VCAM producer Brian Plisko and his partners at Rise Up Vermont traveled to Senegal and Gambia in February to put on the Foreward Home 2008 West African Tour, featuring music by leading Virgin Island Roots artists. They brought with them a camera package from VCAM, and they’re making a documentary about the trip, which will air on VCAM channel 15 upon completion. Brian stopped by the studio today to share some photos from the tour and to thank VCAM for the support, which we were happy to give. Brian writes…
With your camera we were able to document a truly beautiful tour, with the resilient and colorful African culture at the forefront of our consciousness. You have helped us so tremendously bring the beauty and spirit of Africa back to Vermont…
The trip wasn’t all about music, Brian and crew also brought seeds (for farms), solar panels, water pumps and medical supplies for a midwifery called The African Birth Collective.
VCAM, CCTV and RETN are once again collaborating on the Vermont blogging experiment, Exit Voices.
If there was a comments section on your ballot on election day, what would you say? What do you think about the issues, ballot measures and candidates this election? Exit Voices is your forum. On Tuesday March 4th, Exit Voices will host a series of open threads, giving any Vermonter the opportunity to say his or her piece. Some of these comments and video entries will be highlighted on the blog and during CCTV’s live election night coverage on channel 17 and over their live web stream that evening. Stop by Exit Voices and speak you mind. The floor is yours.
Leading up to the 4th, Exit Voices will be aggregating content from all over the Vermont blogosphere and soliciting essays, photos and video posts from Vermonters across the state, discussing Town Meeting Day and the Vermont presidential primary.
Tonight at 7:30 pm Vermont Public Television is hosting a live web chat with Vermont ACLU director, Allen Gilbert, and assistant US attorney, Bill Darrow. The focus of the chat will be “Civil Liberties in a Changing World.” In an email, Gilbert writes…
I’m a panelist with Bill Darrow, an assistant U.S. attorney here in Vermont. The topic is “Civil Liberties in a Changing World.” Darrow, as you may know, is pretty aggressive in defending government actions in national security, drugs, death penalty, etc.
The chat on Wednesday will focus on national security, and I’m sure Darrow will try to belittle claims that civil liberties have been diminished because of the war on terror — or that if they have, the Bush administration has structured security programs in a way that minimizes civil liberties impacts while maximizing protection of U.S. citizens’ safety.
Go here to log into the chat — you can comment anonymously if you wish.
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.
The Nation posted an article this week about the Al Jazeera satellite news network and its growing popularity around the world. The article’s author, Ned Lamont (yes, that Ned Lamont), mentions that despite Al Jazeera English’s widespread acceptance overseas, there are precious few TV channels in the US that carry its content…
Al Jazeera’s most recent offspring, Al Jazeera English, is more like PBS on a slow day. Al Jazeera English is available around the world and even on the Israeli cable systems. But it is barely visible in the United States–Buckeye Cable in Ohio and Burlington Public Access in Vermont are the only channels that carry it.
By “Burlington Public Access,” Lamont is referring to VCAM’s sister organization RETN, which runs a 1/2 hour of fresh Al Jazeera English programming every weekday at 6:30 pm. RETN operates channel 16 on Comcast and Burlington Telecom cable systems in Chittenden County.
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.
If there was a comments section on your ballot on election day, what would you say? What do you think about the issues, ballot measures and candidates this election? Exit Voices is your forum. On Tuesday March 4th, Exit Voices will host a series of open threads, giving any Vermonter the opportunity to say his or her piece. Some of these comments and video entries will be highlighted on the blog and during CCTV’s live election night coverage on channel 17 and over their live web stream that evening. Stop by Exit Voices and speak you mind. The floor is yours.