Posts Tagged ‘storytelling’
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
/above image hot as a fresh flapjack – from http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/images/CameraConfigs/Studio-handheld-cam-2.jpg
Canon, with their 5D MkII and 7D DSLR cameras, (not to mention a host of other traditional still-photography camera manufacturers like Nikon), has slowly been making waves in the camcorder market for the last few years. The disruptive technology found within many modern DSLR’s through their video modes is the primary reason traditional camcorder manufacturers like Sony have to sweat. Video DSLR takes impressive advantage of the large image sensors traditionally used to make high-quality still images by applying these same sensors’ capabilities to video capture. Nowadays, models like the 5D are really stretching the definition of what constitutes a video/film capture methodology. It’s without question that the HD video capabilities of top-of-the-line DSLRs are going from novelty “extra feature” to becoming the primary purpose and use of the device for many production companies and hobbyists alike.
This item from Hurlbut Visuals (special thanks to Twitter user @russish for sharing this) illustrates just how far the video DSLR has come. (more…)
Tags: 5D MkII, 7D, Canon, Canon 5D, Canon 5D MkII, Canon 7D, DSLR, film, filmmaking, Hurlbut, Nikon, storytelling, video, video production, web video
Posted in storytelling, web video | View Comments
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Some people want to know, so here goes. (more…)
Tags: social video, storytelling, video, web video, youtube
Posted in web video | View Comments
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Below is a Web version of a white paper (pdf here, embeddable Slideshare document here) I prepared for Anita Crofts’ Emerging Markets in Digital Media Fall 2009 course in the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program. The paper, entitled “The Emerging Market for Pocketmedia Storytelling in the Developing World” (and accompanying slide presentation, embedded at top) was delivered 5 December 2009, in the Communications Building at the University of Washington.
Tags: cell phones, developing world, digital storytelling, MCDM, mobile technology, pocketmedia, pocketmedia storytelling, storytelling, third world
Posted in communication, storytelling | View Comments
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
I have finally completed and submitted my final paper for this summer’s Web Strategies for Storytelling course in the UW MCDM. Hopefully Professor Keller takes a liking to it! If not, well, I’m still very excited about Adobe releasing its Flash platform to high-def TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and the like. I’m anticipating a revolution in how we consume web video! But, time will tell.
Here’s my white paper, in all it’s PDF glory.
What do you think? Will watching YouTube and Hulu in the comfort of your living room be all that and a bag of chips?
Tags: Adobe, Adobe Flash, digital storytelling, Flash, format-shifting, interactive television, storytelling, television, video, web video
Posted in convergence, digital media, new media, social media, storytelling, web video | View Comments
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
So, Drew Keller, professor of the “Web Strategies for Storytelling” course in the MCDM this summer, asked that I write up a little post about what to do when your editing program (Premiere, FCP, Vegas, etc.) won’t play nice with your source files for your final project. Often the problem is related to the software not being able to recognize the encoding in your files, or the files are of an unrecognized container format, or maybe your computer doesn’t have certain codecs installed, and so forth. Instead of spending hours trying to get your editing program to do what you want it to, my suggestion is that you convert your source files to a format that you know the editing program will like. There are a number of free and open source programs available on-line for handling conversions of various kinds depending on the type of file you are trying to convert. The rule of thumb is that you keep your footage as close as possible to the original in terms of encoding, bitrate, and quality. It’s inevitable that you might get some drop in quality, but that’s the price you pay sometimes for working with a diverse range of file types. I won’t be able to cover all varieties and situations, but I’ll list some programs you can download and you can test things out. Trial and error is the way to go until you get something that works. (more…)
Tags: Add new tag, codecs, converters, editing, encoders, storytelling, video
Posted in web video | View Comments
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Drew Keller asked us students to toss up a brief blog post about what we hope to accomplish with our individual forays in to social media. You know: what do we want to be when we grow up? It’s an interesting question, and one that I have been pondering for some time – well past the due date for the post, too… It’s not that it’s a tough question to answer, although I do feel some pressure to be very clear and very ‘spot-on’ because current and future employers, business partners, and other social media associates may read this. Nonetheless, the hang up for me in answering has been that my personal vision for what social media can be, and what I can do with it, is being continually being shaped week after week, day after day. It’s as evolutionary as the subject matter. I’m afraid that whatever I do say will be made moot by tomorrow, either by someone’s blue sky or my own. Of course, the MCDM is a huge part of the equation, but my life leading up to the MCDM, my past educational and career pursuits, have shaped my vision, too. With that, I guess I’ve got to say something! (more…)
Tags: digital storytelling, drew keller, storytelling
Posted in communication, social media, storytelling | View Comments
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Our course on digital distribution is planning to create a website with a video carousel of sorts. The question is, what should the theme of this website be?
