Digital realities

Streaming video services were ubiquitous. Hulu is aggressively competing with the biggest players, Amazon and Netflix, for new work. Filmmakers are looking for alternatives to the take-it-or-leave-it Netflix-style contract, and especially looking to hold on to some back-end rights. They would also like some data on performance, which may be even harder to get.

Even with all the new streaming money flowing into the environment, it’s not easier to make a living as a documentary filmmaker. The conclusions of a 2016 Center for Media & Social Impact report are still valid today. As filmmakers Doug Blush, Tom Hardy, Alexandria Bombach, and Bradley Beesley testified, it’s still about renting your equipment out, taking odd jobs, working for hire and maybe teaching in order to fund your passion.

But others are working on changing the ecosystem. Jax Deluca from the National Endowment for the Arts highlighted takeaways from an ongoing, field-wide strategic planning process. Along with film-specific opportunities (think state and local tax incentives) and building representative institutions (the International Documentary Association now has an advocacy staff person), panelists reminded filmmakers to pay attention to larger policy issues, such as net neutrality. Meanwhile, at Google’s diversity summit, Full Color Future, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn pointedly criticized the FCC’s lack of concern for consumers, and asked creators as well as small businesses and activists to make their voices heard on net neutrality.

Still from “People’s Republic of Desire” by Eric Jordan

Sophisticated visual design is becoming essential to documentary filmmaking, whether for transitions, infographics, animations that whisk through exposition, or emphasis. If you had any doubt about its central importance, look at Hao Wu’s “People’s Republic of Desire,” which describes the intense world of internet-famous celebrities’ streaming showrooms in China (on public TV next year). Another important one for visual design is “Take Your Pills,” a Netflix doc by Alison Klayman on the many faces of Adderall culture in a society addicted to speed, efficiency and individualism. One side effect: Filmmakers have never expected to need much quantitative savvy, but with the rise of data visualization, it’s becoming clearer how important that skillset has become.

Virtual reality

VR got its own large display room, with a few spectacular items, including a music video on steroids, “Beethoven’s 5th,” and a magnificent, alarming visit to Greenland’s rapidly melting glaciers, “Greenland Melting.” But many of the documentary VR exhibits were passive-viewing 360 video, VR’s low-hanging fruit. My fave of that kind was a short “VR for Good” project (funded by Oculus, which matches non-profits with filmmakers) from the U.K. on testicular cancer awareness, Ryan Hartsell’s “The Evolution of Testicles.” It deftly used the form to surprise you, make you laugh, and hammer home the message with humor. You get to go up high in an air balloon shaped like a giant pair of testicles. Very, um, ballsy.

Generally, though, it was often hard to parse why the subject matter and narrative wouldn’t work as well if made as a 2D documentary. “Sun Ladies,” for instance, was an absorbing visit to a military unit of Yazidi women fighting ISIS, and could have been a recruiting video; but the VR wasn’t necessary to the telling.

The Dining Room by Rone

Lester Francois’ “Rone,” about an Australian street artist who paints highly crafted female portraits one- and two-stories high on decaying, about-to-be-demolished buildings, did build an environment (with the gaming software Unity) appropriate to the subject matter. His subject not only makes environmental art, but makes it in places that often are then torn down. Viewers could browse in a virtual art gallery in VR, watch a 360 film about the artist, take VR tours of Melbourne street art, and conduct at-will explorations of Rone’s environmental installations. Motherboard used the same format (and also the Unity platform) for a “museum-like” experience of endangered wildlife in the Brazilian Pantanal wetland region, “Living with Jaguars.”

But no matter what, the limitations are still stark. The equipment is clumsy, access is minimal (perhaps 300 people at a festival), and smart-phone/Cardboard viewing lowers the quality. Makers of course are endlessly hopeful that technological wizardry is around the corner that will be more accessible.

Perils of AI

I think the oddest moment I had in the festival was while watching “More Human than Human,” by Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting. It’s about the way AI (artificial intelligence) is all around us and getting big enough to be downright creepy. (Or worse than that: at SXSW Elon Musk went out of his way to warn people to be very afraid.) In the doc, an engineer is demonstrating the speech capacities of the robot he programmed, “Sophie.” To do so, he hits on her…and she winks. Really. I’m still waiting for the robots’ #MeToo moment.

Despite the challenges, SXSW showcased how the documentary form has become an important element of media ecology. Far beyond the “pivot to video” in journalism, documentary is a thriving line for streaming media services, a way of pushing brands, a genre to attract investment to cutting edge media – and of course, as always, a way of calling public attention to important public issues.

This article draws upon research and writing for an article on the SXSW festival in Documentary magazine.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor in the School of Communication at American University and the founder of the Center for Media & Social Impact there. She is the author of, among other books, “Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction.” (Oxford).

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The filmmakers at CreativeChaos, whose projects aim to “move the dial on the cultural conversation” and combine “artistic merit, commercial viability, and social disruption,” have launched another big-impact project: Thank You for Your Service.

