Mobilefest London presented by FILMOBILE and Limkokwing University of Creative Technology.
On the 13th November a roundtable discussion on the subject of mobile creativity and innovation will take place at the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in London. During the event a live-web broadcast with the Mobilefest in São Paulo is scheduled to take place. Following the event delegates and participants are invited to join for a networking and a wine reception.
The event is free to attend but registration via email is essential: Max@limkokwing.edu.my
13th November 2009
4pm – 7pm
Limkokwing University London
106 Piccadilly
London W1J 7NL
(Tube Green Park)
São Paulo Panel:
(chair Marcelo Godoy)
Anotni Abad, Caroline Bernard, Greg Giannis, Kasia Molga, Martha Gabriel, Rachel Jacobs
London Panel
(chair Max Schleser):
Dr. Chris Fry, Gaby David, Dom Oliver, Dr Frank Thomas, Julia Kazarina, Waiming
This article will outline the influences, which shaped the editing and montage process of the experimental feature film Max With a Keitai. The city film was shot entirely on a mobile phone in Japan in 2006 and is now being distributed for cinematic and mobile media release. The project illustrates a case for considering approaches within moving-image production, which make use of colour and movement as the driving parameters for a mobile documentary film. A visual flow is constructed within the film. Max With a Keitai is based upon a visual rhythm integral to the sequences of mobile video and the quality of 3gp video. The movement within the frame was used as an initial parameter to edit the 180 hours of filmed material in almost four month on location.
Lev Manovich argues in The language of New Media (2002), that Dziga Vertov can be thought of as one of the major database filmmakers of the twentieth century. The mobile phone filmmaker Max Schleser is extending this argument and comes to the conclusion that Vertov’s creative practices can be described as a pioneering conceptualisation of VJ techniques. Using contemporary VJ software applications such as Grid Pro, Resolume or Motion Dive Tokyo, one can edit and create montage effects live on the fly.
VJ performances are based upon a live montage of video database fragments. In a way analogous to the methods of Vertov where he filmed fragments of Soviet city life, the mobile phone user accumulates a personal video database of mobile fragments. Max With a Keitai was recorded with the caméra-stylo (Astruc 1948). During the production process of Max With a Keitai, the video-blog functioned as a video database. In the first instance the mobile phone videos were indexed daily according to their time and date on location. Within the database, the assembled files are placed into different categories based upon their photographic and abstract representation. In the second instance the mobile video fragments were evaluated and edited to short clips and uploaded to the vblog. As I was working with the mobile phone for the first time, I evaluated the mobile film work at the end of each day. Within this process the video clips were copied and saved in two other databases. I developed a taxonomy based on thematic tags such as (transport, tradition or Tokyo) and one according to the visual characteristics of the medium, i.e. dominant colour in the frame (such as green and orange) or movement on a horizontal and vertical plane. The structure of Max With a Keitai itselftook shape during the editing process. I started to insert the videos in the non-linear desktop editing program’s timeline in a similar way as the videos had been featured on the mobile-mentary vblog (www.mobile-mentary.co.uk). The database, which includes the moving images tagged according their parameters, provides a basis upon which to create the visual flow according to the images visual rhythm. In the final stages of editing the video files are then linked according to this visual rhythm, which is reminiscent of the kinkos’ interval filmmaking method.
“The School of kino-eye calls for construction of the film-objects upon ‘intervals’, that is upon the movement between shots, upon the visual correlation of shots with one another, upon transitions from one visual stimulus to another.
Movement between shots, the visual ‘interval’, the visual correlation of shots, is according to kino-eye, a complex quantity. It consists of the sum of various correlations, of which the chief ones are: the correlation of planes (close-up, long shot, etc.); the correlation of foreshortenings; the correlation of movements within the frame; the correlation of light and shadow; the correlation of recording speeds…. To reduce this multitude of ‘intervals’ (the movement between shoots) to a simple visual equation, a visual formula expressing the basic theme of the film-object in the best way: such is the most important and difficult task of the author-editor.” (Vertov in Michelson 1984, p.90).
Also one can mention here Hans Richter’s approach to producing unscripted work on location, which provides another reference point for working with mobile phone video texts. The 1920s avant-garde filmmakers foreshadowed the practice of editing clips on the fly.
“Along with Walter Ruttmann and Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger must be recognized as one of the first film pioneers who worked to combine movie and sound tracks. His abstract “Absolut Film” is considered the precursor to audio-visual experimentations, such as Vjing. Forms such as the 60s (liquid) light shows, the expanded cinema, the formal movie, multi-media performances, and many others have made the new, hot, and hip art of Vjing/live cinema possible.” (http://www.soundframe.at/sf_info_e.html)
VJ performances are based upon a live montage of video database fragments. In a way analogous to the methods of Vertov documentary filmmaking approach collecting fragments of everyday life. The non-fiction genre provides a creative approach to explore montage and moving-image media according to the parameters of the medium.
The theatre-trained film pioneer Eisenstein asked the artist and filmmaker Richter at the avant-garde gathering at Le Sarraz, Switzerland in 1929:
“… repeatedly what I wanted to say when I made Ghosts Before Breakfast. He could hardly believe that the content, the story – rebellion of objects against daily routine – developed, so to speak, as the by-product of rhythmical conception and by improvisation. The painter had directed the writer, not the other way around.”
(Richter 1977, p. 145)
VJ performance, live editing audio-visual texts in various environments ranging from clubs to galleries, creates a visual rhythm through improvisation. Mark America defines the VJ as a “provocateur who knowingly intervenes in the mainstream art, club, and cinema culture and opens up new possibilities for hybridized art and entertainment events.” (Amerika 2007, p. 56) Writing in VJ: Audio-visual Art and VJ Culture, Bram Crevits traces the term VJ back to its origin, which was first used in the New York club Peppermint Lounge (Crevits in Faulkner 2006, p.14), while simultaneously pointing to the influences from video art and expanded cinema. Elliot Earls situates the current VJ culture as still being off the cultural radar. (Earls in Faulkner 2006, p.14) Recent publications (Faulkner 2006 or One Dot Zero 2006 and 2007) reveal the diverse practices, approaches and backgrounds, which the practioners bring to this field. It is beyond the scope of this present research to map out the field of contemporary audio-visual art practice entirely, but its links to avant-garde practice of the 1920s filmmakers and its application in the editing process of Max With a Keitai are omnipresent. Another common determiner is the form of non-linearity. The experience of a VJ performance, installation or exhibition can be compared to the general unfamiliarity and newness of an emerging art-form found in descriptions of early cinema screenings. In the Struggle for Film, Hans Richter outlines a viewing account of a projectionist who emigrated to Jerusalem in 1923.
“One day by mistake the last real was first. Surprisingly there was no complaints. Even the “regulars” failed to stir. This intrigued the cinema owner. He wanted to find out if anyone objected, and if not why, so he ran all the reels in any order. No one seemed to mind. “Why ?”, he wondered in some amazement, and never grasped the plot, even when the film was shown in the right order. It was clear that they only went to the cinema because there one could see people walking, horses galloping, dogs running.”
(Hans Richter, 1930, p.41)
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan provides a similar account of first time non-western audiences who were not sufficiently visually literate to decode narrative, due to their cultural backgrounds, which are mainly oral traditions.
“Our own talkies were a further completion of the visual package as a mere consumer commodity. For with silent film we automatically provide sound for ourselves by way of ‘closure’ or completion. And when it is filled in for us there is very little participation in the work of the image.” (McLuhan 1964, p. 287)
McLuhan’s argument can be backed up through a more recent analysis by Stephen Barber as presented in Projected Cities.
“…the arrival of synchroniszed-sound cinema implied the destitution of that evocatory power of the film image as all of the great European experimental film-makers of the period foresaw: vocal sound would trivialize cinema into dramatic narrative forms and open it up to forced global appropriation by Hollywood.” (Barber 2002, p.31)
Hollywood as a commercial business aims towards selling as many productions as possible. The linear narrative produced on the assembly line in the studios is packaged for the spectacle of cinema. The mobile phone with its low res capabilities operates in an alternative space. The narrative can contradict the visual development of a story and is therefore secondary in mobile-mentaries.
“Narrative, then, is not an essential quality of film, but only a potential and secondary quality arising from the production of time in the differentiation within and between frames. To misunderstand this leads to a more serious mistake, that of endowing the discrete machinery of cinema with the illusory attributes of continuous flow. … The cinematic event tends towards incompleteness. Its subject is constituted in the ephemeral movement from frame to frame, mobile and unfixed.” (Cubitt 2004, p.40)
The fragments of narrative, which are introduced in Max With a Keitai, function like a short text message. These SMS and the new development of a Keitai aesthetic (as outlined in the next chapter) are based upon a practice specific to mobile devices. In Narrated Theory: Multiple Projection and Multiple Narration (Past and Future), Peter Weibel writes about “reversible rhizomatic narration” in 2002, two years after the introduction of the first mobile phone camera in Japan.
