The fine folks at Kickstarter asked me to answer questions about documentary making, crowdfunding, interactive storytelling, podcasting and other media-related things. You can click on my silly face below and watch the 30-minute chat.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Panel Discussion on NOVEMBER 21 @ 3:30 PM at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University's 25th Anniversary celebration and national forum.
Description: The storytelling power of audio—with envisioned characters and imagined scenes—presents rich opportunities for innovative approaches to the digital terrain. From the podcasting boom to new forms of interactive documentary, the capacity of sound, voice, writing, and layered narratives to spark the imagination extends outside the box (radio, tablet, smartphone) to reach people where they are and to inspire engagement, and possibly changes of heart.
Panelists: ANAYANSI DIAZ-CORTES, AL LETSON, ELAINE SHELDON
Moderated by: JOHN BIEWEN
DECEMBER 2 @ 1PM: Kickstarter Creators Hangout
I'm answering all your questions about documentary filmmaking, podcasting, and production in this Kickstarter Creators Hangout. The discussion will be live-tweeted through @KickstarterTips
SHE DOES:
This week on She Does, we have the talented co-directors of the fantastic documentary, "Frame by Frame."
DESCRIPTION: Mo Scarpelli and Alexandria Bombach are documentary filmmakers and co-directors of award-winning film "Frame by Frame.” The documentary follows four Afghan photojournalists as they face the realities of building a free press in a country left to stand on its own after decades of war and rule under the oppressive Taliban regime. The film had its world premiere at SXSW 2015, has screened over 50 times, garnered several awards, was voted one of the Top 10 Audience Favorites at Hot Docs Film Festival, and is nominated for a Cinema Eye Honors Award for Spotlight Doc. Right now, Mo and Alexandria are knee-deep in an Academy Award campaign for the film. “Frame by Frame” is opening for a week-long run in New York on Nov 20 at the IFC Center.
Mo and Alexandria are extremely self-sufficient women and filmmakers-- both having worked alone on most of their film projects before this one. They both started their own film companies and both have carved out their own niches; Mo in the documentary and journalism world and Alexandria in the outdoor filmmaking world.
In this episode, we talk about how they came to the medium of film, reporting international stories, filming in Afghanistan, their dedication to stunning cinematography, earning the trust of your subjects, the responsibility and weight of releasing stories into the world, holding onto empathy, the perils of co-directing, how to reconnect with relationships after disconnecting to make a film, and how to maintain belonging and community when living out of a suitcase.
In this episode with Ann Friedman, we talk about the changing role of journalism, getting fired, the importance of building your future network, the perils of aging in the media world, and the importance of self-driven projects. If you’re a freelancer, don’t miss this episode.
Ann Friedman is a freelance journalist who lives in Los Angeles. She writes a weekly column about politics, culture and gender for New York Magazine. She also contributes to the Columbia Journalism Review, ELLE, The Guardian, Los Angeles Magazine, The Gentlewoman, among other publications. She’s the co-host of popular podcast Call Your Girlfriend and reviews books forNew Republic and Bookforum. Ann understands the importance of developing your own voice. She understands how our shifting landscape has changed the way people consume media, and how having a personal connection and point of view as an author, allows readers an entry point to trust your voice. Those who trust Ann’s voice look forward to her beloved newsletter,The Ann Friedman Weekly, where she sums up everything she’s written, read, listened to and watched that week. Ann has a broad view of how to tell a story, embracing all sorts of methods from longform, to GIFS, to pie chart, to DIY publishing, she's inventive and knows how to turn it into a paycheck.
READ 5 Takeways from Ann's episode on FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
This post is for anyone interested in how or why we made Hollow. We're fortunate to get alot of interest and inquiries from folks asking about how the project came about, how it was developed, what made it successful and what the response has been. So to help answer these questions, and more, we have compiled some links below :
- 1-hour Hollow team chat: Answering all your questions about producing HOLLOW
- My keynote at iDocs: Showing how the designs and concepts changed overtime
- Interview at iDocs about Hollow: General ideas about the project
- Interview at Festival du nouveau cinema: General ideas about the project
- Presentation at the Magnum Foundation: Community-centered journalism
- Presentation at Woodstock: Using digital media to tell these stories
- Jeff Soyk on MIT's blog: UX design and development
- Jeff & I on Filmmaker Mag: How we made this project happen
- Hollow on MIT's Docubase: Resources, documents that show our process
- IGNITE Interview with Elaine: The Making of Hollow
- Interview with Jeff & I on Colombia Visuals: Behind the scenes
- Interview on Storybench: Why choose interactive, Who's the team, How to raise money?