Casting directors everywhere have to love the CreativeChaos folks. Their 2012 Casting By documentary heralded the skill and talent of casting directors; the film castigated the Oscars for failing to have a casting category. As a result of the waves the film made, it now has a casting branch, and is about to give the legendary Lynn Stalmaster an honorary Oscar.

Mental health and the military

Read the full Measuring Impact series.

With Thank You for Your Service, which goes theatrical Oct. 7 after a festival run, the filmmakers have gone far beyond Hollywood. They have taken on the neglected mental health of America’s soldiers in a project that took years, took them to 55 American cities and got them into discussions with dozens of military brass and other public officials as well as veterans struggling to survive post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

The reveal: Suicide is endemic in the U.S. military, and it’s a direct result of untreated health consequences of war. The military has known about and seen the enormous cost of leaving mental health untreated for at least several wars but has refused to change the way it handles mental health either during or after service. The numbers are real, but so are the stories, by veterans and by people vets left behind. The numbers tell the frustration, but so do the anguished interviews with doctors and officers who bitterly recount willful neglect. The film is a carefully structured, three-act drama that culminates in a call for change: The military must reorganize the way it deals with mental health, and that has to come from public demand for change.

Cinematic Documentary

Producer Ilan Arboleda with subjects Phil Straub and William Rodriguez at the Washington, D.C. premiere of Thank You for Your Service. Photo credit: Patrick Ryan.

“A film cannot be too smart. It has to appeal to people of all kinds, with emotion. You’ve got [Marine vet and PTSD sufferer] Phil Straub, looking like the Marlboro Man on a horse, and at the end he cries. I want that to appeal to every American.”

The film, funded by a private investor committed to the issue, was grounded in two years of research and filming, but most of it is not on the screen. The priority, said Donahue, is emotional investment.  Producer Ilan Arboleda noted that the film is also expected to provide a respectable financial return on investment.

A Powerful Advocacy Film

This is a film that wears advocacy on its sleeve. “A powerful advocacy film is a great film like any other,” said Donahue. “It should work within the same dramatic parameters of narrative films.” But in an advocacy film, he said, balancing entertainment with message always involves compromises. “There are parts of the film that are essential to the argument, even if they are not the most entertaining. And there are whole stories, gripping and emotional, that didn’t fit with the argument. We made five trips to Austin, Texas, where there is an amazing theatrical project that deserves its own documentary, but it didn’t make it in.”

The investor money came with the requirement to find a call to action, which the filmmakers chose after hearing both about the problems and proposed solutions from their subjects, especially Dr. Mark Russell, a former Marine himself with 26 years of active duty. That solution is for the Defense Department to create a Behavior Health Corps to coordinate mental health support throughout the armed services. The #BHCNOW hashtag promotes support, as does a BHCNOW website. Another website, tyfysfilm.com, permits ongoing connection and the ability to book the film in your own town (via Gathr). Indeed, the people who are bringing it to a theater near you are… you and people like you, finding enough folks to buy tickets to rent the space.

Photo credit: CreativeChaos vmg

Film Creates Political and Public Pressure

How does the film viewing interact with the organizing? Donahue explained: “Our strategy over the next year is two tier: growing the ability to apply public pressure, building awareness by screening as many times as possible. The second tier is political pressure. Backed by that army of supporters, we meet with legislative aides of senators, congresspersons and other influencers, trying to make change from within.”

Arboleda said, “We have spent 10 months traveling around the country ahead of theatrical, at fests and influencer screenings, and people have come out of the woodwork with good ideas. At the D.C. premiere, we had U.S. senators hosting, two in attendance, one giving opening remarks, an ex-congressman, and several others had planned to attend. One senator, Angus King [I-ME], said he would show the film to the Armed Services Committee. And other senators said the same thing.”

He continued: “The military won’t willingly make this change. It probably will take Congress to make that happen. We’ve also showed it in some state legislatures, we’d like to show it in all of them. At the state and local level, it’s working.” The filmmakers have also had talks with both presidential campaigns. For both Arboleda and Donahue, the measure of the film’s success will be change in medical systems for military mental health.

Still, Arboleda said, “We’re filmmakers. We have to hand off the film to an organization that would be the watchdog group and that would promote advocacy and awareness around the issue. A few months ago we set up a nonprofit initiative, BHCNOW. This should be the catalyst for a movement.”

CreativeChaos has several new social-issue projects, but Arboleda and Donahue, along with Steve Edwards, CreativeChaos’ third founding partner, are still on the road with this one as well. Donahue claimed he did not find that distracting: “If showing the film and talking with people afterwards isn’t your favorite part, I don’t know why you’re making movies. The best part is feeling through the eyes and ears of the audience the emotions in the film.”

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and founder of the Center for Media & Social Impact.

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“This is going to be the year of a lot of bad VR,” predicted the New York Times’ Sam Dolnick. The reason? Headsets just went on sale, and media productions are rushing onto different platforms to make it worth your while to buy one. But there’s also going to be some good stuff.