“In the future era of calm technology and ubiquitous computing one person is going to carry and use a lot of microcomputers… anybody is going to be able to see any movie in any place at any time: x persons see x films in x places at x times. Anybody, anywhere, any time is the formula for the digital image technology of the future.”
(Weibel 2002, p. 53)
The experience of viewing the micro-movies in the cityscape has like “the rhizome, has no beginning nor end, but always a middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p.27) from which the micro-movies can be accessed. The documented environment of Tokyo’s cityscape reflects the same rhiziomatic structure. “Run lines, never plot a point! Speed turns the point into a line! Be quick, even when standing still!” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p.27) or ‘Hayaku’ (=’be quick’) as the Japanese would say.
The experimental documentary Max with a Keitai is exploring Japanese metropolitan centres through the lens of a mobile phone and captures a new emerging mobile phone video aesthetic, which surfaced and characterises the years 2005-2008. The city film captures the everyday life of the mobile phone filmmaker Max during the mobile-mentary (mobile documentary) production and the Japanese megapolis in the Taiheiy? Belt. The cityscapes are depicted as a hybrid of tradition and progressive technoculture. Max With a Keitai provides an alternative reading of the technologically most advanced centre to that of the films produced by Wim Wenders and Chris Marker (Tokyo GA 1985 and Sans Soleil 1983) in the 80s political and cultural landscape. Through a critical lens Max Schleser records the failures of the technoculture, such as the derelict shopping mal in Den-Den town (= Electric city). This sequence can be seen as a requiem of consumer culture, a shopping-centre equipped with a rollercoaster, but no customers and abandoned shops is an epitome for the economic recession that hit Japan in the 1990s. These new images of Japan, which stand in contrast to the futuristic progressive images of Sans Soleil (1983) or Tokyo GA (1985) have a very current connotation referencing the global economic recession. The affect of the Japanese economic recession in the 90s can be contextualised through the work of the photographer Toru Kurihara. Note of Ruins – Dilapidated spaces show nostalgia illustrates the ruins of urban consumer culture projects in Japan. The haikyo phenomenon [1] provides a largely unknown picture of the postmodern megalopolis revealing its economic downside in juxtaposition to the most advanced technoculture. Naturally Max With a Keitai shares some ideas with the 80s city films, which have influenced the project in specific parts of the production process. Sans Soleil can be seen as a direct inspiration to produce a city film in Japan, while Tokyo GA became more influential in the editing process. Here one can point at the train sequence used in Max With a Keitai that reflects Marker’s and Wender’s impression of Tokyo. In Max With a Keitai trains are a visual representation for data traffic in the network of the megapolis. The mobile phone as a ready-made consumer product, a low res format, was used to produce the feature film for the silver screen, which can also be presented as a live remix (see FILMOBILE exhibition, www.filmobile.net). The pixel, a new aesthetic and construct is driving the film’s plot and/or the VJ performance. Its exposure to the most expressive state is depicted in the A-Dome scene. This sequence is a symbolic statement, which emphasises the status of the pixilation on the discursive layer. Hiroshima marks the destruction of the traditional Japanese life and simultaneously introduced a new epoch of consumer culture. The significance of this reference is manifested through the atom test conducted in North Korea during the time of production [2]. The fragmentation of the digital pixel is suggesting the atomic implosion, which is characteristic for the Keitai aesthetic when blowing up mobile phone video footage to cinematic dimensions. Furthermore the mobile phone as a tool for cinematic communication has pushed the representation of the digital city to the next layer. Max With a Keitai has logged and captured the impact of mobile technologies in an abstract form and portrayed the ‘Global City’ Tokyo and other Japanese metropolitan centres through the lens of a mobile phone.
“The erosion of the film image’s status coincided with the rise of its digital cityscapes, transmitted pre-eminently from the façades of the city itself, via the immense image-screens of its department stores and corporate advertising zones, and also from the minuscule, hand-held digital screens which contribute to the obsolescence of the city’s cinema screens; those digital screens are maintained in intimate proximity to the endangered urban body in transit.” (Barber 2002, p.153)
The city screen nexus is captured with the mobile phone and has provided an update for the city film genre. Historically the city films have been concerned with the exploration, expression and examination of a cinematic forms and technologies. Max With a Keitai expands the city film genre into the mobile realm. The idea to produce non-scripted films as formulated by René Clair in La Tour (Clair, France,1928), the candid camera techniques applied in Berlin Symphony of a City (Ruttmann, Germany, 1929) and the experimentation with unconventional camera practices and techniques are a relevant approach to work with mobile media. Writing in The films of René Clair, R.C. Dale refers to Claire who said “we really just went out and shot a lot of footage, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to it until I started to put it together in the cutting room, where I assembled it largely by trial and error.” (Dale 1987, p.112) Furthermore Dole says Clair had dreamed the film would be free of any restrictions and restrains imposed by narrative fiction.” (Dale 1987, p.112).
Before the premiere of Berlin, which can be described as Germany’s first documentary (Prümm 2005, p. 411), Ruttmann said that no language or no concepts are existing to define his project. “A film without a story, without love drama and without happyend” (My translation, Prümm 2005, p.411). Mobile filmmaking requires not only new techniques, but also new terminologies, such as the mobile-mentary [3] (mobile documentary). Through the saturation of the mobile phone, keitai, cell phone, Handy, the mobile devices, mobile computers and mobile cameras created “new opportunities have merged for cultural intermediaries to filter this jumped-up micro-content to big media organisations” (Goggin 2006, p.147). And I would like to add new opportunities have come into experience for the big screen as mobile feature films like SMS Sugar Man (Aryan Kaganof,2008, South Africa), Nausea (Matthew Noel-Tod, 2005, UK), Why didn’t anybody tell me it would become this bad in Afghanistan (Cyrus Frisch, 2007, Holland) or indeed Max With a Keitai (Max Schleser 2008, Japan/UK)have illustrated. In difference to the mobile feature productions SMS Sugar Man, Nausea and Why didn’t anybody tell me it would become this bad in Afghanistan and Max With a Keitai is, that the latter is exploring the potential of mobile phones not only as a camera, but also as a viewing device. The prototype experiment is exploring the possibilities to distribute one project filmed on mobile phones for a single screen cinematic projection and simultaneous as new mobile viewing experience. The consideration of form becomes a long-term investment into the construction of knowledge about a specific media format. On the Video Vortex blog hosted by the Amsterdam based Institute for Network Cultures, filmmaker Andreas Treske, points to the essay on Online Video Aesthetics written in January 2008 to illustrate the parameters of the mobile-media:
“However portable devices, such as the iPhone, are used ubiquitously, which is different from cinema … It is therefore inevitable that we study new methods of impact and discover new ways relating it to video.” (Andreas Treske 2008 [online])
The mobile-mentary Max With a Keitai and the mobile-mentary micro-movies project are edited according to the specific viewing experiences. The mobile-mentary can function as a cinematic project, challenging the cinematic qualities itself and simultaneously as a mobile media project. The new mobile experience results from the viewing of micro-movies in the streets, which are distributed via a Bluetooth hubs and edited for a viewing experience in the city outside a cinematic environment. By means of viewing a city-film outside the cinema in an urban environment a new experience is crafted. The translation between the silver – and mobile screen functions via montage;
“the combination of two elements, resulting in the production of a specific effect that could not be produced by either of the two elements.” (Aumont 1992, p.48)
The micro-movies are sent at intervals at different times of the day. The micro-movies create an experience, which merges the location of the viewing (ie in this case London’s cityscape) with the filmic representation of a place on the other side of the world. The user experience is taking the potential viewing time into consideration. The 23 micro-movies are constructed in a non-sequential fashion and can be viewed in any order to establish an understanding of the whole project. The mobile AV productions function as a unique experience fusing the phenomenal everyday environment with the on screen pro-filmic audio-visual work. Most likely the mobile micro-movies will be viewed in situations where no other screen media is available. Consequentially the user might not solely focus on the micro-movies as one is viewing the content while being on the move.
The 23 micro-movies were designed to represent Tokyo’s impressions conceptually.
