THURSDAY MAY 17TH

Today we will begin class by watching, Undocumented and Unafraid, a short video written, produced and edited over at The Urban Arts Partnership's Media Lab Academy. Tweet your reactions to the video before getting to work today. 

*CLASS ANNOUNCEMENTS*

The end of the quarter is fast approaching on Friday June 8th! The school community will be invited to a Mediastorm screening on Friday June 1st. On that day all social marketing sites, soundcloud tracks and a rough cut of the video should be ready for presentation. To support you in preparing for your group's BIG DAY Ariana will be available every Tuesday and Wednesday during office hours for the rest of the quarter to help with editing! Each team should commit to staying at least one day/week for the rest of the quarter so finalize editing. Also, communicate with Ariana if you would like to check-out the camera in the coming weeks. Remember editing is by no means a solo gig, team managers, marketers, and producers should all be in constant communication about the direction and development of the story! 

Wednesday May 8th

The Eagleman Stag is Michael Please’s Royal College of Art dissertation + recent BAFTA award-winning film is a masterpiece.  Animated through stop-motion, the film incorporates thousands of hand-created models across 115 sets to tell the story of Peter Eagleman.  Peter possess a peculiar awareness of time.  The storytelling is unique and the film has been a hit at film festivals including Sundance, SXS and included in the Wholphinselection. 

Today there is a social marketing roundtable with me.  Editors please email Ariana and Scott with your footage as their is a editors workshop tomorrow with Ariana and Kouross.

Check out the teaser trailer for the The Right Note from Envy Productions.  Well done ladies.  

The Right Note from Mediastorm New Design on Vimeo.

Monday Stranger in Her Own City

There are only 6 more weeks of school left and only 6 more weeks of work to film and edit your film. Watch this clip of Stranger in a Her Own City and follow with a tweet. Then get to work.

Plastic Beaches and Editors List

One Plastic Beach from High Beam Media on Vimeo.

One Plastic Beach documents Richard and Judith Selby Lang and their picking up plastic detritus from Kehoe Beach in Northern California and using these found objects to create art. The results are pretty spectacular.  They have been doing it for years.  In one year they found over 4,000 pounds of plastic from a very narrow stretch of shore.  Short of the Week writes,

The filmmaking, courtesy of San Francisco-based High Beam Media is not spectacular, but the art often is, and for documentary filmmaking I think that finding a capitivating subject is 80% of your work.
 
Check out Richard and Judith's work through their blog.

Today:

• Editors have to make a list of all the footage they have and email it to Scott, Ariana and Kouross
• Social Marketers make a list of all your marketing sites together for a presentation to the other marketers next week.  How you do it and where you show it is up to you?
• Team Managers will meet with Scott to discuss challenges being faced.  

Amar Observational Documentary

Amar (all great achievements require time) from Pilgrim Films on Vimeo.

Amar, 14, works two jobs six and half days a week and is the top breadwinner of his family.  He is also the top of his class.  Check out this observational documentary about his life.  Observational documentary is a form of filmmaking where the filmmaker follows the subject often in their daily routine.  In the film Short of the week writes about the film:  

Amar follows a 14 year-old Indian boy at the top of his class who would someday like to be a professional cricketer. He also happens to be his family’s main breadwinner, working two jobs six and half days a week. But, this film isn’t an analysis of Amar’s misery or  an expose on his suffering. No, it’s instead a quiet celebration of the human spirit–of a boy whose tenacity and quiet resolve carry him through every day. The system may be broken, but Amar’s spirit certainly isn’t....In the end, the film is not attempting to make some grand, profound statement. It’s not requesting that we view Amar has some sort of hero or metaphorical beacon of light. It just asks that we pay attention—give up nine minutes of our lives  to halt our lamentations of the world and remember, if just for a moment, that there truly is beauty left.

To learn more about the filmmakers check out Pilgrim Films.  


Tweet what you think when you are done watching the film. 

Wednesday April 2nd Transmedia Storytelling

PHASEONE - SUGAR from Ryan Powell on Vimeo.

Short of the Week writes about: SUGAR, nominated for a Vimeo Award in the category Best Experimental, delivers a novel way of telling a narrative, presenting the story of two lovers through the medium most modern relationships work—short texts.  The film itself is very simple. Traded texts appear on screen at a headlong pace, carrying the narrative. A couple, seemingly ex’s, are in contact. One of them is leaving the city, the other is taken by surprise, and wants to meet. Sounds monotonous when laid out so plainly, but these are the plotlines of our lives, and as executed in the film, become very absorbing.  Behind it timelapse traffic images provide a backdrop for the drama written out. Some complain that over the course of a 4min film that the timelapse imagery of traffic becomes a bit monotonous, but it does tie into the plot, and the texts themselves take up so much of one’s attention, it’s difficult to focus on the traffic images as more than backdrop.

Transmedia storytelling is a hot topic in film circles at this time. A relatively new concept, it incorporates the use of new technologies across different platforms to engage audiences, changing the way stories can be told and how artists convey emotions and characters through different media. Is PHASEONE – SUGAR, a transmedia project? Probably not, but the experimental combination of different media principles as a storytelling aspect inside a “concluded” short film presents the viewer with new watching experience, and a quite powerful one at that.

Friday April 27th Mr. Happy Man

Mr. Happy Man Clip- "Love" from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.

Come rain or shine, 88-year-old Bermudian Johnny Barnes. Mr Happy Man, devotes six hours every day to an endearing traffic ritual that has made him one of the island’s most cherished citizens.

A man sitting in traffic doing eccentric things is a cause for worry, but Mr. Barnes is as sweet and genuine as one would hope he’d be. Through Johnny’s persistence, time has transcended awkwardness, and the film shows how, to the community in Bermuda, Johnny has become an indispensable icon. Shot in the bright Bermuda sunshine, Mr. Happy Man is an endearing and optimistic pick-me-up, a perfect pairing for a case of the Mondays or any form of Valentine distress.



Director Matt Morris first came on my radar through his wonderful short doc Pickin’ & Trimmin.

Tweet about Mr. Happy Man after you finish watching the film.