It’s still a time of great experiment. After all, the basic grammar of this immersive form is still being worked out, as a recent Documentary article points out. But makers were drawing on experience in sharing tips at the festival.

1. Make it a destination experience–one they’d like to return to. The New York Times, which is making a well-publicized landgrab for journalistic VR, announced its launch of Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart, its simulation of the surface of Pluto, using NASA data. The available clips looked impressively returnable-to.

2. Think of yourself as a tour guide to the experience, more than the storyteller. Storytelling is still a headscratcher of a problem in VR, while taking people on a journey is much simpler conceptually. As Jessica Brilhart, Google’s head VR filmmaker, said, “Don’t try to force your viewer to go anywhere; reward them for doing so.” Jake Silverstein, editor of the NYT magazine, said, “Story isn’t the center of VR.”

3. Pay attention to the sound, and use the capacity of the medium for directional sound.  Musicians and sound designers were all over Tribeca’s VR showcases, because sound has been recognized as central to the experience, especially directional sound that enhances the illusion of presence and that creates more specificity. One of the featured VR pieces was a father-daughter story told in music, inside a car (and produced by Pearl Google’s Spotlight Stories),

4.  Virtual reality can be alarmingly effective. Although real-life VR video—a Palestinian mother’s story of loss, a heartwarming story about African entrepreneurship—generally underwhelmed me (and made me feel guilty for being underwhelmed), in one case social-issue VR video really worked for me. 6X9, produced for The Guardian newspaper, puts you inside a solitary prison cell for only a few minutes, just long enough to make you really glad you can leave. In the process, it creates a variety of short messages on the surrounding walls, as well as fantasy wall patterns and ghosting meant to emulate hallucinations engendered by extended solitary time. The combination of experience and information is intensely affecting, without being overwhelming. An Australian VR experience, Collisions, combined video and animation to recreate a real-life 1950s atomic bomb blast from the viewpoint of and within the physical environment of an aboriginal elder. It was a remarkable point-of-view experience, giving viewers a chance to imagine not only the event but the elder’s relationship to the land before and after it.

5. Video is several kinds of a challenge. Video carries with it implicit linear storytelling, as it records in real time. It requires gigantic amounts of digital space. Any distortion sets off alarm bells in the viewer’s brain. (360-degree video is a lot easier to do than VR, though.) “Animation and VR are made for each other,” said Maureen Fan of Baobab Studios (they made the short animated VR experience Invasion!).

6. Less can be more. One of the most minimal VR experiences was the exquisitely designed Sens, built upon a graphic novel that is equally minimal. In both, a trench-coated man (you will sometimes become this figure in the VR) explores a world where a white landscape is occasionally interrupted by black arrows — follow them — which lead to buildings, ruins, a beach, and eventually, in Chapter 1, to a magic carpet ride. The experience plunges you into a world of indistinct and perhaps unknowable meaning, and gives you a wondrous experience of discovery unattached to goals.

7. More can also be more. One of the most satisfying VR experiences was the elegant, well-designed game Land’s End, from the same people who brought us Monument Valley. It shares some of the same characteristics—delight in discovery and arrival, solveable mysteries, beautiful, improbable magical landscapes. Deep VR, a scuba-like trip through an imaginary cave with experience synched with breathing rate, was so hypnotically entrancing that I whimpered when they tapped me on the shoulder to signal the end of my time with the experience.  The music was key to the enchantment. Allumette, a grim look at an alternative future in which the Little Match Girl lives and dies again, allows viewers to poke around in the adorable, elaborately constructed town in the sky, which provides her no social safety net.

8. Be prepared to make your work for several platforms and constantly changing equipment. Cardboard, Oculus, Vive, mobile and the web all require different versions. Rigs change daily, it seems. While we wait for the field to shake out, resign yourself to a lot of adapting.

Google cardboard. Photo by Maurizio Pesce on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

9. Respect the current limits of the technology. Today’s VR allows for limited movement, and movement in virtual reality can cause enough cognitive dissonance to make you nauseated. So you want to avoid “PPSs” (potential puke shots).

10. Expect glitches. A lot. Many of the demos at Tribeca suffered from tech meltdowns, which drove everyone crazy and made long lines to use the equipment even longer.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

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The annual tech-meets-film-meets-music extravaganza that is SXSW was crowded with people trying to pick up tips and trends. How crowded was it? Well, the people willing to wait in line for you for the panel, movie or party have organized; they handed out business cards all over downtown. It was a struggle to get a place to park your bike. The escalator traffic jams were epic.

Among the tips and trends:

VR, VR, VR.

Photo from Pixabay and used here with Creative Commons license.

Virtual reality is now so the buzzword that panelists facing standing-room-only audiences frequently cautioned about over-enthusiasm.  Richard Holzer, whose Inside Impact series is in production with the Clinton Global Initiative, said, “It’s the VR bandwagon days, both in marketing and nonprofits.”

“The language is so new, you have to test everything,” said Ricardo Casale Laganaro, whose immersive work includes Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Tomorrow. “What you think will work, won’t!”

