Break-Out Box

This semester we are happy to announce some new equipment in the Media Center. Stop by and check this out. New equipment available for loan:

• H2 Zoom Digital Recorder
• H4 Zoom Digital Recorder
• Alesis IO|26 Firewire Audio Interface
• Canon ZR800 MiniDV Camcorder
• Marantz PMD620 Digital Recorder
• M-Audio ProKeys 88sx Lightweight Stage Piano
• New Condenser Microphones (Audio-Technica MB4K, Audio-Technica ATM650

We just got some new cameras in today. These cameras increase our general inventory and replace some of our older ones that have seen almost 2 years of use and hundreds of loans. This gets us through the rest of the semester.  We replaced our panasonic cameras with the same model (Panasonic PVGS500 3 chip MiniDV cameras) and added two new smaller MiniDV cameras (Canon ZR800’s).

To keep the cameras available for the record number of classes completing video projects, our cameras are only available to students working on a project for a class.

How to do Good Reporting in the Era of Globalization

When: Friday, September 21, 2:00-3:30 pm
Where: Ford Classroom, Media Center, Swem Library

This informal workshop will focus on issues of journalistic story
telling in multiple media: How to find a story and get the scenes needed
to tell the story well across “platforms.” How to “sell” that story so a
national show will run it. And, crucially, how to confront the ethical,
logistical, cultural and other challenges in telling the story well,
especially a story from outside the United States.

/Free and Open to All Comers!/
/Bring Your Questions & Ideas!/

Mary Stucky has been a TV, radio, and web journalist for more than
fifteen years. She a co-founders of Round Earth Productions, which
writes and produces stories that explain how the policies and actions of
the developed world change the lives of people around the globe. Mary
and Round Earth aim for vivid, personal stories that will help listeners
in America make informed decisions about globally important issues.
Currently Round Earth’s stories focus on Latin America and are broadcast
on public radio’s national news and cultural programs. In addition,
Round Earth reporting is carried on the websites of 70 commercial
television stations across the country and on the World Vision Report,
which airs on 300 mostly Christian radio stations nationwide.

In addition to her work with Round Earth Productions, Mary has reported
on Chinese and Mmong immigrants as part of the public radio documentary
“Crossing East,” which won a 2006 Peabody Award, broadcasting’s highest
honor. Mary has covered social and cultural issues, foreign affairs,
public policy and the environment in South America, Mexico, Cuba, Europe
and Canada. For 13 years, Mary was a reporter/anchor for the NBC-TV
affiliate in Minneapolis. Mary’s reporting awards include the New York
Festival’s Gold World Medal.

Swem and  Film Studies has teamed up to bring some fine international films to campus. These are first-run films, not likely to ever make it to theaters here in Williamsburg. These films will be screened at the Kimball (in the screening room). Admission will be $1 dollar with W&M ID. More info is available here.  Also, don’t forget to keep tabs on Film Studies events here.

For 7 days during the spring semester 2007, we set up a camera microphone, lights and background, ala Errol Morris, and asked people coming in to the media center to answer a few questions. We accumulated over 4 hours of footage. Here’s a condensed 6 minutes or so. The media center at Swem is officially cool.

We’ve finished up production on our “How I use the Media Center” video. The concept was simple. We have people who come into the Media Center. Why not ask them, while they are there, what they are doing and have done.  The production piece was inspired by Errol Morris’ video for the Oscars. We set up a wall divider, a white table cloth, some lights, a shotgun mic on a microphone stand, a camera, tripod and a monitor and asked them a series of questions. It took only 45 seconds of their time. We shot it in wide screen in color and have been working on tweaking filters in Final Cut Pro (in conjunction with experimenting with 24p presets in Compressor). It should look hot.   We got about 4 hours of footage to edit.  More to come on this.

The 24 Speed contest for 2007 is now over. I’ve been hard at work getting the films encoded (thanks Kevin for the compressor exports) and ready for presentation on the web.

This year’s films were:

1. Citizen’s Arrest (Mockumentary)
2. Action Man (Action)
3. Cache (Mystery)
4. Chosen (Horror)
5. Elevator Music (Musical)
6. Most Likely To Succeed (Romantic Comedy)
7. Snap (Sports)
8. The Takedown (Gangster/Crime)

You can now view the site and the films on our web site.

I’ve also tried something new and made them available on our beta exploration of iTunesU. You can view them via iTunes here.

Paul Harrill, self-reliant filmmaker extraordinaire, will be visiting the W&M campus from February 23-24. Paul will serve as a judge for the 24 Speed contest and will kick off the CANS film festival screening, with a screening of his own films, at the Kimball Theatre on Saturday February 24 at 4PM.

About Paul Harrill

Paul Harrill is a Southern filmmaker. A native of Knoxville,Tennessee, Mr. Harrill received his Master of Fine Arts in Film & Media Arts from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

His short films include Gina, An Actress Age, 29, which follows a budding actress in Knoxville who is hired to bust a union-organizing effort. The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking. Later festival screenings included Clermont-Ferrand, Rotterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films, among others.

Brief Encounter with Tibetan Monks, a documentary, was included in Caveh Zahedi & Jay Rosenblatt’s 9/11-themed anthology, Underground Zero. The anthology screened at over forty festival venues and was awarded a Special Citation by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle in 2002. On its own, Brief Encounter screened on Cinemax on the one year anniversary of September 11.

Mr. Harrill has been an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee, and a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York and The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

He currently resides in Southwest Virginia where has taught courses in Digital Film/Video Production at Virginia Tech since August 2006.

Self-Reliant Film (http://www.selfreliantfilm.com), Paul’s weblog, is devoted to the principles and practice of do-it-yourself filmmaking. The site receives over 50,000 hits monthly.