Tokyo as a city is made up of 23 wards, therefore I chose to create 23 micro-movies. In comparison to Western city structures Tokyo presents an entirely different formation, which does not consist of one central hub, (but an central area, which is made up of six wards [4]), nor the Western concept of the Cartesian city. In the 18th Century the classical Cartesian cities were constructed with one centre hub or location, usually churches, cathedrals or city halls. “The essence of the Cartesian city consists in the geometrical principle which unifies and dominates the totality of the city” (Sasaki 1998, p. 54). Ken-ichi Sasaki summarises in the discussion about cityscapes For Whom is City Design? Tactility vs. Visuality that the visuality of the Cartesian city was addressed to the God’s eye. (Sasaki 1998, p. 56) Japanese cities are characterised by a tactile experience and a lack of stylistic unity, which creates according to Sasaki an impression of noise and energy. (Sasaki 1998, p. 64) The non-existing centripal structure can be explained historically. In the Edo period (1603 to 1868) the government adopted a policy of keeping the temples away from the city centres, removing them to its periphery (Sasaki, 1998 p.64). The traditional Japanese cityscape transformed rapidly in the following century through the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 and the 2nd World War bombings, which “urged hyper-modernisation of this city” (Yoshioka 1998 p.71). Tokyo’s model of development was mirrored by other Japanese cities in the Taiheiy? Belt. Ever since the Meiji Period, the word city has simply meant Tokyo.
“Tokyo multiplied modernity all over the country within a surprisingly short period of time….Modernisation is Tokyo.
… in a sense, all Japanese cities are small Tokyos.” (Yoshioka in Paetzold 1997, p.71)
Writing in Where the streets have no names: The Japanese City and its Future, he argues that the city consequently is everywhere and nowhere. In Center-City, Empty Centre, Barthes argues that the West has constructed all cities as concentric for historical, economical, religious and military purposes. Tokyo possesses a centre, but
“this centre is empty. The entire city turns around a site both forbidden and indifferent, a residence concealed beneath foliage, protected by moats, inhabited by an emperor who is never seen, which is to say literally, by no one knows who.” (Barthes 1983, p.30)
Japanese cities, as exemplified through Tokyo, are conceptually structured like a network. This relationship between media- and city- scapes is also implemented in the definition of micro-movies. The term ‘micro-movie’ was coined in the 1980s in Nicholas Negroponte’s Architecture Machine Group at MIT and expanded in 1993 by Glorianna Davenport (Director of the Interactive Cinema Group at MIT Media Lab) in the context of interactive video databases – which were introduced in 1997 at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. (Wolf 2005 [online]) In Orchestrating Digital Micromovies, Davenport describes a micromovie as a short piece of video with descriptive information attached to it (Davenport in Wolf 2005 [online]).
The mobile-mentary micro-movies are an experiment in cinematic communication for the small screen using visual information of colors and movement. The micro-movies explore the aspect of translating mobile phone video from the cinema screen to mobile devices via the application of colour and movement. In mainstream cinema we are presented with a continuous narrative story construction, which cannot be interrupted at any point. Continuous editing drives the linear story line from beginning to end. Therefore it is bound by this notion of chronological development. In a cinematic environment the viewing experience is relatively standardised (a dark room in which one is facing a screen in front of the cinema projector). The viewing experience and the narrative construction are thus a linear process, a spatial confinement of the narrative genres.
“It has often been pointed out that the mute cinema, whose expressive techniques are installed with a certain coefficient of non-reality (no sound / no colour) in some ways favoured a considerable lack of realism in its narration and representation.” (Aumont 1992, p.33)
On a mobile device each location can alter the viewing experience and linearity does not provide any flexibility to take this into account.
“Linearity and chronology, as classical parameters of narration, fall victim to a multiple perspective projected onto multiple screens. Asynchronous, non-linear, non-projected onto multiple screens is the goal. These narrative procedures comprising a ‘multiform plot’ have been developed with reference to and oriented toward such rhizomatic communication structures as hypertext, ‘associational indexing’ (Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945), text-based ‘multi-user dungeons’ (MUDs) and other digital techniques of literary narration.” (Weibel 2002 p.50)
The everyday surroundings shift to the foreground and can alter the viewing experience. The mobile phone enables us to view images in any location, which traditionally used to be connected to the fixed point of the cinema theatre, home or desktop space. The Situationist notion of psychogeography references the significance of location. The Lettristes and after that the Situationist used dérive to formulate the idea of psychogeography. Writing in the book, which bears the name of this concept, Merlin Coverley illustrates psychogeography, as a combination of literary movement, political strategy, a series of new ideas and a set of avant-garde approaches, which
“is resisting definition through a shifting series of interwoven themes and constantly being reshaped by its practioners.” (Coverley, 2006, p. 11)
Writing in Rethinking the city – Formulary for a new urbanism, Simon Sandler illustrates psychogeography as
“playful, cheap and populist, an artistic activity carried out in the everyday space of the street rather than in the conventional art spaces of the gallery or theatre.”
(Sandler 1998, p. 67).
In the Situationist international – A user’s guide, Ford says the Situationist city “had to be reinvented on a personal level, to be reconfigured along the lines of a new nomadic lifestyle. Historical precedents include Baudelaire’s description of the flâneur.“ (Ford 2005, p.34) The production of two city films in Japan by the end of the 1920s was foreshadowed by Berhard Kellermann’s 1912 publication Ein Spaziergang in Japan (= A drift in Japan). Writing in Benjamin’s Flâneur in Japan: Urban Modernity and Conceptual Relocation, Rolf Goebel illustrates Kellermann’s work as
“The flâneur seeks to decipher the ‘Winke and Weisungen’ (= hints and directions) that buildings and streets, through ‘sprachlos, geistlos’ (= voiceless and spiritless) themselves, offer to someone obsessed with the hidden significance of wayward, half-forgotten details of the cityscape.” (Goebel 1998, p.380)
Max With a Keitai depicts these half-forgotten details, which were encountered through drifting and exploration of the city by unconventional means. Dérive functions here as the process of exploring a location or cityscape. Moreover Tokyo requires a flâneur-like approach to exploring the city as there are no house numbers and only a few main streets have names in Tokyo.
“You must orient yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience; here every discovery is intense and fragile, it can be repeated or recovered only by memory of the trace it has left in you: to visit a place for the first time is thereby to begin to write it: the address not being written, it must establish its own writing (Barthes 1983, p. 36).
Also Christopher Gray points to the influence of communication media within the conceptualisation of psychogeography in “Everyone will live in his Cathedral”:
“psychogeography was a study and correlation of the material obtained from drifting…During the same period (1958-1964) they (the situationists) were also toying with new forms of communication and deconditioning within the city.” (Ivain in Gray, p.4)
Moreover he refers to Chtcheglov (Gilles Ivan), whose “central theme was that the city was itself the total work of art…to play with time and space” (Ivain in Gray, p.4)
So how can a mobile phone viewing experience be conceptualised through this ‘play’ with time and space?
By means of extending the idea of montage into a hybrid technique, micro-movies can be linked to any location. New media artists, practioners and theorists have utilised the montage technique ever since its first defining experiments by Kuleshov in the early 1920s. By means of using a split screen it is possible to extract micro-movies from the feature length project. A fruitful conceptualisation was introduced by the filmmaker Hans Richter at the beginning of the 1920s. Hans Richter published in the De Stijl magazine the article Film:
“The existing challenge is defined through the tension, which in detail produces the light’s space, becomes the basis for the construction in the assembling of the whole, so in consequence not only a sum of space constructions is developed but a new quality.”
(Richter in Peterson 1968, p.66, my translation)
A mobile media montage creates a new quality of its own, a hybridity between city and cinematic space. As outlined in the previous section of this chapter a connection between the micro-movies and Tokyo is decipherable. Writing in EACH ONE A HERO-The Philosophy of Symbiosis, Kisho Kurokawa outlines “A Master Plan for Redeveloping the Nation: The Symbiosis of Redevelopment and Restoration”. His work is constructed in order to preserve the “Jumble of Tokyo’s Rhizome”.
“The mazelike, jumbled chaos of Tokyo is a natural rhizome that possesses the potential for becoming a city of night, a Postmodern city of symbiosis. Tokyo today seems chaotic, without order… But as I have said before, we are living in a new age, with a new value system and sensibility that transcends Modernism. Anyone would prefer to walk the back streets of Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Harajuku over the broad avenues of Kasumigaseki, lined with the same square Modern boxes. While there’s nothing wrong with broad boulevards and high-rise buildings, we also want cluttered mazelike districts to explore.” (Kurokawa 1997, p.232)
These lines lead us back to this concept of nomadic exploration, flânerie [or now-a-days the Phoneur (Luke in 2005, p. 186)] and the Situationist practice, which contextualise the experience of viewing mobile-mentary micro-movies.
The camera phone enables agents to navigate through a number of territories and spaces, which could previously not be connected to a cinematic experience. Here a composite of city and cinematic space is introduced.
“Open a book, enter a movie theatre or dial up a track on your iPod and your attention is constantly shifted to another place time or time. The dense embedding of these discrete media spaces in the urban fabric yields a city that, like a film with jump cuts and flashbacks is experienced and understood as a sequence of spatial and temporally discontinuous scenes, some of them expressions of the current, local reality and other ephemeral media constructions.”