Makers are worrying about discouraging people with bad content, frustrating people with hard-to-use apps and awkward equipment, and avoiding an immersive version of “poverty porn” and sensationalism.

For good or profit, shock appears to be the frontline of VR. AT&T made a video that lets you experience a car crash you precipitate by texting while driving. Samsung rented an entire first-floor venue across from the Austin Convention Center to host thrill-rides for attendees who spent hours waiting in line (or having someone wait for them) to sit in seats that move roller-coaster style, with Oculus VR headsets providing more immersion.

Far more pleasant, not to say wondrous, was Orange Sunshine VR, associated with the film of the same name and available at screenings (soon, at other fests too). The film recounts the unlikely history of a spiritual “brotherhood” of people convinced that mass imbibing of LSD could bring world peace, and set about to make and distribute enough to make that happen. The VR offers an experience designed to take the viewer on an LSD-type trip, one that in its awe and delight in a natural setting begs for repeat.

Video everywhere.

As Mashable’s Pete Cashmore said (a lot), video is ubiquitous, attractive and now an essential part of any brand experience. It’s also key to nonprofit strategies. Artist Molly Crabapple’s sketched animation video vividly shows what’s wrong with widespread solitary confinement of prisoners, and has been used in human rights advocacy. POV’s Adnaan Wasey showcased an interactive designed for cellphones, with the Jongsma + O’Neill team. The interactive, Exit, lets you join a “zombie apocalypse” outdoor adventure game for tweens. Look for it in the fall.

Screenshot of POV’s Exit project.

Diversity.

#BlackLivesMatter feature on panels; women filmmakers organized as #filmfatales; and an entire daylong strand was dedicated to online harassment, especially of women. (This last was a SXSW solution to an uproar that ensued when it cancelled panels on harassment, after Gamergaters threatened violence.) But as FilmFatales founder Leah Meyerhoff noted, SXSW itself continues to be mostly white and male. All its programmers are white, and its board is composed of all white men.

Engagement.

Whether in short form, longform, VR or interactive, filmic storytelling was linked to engagement.  The viewer has long since stopped being the audience, but what kind of engagement they have depends on the issue, form and venue.

Episodes.

More is better, basically; episodic entertainment builds relationships, commitment, engagement. SXSW showcased budding TV series galore, and documentarians noted that episodic structures can provide security, although network deals bring their own constraints.

Disappointing distribution.

For longform filmmakers looking for all the new digital opportunities, the news was not dazzling. More money is in the marketplace than ever before, but it’s being consolidated in the hands of fewer entities, with a few streaming services playing a big role. If you want to leverage the engagement of your viewers, you need to work at it yourself relentlessly, even with a good distributor’s help. A panel of distributors warned filmmakers to expect their first feature to be the calling card for other opportunities, and to invest heavily and personally in cultivating the viewership for that first film.

Who knows?

The question marks were much bigger than the knowns, as usual. Netflix and Amazon hoard their user data, so the filmmaker can’t find out real viewership numbers, much less follow-on data. Although VR throws off a monster amount of data, no one has reliable metrics, or even a good idea of what should be measured, yet. So any conclusions about what works, how long anything should be, or what techniques are best are seat-of-pants and individual.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

The post At #SXSW 2016, Virtual Reality, Storytelling and Engagement Shine appeared first on MediaShift.

On launch of the 30^th SXSW Interactive and Film Festival, using media and tech for the public good was front and center.

Government needs tech.

President Obama used his opening keynote for an ambitious purpose: to bring tech smarts to increasing citizen voice, in a political process that often works to shrink democracy. He challenged the notion, especially marked in among tech innovators, that government is hopelessly inefficient and dysfunctional. The things government does well, he argues, are invisible to users because they work so well, and some things government does are really hard—like educating everyone. Tech innovators, he argued, have an obligation to make government serve, inform and enable action by citizens: Look at what could happen at the DMV, in voting, in social services, if tech helped government and citizens connect more easily.

He also acknowledged poor procurement processes botched the health care website launch, but praised the team of ninja-nerds that fixed it, and pointed to other private-public partnerships working to bring tech smarts into government. Put on the spot about encryption, he asked techies to work with government to find a solution that would let law enforcement into devices on issues that the society agrees threaten us all.

Don’t complain, organize.

Right behind this do-good tech-centered argument was a starkly political one. The President openly acknowledged that citizens are now often shut out of participation and services because powerful politicians don’t want them in. “The reason Texas has such a bad voting record,” he said, “is because the people who run the good state of Texas don’t want those people to vote.” And the only thing that would change that, or other distortions of democracy and dysfunctions of government, he said, was more citizen action.

The President was appealing to the tech innovation elite to enable and encourage citizens to demand and defend democracy, even as it is snatched away from them by powerful interests. Bold. Very bold.

Trapped.

The opening evening featured the already-celebrated documentary “Trapped,” which features Texas characters. The film, by Dawn Porter, tracks several providers of abortion and other reproductive health services in southern states, affected by legislation that harshly limits access to abortion and that now is being challenged in the Supreme Court.

