DocAgora

DOC Agora Ontario, in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, invites mid-career to experienced documentary and new media producers to submit applications to the inaugural NFB DOC Agora Ontario Convergence Lab.

NFB DOC Agora Ontario Convergence Lab will guide eight participants through a process with the goal of extending creative documentary concepts into the digital realm. It will provide a thorough understanding of the interactive funding landscape and present guidelines in how to develop effective proposals for funding agencies and new media production partners.

The Convergence Lab incorporates skills-based training, mentorships and panel presentations from leading experts in cross-platform production to create a boot camp in interactive production for the documentary filmmaker.

For more information, please download the full application information packet: convergencelab2008.pdf

Application Deadline: March 20th, 2008

Monday evening Neil Sieling gave a talk about the possibilities and future of online technology and resources available to documentary filmmakers. A complete list of the links and some notes from the talk are available here:

Neil Sieling’s Documentary Resources Notes

Impressions from any media workshop @ IDFA 2007–11–24
Amit Breuer

Away from the hustle of the festival group of participants who are engaged in the visual arts, print media and traditional documentaries. Gathered together at the mediamatic studio for five days to participate in Any Media Workshop- located above the Stedelijk museum in the dok area.

It is the end of the second day.

The lack of funding for projects via Television and/or other traditional funding sources for projects, and the curiosity to learn more about New Media creative practices, are the key motivations of the participants.

I decided to join the workshop as an observer to see the process from close up. There are pronounced gaps in technological knowledge between the young participants and the older participants, between traditional filmmakers and those engaged in non linear thinking. Notions of participatory media, context and contact, creating one’s own social network, raise some eyebrows. We used to research , shoot, edit, release ,hand to distributor ,small screen , Theatre, festivals ….What is this brave new world!?

The main technique used by Mediamatic’s workshop is the Korsakow system created by a Berlin based visual artist named Florian Thalhofer. His system offers a creative way to organize material through keywords for non linear interactive projects. “Linearity” focuses the filmmaker on delivering a predicted outcome.
“Stories are containers, stories are pills “, says Thalhofer “the system allows us to work in an associative way, to follow the paths of thinking. Get off the highway and find the small roads. This is a key for discovery” suggests Thalhofer to the participants.
Media researcher and writer Jacob Schillinger, who has worked with this software for many years, uses it as a “sketch book”. His interest in Korsakow system came from his interest in the interaction with an audience rather then telling a story in a non linear way.

Some of the workshop participants, during the next days, will work with their own material while exploring the Korsakow system hoping to move on with the development of their projects.
Another technique, presented by media researcher Martijn de Waal, was “Locative Media” which suggested how one may use data to tell a story. It speaks of the use of real space as an interface for information (or using it as representation of space), and how this data can create a documentary project or be embedded in documentary content . A place or an image of a place. used as a starting point to tell a story, and shooting with a GPS device, can sometimes be combined with other sources like flickr, google map, bliin live (a social networking service lets you share your location and geo-tag photos from your handset in real-time). Some examples are www.youarenothere.org or, a story of milk making its way from Latvia to Amsterdam through a GPS device.

The workshop leader Klaas Kuitenbrouwer shows us how to use YouTube in intelligent ways and offers the participants key questions while going over each project, suggesting the exploration of Form Rules, Content Rules and Time Frames.

The workshop opens the minds of documentary content creators to new tools for creativity and communication. However, this process still needs to be pursued individually well into the future.

Back at the festival venue I see many young filmmakers hanging posters in bars and on restaurants walls, distributing small flyers, trying to get ‘eyeballs’ to their films’ premieres. Its all about visibility .The excitement of the creators showing film for the first time is like a first kiss. Looking into the eyes of a few hundreds strangers, that are soon to become intimate friends for an hour or two. Can one experience the same feeling in a virtual space or over a mobile device?

I go to the beautiful Tuschinski Theatre where IDFA is celebrating 20 years of primarily linear POV story telling. Respected speakers encourage us to continue making documentaries that can trigger change , to keep making provocative , engaging films in an era where news is fast becoming entertainment and Paris Hilton is the hottest item everywhere. I think to myself- we have to work harder to be so convincing and more creative then ever before, in order to keep this ongoing dance between an active and non active audience; an audience that soon will become content generators themselves on the one hand and more fragmented on the other hand.

More on mediamatic workshop www.mediamatic.net

Now Media Hour focuses on developments in new systems of financing, new forms of docu-media, and new distribution platforms for documentary content.

Each day during the IDFA FORUM (5pm - 6pm), the Now Media Hour focuses on developments in new systems of financing, new forms of docu-media, and new distribution platforms for documentary content.

The Now Media Hours are a combined initiative of the IDFA FORUM and DocAgora, with the support of Mediamatic. Our goal is to bring professionals up to speed on the new documentary media of today and the practical possibilities for tomorrow.

26 November: New Forms of Financing

Neil Sieling, a Fellow with American University’s Center for Social Media and DocAgora partner, will introduce an extensive overview of new forms, new systems and new players in the world of financing documentary content.

27 November: New Acts of Creation

The Now Media Hour theme will be creating ultra-short documentaries for different new media platforms. Guests are Femke Wolting, Bruno Felix and Claire Aguilar.

28 November: New Forms of Distribution

Jamie King talks about the latest developments in distribution. Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Mediamatic) and Ingrid van Tol will also be present.

DocAgora@Silverdocs Friday June 15th and Saturday June 16th.

Participate live here: live.docagora.org

DocAgora is a open space to consider new forms, new platforms and new ways of financing creative, authored and socially-engaged documentary content.

DocAgora is this virtual webplex. But DocAgora also co-organizes real world events that touch down as compact conferences and funding opportunties at leading documentary film festivals and media markets throughout the year.

In ancient Athens, the Agora was a meeting place, a market place, a public place. A site of spirit and commerce, community and renewal.

DocAgora aims to serve the needs of greater documentary community. It hopes to facilitate information interchange, provide real-life and on-line platforms for sustainable documentary financing and offer opportunities for essential face to interface networking.

DocAgora welcomes you – the whole community of new and established makers, producers, broadcasters, distributors, marketeers, next media distributors and new funders into one progressive place. DocAgora hopes to forge new strategic alliances, practical plans and working systems in order to sow the seeds for future ones.

Documentary is the hot now media. Yet the changing mediascape is rapidly shifting beneath our reality-based feet. Mobile, Netcasting, Digital-docs….. technology is transforming documentary expression and non-fiction media. In this zeitgeist, the definition of documentary film is morphing into something wider, more exciting and challenging. NOW is time to look at NEW ways of producing, funding and distributing the NEXT forms, and platforms, for creative documentary. Whether long form or short form. Broadcast or hypercast. Arguing for tactical social media, quality, and freely expressed points-of-view, DocAgora aims to move content beyond the ephemeral, and beyond the product. To ensure that creative documentary is not left behind in the digital dust.

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Sign up to get on our DocAgora mailing list to keep you in the loop about the next DocAgora events and developments. Join us to discover what effect these new forms and platforms will have on you, your story-telling and on the production, financing and distribution of creative documentary. The word is DocAgora. Volunteer to spread the word.
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