(Mitchell 2005 p.14)
Sandler describes the Situationst City as a constant play of contrast, between confined and open spaces, darkness and illumination, circulation and isolation. (Sandler 1998, p.72) Within the Situationist techniques of drifting and psychogeography, which originate from the lettrists (Ivan Chtcheglov aka Gilles Ivain 1953 Formula for a New City), junctions with the exploration of the city were termed “Plaques tournantes” (Sandler 1998, p.88)
“The term punned on so many meanings that it is not possible to translate it straightforwardly. A plaque tournante can be the centre of something; it can be a railway turntable; or it can be a place of exchange.” (Sandler 1998, p.88)
Sandler describes Paris as a “plaque tournante of culture” and Marseilles one of trafficking. (Sandler 1998, p.88). Without question Tokyo is the capital, plaque tournante, of hybrid culture, Eastern and Western, modern/post-modern/hyper-modern and traditional, Tokyo is the society of the spectacle (Fashion, culture, commerce, screens in public places, galleries in department stores, zoos in high rise skyscrapers, etc…).
“A circus, a show, an exhibition, a one-way transmission of experience. It was a form of ‘communication’ to which one side, the audience, can never reply; a culture based on the …consumer capitalism was to be simply the society of the spectacle.” (Gray 1998, p.6)
Tokyo reflects exactly this notion of exchange or an in-between state, sometimes chaotic, but nevertheless structured in the hustle and bustle. Trains leaving the stations at the moment the precise moment the second indicator on the digital clock jumps to zero and entertainment, a red-light district, traditional shrines all next to postmodern architecture in one ward. Parallel phenomenons are found in all 23 wards. Max With a Keitai captures these expressions through rhizomatic lines, which are crafted in the editing process as a visual flow. This visual flow is based upon the colour and movement of the mobile video clips. Moreover Max With a Keitai visually references the idea of drifting by means of navigating through the film via Tokyo’s subway map. “Make maps, not photographs or drawings” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p.27). The film’s non-linear approach is based upon a network structure, which can be graphically illustrated through the subway maps. In addition the idea of a Keitai culture is represented through the superimposed images of the Kenka matsuri [5] (fighting and thunder drum) festival. The festival, which is taking place in the town of Shirahama, Himeji city, is an expression of the concept of mobility. During the festival portable shrines are carried by the man of the local villages. Next to the parades in which the shrines are carried up a hill, the festival also includes fighting rituals in which the different village groups try to topple the shrines. Conceptually the dynamic of the Keitai culture is enunciated through the idea of moving portable shrines around different locations, rather than going to the locations. The portable shrines, the mikoshi, yasa and yatai create an experience in the city rather than in a confined area of a temple. The mobile-mentary micro-movie project has been influenced by these observations during the production of Max With a Keitai.
Why would I create AV productions on a mobile phone for the silver screen?
The mobile-mentary project is an experiment in cinematic communication. The practice-led research examines the impact of mobile phones on the transforming mediascape, focusing on the convergence of communication technologies with lens-based media. In order to explore how mobile documentaries (mobile-mentaries) contribute to and extend the definition of documentary theory and practice I set out to work in the original parameters of the cinematic medium/format. Documentary originated as media format on the cinematic screen. Max with a Keitai is produced on a mobile phone (Keitai) as a single screen cinematic work. The main objective was to discover if it is possible to produce work with a mobile phone for the big screen. Three years ago mobile phones had limited storage capacities (512 mb microSD cards), recorded in 12 frames per second on two megapixel cameras and worked with the first generation of the 3gp compression format, which could not be transferred directly into non-linear editing suits. Technically it seemed almost impossible to film a feature project on a mobile phone.
The mobile-mentary project is referencing the early definitions of documentary, which is defined through a hybrid of the contemporary categories of experimental film and new media. The mobile-mentary research investigation explores the viewing experiences for mobile devices as a form of a new mobile media experience. Both screen formats, the large scale cinema screen and the small mobile device are conceptual tangents in the montage process. As one of the first findings from the pre-production experiments, one can emphasise that no matter how pixelated the images are and how low the resolution on the small screen (174×144) movement will always be decoded.
“The basic cinematic rhythms, achieved through editing, coordinate with the equally basic movements of subject motion and frame motion. The effectiveness of any given shot may depend not only on motion within and motion of the frame, but the motion evoked by juxtaposition. Thus, seven fundamental rhythms are responsible for cinema being the art of creating movement. The use of motion in every shot are based on two- at least subject motion and one of the editing types – or more possible rhythms.” (Gessner 2003, p. 167)
Robert Gessner writes in The seven faces of time: An Aesthetic for Cinema that once cinema’s uniqueness is more fully understood, we shall have an aesthetic key capable of unlocking new windows. (Gessner 2003, p. 167) The cinematic uniqueness is defined through a filmic quality, which can be underscored through producing a visual rhythm. Working with mobile phone video one can thus create a visual rhythm according to the screens’ parameters for 174×144 or 576×420. With the aim producing an experimental documentary on a mobile phone Japan was chosen, as it is the country with the longest history of mobile devices in this new media. Jphone introduced the first mobile phone with a video camera, the SHARP SH-04, in Japan in 2000. Seven years later in 2007 a Digital Video [6] issue lists a Finnish mobile phone as a video-camera under £500. This mobile phone company is now the worlds largest camera manufacturer and there are now more camera phones in circulation than digital video and stills cameras combined [7]. Last year the N95 was released and introduced a new standard for mobile filmmaking. The mobile device has got 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Optics camera, which has the capacity to record images in native video desktop format (VGA 640×480). In the feature Max With a Keitai, I made a distinct choice in using a 2005 mobile phone recording in a low-res resolution (3gp / 176 x 208 pixels). Simultaneously the feature film is illustrating the potential of advanced mobile phone camera technology by means of using a progressive Japanese camera phone in the production. The Foma N902is already had the capacities to record in mpeg4 compression and native video format in 2006.
The research is framed through the technological advancement in the years 2004-2008. Three years ago in 2005 when I started my research file size limitations and video technology in mobile devices made this task a high risk endeavour. Writing in the 2006 publication Cellphone Cultures, Goggin outlines the format of the 3GP media devices.
“The quality of their lenses is inferior to that of analogue and digital cameras, as they are made from plastic rather than glass. So far resolution has been relatively poor, compared to the standard quickly established by digital cameras. Other early problems included limited storage capability, relatively short battery life, and lack of control over exposure, focus, and lense size, compared to fuller-featured digital and analogue cameras.”
(Goggin 2006, p.152)
There were a number of problems ranging from the non-existence of any technical support or instructions to incompatible file formats, landscape and portrait formats of mobile phones. The implementation of two mobile devices, a traditional European and an advanced Japanese model allows reflecting upon the advancement of mobile video technology within the project and the timeframe of production. Max With a Keitai can document the technological advancement in camera phone filmmaking juxtaposing the technical quality of a Japanese mobile phone and a European model. The latter camera phone captures the images with a digital two megapixel camera, which pixelates extensively when blown up to the native video format. The video is filmed in the native 3gp format (176×144) QCIF with 12 frames per second. The advanced Japanese mobile phone incorporated the mpeg 4 codes, which allows working with mobile phone video files in the digital standard size QVGA 320 x 240. As the name indicates this is a quarter of native video format VGA (640×480) and therefore video does not pixelate when imported in a standard DV environment. In addition the keitai video camera records with twice as many frames and stereo sound that can be matched with consumer DV camera quality.
The ‘low res’ obstruction of the camera phones can be utilized as a creative feature by means of working with the mobile video in an abstract form. Furthermore the captured mobile phone video material depicts the notion of a hybrid culture on the discursive layer. Japan is a hybrid of Asian and Western cultures, which are blended into one commercial fashion/consumer culture in the city centres. Post-modern high-rise temples sit side-by-side traditional Japanese architecture. Traditional shrines are one minute apart from Pacionko halls, art-exhibitions are found in Tokyo’s convention centre Big Sight or on the top floor of shopping centres, which are two subway stops apart from derelict entertainment and shopping malls. The juxtaposition of hyper-modern and tradition is omnipresent in Japan and defines its own ethos. This bricolage is mirrored in Max With a Katei through using the 3gp and mpeg standard. Since the pre-production experiments in 2005 [8], technology has advanced and lens-based mobile devices have reached new standards. The mobile-mentary Max With a Keitai is referencing Japanese progressive technology by means of incorporating a Japanese and a European mobile phone in the feature film production. On the discursive level the distinction between the 3gp and mpeg4 compression codec also reflects a discrepancy in contemporary Japanese culture between the traditional values and consumer-culture lifestyle. The pixilation of mobile video is a result of the compression formats. On a conceptual level one could describe Japanese cities and the Taiheiy? Belt as a ‘CITYpeg’. The megapolis is highly populated and space zipped (meaning compressed) by any means.