At the opening night screening, the audience gave an ovation to the people featured in the film, who came up on stage, as well as former Texas legislator Wendy Davis. Davis had conducted a filibuster that temporarily blocked one of the pieces of legislation. On stage, she celebrated the courage and dedication of the abortion providers. “You are the heroes,” she said.

Porter talked about the daily dangers that the doctors and provider personnel confront—which the film shared in. “We were careful and discreet,” she said, talking about the challenges of making a documentary under dangerous conditions.   “I’m not the one under constant surveillance,” she said. “But when one of the anti-abortion activists tells me they are just expressing their opinion, I say, ‘The difference between us is that when I express my opinion, you’re not afraid of getting shot.’”

Porter launched the film to contribute to public debate on the issue in the season of Supreme Court deliberations.  More than a hundred community screenings are being held nationwide, organized through the film’s website, and it is in theaters in major cities.

Panels.

The strand SXgood was full of tips for nonprofits to leverage digital affordances. At the panel “Turning the Tide of Corruption,” presenters featured ways that Mexicans and Guatemalans are using online technology to confront power. Kara Andrade, an American University Ph.D. student, analyzed — drawing on legal scholar Lawrence Lessig — how citizen digital challenges could attack power in four ways that it is organized, including law, code/architecture, markets and norms.

Wendy Davis in 2013. Photo by Alan Kotok on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

A mini-conference on online harassment resulted from an embarrassing kerfuffle in SXSW planning, when the Interactive team temporarily cancelled panels on the topic after Gamergate types threatened violence. After protests, SXSW held an all-day summit that drew lawyers, nonprofit reps, and activists. The well-attended panel on women and media began with startling statistics from Jamia Wilson, who heads Women Action and the Media (and is an AU alum). Some 12 percent of the complaints coming into her organization concern harassment that involves direct threats of violence. This panel also featured Wendy Davis, who talked about the consequences of being labeled “abortion Barbie” online. Soraya Chemaly of Women’s Media Center noted that more women need to be in media, to address implicit bias. Panelists agreed that misogynistic online harassment of women is the tip of a very big iceberg of misogyny.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

The post #SXSW for Good: Obama, Abortion, Harassment, Diversity appeared first on MediaShift.

Is interactive documentary about letting a viewer choose their own adventure (Ted Biggs and Angad Bhall’s The Deeper They Bury Me), about making work that viewers provide input to (Kyle McDonald’s Exhausting a Crowd, Ross Goodwin’s word.camera), or about creating systems, such as games (Tracy Fullerton, Walden: A Game), that viewers can tell their own stories with? All of the above, it seems. And more: Virtual reality was the new toy.

Some takeaways from the conference experience:

1. If you’re using virtual reality, have more than a gee-whiz reason.

Photo by Phil Whitehouse on Flickr and reused here with Creative Commons license.

Being able to look around in the image still isn’t like being there (nausea is still an issue), and anyway being there isn’t any royal road to understanding. Sending viewers to virtual refugee camps or to a Liberian hospital where Ebola was subdued (Gabo Arora and Chris Milk’s Waves of Grace) doesn’t necessarily make them any more empathetic than drawing a picture for them with words or photos or showing them a movie. The touching story of a survivor living with PTSD from a terrorist attack (Darren Emerson’s Witness 360: 7/7) isn’t discernibly more touching for having strapped on the lunchbox-on-face VR equipment and been able to look around her bedroom. That doesn’t mean the stories weren’t well told and touching; both central characters and their narratives were compelling. But they would have been compelling without the VR.

2. Leverage the capacities of the medium.

A lovely animated VR work, Drawing Room, by Jan Rothuizen and Sara Kolster — winner of the Digital Storytelling award — does that with grace.  Viewers got both to browse Rothuizen’s physical workspace at will and share his creative questions, and also go with him to dreamspace in the sky — all without nausea.

3. Make sure something’s at stake.

Dries Depoorter’s Sheriff Software put viewers in the position of being snoops. It showcased publicly-available police webcam feeds, and allowed you to report crimes such as jaywalking. (I didn’t see anyone reporting a scofflaw.) Simply scanning the webcams was a chilling reminder of how pervasive and public such information is.

4. Make the audience part of the event.

Vigorous Twitter chatter raised questions that the hosts sometimes engaged. Even more fun, May Abdalla and Amy Rose from Anagram (remember Door into the Dark?) put surprises under everyone’s chair and provoked a conversation about what kind of experience could become part of their next effort.

5. Remember, if it’s interactive, the user is important. Really, really important. 

So you really, really need to consult them (this is what Paul Ford calls WWIC). This was William Uricchio’s core observation, as the grandfather of DocLab and much more interactive documentary work at MIT’s Open Doc Lab.  Creativity is a social process. Being creative in an interactive environment is a user-centric process.  And inevitably, as Sandra Gaudenzi noted in the twitter chatter, involving the user also involves you in clarifying your expectations, goals and, um, metrics.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

The post 5 Takeaways About Interactive Documentaries from IDFA’s DocLab appeared first on MediaShift.

