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Appalachia

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New Awards & Opportunities for Hollow

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Over the past couple days, some pretty cool awards have been announced. Check out the images/links below and thanks to everyone for your continued support of Hollow! HOLLOW is a finalist in the SXSW Interactive Awards in the "Activism" category

Green, governmental and non-profit projects striving to make the world a better place.

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Screen Shot 2014-02-05 at 8.14.43 AM

Congrats to the team (especially to our sound designer, Billy Wirasnik, and music composer, Lee Strauss) for winning two Platinum AVA Digital Awards for Creativity (Web Video)/Original Music and Radio.

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Screen Shot 2014-02-05 at 8.43.03 AM

Hollow is featured for Eastern Oregon's Film Festival's Online Selection.

The rise of digital cinema has shown that 20th Century exhibition models are increasingly insufficient. Cinema is in constant flux, and without adapting to changes in the distribution landscape, most filmmakers cannot survive. We believe that festivals’ inclusion of online works is progressive, and vital to independent cinema. The Internet also serves as a temporary home for some of the more intimate, experimental works that move us.

I have also been invited to lead a discussion and screening at the following places, this spring:

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RECAP: #hollowdocchat

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RECAP: #hollowdocchat

Thanks everyone for joining us! If you missed the hangout, you can check it out below in two parts.

Part One: research, building an audience, pre-production, funding and on-the-ground production.

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W.Va. Water Woes Continue

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W.Va. Water Woes Continue

Synopsis: West Virginia stands in a state of emergency after a potentially harmful chemical spilled into a local river and contaminated the water supply. And no one knows how long it will last. More than 100,000 customers in the nine counties receiving water from the 1,500-mile affected network were ordered to stop using their water for almost everything.

I produced this piece for the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday. If you need caught up on what has been happening in West Virginia, during the past 36 hours, take some time to watch the video.

 

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Storytelling 101

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Storytelling 101

I traveled down to McDowell County, West Virginia yesterday to hold an intense (yet small) workshop for two high school students. Cody and Josh were chosen for the Opportunity Launch program, supported by  Scott Widmeyer and WVU's School of Journalism. I taught Cody and Josh the basics of what makes a story newsworthy, compelling and the process to research and develop your story. They practiced their interview skills and learned how to use the Canon 5D. I was very impressed with the quality of their work and the amount of dedication they brought to the workshop. Over the next week, we will be working on their video segment and interview with Linda McKinney (featured in Hollow), photo gallery with caption, and press release. You can download my Storytelling 101 presentation here.

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1 Minute in Appalachia: Video Series

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  Over the next couple months I will be adding to a series of microshort films (1-2 minutes) that focus on observing life in Appalachia. The footage from the series was shot in 2012 while I was filming for Hollow, an interactive documentary about the residents of McDowell County, West Virginia. From May to September, I filmed seven terabytes of footage in the coalfields.

Many of the interesting moments and awesome people I met did not make it into the interactive doc so I'm happy to find a new home for these people and places in this series. You can expect to observe church services, front-porch haircuts, residents wandering through abandoned buildings, riding on golf carts with the elderly, tent revivals and moments at home. I am very excited to share some of these slices of life with you.

You can view the first five shorts and read my artist statement here. Enjoy and stay tuned.

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2013 In Review

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2013 In Review

2013 has been an amazing experience. I am extremely grateful to all of you who have supported, shared and helped bring Hollow to life. There is still work to be done, but I can safely look back on 2013 with full satisfaction and gratification. I feel so lucky that we have been invited to screen and present Hollow 23 times in a 5-month period. We have traveled from California to NYC and from Appalachia to Amsterdam. We have won several awards and were most recently chosen for IDFA's DocLab. Nearly 80,000 people all around the world have experienced Hollow online since June 20. We're looking forward to experiencing what 2014 has in store for the team and community. We have several more Kickstarter-backer screenings to hold, but here are some university and conference screenings that are already lined up (starting in January): OSU, Davis & Elkins, Shepherd University, Wheeling Jesuit University, iDocs, Appalachian Studies Conference and Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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