Read Original on HUFFINGTON POST
Privilege was one of the topics we explored in a 90-minute conversation about race and media at the 2015 Camden International Film Festival. The conversation was a live recording of She Does Podcast, hosted by Sarah Ginsburg and myself.
In collaboration with the Points North Documentary Forum, we gathered three talented media makers--Sabaah Jordan (co-director "Whose Streets"), Alex Hannibal (Tribeca Film Institute) and Shayla Harris (Frontline PBS)--to discuss how race impacts their professional roles as a filmmaker, film funder and journalist.
I'm super excited to be on a panel about The Future of Journalism and Documentary with Ingrid Kopp, Gabo Arora, and Sarah Wolozin. The New Storytellers conference is being held on September 23 in Montreal at the Phi Centre, in conjuction with the opening of the "Sensory Stories" exhibit. We will be talking about new ways to tell stories and how that influences form and function.
Join us!
I'm excited to participate in #DocForum2015 at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University this year!
On Saturday, November 21 at 3:30 p.m., I will be sitting on a panel with Al Letson and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes. The panel, titled "AUDIO & NEW FORMS | Interactions and Impact: Possibilities for Listening," will be moderated by John Biewen and should be loads of fun! Come and join us for a conversation about storytelling across platforms and mediums.
Tickets just went on sale today. Reserve your seat!
I'm honored and excited to be an AIR New Voices Scholar. As a scholar, I will be attending PRPD conference in Pittsburgh in late September and continuing my work exploring representation and diversity in Appalachia.
Check out the other scholars here.
Do you make media and/or art? Do you live in Appalachia?
If you answered yes to those questions, you should get on a new database of makers in the region. I'm creating a list of those of us who make media in the region, in hopes that we can start collaborating and make better work! If you want your name to be featured on the list get in touch below.
For the sake of keeping things less complicated, I'm looking for folks who do: video, film, editing, writing, animation, design, illustration, photography, interactive media, technology, audio, journalism, music, exhibitions, installation art, etc.
IMPORTANT: You have to make work from or about Appalachia. You must be interested in collaboration and not just self-promotion.
Not sure if your city/town is in Appalachia? Check out this map courtesy of Looking at Appalachia.
I love searching for interesting color palettes, typefaces and designs from the past. And I'm always snapping photos of things that catch my eye, so I've decided to share some of my favorites here...with you. Many more to come.
Enjoy and stay tuned.
We're in the middle of a podcast explosion, but last year I realized something was missing: stories about women in media, told by women themselves and presented in an artful way. So in January, my colleague Sarah Ginsburg and I began exploring the creative minds of women making waves in their fields and created She Does Podcast. The series digs into each guest's journey, process and philosophy, and although their professions don't always align with our own, we've found that there's always something to learn from their experience and apply to our own lives and careers. Here are the top 15 pieces of wisdom these women have taught us.
First-time directors: Learn how to say no
"I am getting a lot more comfortable now with being the one to say 'no' and it's been pointed out on many occasions by my collaborators that I'm sort of the quality control on this project, and I'm the last stop on this show. Me following my intuition and me following my instincts has never not paid off."
Listen: Katja Blichfeld, writer and director of Vimeo & HBO's High Maintenance
Storytellers: Pitch story ideas from the heart
"I'm realizing more and more that your pitch has to be dominated by your opinion. No one wants to hear the facts of your story, they want to hear your analysis of your story."
Listen: Lyric Cabral, co-director of (T)ERROR
Women: Speak up--listeners want to hear more of you
"When I started working on Death, Sex, and Money in 2013 the landscape was very different than it is now. Not only were podcasts male dominated, but listeners were male dominated. There has been a conversation in public media about highlighting women podcasters and I think that's really starting to show. I've certainly felt listeners responding to me. You hear, 'It's just really nice to hear a woman host.' They respond to stories about my personal life and about the particulars of being a woman in her mid-30s thinking about family and career."
Listen: Anna Sale, host of WNYC's Death Sex & Money podcast
Choose collaboration over barking orders
"There's no space for that old style of the big barking orders coming from the big man. I think we're done with that paradigm. It's good and right and just to acknowledge the work of others. I think women do a good job saying 'I am not the king. I am a head coordinator and I'm working really hard with other people who all are contributing something to this effort.'"
