Documentary
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The New Digital Storytelling Series: Caspar Sonnen
For the final installment of Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s interview project with the foremost thinkers on transmedia, IDFA DocLab’s Caspar Sonnen answers our questions. Sonnen is the new media coordinator for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and curator of the festival’s IDFA DocLab, a competition program for new forms of documentary and interactive storytelling. In 2008, Sonnen founded IDFA DocLab to create a platform for interactive and multimedia documentary storytelling that expands the genre beyond traditional cinema. Besides his work at IDFA, he is co-founder and programmer of the Open Air Film Festival Amsterdam. For an […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on May 24, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: D. Fox Harrell
In the penultimate part of Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s interview project with prominent transmedia figures, D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Comparative Media Studies Program and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, answers our questions. Harrell’s research explores the relationship between imaginative cognition and computation. He develops new forms of social media, gaming, computational narrative, and related computational media systems based in computer science, cognitive science, and digital media arts. The National Science Foundation has recognized Harrell with an NSF CAREER Award for his project “Computing for Advanced Identity Representation.” He has worked […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on May 16, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Katerina Cizek
In the tenth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Katerina Cizek gives her take on the way digital technology is shaping contemporary storytelling. Cizek is currently the director of the NFB’s HIGHRISE project, exploring new forms and new approaches to content. HIGHRISE is a multi-year, many media series of projects. You can see it at highrise.nfb.ca and her previous project Filmmaker-in-Residence at filmmaker.nfb.ca. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on May 9, 2013 -
Ground Breaking for DCTV’s New Doc-Only Theater
“Today we’re celebrating the start of a new era,” DCTV’s co-founder and co-executive director Jon Alpert announced to a crowd of several hundred filmmakers, documentary enthusiasts and journalists. In the background stood DCTV’s home since 1979, a striking structure in French Chateau style with steeply pitched hip roof and prominent corner spiral, which contrasted sharply with the surrounding towers of American boxes. This juxtaposition contributed a bit of the surreal to the ceremony. But only a bit. This was not the 16th century, and certainly not the tranquil Loire Valley in France. The honking horns and growling trucks, darting taxis, the […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on May 8, 2013 -
Letters from Blocked Filmmakers: Jessica Vale
Although the title of this column may make you think of “writer’s block,” filmmakers can be blocked by external forces as well as internal ones. In last week’s post, Drew Whitmire wrote about the internal factors — a relentless perfectionism and self-questioning — that have prevented him from finishing his first film. In today’s post, Jessica Vale writes about a series of events that brought her to Liberia to shoot footage about a medical mission there, a trip that led her to then embark on a larger feature documentary. But a number of factors stopped that feature in its tracks […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 7, 2013 -
Slurping Docs at Tribeca
The 12th annual Tribeca Film Festival is finis, but not its films. They will live, often for years, particularly documentaries which historically are Tribeca’s strongest category — one of the few things New York festivalgoers agree upon. This year’s crop of wide-ranging docs had me ping-ponging fast and furious, doc slurping from gruesome war to ballroom dancing to stoned hillbillies to weird couple to profound icon to stunningly gorgeous. Maturity seems to be catching up to Tribeca, and in a good way. Certainly for the docs. The Kill Team After a decade of U.S. fighting in Afghanistan and after screening […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Apr 29, 2013 -
The Druid City: Interview with Kristyn Ulanday and Max Esposito
Kristyn Ulanday and Max Esposito graduated from the journalism department of Boston University in 2010. They both work commercially as freelance photographers and filmmakers, but in 2011 they also began a collaborative project called Full Frame America to tell the stories they wanted to tell. The first result of that collaboration is a 24-minute documentary, The Druid City, that focuses on the town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and how the residents have coped after the town was hit by an EF4 tornado in April 2011. Filmmaker: How did you come to make this movie? Esposito: We both felt like we […]
by Michael Murie on Apr 29, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Vivek Bald
In the eighth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Vivek Bald, filmmaker, Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media at MIT and a member of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, answers our questions. Bald’s ongoing project, Bengali Harlem, documents the history of two little-known groups of South Asian immigrants. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you become a digital storyteller? Were there […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Apr 25, 2013 -
Storyscapes: Tribeca Goes Interactive
This image is from Empire Uncut, part of the Star Wars Uncut project and one of the five projects at the Tribeca Film Festival’s first juried exhibit of interactive video projects, which ran this week at the Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination on Varick Street. TFI has been supporting digital, transmedia, and multimedia projects for years through programs like its New Media Fund and hackathons, and now TFI’s Director of Digital Initiatives Ingrid Kopp (who was recently interviewed by Filmmaker) has found a way to bring some projects into a physical space to coincide with the film festival in lower […]
by Randy Astle on Apr 23, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Ingrid Kopp
In the seventh part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives at Tribeca Film Institute, answers our questions. Kopp oversees the TFI New Media Fund, runs Tribeca Hacks and produces TFI Interactive during the Tribeca Film Festival. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How do you see people making the transition to digital interactive storytelling? Kopp: I think people have […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Apr 18, 2013