The implications: Independent filmmakers with a diverse team or characters have options these days, but their best bet is still public TV. Public TV can celebrate the diversity in “Independent Lens” and “POV,” but can’t boast about consistent diversity in other doc series.

Public TV and Indies

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which channels the Federal dollars to stations and programs, proudly announces on its website that “Digital, Diversity and Dialogue are the framework for public media’s service to America” and founded “to champion the principles of diversity and excellence of programming, responsiveness to local communities and service to all.”

But it’s not always easy, given public TV’s funding structure and history, to demonstrate diversity. That’s where independent filmmakers have always made a difference. Their programs have often brought voices and perspectives to TV and to the American public that go beyond TV’s racial, gender, socio-economic and geographic default settings.

It’s always taken effort, although — as IDA lifetime achievement award-winner Gordon Quinn has often explained — the fact that public TV is public made it possible to make that effort. Independent pressure on public TV to be more diverse — to be more representative of America’s diversity — resulted in the creation of a series showcasing independent work, “POV,” in 1988. In the same year, Congress also ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to create the Independent Television Service (ITVS), to co-produce diverse and innovative independent work offered to public TV. By 1999, ITVS developed a showcase series, “Independent Lens,” co-curated with PBS.

Last year, both “Independent Lens” and “POV” were threatened with removal from their prime-time PBS spot — a life-threatening move for both series, which are tied contractually to public TV. The pressure began again. After nation-wide protest from independents, non-profits and viewers, arguing the need for diversity, PBS pledged a one-year commitment to the programs.

Photo by flash.pro
on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

But today, with HBO, CNN, Pivot, Netflix, Amazon and many more jockeying for documentaries, is public TV so distinctive? Could indies with diverse perspectives and voices go elsewhere? Could viewers? To find out, we counted female and minority participation in commercial and public documentaries.

How we counted

We examined 165 documentaries that aired in either during the 2014 or 2014-2015 season in the U.S. We focused on social-issue documentaries produced by independent makers, as represented in series that curate authorial works. For commercial TV, we chose “HBO Documentaries” and “CNN Documentaries.” For public TV, we chose “Independent Lens” and “POV.” These four series are all series seriously considered by independent filmmakers and their agents when deciding on a broadcast partner for the same kind of social-issue work.

We also, for comparison within public TV, selected for analysis three other public TV series featuring social issue documentaries. These series often employ independent producers to work on these programs, and sometimes even select programs based on pitches by them, but maintain control over the ultimate design and look of the program. We chose two series that feature social issues, “Frontline” and “American Experience,” as well as “American Masters,” an arts series featuring the social context of performance. We chose these other series on public television to see whether curation of independent authorial work was more significant in explaining minority and female representation than the venue of public broadcasting itself.

We asked questions about both minority and female participation, both as directors and producers. In asking about minority makers, our standard was whether at least one member of the relevant group was a U.S. minority within the federal categories. We also asked whether the documentaries featured minority, international and/or female characters in a major role, which was considered as recurring characters who shape the core narrative and motivate the arc of the action or explanation. For international characters of color, we included Middle Eastern. In all cases, any maker or character who occurred in two categories, e.g. minority and female, was counted in both.

We combined results for “Independent Lens” and “POV,” whose results were similar, and for “HBO Documentaries” and “CNN Documentaries,” which also featured similar results.

What we found

“Independent Lens” and “POV,” which have similar results, feature many more programs that have at least one minority director than either commercial TV or any other public TV program.

Independent Lens and POV, which have similar results, feature many more programs that have at least one minority director than either commercial TV or any other public TV program. Graph courtesy of CMS Impact.

“Independent Lens” and “POV” feature more films with at least one women director than HBO and CNN, but not by as large a margin as directors. Also, one other public TV show featured many women directors.

“Independent Lens” and “POV” feature more films with at least one minority character or international character of color than both commercial and public TV, with the exception of “Frontline,” which features many international characters of color.

But in one area, commercial TV excels: the category of producers, a category that can cover a lot of roles, from arranging a shoot to filming to fundraising. But one thing is in common: producers do not get authorial credit. Given commercial TV’s record of minority producers, it also seems that often being a producer does not necessarily lead to opportunities as director.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

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At a panel at 100Reporters’ “Double Exposure” symposium in Washington, D.C., digital video programmers from several news media outlets explained how they’re building knowledge, brand and capacity at the same time.

Aid from in-house productions.

Although wildly different from each other, they all said that video was garnering more traffic than anyone had expected, and that their units were becoming more important within their companies. The Atlantic’s video team for instance just doubled from five to 10. Work is typically fact-checked and vetted like any other journalistic effort. They often work closely with an audience development team.

All of them still depend more on in-house production, but are reaching out selectively to independent filmmakers. Only one, AJ+’s Michael Shagoury, could put out a number ($10-15,000 per work), and none could get specific about the relationship at this early stage.

Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg from The Atlantic described a largely in-house effort that produces a wide variety of work, often but not always tied to written work. It ranges from a profile by staff writer Jeff Goldberg of Louisiana’s Angola prison to the “If your body could talk” health series.

At public TV series POV, Emma Dessau said, digital work stands apart from the TV series, largely commissioned and produced with private foundation funds; POV also pays independents licensing fees. Work is always interactive, and, she said, is most successful when originally conceived as an interactive project. Among them are the Whiteness Project, 89 Steps, and Immigrant Nation.

Innovative sources and platforms.

At the Guardian US, Valerie Lapinski works with UK video commissioner Charlie Phillips to produce or commission work linked to The Guardian’s journalism and identity. “We’re not as big as many news outlets in the U.S., so we can’t compete directly with them,” she said. “So we try to stand out with quality and a distinctive voice in what we do.” She pointed to a project to document all police killings in the U.S., The Counted.

Sky Dylan-Robbins at The New Yorker discussed the need to have an angle true to the magazine’s quirky character on a topic, and the value of a cinematic approach, whether for an investigative piece or a portrait. As an example she showed “The New Yorker version” of a cat video.

Michael Shagoury from AJ+, the digital arm of Al Jazeera, discussed the challenge of producing work for different platforms. Facebook draws a lot of traffic, he reported, and YouTube—where documentaries go—not so much. What works, he said, is short, fast, and engaging, with a lot of text onscreen. AJ+ is finding that a presenter-led format (think Vice), which allows easy exposition, is most popular. AJ+’s docs are short, about 7-10 min, and commissioned from filmmakers around the world, often through the platform Storyhunter; they are character-driven, focused on Al Jazeera mantra–giving voice to the voiceless.

Greg Veis from the Huffington Post magazine Highline is developing an interactive journalistic-documentary format, with a mix of text, photos and video, activated with a scrolldown. Some of its stories have topped the charts of HuffPo stories in a week. While production is in-house, journalists come to them with stories from outside as well as internally, and are paid standard magazine freelance prices.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University. Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

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Is there anything we can’t call interactive?

At Storyscapes, an exhibition of interactive installations, sponsor Bombay Sapphire gin promoted its build-your-own-cocktail bar as an interactive experience. OK. The exhibits themselves ranged from an online-video series to an in-real-life labyrinth you navigated blindfolded. At TFI Interactive, interactivity included organizing public spaces for the Occupy movement, doing a virtual-reality version of Skype, and telling a stranger embarrassing personal facts. Of course, user engagement always creates interactivity, but where is the creative edge within that general truism?

Photo courtesy of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Is there anything that can’t be interactive media?

At TFI Interactive it was email platforms, data visualization, comic books, Google doodles, wrapping yourself in plastic, and games, as well as documentaries. Some of those documentaries were interactive in the sense that you could, as in The Guardian’s new video-rich web pages, click on them to watch.

Is there anything that isn’t storytelling?

One of Tribeca’s innovations this year was bringing a mini-experience of DefCon, the huge industry hacker and security conference. There, you could pick a lock and learn about crypto, and sometimes the friendly hackers made a connection back to media. For instance, one flyer on security measures helpfully mentioned that Citizen Four featured secure email transmission. But mostly it seemed like quite a stretch. If story is the way you make sense of experience, then almost any kind of experience can become your story. But the capaciousness of the definition makes it hard to consider the role or even quality of crafted storytelling.

At the same time, the worlds of hackers, filmmakers, and game designers are still remarkably siloed. One of the fascinating pleasures of TFF was moving between the mini-cultures, where dress code, speech style, and use of devices all distinguished them.

Sorting it out

Photo courtesy of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Speakers variously picked up the challenge of making sense out of vastly diverse set of stimuli. Sam Gregory, part of WITNESS’ braintrust, asked people at TFI Interactive to think about how to use the already-built landscape they occupy to leverage our shared “distributed willingness” to help in cases of human rights abuse. Livestreaming (Meerkat), crowdsourced work (Mechanical Turk), smart calendaring, Meetup sites, and so much more can help people do anything; how to turn attention to human rights?  For instance, virtual reality is another potential tool for empathy—if we want it to be. “But let’s not forget that in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, they had feelies but that didn’t drive them to action against social injustice.”

At Games for Change, Oculus designer Michael Abrash was asked about virtual reality v. reality. “I think in the future it won’t be one or the other—it’ll be mixed reality,” he said. “People ask what’s the killer app for virtual reality? And I ask, well, what’s the killer app for reality?”

That way of framing the issue throws the whole question back to the basics: what do you want to do, with whom? It acknowledges the pervasiveness of digital technology in our in-real-world experience. It recognizes that our imaginary and our physical presence are intermixed. It reminds us that tools are tools for something, and it’s the something that matters. It invites you to ask how you want to change the world, not a form.

