British Film Institute Sessions
Citizen Video
Zoe Young, Greg Hall, Paul O'Connor and Stefan Szczelkun
Urgent and politicised, this programme of contextualised screenings explores the emergence of citizen video reporting on the Net. Essential viewing for anyone concerned to intervene in the media representation of global events.
This session will feature Zoe Young, Greg Hall, Paul O'Connor and Stefan Szczelkun. These four film-makers will introduce work from video projects with which they work. The films spans reportage of grassroots direct action from the uk, international collaborations between radical media collectives and rapidly captured video of protests and events that have inspired citizens worldwide.
A discussion will follow with diverse themes including; bursting the bubble of media objectivity, awareness and strategy for sharing sensitive material within a social justice context, the importance of social movements documenting their own history, challenging the passivity of film as a medium and exploring tools to distribute citizen video more effectively.
SOFT TV
League of Noble Peers (Steal This Film)
Dongwon - Labournet
And - Engage Media
League of Noble Peers (Steal This Film)
PirateCinema - Berlin, New York, London, (Rome)
PirateBay - 2.000.000 unique visitors Steal This Film - 750.000.000 downloads in one month
Made about a month ago, not film makers. But we are technologists. We have had 3/4 of a million download this film. What does it mean that 3/4 people can download this film which made for 1500 £. This means that the new model of media distribution spells doom trying to sell units. On the other hand the digital form of reproduction and network form of distribution allows us to challenge old model at precise moment that it offers us to go forward in a way which works Part of the reason we made this film was b/c we knew how bit torrent works. It Is only this and this only which allows us to distribute the film in this way
Dongwon - Labournet
16 Takes on Korean Society: Korea is going crazy (110 mins) - feature doc in collaboration by 16 independent filmmakers. Korean Association of Independent Video Makers - organises one collective documentary to by produced every year. The development started on a forum from a post. 4 means of distribution:
1. Screenings: local community activists for screenings: made copies in two weeks for forty community screenings. Community Screening Network.
2. OurTV - Public access satellite channel. Anybody can submit content. This film was screened 5 times on this nation-wide channel.
3. Website - streaming and download (900MB). Ask why do you want to download the film and for your personal contact information. Forum about what people do with the film.
Local video collective in Pyongteng makes 10 minute news every day on their website. They moved there and live there -- 4 young activists just there to cover the actions since 5 months.
Answer to the praise of the video work: it's not just b/c of the great internet penetration but also because of the really well developed local social movement. Why is the movement strong? There are a lot of nonsense things happening in Korean society.
Context in korea is highspeed internet transmission Case for distributing independent documentaries
16 takes on Korean society – shows 16 ways in which Korean society is going crazy, because Korean society is changing in various ways. Picked out one segment of this doco, how doco made and distributed nation wide
collective doc making happens once a year – one doc maker posted idea of making a post once a year – people comment on this post and decide to have 16 takes theme. They there was a discussion about how to distribute documentary etc
Basic plan involved 4 distribution strats – distribute to social movements who want to screen in their space. Asked rtv to screen – which is a public access satillite broadcasting channel. Has been programmed 5 times on RTV. Use of downloading – make special website for doc – this download based distribution is a new approach – special page available for download. Before you download, you are asked to organise a community screening in space. Also leave some info about name, email, why would you like to download films so that producers and makers can recognise where this film can be screened. The result is that it has 900 downloads by users. Make daily village news which was on website
Positive mentioning of online activism because Korean social movements have been strong. Not just internet penetration, but the most important factor is social movement. The media activism results from online actions of social movements. Then you need to ask why Korean social movement is strong. I think allot of nonsense happens in Korean society – that’s why I think it is strong
And - Engage Media
Local activist video site that took and expanded the open source tools for the videoCMS Zope/Plone. 1 year to build the site, launched 2 weeks ago.
- Profile page - Folder for your videos - Vodcast: RSS2 > Democracy Player - ...
There are many other developers who are working on the video capabilities of Plone.
Support for collaboration: You can add scripts, files, images or videos with the public or certain groups.
Tatical technology – foss technologies
Melbourne indymedia
Primarily came out of oceania indy newsreal
Felt there was a space missing in region for stuff which is already out there
But found that these tools are not available
Based on plone is an oss content management system
Given ability to have large feature set
Can upload video by creating a profile etc Plone initially built around being an internet management system for large organizations, which is
quite different to drupal which was based around community groups
We have been trying to develop applications around plone etc
Benefits of using plone and other oss is that you are leveraging a broader community
Democracy player which allows you to create your own rss channel – which means that you need to either
Focused on critical content which is activist, artistic etc – basically premised on socially relevant, rather than here is my mate jumping off the garage.
Singaporean video
Didn’t want to be just about Australia, but establish ongoing cross border relations – we think of ourselves as an island of whiteness, but there is a huge population which we don’t engage with
An aspect which we try and build on is the collaborative nature of the site
Attempt to develop a more collaborative workspace – such as sharing of space
Attempt to develop project management systems – allows to become a space in which you collaborate and organise
Comes out of a situation where people are working on laptops – which means that production has become decentralised. This means that a network has been developed to see what video productions has been established to work with others
Established bit-torrent – needed to find a way to automate the process – needed to find a way to automate the process
We saw that there was a whole range of processes out there
Attempted to find ways to produce videos and sharing code, knowledge and experiences
Have a proscribed idea of what is on site. We have created a niche around certain issues – but h hopefully this feeds into broader issues
At a stage where a lot of work has come together around oss technologies and other issues The site has been translated – plone has good translating tools – the site will display all the basic functions which are already in functions
Q&A
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Q>And: Is Engage Media translated into Asian?
And: There are translation tools included.
Q>Jamie: P2P as a distribution channel?
Jamie: We were able to distribute our hype film to almost a million without having to worry about our pockets or our servers. Google and YouTube only centralise files because they want some kind of control over their content. We have no reason to do that.
Q: Too much talk about tech but how do you really deliver to people?
And: The key issue is whether people find your information and how. You have to be a PR manager to do that.
Jamie: As we move from mass media to independent media we have to move from mass advertising to more decentralised marketing -- like recommending things personally to people. These are effective information systems that the corporations have difficulty using for their own purposes.
Mick: Re:transmission is not about delivering the content to the people but about getting people involved in the development of these issues.
Jamie – bit torrents about problem with costs of being centralised files. It Is strange that google continues to have centralised files. Bit torrent is changing the way that media works etc
How are you trying to get things beyond people who already know what these are
The last key link in the distribution model – means of production and distribution are available, but means of getting peoples attention is not available
We are currently working through horizontal links, but also using corporate media when it is advantageous
As we move from mass media to distributed media, we are move from mass techniques to attempt to create relational references in media – where recommendations are key. As you pass reference to group, you then attempt to move towards becoming ‘prosumers’ – in many ways it is up to viewers of the video to re transmit stuff – allows huge quantity of data to break this into manageable chuck in which video is transmitted. In process of creating this map allows us to break up this map How strong is the local connection
G20 meeting in a month in Melbourne – aim to support people putting stuff online etc
AUDIO
And: ftp://metatron.zapto.org/audio/20061014-bfi-and.mp3 Jamie: ftp://metatron.zapto.org/audio/20061014-bfi-jamie.mp3 Do*: ftp://metatron.zapto.org/audio/20061014-bfi-do.mp3 Do 2: ftp://metatron.zapto.org/audio/20061014-bfi-do-2.mp3 Do 3: ftp://metatron.zapto.org/audio/20061014-bfi-do-3.mp3