User Engagement
I believe in order to encourage user engagement, the content on the site obviously needs to be meaningful to a particular audience. I think the audience for our project would be the same audience for much of the content coming out of the UW’s MCDM program; that is to say, an audience eager to tap into our knowledge base. If the site is too generic, or too wide in scope, it might lose its audience, too. Having said that, I propose we generate video clips that are highly topical and relevant to our program. So, each clip from each student should answer the question: “What is social media?” Or, “How do I use social media?”
(more…)
Tags: drew keller, storytelling, video, web strategy
Posted in social media, social production, storytelling | View Comments
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Say What?
They say YouTube isn’t making any money. Its bread and butter is user-generated content, although it has managed to draw partnerships with some major Hollywood content providers, such as Fox and Warner Bros. Nevertheless, the money is supposed to be sparse. Then you have Hulu, which got started with content from some of the major players, like NBC Universal and Fox, right off the bat. Hulu is, according to the word on the street, doing very well. And so what we’re looking at is two models, UGC and content from mass media. In other words, a site catering to social media vs. a site catering to mass media (or, instead of simply saying “mass media”, we mean the lumbering, late arrival of mass media content providers to the social media space).
(more…)
Tags: content providers, distribution, funny or die, hulu, old media, social media, storytelling, web video, youtube
Posted in web video | View Comments
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
The following has been prepared as an exercise for my Digital Storytelling class at the UW MCDM. It is in no way, shape, or form officially endorsed by Stan Orchard, The Pacific Science Center, or GPS Adventures.
PROPOSAL | Using Social Media with Traditional Advertising: A way to bring technologically unsavvy families to the upcoming GPS Mazes exhibit at the Pacific Science Center
LOGLINE | A series of 5-6 thirty second traditionally crafted commercials promoting the upcoming geocaching exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Each ad is hosted at Myspace Video and posted to the center’s Myspace profile. Each video depicts a different well-known local Seattle personality being asked to explain what geocaching is to a kid interviewer. Each personality fails to explain it, in a comical manner. Local kids facepalm. A narrator then declares: “Kids, adults don’t know anything about geocaching. Bring your parents to the GPS Mazes exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. We’ll help you teach them a thing or two.” (web ad video series, color, 2009)
(more…)
Tags: geocaching, gps, MCDM, pacific science center, pitches, Seattle, storytelling
Posted in advertising, social media, storytelling | View Comments
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Though we exist in a time of great media upheaval, where the Internet has made available so much story for so little effort, millions are still drawn to long-form traditional narratives. We still go to the cinema, the bookstore, the concert, the play, the big game, the event. Though so much power can be packed into a media snack – a tweet, a blog post, a text message, a sentence, a word, or even an acronym (LMAO anyone?) – we still sit down for super-sized media meals. Something must be inspiring us to pull up that chair and sup from the old media table. Inspiration seems to be the answer. What is the importance of inspiration to storytelling? In our digital world – full of bombardment from massive narrative abstraction and fragmentation, where so much story content is being communicated in so many bits and bytes and packets like bullets from a fiber-optic Gatling gun – we still find time to stick the old media morphine drip in. This happens when we do something so archaic as watch an hour-long drama on network television, spend nine innings at the baseball stadium, or, gasp, read an entire Harry Potter book cover-to-cover. (more…)
Tags: books, digital storytelling, inspiration, Joe Lambert, Joseph Campbell, movies, new media, old media, sports, storytelling, television
Posted in entertainment, old media | View Comments
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