Listen: Debra Granik, Academy-award nominated director of Winter's Bone
Set expectations for your work
"I think having confidence in yourself earlier and just being bold is important. Something that's really common is that men who are interns for a radio show will expect their stuff to be on the air right away, and women won't. I hear this over and over again from people at different shows and I think that's a problem. I think that women serve as the support system way too much and don't expect to be in positions of power or to have their voice heard as often."
Listen: Kara Oehler, co-founder of Zeega and GoPop
Documentarians: Don't hijack someone's story
"The notion of helicoptering in and taking on the role of documenting is so 19th century. It's just not right. Newsworthiness, in terms of documentary, is a really good standard. But a higher standard is ethics and accuracy. You have to understand that in that depiction you are altering the community's environment. You are absolutely affecting the way they are going to be perceived. And perception rules the way resources flow. It is really that simple. It's a huge responsibility and a burden you have to pick up. You have to be really careful about it."
Listen: Lina Srivastava, impact producer on Who is Dayani Cristal
Curators: Demand diverse makers and work early on
"In order to get where we want to go, which is creating really amazing pieces of work for audiences everywhere, you need to have diverse production teams and diverse audiences. It makes the work better. If you want this new interactive storytelling culture to be diverse and inclusive where everyone feels welcome and when you say civil dialogue you really mean that, then you have to do it early, because otherwise you're going to start building in all of that legacy bullshit and I just don't want to do that."
Listen: Ingrid Kopp, Former Director of Interactive at Tribeca Film Institute
Filmmakers: Put down the camera and build relationships
"I had quite a few instances in my life where I couldn't turn on the camera. Maybe sometimes you don't need to film. Maybe you sometimes have to put your camera down and let things go because you're also killing something with the camera if you're shooting all the time. You're not allowing for this other part of your relationship (with your subjects) to flourish, to take place."
Listen: Hanna Polak, director of Something Better To Come
Be like Netflix and cut out the noise.
"When I joined Netflix, in June 2011, the stock price was over $300. By July they had announced they were splitting the DVDs from the streaming service and the stock was at 75 going down to 50. You couldn't go anywhere across industry trade, business trade, general consumer coverage, there was so much just noise about the company. But it was great to see it from the inside; they were so calm. They knew what they wanted to do. That's really important, to be able to cut out the noise. Just being able to focus on what you're doing and put those blinders on. It's a company that isn't afraid to trust its own instincts."
Listen: Linda Pan, general manager of SundanceNOW Doc Club
Treat every interaction and interview as a mutually beneficial experience
"Having a tape recorder there is just an excuse to be able to ask these questions that I'm really wondering about and struggling with. What's served me best is to share things about myself and that's always led to great interviews and conversations and things that have been genuinely helpful to me. It's created deep relationships between me and the person I'm interviewing. A great lesson is when you share something about yourself people are usually grateful and willing to share something back"
Listen: Bianca Giaever, radio producer and filmmaker for This American Life
Value relationships over technology
"It's about understanding that a subject isn't a subject. A subject is an agent in their own world and how can we work together to create interesting media that will contribute positively. This incredible revolution that we're going through provides a moment everyday with new technology to really question our methods and our relationships with the people we work with. Too often we get so enamored with the technology that we forget about that."
Listen: Kat Cizek, director of Highrise series at the National Film Board of Canada
"Fake it 'til you make it" isn't always the best advice
"I won't say that I was 'faking it 'til I make it' because I didn't feel like I made it as a director. But I certainly was willing to raise my hand and say, 'I should direct that play.' I had a really high bar for what good theater looked like, and as a director, I was just competent. I wasn't great, and I knew the difference. At a certain point if you're only faking it and you don't get the payoff of making it, you will become dissatisfied."
Listen: Mary Coleman, Senior Development Executive at Pixar Animation Studios
Photographers: Be patient, curious and consistent
"Find something that you can stick with, that you can go back to, that you can grow in, that there's a lot of variety within it. Something that you can photograph over time. Don't be in a hurry. Take your time and build a project where you have 25-40 really powerful pictures. Not every picture in a project has to be dramatic. A project is like a piece of music. You have crescendos and very quiet times. Every photograph in a project has a job to do, and some of them are bridges from one idea to the next."
