiere on VCAM Channel 15 next week!
A trio of British graphic designers spent four days filming themselves running up and down Omaha Beach in Normandy and then composited the footage to create an amazing, on-the-cheap, DIY D-Day scene. Here is the YouTube clip…
American University’s Center for Social Media has conducted a study about the use of copyrighted materials in user-generated video content. When YouTubers take copyrighted content and make video “mashups” and put them up on YouTube, are they breaking the law? The study, which comes from the same institution that published the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, is available for download here. According to the study’s site…
The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by Center director Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, shows that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups)—all of which could be legal in some circumstances.
Fair use is the part of copyright law that permits new makers, in some situations, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying the owners. The courts tell us that fair use should be “transformative”—adding value to what they take and using it for a purpose different from the original work. So when makers mash up several works—say, The Ten Commandments , Ben-Hur and 10 Things I Hate about You , making Ten Things I Hate about Commandments —they aren’t necessarily stealing. They are quoting in order to make a new commentary on popular culture, and creating a new piece of popular culture.
Unfortunately, this emerging, participatory media culture is at risk, with new industry practices to control piracy. Large content holders such as NBC Universal and Viacom, and online platforms such as MySpace and Veoh are already crafting agreements on removing copyrighted material from the online sites. Legal as well as illegal copying could all too easily disappear. Worse still, a new generation of media makers could grow up with a deformed and truncated notion of their rights as creators.
Check out this video of Regis Philbin discussing his run-in with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman at a dinner part at Phil Donahue’s Manhattan penthouse. Regis almost suffers an existential crisis on the air as he admits that his show is vapid and pointless compared to the serious work being done by Goodman, which he says airs on “one of those PBS stations,” referring, of course, to PEG access channels. It almost makes you feel bad for the guy… almost.
Documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (The Control Room) and TED, the invite-only Technology, Entertainment and Design conference held annually in Monterey, California, are teaming up together for something called Pangea Day, and asking professional and amateur filmmakers around the world to submit short pieces for a world-wide film festival with the lofty goal of building bridges between cultures. The films will be screened in a four-hour presentation in cities around the world and online on May 10, 2008 — Pangea Day.
How to produce and submit your short film:
Pangea Day films are meant to be visual stories, ones that can be understood despite language barriers, and therefore should not rely on dialogue. If dialogue is required, Pangea Day organizers are asking that videos have English subtitles so that all films can be translated. In order to show as many videos as possible, submissions must be 5 minutes or less.
A panel of jurors, led by Noujaim and other renowned members of the film community, will review all submissions and select the winning films to be screened on Pangea Day.