Max With a Keitai is a digital record of a vblog (www.mobile-mentary.co.uk). The video-blog was produced at the end of 2006 during the production on location in Japan. The experimental city film Max With a Keitai was edited on location and screened for the first time in Japan at the Design Fiesta in Tokyo (http://www.designfesta.com) in December 2006. The screening of the film to a Japanese audience became part of the project and is a direct reference to the Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov 1929 Soviet Union). In a similar way as Vertov (or Wenders Tokyo GA) describes his filmic project as the diary of a cameraman, the mobile-mentary feature project draws upon the mobile-mentary vblog in the form of a visual (almost) real-time sketchbook. Simultaneously comments from the vblog commentators have been included in the city films as inter titles. The web 2.0 impulse is therefore implemented in Max With a Keitai and allows other people beyond the filmmaker Max to give a ‘voice’ in the film. Max With a Keitai bridges the filmic and online formats and environments through the simulation of sms-inter-titles appearing on screen. In addition the vblog functioned as a production diary and travel log. One can notice a conceptual similarity between documentary and (video) blogs at this level. The word ‘documentary’ itself derives from the French, who used the term to describe travelogues by the term documentaire. (Grierson in MacCann 1966, p.207) The mobile-mentary vblog functions in a similar fashion, while creating a visual database as resource for the feature project. The Vblogs or moblogs can be seen as an extension of the documentary format on the websphere.
“A weblog is a record of travels on the Web, so a mobile phone log (moblog) should be a record of travels in the world. …As we chatter and text away, our phones could record and share the parts we choose: a walking, talking, seeing record of our time around town, corrected and augmented by other mobloggers.” (Hall in Goggin 2006, p.143)
Another factor that needs to be mentioned when dealing with mobile media is the notions of the immediacy and intimacy of the mobile device.
“Rather than being a somewhat distinct, or even formal part of the recording, documentation, and remembering of an event or ritual, the camera phone often has become part of the event itself. Camera phones are perceived to offer a sense of immediacy, lessening the time elapsed between the time when the photo was taken and the time it is reviewed.” (Goggin 2006, p.149)
Goggin quotes Wilhelm’s phrase of the ‘power of now’ in Mobile convergences. With immediacy, real time simulation and liveness take the position of indexicality. Rather than re-evaluating the capacity of film to capture actuality, Max With a Keitai and the mobile-mentary micro-movie project focus on the formation of a new mobile experience. As a documentary filmmaker one would normally place the camera in a safe position and then use the tele-focus lens to film a scene at a distance from where the action occurs. The mobile phone does not have these capacities and requires the filmmaker to be involved in the action. This directness is transmitted on screen. The images captured on mobile devices are so close that one could touch them. The notion of immediacy, which is often linked to mobile productions, is explored in the city film through the perspective of the filmmaker. Max reminds the audience showing his projection using the camera-phone in mirrors. Max breaks the 180° rule and thus establishes a link to the audience. Through the immediacy of the medium one can identify with the role of the filmmaker. The obstructions of low-res camera technology can be used in a creative way, which is reminiscent of filmmakers using Super 8 or Pixelvision. The abstract pixel is treated as a driving parameter in the construction of the story, which is revealed through the movement and visual flow of the mobile images. In addition the status of a filmmaker shifts into an invisible phenomenon. As mobile phones are ubiquitous one has the possibility to film without attracting much attention. Max With a Keitai does not claim to work as a fly on the wall, but rather provides a intimate perspective of a subjective view of the world. Max with a Keitai films some scenes using a pocket to hide the camera, while drifting through the cityscapes. Also the phone was attached to bicycles and trains, which references the city films travelling shots. The spirit of the Kinkos is present in the mobile-mentaries as we hold the possibilities for filmmaking in our hands on a daily base. The means of production have been made accessible as the Motorola advertisement slogan reveals: We’re all filmmakers now. The industry is trying to market the mobile device as professional camera equipment (which can be exemplified through the Samsung advertisement, which uses professional set lights.) The mobile-mentary research positions the mobile media practice in a rather alternative space. At this point one can also mention the economical factor for mobile-mentaries. The budget for producing a mobile-mentary is located in the region of Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003, USA) rather than a blockbuster film project. The recording device, the mobile phone was ‘bought’ for free with a mobile phone contract.
The mainstream entertainment media is fighting for pole-positions in the race to attach the fragmented users and consumers to their mobile brands. Mobile phone manufactures now produce more lens based media than any other media companies and are also shifting into the domain of internet and social networking services.
“On the one hand, new media technologies have lowered production and distribution costs, expanded the range of available delivery channels, and enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. At the same time, there has been an alarming concentration of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, with a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating all sectors of the entertainment industry. No one seems capable of describing both sets of changes at the same time, let alone show how they impact each other. Some fear that media is out of control, others a world where gatekeepers have unprecedented power. Again, the truth lies somewhere in between” (Jenkins 2006, p. 18)
Without entering the field of cyborg theory one can now point to the extraordinarily fast developments in the field of augmented and alternative reality games. Jenkins quotes Jane McGonigal in Convergence Culture describing alternate reality games as
“an interactive drama played out online and in the real-word spaces, taking place over several weeks or month, in which dozens, hundreds, thousands of players come together online, form collaborative social networks, and work together to solve a mystery or problem that would be absolutely impossible to solve alone.” (McGonigal in Jenkins 2006, p. 280)
AR (augmented reality) or toolkits like HP’s mscape technolgy [9] have the potential to bridge the two distinct domains: the cinema industry and the games industry. The mobile-mentary micro-movies project works on a similar layer as unique experiences are created by means of watching micro-movies in the city. Different sections from the feature film are extracted as micro movies via Bluetooth and/or the Internet. As the micro-movies can be viewed in any location, they create new experiences, which can be described as a hybrid of the city and filmic space. “Convergence involes both a change in the way media is produced and a change in the way media is consumed” (Jenkins 2006, p. 16) The mobile device is broadening the field in which mobile media artefacts and video footage can be screened. Thus the mobile-mentary project can be viewed as a cinematic single screen project, as a vblog online, as a micro-movie in the city, in a gallery exhibition and/or as a VJ performance.
The mobile-mentary micro-movie project explores the fusion of city and mediascpe. Tokyo, as one of the highest populated urban areas and cosmopolitan centres, presents itself through a futuristic endless cityscape. Tokyo Ga mirrors Max’s ginji (foreigner) impressions and perspective of Japanese fast pace everyday life.
“The first impressions present a city and a population in constant movement: sounds from video arcades, pachinko halls, and televisions, augumented by the ever-present, discordant soundtrack, the constant rush of traffic, of trains and of people in the Metro system that create a flood of images, and an inescapable cacophony of audio impressions that blend into a monstrous chaos.” (Graf 2002, p.106)
In one weblog entry entitled Hayaku (=’be quick’) the impression of the city is symbolically compared to a computer microprocessor.
“The city is criss-crossed by trains, cars and pedestrian bridges. The illuminated billboards flash like microprocessors directing the traffic of the town. The post-modern impression of a city is fueled through the Japanese mentality. Office ward workers, couriers, businesswomen, and lots of other passers-by seem to be in a constant hurry. At the street junction in Shibuya a video billboard uses live-video input. …” (Thursday, September 28th, 2006 www.mobile-mentary.co.uk)
As a ginji it is a difficult endeavour to break into traditional Japanese circles, but through the non-conventional means exploring the city seemingly hidden traditional spaces have been revealed and captured through the lens of a mobile phone. The futuristic appearance, as framed by Chris Marker and Wim Wenders is extended through the vision of the mobile phone, which captures the contemporary digital city. Max With a Keitai pushes the pixel aesthetic to its limits and beyond any formats fund in mainstream media (, as one can clearly notice in the Hiroshima section of Max With a Keitai.) The limited camera technology depicts the city as a digital and pixelated image. Max With a Kaitai is a film about Japanese cities and thus reflects the structures of the city both formally and aesthetically. Tokyo is a bricolage of tradition, hypermodern, derelict and new emerging consumer temples: a vast hybridity.
During the time filming on location, I realised that the structure of the emerging film can be compared to the rhizomatic structure of Tokyo itself. A topological map of the subway system represents the non-linear structure of the film. Moreover the subway map uses a colour code to represent the different options available navigating the city. Max With a Keitai is edited with an emphasis on a particular colour code of orange and green. These colours represent Japan’s nature and botanic, the green Japanese gardens turn orange as the maple leaves change colour in the autumn season. In order to show the parallelism in Tokyo’s formation and Max With a Keitai I will briefly outline the concept with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987) formulated in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Deleuze and Guattari use the metaphor of an organic botanical growth (subterranean stem, which is different from roots and radicles) to explore psychoanalysis, language and other ‘plateaus’: “Any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p.24) The underground stems can be seen as transport stations on the map, which allow multiple connections. The micro-movie extracts from the feature project can be viewed in ‘any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities’. Despite the fact that Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concepts are open to criticism, their abstract writings and the concept of the rhizome provide a dynamic framework by which to explain the synergies in between cinematic and city space. The rhizomatic patterns are applied in architecture (Varying Title: plan to unify departments and campus. Architecture and Urbanism, 1994, p. 102-9 and Buona Vista masterplan Competition Project. Architecture and Urbanism (2004) p. 84-91), new media (Weibel 2002) and consequently can form a continuum between city, filmic and mobile media space. Deleuze and Guattari outline rhizomatic structures through the five principles of connection and heterogeneity, multiplicity, a signifying rupture, and the principle of cartography of decalomania. The rizomatic characteristica of discontinuity, rupture, multiplicity, contiguity and immediacy (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p.17) define the montage between the filmic, mobile media and cityscape. The new mobile montage “connects any point to any other point” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p.23) and this is reflected in the editing process of Max With a Keitai and numerous VJ performances.