Listen: Maggie Steber, documentary photographer who has worked in over 60 countries
Remove "weakness" from your vocabulary
"Our culture is so oriented towards success and achievement and very little towards process. In my work and my life, because they inform each other always, there are things that I will work on my whole life and I'm really trying to embrace all of myself. Hollywood is a town that especially wants women to be sort of...not human, actually. And wants to deny a whole part of their humanity and their complications. What happens when we start telling those stories for the next generation of girls? That really matters."
Listen: Caitlin FitzGerald, actress and Libby Masters on Showtime's Masters of Sex
Stay committed to your value system -- it will pay off
"The thing about being an artist is there's always room, but now more than ever if you want to make a sustainable living it's your responsibility to find the people who also want you to have a sustainable living doing what you do. There's something about being really committed to a set of ideas that are important to you, and continuously articulating that value system to yourself and to your community in a meaningful way. And you will find your people."
Listen: Emily Best, founder of Seed&Spark and publisher of Bright Ideas Magazine
Sarah and I are very excited to announce that She Does podcast is officially part of Panoply Network. Panoply is a podcast network that features programs from The New York Times Magazine, Inc. Magazine, New York Magazine, Real Simple, The Huffington Post, WBUR, FX, Slate, and many more leading media brands and thought leaders. We're so honored to be among these talented voices.
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You will now be able to hear us on Panoply's SoundCloud.
Congrats to our team for all their hard work: Illustrator, Christine Cover. Sound designer, Billy Wirasnik. Production Accomplice, Alijah Case.
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Kerrin and I are documenting Estella (pictured far right above) during the days leading up to opening her new restaurant, Tofu Boutique at the JW Marriott in Shenzhen. We just drank lots of tea and spent time with her sweet family, including her grandmother who made these beautiful pieces of art for the walls.
I'm currently in-production on a new documentary project focusing on the farmers, researchers, politicians and business men and women that are reintroducing hemp back into Kentucky's (post-coal and tobacco) economy. It's a super exciting story to follow and watch the industry unfold. Kentucky's history with hemp is deep-rooted, but our nation's relationship is complicated. I will have more to share in late June, but follow me on Instagram for occasional field updates.
I'm honored to have shot featured in the FreeFly Systems commercial, not only because it's a special moment as a filmmaker, but also because I LOVE FreeFly's MōVI M5. An upcoming video I am releasing with The Bitter Southerner was shot using the MōVI. Watch for that to drop soon and keep your eye our the little girl waving around fire sparklers in the commercial...that's me! You can license that content too on Story & Heart.
[vimeo 124556378 w=500 h=281]
Stay Curious from Freefly on Vimeo.
A friend wrote me asking for resources to find/discover/learn about interactive storytelling. I compiled my list of go-to links and sent her an email, but decided that it may be helpful for all of you too! So below, I have listed out the sites that I like to go to for updates in interactive storytelling. There are certainly many more (add the ones you love in the comments section) but these are my favorites, and have a bit of a non-fiction slant to them.
RESOURCES
- MIT DocuBase (amazing database of interactive & immersive storytelling)
- iDocs
- CollabDocs
- Tribeca Sandbox (has funding and distribution resources, in addition to featuring projects)
- IDFA Doc Lab (great way to discover high-quality and curated projects)
- NFB Interactive (leading the charge with amazing work from Canada)
- Arte Interactive (France)
- Submarine Channel
- Story Bench
- CommArts
- Chrome Experiments
DISCOVER PROJECTS THROUGH PLACES THAT AWARD & EXHIBIT INTERACTIVE MEDIA:
- FWA
- SXSW Interactive
- Tribeca Storyscapes
- Emmy Awards: New Approaches in Documentary category
- Peabody Awards: Interactive
- Webbys
- World Press Photo: Multimedia Awards
- FITC
Share your resources below!
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Just another Saturday morning in my strange neighborhood of South Beach, watching strangers take selfies and do other weird things.
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Last time we were back in West Virginia, we met up with our friends, Jonathan and Clara (Coat of Arms Post), to help film at the Swiss restaurant, the Hütte, in Helvetia. Jonathan and Clara have been working on a documentary project about Helvetia--Clara's hometown--for a while now. I'm excited to see what they come up with. Kerrin shot some sweet slow motion on the FS7 and flew his drone about...I collected audio and photos and explored the many books, photographs and artifacts in the tiny restaurant. If you haven't been to the Hütte to eat yet, go! It's delicious. Just imagine: homemade, fresh baked bread, mounds of swiss cheese and frothy hot chocolate. YUM.
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV
Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia, WV