And some people reminded us that sometimes analog works fine, given your objectives. When Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill developed their transmedia project Empire, about Dutch imperialism, they grappled with rapidly obsolescing platforms and technologies. To cope with instability and impermanence, they made a book. The Priya’s Shakti project, which has some cutting-edge digital applications, will achieve outreach throughout villages everywhere in India through an old-fashioned comic book.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

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At SXSW, PBS made a bigger splash than usual at the media/tech mecca, with seven (!) panels and three films. At the new-this-year PBS Lounge (swag, free beer, comfy couches, selfies posted direct to Net), you could meet filmmakers of the three PBS premieres. PBS also announced investment in theatricals. And more than two dozen PBSers were on hand to court indies.

But it joined a throng of distributors — not just broadcasters but also online platforms — doing the same thing.

Competition

PBS has a lot of competition in its desire to lure indies to its brand. At the moment, PBS doesn’t even seem to make the radar of Variety, which just did a trend piece on the “golden age” of documentary without once mentioning it.

That competition wasn’t just coming from broadcast at SXSW, either, although HBO, CNN Films, ESPN, Al Jazeera and a host of European broadcasters were all prowling for content and deals. So were reps from online platforms. Showcasing their recent investments in indie production were, among others, Vimeo, YouTube, Netflix, EPIX (which is available both on cable and online) and AOL (yes, AOL).  This is the year that online platforms became serious rivals for the content and talent broadcasters look for.

PBS had a respectable lineup of film premieres at SXSW; they were all films funded by ITVS, the production fund for indies within public TV. “The Best of Enemies” is an enormously entertaining recounting of the enormously entertaining 1968 debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. “Welcome to Leith” lets you watch as a neo-Nazi group takes over the town council of a tiny North Dakota town — and it’s not fiction. And then there’s the unforgettable surprising heart-stealer, “T-Rex.” Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, who aspires to be the first woman gold medalist in boxing at the Olympics, is an African-American high schooler saved from homelessness and domestic abuse by a sympathetic coach and his patient wife. And she’s also a phenom and a character. All will end up on Independent Lens or POV, the two major series showcasing independent documentary on public TV.

Welcome to Leith – Teaser from NO WEATHER on Vimeo.

Weirdly, at a panel promoting the opportunities for indies and PBS, PBS reps made no commitment to keeping these series in their primetime slots after rumored plans to move them generated enormous pushback from filmmakers and viewers. Panelist Byron Hurt, whose latest film “Soul Food Junkies” showed on Independent Lens in 2013, raised the issue: if “common carriage” (having all the stations carry the program at the same time) was too complex, he said, at least PBS should commit to their current primetime slot.

POV and Independent Lens also have audiences that skew younger and more diverse than PBS’ typical 60-plus. Indeed, PBS’ Donald Thoms actually reminded one hopeful indie that PBS programs for over 60s. PBS programmer Beth Hoppe, who brought a whole team to SXSW looking for potential pick-ups, jumped up from the audience to express her enthusiasm for younger audiences — without, however, committing to keeping the shows in primetime.

After the panel, one of the panelists, much-lauded indie Marshall Curry, noted that POV and Independent Lens are very indie-friendly: “POV and IL are supportive of filmmakers. They have huge audiences that dwarf most other broadcasters, and they allow directors to maintain creative control of their films, which is not always the case with other broadcasters.”

Diversity

Photo by Ed Schipul on Flickr and used with Creative Commons license.

Diversity was the subject of a PBS panel, which with refreshing frankness showcased ongoing diversity problems in broadcast. It featured two young women, Lauren Saks (PBS Digital) and Shereen Marisol Meraji (NPR CodeSwitch), who discussed how difficult it is for diverse content, like the kind they produce, to reach the center of attention on public broadcasting. Indeed, when asked if the digital side of PBS was able to carry its diversity orientation over to broadcast, Saks said, “We hope that the digital and the broadcast side get closer together, but broadcast just isn’t there yet.”

The two speakers also frankly discussed vitriolic hate comments on their sites about any topic touching race, even incidentally. They talked about how difficult it is to begin conversations on such difficult issues.

Engagement

At SXSW, where tech meets film, multi-screen, multi-platform and user engagement are all touchstone words.  One panel “Analog and Digital: Synching an Engagement Campaign,” featuring “Last Days in Vietnam,” showed how it can work. Mark Samels, who heads “American Experience,” the series in which it appeared, walked through an elaborate engagement strategy, involving theatrical coordination with NPR’s StoryCorps, a digital platform for viewer stories, and crowdsourcing funds for outreach.

But unlike with Independent Lens and POV, where engagement is typical, Samels explained that this was an exception. “We make 10 films a year,” he said. “And only maybe one every other year goes into this kind of distribution. It’s the pressure of broadcast schedule.”  He explained that only when it was out did they discover an enormous amount of appetite for the film in Asian immigrant communities.

PBS stations, added together, have unparalleled reach, and they can proudly display a brand that signifies trust throughout the United States and beyond. PBS could be a great partner for indies and appears to have powerful assets in house, but it faces stiff competition.

This post originally appeared on the the site for the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University.

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor and Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication, American University, and co-author with Peter Jaszi of “Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright” (University of Chicago Press). You can give feedback at cmsimpact@american.edu.

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