One person chooses to end his life every 5 minutes in India. That person could be anyone. Even you. Dabbling in the exciting world of making films I came up with this…

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Angela Grant has this interesting video interview with Micah Gelman, executive producer for domestic video, Associated Press. Gelman talks about how writing skills are the key in the new newsroom. All else can be learnt, he says.

His last sentence is most interesting: Who knows what the jobs are going to look like 5 years from now. But the basic skillset of being able to write will always get you somewhere.

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This is my first attempt at PhotoSynth. Here you have a 3d walkthrough my living room. Check out the detailing on the century old grandfather clock on the wall and yes, try it in full-screen mode.

PhotoSynth from Microsoft is an amazing new tech I am currently dabbling with. It’s neither photos, nor video. Almost like a new medium. It’s great for showing a 3d walkthrough of a location or event. CNN used it first to capture “the Moment” during Barrak Obama’s inaugural.

I think it has tremendous potential in tourism. I have used it pretty sucessfully to do a 360-degree walkthrough of a commercial location I recently shot. This is, I think, the first time PhotoSynth is used for a resort in Goa. Will post that shortly.

[Note: to view the Photosynth you will need to download a small viewer software from the site. I have not experienced any issues with the software on a Windows Vista machine.]

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Was helping out at a workshop on Online Advocacy today, facilitated by Freeman Murray.

Freeman used the Barrak Obama campaign as his case study to introduce participants to the New Media tools available to anyone willing to invest time, that’s all.

Freeman began by telling the participants that this is not like any usual advertisement medium – it’s not about buying space on television or in print and putting out your message. It’s about building a community and that takes tons of time.

Corporates are keen to get their message across but activists often lag behind – they are too engrossed in fighting their battles in the real world to be bothered about the virtual world. McCain made that big mistake – his campaign overlooked the power of the internet for more traditional campaign strategies.

Obama, on the other hand, was willing to invest in building his community online. And he was able to win the hearts of millions. And he was prepared to listen to his community. And that is the crucial link that closes the chain – acknowledge the presence of your community and LISTEN.

So what were the tools of the campaign?

Well of course its good to start with a website to let the community know who you are and what you do. Obama used it to get people to fund his campaign and subscribe to his mailing list. He used this mailing list effectively to garner support at the drop of a hat. Then he made sure his supporters knew who he was and what he believed in. For this, he used his personal blog to get his views out there.

Don’t have a website yet? You can start with the free Google Sites web page builder and Blogger for a free blog (like this one). Once you’ve got your feet wet you could go in for your own domain (like mine at gasperdesouza.com). It’s cheap these days. But a website is just the beginning. How do you actually get people to come to your site?

Here’s the Obama Way:

Facebook: 3,322,316 supporters, Youtube: 20,133,759 views, Flickr photos and Twitter: 143,496 followers.

By not getting online on the social networking sites, McCain lost the battle without a fight. When people went online to search for McCain, they were more likely to find material posted by Obama supporters than from the McCain camp. And therein lay the downfall.

There’s loads of interesting stuff to read on New Media, on Freeman’s blog, so I recommend you go check it out.

Building a community takes time. Spend it! Its a wise investment. Of course, before anything, make certain you have a message worth sharing!

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Just spent a full day watching films by the masters – Hitchcock (Rear Window), Godard (Breathless), Antonioni (Blowup!) – all part of a film appreciation workshop i am attending.

I generally watch films purely for the content, but for once I changed my perspective to look at them very technically.

An amazing lot to learn from the greats!

The use the power of suggestion through visuals alone – aka montages. It’s quite revealing how, through simple placement of frames in set sequences, viewers can be led to make inferences. Quite similar in a photo essay – lay out the images in one sequence and you project one idea, change the sequence and it could result in a completely different inference. Rear Window, for instance, could easily have been a series of stills in a photo montage and, together with the excellent audio cues, would have made a great photo story.

Point of View also comes out strongly in rear window where, camera angles, what we see (and don’t see) are all confined to the views of the wheelchair bound Jeff. Then there’s Hitchcock’s use of editing to compress / elongate time – even with simple fades. This is a key in editing video sequences – keep the key components in the activity and imply the rest. Also, his use of the panning camera at the start of Rear Window to set the scene in space. This is an excellent example of when a pan is called for.

Of course, this idea of panning is turned on its head by Godard in Breathless. He uses some very long sequences without any cuts – the camera follows the actors around in the figure 8 movement. Then there are the many instances where he breaks the fundamental rule of 180 degree axis of viewing, taking the camera from one side of the axis to the opposite. How many video shooting manuals will tell us never cross the axis – it disorients the viewer. But Godard seeks to do just that – disorient us.

And the most fundamental way the does this is with hundreds of “jump cuts”. He literally stitches together scenes (using anti-aesthetic cut points), creating “jumps”. For instance: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg are engaged in a discussion in a bedroom, Belmondo seated on the bed, in one frame and in the very next Belmondo is standing by Seberg by the cupboard. It is quite disconcerting, when did he get off the bed? These jumps happen repeatedly through the film.

By breaking the rules, Godard gives us a better understanding of the smooth cuts in editing – let the action leave the frame before the cut etc. Generally we would be told let Belmondo begin to get off the bed, then show him in the next scene standing by the cupboard – continuity.

First do the right thing and then break the rules – knowing you are doing so.

David Dunkley Gyimah of viewmagazine.tv executes this technique in video journalism, calling it anti-aesthetic edits using jerky camera movements, disconcertingly jerky/jump cuts, grain. But again, this technique can be appreciated and executed only once the rules are known. He is today’s Godard in video journalism.

Break the rules once you know what you are breaking.

Of course, by simply watching Godard’s cuts in Breathless, it could easily be construed as being “badly edited”.
Isn’t that what a lot of art provokes us to say!

The workshop, held at the newly opened center for the arts – Sunapranta, is being facilitated by Anuja Ghosalkar, Programme Executive for Arts Research and Documentation at the India Foundation for the Arts. She curated the Tri-Continental Human Rights Film Festival 2007 and is a trained lecturer in literature and mass media. She has worked with a number of film projects including Channel 4.

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