Ce court métrage de Kaganof a été réalisé en novembre 2008 pendant le séminaire éponyme de trois jours, du 2 au 4, à l’Université de Malmo. C’est vraiment un film différent de l’auteur, si on le compare aux précédents de sa filmographie. Il est aussi légèrement ironique. Cette touche d’ironie est aussi différente. Elle est douce et discrète et devient évidente surtout à la fin du film, quand le cinéaste se révèle devant l’objectif en nous faisant un signe « optimiste » avec ses doigts. La musique de Michael Blake est aussi douce et sans continuité, comme l’ironie qui en découle. Si on fait référence à un poème du cinéaste paru quelques jours plus tard sur le kagablog, on prend la confirmation. Voilà un vers traduit par nous : « la plupart des professeurs universitaires, ce ne sont pas des intellectuels mais des agents de la pensée » (voir « How I died (again) » du 15 décembre 2008).
Parmi les professeurs universitaires du séminaire nous pouvons distinguer Anne-Marie Duguet, Lajos Varhegyi, Michael Heim, Dick Hebdige et quelques autres. Tous se tournent vers la caméra au début du film avant de laisser la place à Kaganof. Il n’y pas de citation de leurs noms, ni au film ni au générique ! Nous avions rencontré Anne-Marie Duguet au festival parisien « Astarti » en 1998. Elle est prof à la Sorbonne, spécialisée à l’art vidéo. Elle dirige aussi la belle série théorique « Anarchives », dont le titre contient une ambigüité réussie. C’est la même ambigüité qui caractérise la plupart des créations de Kaganof. L’américain Michael Heim est aussi compositeur et sa qualité d’artiste (comme notre idole tout justement mentionné) pourrait donner une nouvelle destination au séminaire. Le plus célèbre professeur du séminaire est sûrement Dick Hebdige, anglais qui exerce ses fonctions aux Etats Unis. Il est aussi le chouchou (parmi d’autres) du très important Palais de Tokyo parisien qui a plusieurs fois fait référence à ses écrits. « Il s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux classes ouvrières blanches et à leurs sous-cultures en lien avec la musique, des teddy boys aux mods, des rockeurs aux punks et aux skinheads » (in « Palais » numéro 7, Paris, automne 2008, page 90). Son ouvrage célébrissime « Sous-culture : Le sens du style » vient d’être traduit en français pour la première fois avec un retard inadmissible de trente ans : « La version traduite du texte, disponible désormais aux éditions de La Découverte, permet d’évaluer avec trente ans de retard ce décloisonnement des disciplines propres aux cultural studies et dont la France s’est longtemps tenue écartée » (Gallien Dejean, in « Zéro Deux » (Nantes), numéro 49, printemps 2009, page 35).
Pour revenir à notre argument du début sur l’ironie kaganovienne, qui est d’une nouvelle dimension sociopolitique cette fois, nous allons citer encore le poème « How I died (again) », inspiré par cette rencontre :
« je ne peux pas
être le seul
à sentir comment
cette rencontre
est une perte de temps
et d’énergie extraordinaire ?»
(traduit par nous)
Ce film « New Media Politics – Experiment number 1 » n’est pas disponible seulement au fameux KagaBlog mais aussi sur « You Tube ».
im not an expert,but i also have the nokia n95..and i love it. its such a toy. everywhere i go,i make photos,my children use it to shoot little films,i have internet wifi..i often upload the photo directly from my phone to my flickr account. the cam features are easy to use,the photos and film look great,two days ago i was going out,and my phone fell out of my bag,down the stone stairs..i was convinced it was broke..but it works…its a chunky lovely gadget
Met genoegen nodig ik u namens de medewerkers van het Groninger Forum uit voor de opening van de tweede editie van Viva la Focus! op vrijdag 17 april aanstaande. Viva la Focus! Dutch Mobile Film Festival is een jong, eendaags festival waarin films gemaakt met de mobiele telefoon centraal staan. Het festival beleeft in 2009 zijn tweede editie.
Het overkoepelende thema van Viva la Focus! 2009 is Wat is waar? Feit en fictie in het digitale tijdperk. Wat zijn de effecten van de supersnelle ontwikkelingen en enorme overdaad aan nieuwe media en informatietechnologie? Hoe zie je door de bomen het bos nog, hoe kun je op internet nog het goede, het ware en het schone onderscheiden van de grote hoeveelheid pulp zonder er in te verdrinken? En hoe gaan de verschillende generaties hiermee om?
Met deze vragen in ons achterhoofd programmeerden we het festival. Maar uiteraard is er ook ruimte voor films van de mobiele telefoon. Aryan Kaganof, Karin Spaink, Andrew Makkinga, IJsbrand van Veelen en Andrew Keen: het zijn slecht enkele namen uit het programma. Een programma met speelfilms, documentaires, vj’s, lezingen, presentaties, dj’s, workshops en maar liefst twee prijsuitreikingen: een voor de scholieren en de grande finale van de online wedstrijd.
Wij zijn al met al best trots op het programma en nodigen u van harte uit dit met ons te beleven.
We openen het festival, samen met de kersverse winnaars van de Scholierenprijs die tussen 13.00 en 14.00 uur wordt uitgereikt, om 14.15 uur in de foyer van filmtheater Images.
Graag wijzen we u erop dat het festival al eerder start (om 12.00 uur) en tot laat op de avond doorgaat. Op de website van Viva la Focus! vindt u het downloadbare programmaboekje: www.vivalafocus.net/downloads/VLF_Programma.pdf.
Opening Viva la Focus! Dutch Mobile Film Festival
Vrijdag 17 april, 14.15 uur
Foyer filmtheater Images Groningen
Gratis entree
www.vivalafocus.nl
Ik hoop van harte u te mogen verwelkomen op deze feestelijke dag.
52 minutes
shot on a Nokia N95 mobile phone
starring Dick Tuinder, Michiel Huisman, Tara Elders, Tom Jansen, Marcel Farber, Gijs van de Westelaken, Ralph Wingens and many more…
world premiere Groningen 17 April 2004
Zolang het kunstwerk onbeperkt beschikbaar is, lijkt het
daarom waardeloos. Het is overal en dus nooit ergens werkelijk
aanwezig. Het is er altijd en dus nooit echt urgent. In
die overvloed zijn de signalen zelf ruis geworden, achtergrond
zonder betekenis. Maar geleidelijk ontstaat in dat
wereldwijde web een structuur van menselijke relaties,
verankerd in de structuren van de lokale samenlevingsverbanden.
Langs die lijnen laten de alom beschikbare beelden,
geluiden en teksten zich opnieuw selecteren en interpreteren.
Dan wijkt de ruis voor de signalen.
Bob MacKenzie wrote a relatively balanced and thoughtful piece about the future of television in the February 3, 1974 Oakland Tribune titled, “A ‘Tomorrow’ Look At World Of TV.” Even articles about television were shaped by the energy fears of the 1970s.
“It now seems possible that we won’t keep getting richer,” MacKenzie writes. “The energy to run those room-size television screens and 3-D telecasts may have to be used for something more mundane…. like heating the joint or getting the old man to work and back.”
Later in the article, MacKenzie explains what made movie theaters unique in an era before HBO and VHS tapes, “At present the movie theaters are offering patrons what they can’t get on their home screens - bloody violence, nudity, sex, naughty words. But even those never-failing attractions will be available on television in the future….”
The piece in its entirety appears below.
Malcolm Muggeridge, the ancient, acidic book critic writing in Esquire, likes to refer to “future historians . . . if there are any.”
We must now consider the case of future television watchers, if there are any.
What will they watch, and on what?
Every era rewrites the future; visionaries of the 1960s told us about all the fantastic electronic gear that would doubtless bring the world into the living rooms of future Americans - not only in sounds and pictures, but in odors too; specials about pollution would come complete with stink. The images would likely be three-dimensional and life size. Some of the more fervent prognosticators even looked forward to feelevision.
Video screens, it was said with what seemed optimism at the time, would cover entire walls in our homes. Channels would be unlimited; the viewer would be able to tune in on a Russian news program or a course in Latvian cooking at the touch of a button, or rather, a wave of the hand over a sensory node.
Banking and shopping would be done at home through two-way television communications. Voting would be done directly through the video system. Local town meetings would be conducted through television, with the participants all sitting home.
Three-dimensional television, technically feasible through ionization of alpha particles in the air that fills the living room, would bring life-size actors walking around in the room. Viewers would be able to enter into the drama, play roles, with computerized dialogue responding to the home player’s improvised lines.
It all sounded wonderful. Or did it?
All those dreams of endless fun and self-improvement through the magic of super-television depended in part of the reigning ideology of the time which was: everything is always going to keep getting bigger and better.
Suddenly the doctrine of eternal abundance as a basic American right is seen as not so certain any more. We are running out of things. And the inevitability of progress can’t be taken quite so readily for granted.
It now seems possible that we won’t keep getting richer. The energy to run those room-size television screens and 3-D telecasts may have to be used for something more mundane…. like heating the joint or getting the old man to work and back.
The supersize television screens postulated a complete changeover in television technology; in other words, the scrapping of every piece of television equipment now in use - every home set, every camera and videotape machine. For, to increase the size of the screen considerably, we would have to increase the numbers of lines of transmission. That means new machines.
This could happen in 100 years. Almost anything could. But it probably won’t happen for a long while, so finish paying off that color set.
Does the energy crunch and all its attendant melancholy side-effects mean that television technology isn’t going anywhere?
Not at all. In the near future we’ll be receiving new messages new waves on new equipment - not in life-size tri-dimensional smellovision, but in conventional television with improvements.
Like miniaturization, for instance. This branch of the electronic sciences has boomed in the past few decades. The tiny transistors which replaced the cumbersome vacuum tubes have themselves been replaced by even tinier, miraculously encoded bits of metal called MOS chips. One chip the size of a nailhead replaces hundreds of transistors. Not only are they littler, they’re cheaper.
What does this mean for you and me? How about a perfectly flat television set that can be hung on the wall like a picture? Perfectly feasible in the near future. And the wrist television set, a la Dick Tracy, is now a practicable machine. Within a decade or so, you may be carrying a tiny walkie-talkie-like device in your shirt pocket. We may all be in instant audial and visual touch with one another.
Once the technology of miniature television receivers is worked out, they will be inexpensive to construct. And they will use less energy than present set, the pocket TV set will be as handy as a pocket calculator - and probably less expensive, since everyone will have one.
Every technological advance has its darker side, of course. If everyone is immediately reachable by two-way television, your boss will always be able to find you - not to mention your wife and your friendly local loan company.
Cassette TV is really on the way, too. A home library of cassettes will be a normal middle-class acquisition long before the Tribune Tower weathers its second centennial. But don’t expect home cassettes to arrive immediately, or to be inexpensive when they do arrive. It will be a long time before cassettes reach the mass-distribution economics of the music recording industry. even when it does, a taped television program will cost at least twice what you will pay for an LP music tape.
Since, as mentioned before, it’s just possible we won’t all be richer then, how will the average family buy TV cassettes of the movies, instruction courses, plays, etc, that will be offered?
Probably by renting cassettes, or borrowing them from public libraries. Cassette TV, when it arrives, will bring the convenience of books and magazines: the viewer will watch a program of his choice, at a time of his choosing.
Full-scale home cassette television should arrive within 10 years, provided we do not develop air shortage in the meantime, and provided the Japanese continue to improve in what used to be called American knowhow.
What about television programs? How will they change?
100 years in the future is very far ahead to peer; if there are still television programs then, they will be about things of interest to a people who will be as unlike us as we are unlike the steerage passengers in the Mayflower. Perhaps their programs will be instructional “How to Eat Plastic,” or “I Breathed in Los Angeles and Lived.”
Who knows? We will leave these matters to future television columnists, if any. But we can look into the immediate future and make some educated guesses about programs in 10 and 20 years, based on the ways programs are changing now.
The most immediately obvious evolution in television is toward bigger and better movies for television. In a very few years, features produced for TV have moved from skimpily budgeted trash (Z-pictures, one critic called them) to a healthy form that often supplies good entertainment and occasionally brings memorable drama.
TV-movies still supply plenty of trash (perhaps trash is a needed commodity; the world has never been without it), and budgets are still small. But changes are coming, and very soon.
Small budgets and high aspirations have managed fine television movies like “Brian’s Song”; but in the future producers may not be so confined in the money department. Ways are being found to produce full-scale motion pictures for television.
“The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” might be considered the first of anew generation of television movies. Produced with scope and size, this fine picture was budgeted at $900,000 - still a low expense for a theatrical movie, but double or triple the cost of most TV-movies. A network contract for four showings, plus planned revenue for European theatrical bookings, will pay for the film and bring a profit.
Another venture, on NBC, is called International World Premiere. By this plan, new movies for television will be seen on NBC the same night they open in theaters in other countries - so the producers, with revenues from both TV and theaters, can hire major stars and deliver full-scale production.
Eventually, as other ways of financing television films are found, movies for television will become the equal of theatrical movies - in quality if not in sensationalism.
At present the movie theaters are offering patrons what they can’t get on their home screens - bloody violence, nudity, sex, naughty words.
But even those never-failing attractions will be available on television in the future - if not in the regularly scheduled programs, then in cassette television. And, needless to say, Cassettes will bring the era of readily-available TV pornography. Whether that constitutes an advance for the civilized world the reader must decide for himself.
And as long as people persist in being human, television drama will concern the same subjects that drama has always treated: the timeless issues of love and faith and valor and ambition and loss, the yearnings of the heart and itchings of the glands.
People will always be interested in these things. And television, or whatever replaces it in the incalculable, unpredictable future, will still be staging the stories about the good guys versus the bad guys.
With any luck, the good guys will still be winning.
Halverwege de jaren negentig werden digitale camera’s voor elke filmmaker betaalbaar. Sindsdien zijn ze alleen maar beter en goedkoper geworden. Bovendien kun je tegenwoordig professioneel monteren op je pc. Al jaren wordt voorspeld dat deze technologische revolutie zal leiden tot de definitieve democratisering én een inhoudelijke vernieuwing van de cinema.
Die democratisering is aarzelend begonnen. Het Nederlands Film Festival zag het aantal inzendingen van in eigen beheer gemaakte, digitaal geschoten films de afgelopen vijf jaar toenemen van een handvol naar enkele tientallen. De meeste zijn te amateuristisch om te worden vertoond. De enkeling die wel door de selectie komt, heeft meestal een traditionele stijl en opbouw. Van een inhoudelijke digitale vernieuwing van de Nederlandse cinema is nog weinig te merken.
In 1999 zorgde de studentenhorrorfilm The Blair Witch Project wel voor zo’n soort doorbraak. Met deze film, geschoten op 16mm en video, leek de wens van Francis Ford Coppola uit te komen, die ten tijde van Apocalypse Now (1979) zei: ‘Mijn grote hoop is dat dankzij die kleine 8mm-camera’s (…) op een dag een dik meisje in Ohio plotseling de nieuwe Mozart blijkt (…), zodat het zogenaamde ‘professionalisme’ van de filmwereld voor altijd wordt vernietigd. Dan wordt film echt een kunstvorm.’
Met hun lowbudget-film, geschoten gedurende een paar dagen met enkele vrienden, creëerden de makers van The Blair Witch Project een internationale hype. Het consequente gebruik van de schokkerige subjectieve camera (waarbij een personage in de film de camera vasthoudt) was niet helemaal nieuw, maar beleefde met deze film zijn doorbraak naar de mainstream. Kortom: een inhoudelijke revolutie, door jonge, onafhankelijke lowbudget-filmmakers, met gebruikmaking van de specifieke kenmerken van nieuwe, betaalbare apparatuur. In Nederland was Robert-Jan Westdijks Zusje (1995) een even frisse, jonge film, met een verhaal dat ook was opgebouwd rond de subjectieve videocamera.
Het riep herinneringen op aan de Nouvelle Vague, de Franse filmstroming van de jaren vijftig en zestig waarin filmauteurs als Jean-Luc Godard en François Truffaut filmische grenzen verlegden en internationale hits scoorden (zoals Godards À bout de souffle, 1960), met dank aan de nieuwe, draagbare 16mm-camera’s.
Dus waar blijft de digitale Vague? Niet de top-down revolutie van digitaal Hollywood – die vooral bestaat uit computeranimatie en digitale special effects. Nee, de bottom-up-revolutie, de definitieve democratisering van film als betaalbaar medium, waarbinnen vanzelf talenten komen bovendrijven die met de mogelijkheden van de digitalisering aan de haal gaan. Zoals in de fotografie is gebeurd, met de vernieuwende beeldmanipulatie door fotografen als Inez van Lamsweerde en Micha Klein.
Dreigende schimmen
‘Ik vind het steeds immoreler om dure films te maken,’ zegt Cyrus Frisch, die al vanaf zijn debuutfilm Vergeef me (2001) met goedkope camera’s experimenteert. ‘Zeker nu digitale camera’s een kwaliteit hebben die ik een paar jaar geleden nog voor onmogelijk hield.’ Frisch geldt niet alleen inhoudelijk als grensverleggend in de Nederlandse cinema – met confronterende films als Vergeef me en Blackwater Fever (2008) – maar ook stilistisch. In 2007 maakte hij Waarom heeft niemand mij verteld dat het zo erg zou worden in Afghanistan, de eerste bioscoopfilm ter wereld die was geschoten op een mobiele telefoon. ‘Ik durfde niemand te vertellen dat ik ermee bezig was, omdat ik dacht dat ze me zouden uitlachen.’
De lage resolutie van de telefoon, die op een bioscoopscherm een enorm grove korrel oplevert, is niet alleen als experiment gebruikt. ‘Er was een inhoudelijke reden waarom ik voor een mobieltje koos. Ik wilde de spanningen tussen autochtonen en allochtonen in mijn buurt vastleggen. Daarom ging ik filmen terwijl ik boodschappen deed – je hebt zo’n camera toch op zak. Het materiaal was per definitie spannend, omdat je niet goed kon zien of horen wat er gebeurde.’
Als hij vanaf zijn balkon jongeren filmde op een pleintje, werden die door de beeldkwaliteit van zijn telefooncamera duistere, dreigende schimmen. ‘Juist vanwege de beperkingen van de camera kreeg je die mooie beelden. Je moet met zo’n cameraatje geen normale film proberen te maken, dat heeft natuurlijk geen meerwaarde.’ Frisch wijst op de beeldkwaliteit van YouTube. ‘Voor de jeugd maakt het niet meer uit hoe iets eruitziet. Dat is misschien wel de echte revolutie: dat we helemaal worden teruggeworpen op de inhoud.’
Ook zijn nieuwe film Oogverblindend (met Rutger Hauer en Georgina Verbaan), die in januari in première gaat op het filmfestival van Rotterdam, is grotendeels digitaal gedraaid. ‘Ik snap ook niet waarom niet veel meer makers zich erop storten. Met Festen bewees Thomas Vinterberg al in 1998 dat je een goede speelfilm kon maken met digitale middelen. Ook al maakt Festen niet specifiek gebruik van de mogelijkheden van een kleine camera – je had die film ook met een 35mm-camera kunnen maken. Dancer in the Dark, van Lars von Trier, doet dat wel, door honderd camera’s tegelijk te gebruiken. Maar dat is dan toch weer een spuugdure film.’
Op zijn kop
Ondanks zijn verbazing over het uitblijven van een golf gelijkgezinden, blijft Frisch een optimistische profeet van de digitalisering. De Zuid-Afrikaan Aryan Kaganof, die als Ian Kerkhof jarenlang in Nederland werkte, was ooit net zo optimistisch. Hij experimenteerde al vroeg met digitaal filmen, in Naar de klote! (1996) en Shabondama Elegy (1999). Zijn geloof heeft echter een knauw gekregen. ‘Mijn eigen werk zou onmogelijk zijn buiten het digitale domein. Maar ik ben bang dat de digitale revolutie is gekaapt door Hollywood. Hun revolutie is totaal anders dan de mijne. Ik hoopte op een revolutie van authenticiteit; zij doen het tegenovergestelde.’ In Hollywood worden massaal digitale effecten gebruikt, zodat vaak alleen de acteurs nog echt zijn – en soms zelfs dat niet.
Zelf blijft Kaganof digitaal experimenteren. Ook hij maakte een film met een mobiele telefoon, SMS Sugar Man (2006; in december op dvd). Een sterk voorbeeld van een film waarvan de stijl voortkomt uit de digitale techniek. Het beeld draait en kantelt voortdurend, zoals dat bekend is van gsm-filmers, die proberen het onderwerp goed in beeld te houden en pas later, bij het afspelen, merken dat ze de camera hebben gedraaid. Grappig genoeg leidt het niet af – ook niet als het beeld op zijn kop staat. Op een ander moment verandert de belichting drastisch, door de automatische belichtingsmeter van de telefooncamera, als een raam door het beeld glijdt. Kaganof: ‘Mijn cameraman was daar mordicus tegen. Hij wilde de belichting handmatig aanpassen. Maar de technische beperking van zo’n belichtingsmechanisme levert juist geweldige resultaten op. “Professionals” verdedigen altijd de status-quo. Het omarmen van een amateur-esthetiek is daarom ook een daad van politiek verzet.
Nigga video collage, een van Kaganofs digitale remix-experimenten, gemaakt samen met Philipp Virus en Carl Hancock Rux. Een visuele stijl die (nog) niet geschikt is voor speelfilms maar wel voor clubs, galeries, musea en internet.
Liever een clip op Youtube
Kaganofs film Kyodai Makes the Big Time (1992), die hij maakte als Filmacademie-student, was een belangrijke invloed op scenarist Rogier de Blok, een vertegenwoordiger van de volgende generatie. De lowbudget productie motiveerde De Blok als student om ook een speelfilm te maken buiten de lessen om. ‘Je ziet op de Filmacademie allemaal klassiekers, maar pas na het zien van Kyodai dacht ik: dat kunnen wij ook. Als er echt les zou worden gegeven in lowbudget films, al is het maar een paar weken, dan denk ik dat meer mensen die stap zouden durven nemen. Waarom stonden Kerkhof en de lowbudget films van Pim de la Parra en Wim Verstappen niet op de verplichte kijklijst van de Filmacademie?’
Samen met regisseur David Verbeek maakte De Blok, als regieassistent en scenarist, Beat – na Kyodai Makes the Big Time de tweede buitenschoolse speelfilm van Filmacademie-studenten die werd geselecteerd voor het hoofdprogramma van het filmfestival van Rotterdam. Momenteel zit De Blok in Taipei voor het project R U There?, opnieuw samen met Verbeek. De Blok snapt nog steeds niet waarom niet meer studenten tijdens hun opleiding gebruikmaken van de gratis beschikbare apparatuur.
‘Veel van mijn klasgenoten maakten liever een clip die wordt gezien op YouTube dan een speelfilm waar duizend mensen heen gaan – ook al is dat op het Rotterdams filmfestival. Dat begrijp ik ergens ook wel weer. Maar Beat heeft ons, als filmmakers, zeker drie of vier jaar voorsprong opgeleverd. We ontmoeten hier in Taipei nu dagelijks mensen die met onze filmhelden Hou Hsiao-hsien en Edward Yang hebben gewerkt. Als iemand ons dat vijf jaar geleden had voorspeld, hadden we hem voor gek verklaard.’
Recensie in Variety
Maar we hoeven niet meer alleen naar de opleidingen te kijken, nu het aantal in eigen beheer gemaakte speelfilms toeneemt. Zoals de film Nu. van Jan-Willem van Ewijk, vertoond op het Nederlands Film Festival. Van Ewijks verhaal klinkt als een jongensboek. Hij werkte in de City en was daardoor gewend met grote sommen geld om te gaan. Maar om de zoveel tijd overviel hem de vraag: waar ben ik eigenlijk mee bezig? Hij besloot door Zuid-Europa te gaan rijden en kwam in gesprek met een Duitse regisseur. Toen sloeg de vonk over: hij ging filmmaker worden. Opeens moest hij bedelen om geld en vrienden vragen om voor niks mee te doen. Hij wist niks van filmmaken, maar het lukte. Negentig uur filmopnamen en drie pogingen later werd Nu. geaccepteerd door het Nederlands Film Festival. Vervolgens werd hij vertoond op internationale festivals, waar hij werd opgemerkt door het vooraanstaande Amerikaanse filmblad Variety. Die wijdde een positieve bespreking aan de lowbudget productie. De droom was uitgekomen.
‘De digitale techniek heeft mij geholpen filmmaker te worden. Veel sneller en efficiënter dan vroeger mogelijk was, zeker voor mensen van buiten de filmwereld. Maar ik geloof eigenlijk niet dat de digitale techniek ook een inhoudelijke verandering teweegbrengt. Je kan niks met een digitale camera wat niet al kon met die kleine filmcamera’s.’
Filmen als schrijven
De democratisering van de cinema is dus aan de gang – al blijft de inhoudelijke revolutie daar tot nog toe bij achter. Zo snel als pioniers als Frisch en Kaganof de revolutie ooit voor zich zagen, heeft hij zich niet voltrokken. Maar de verandering is desalniettemin onstuitbaar. Kaganof: ‘De hele cultuur wordt ontzettend foto- en filmbewust. Tegelijkertijd is door het gemak en de toegankelijkheid van montage ons vermogen om de werkelijkheid vorm te geven ontzagwekkend geworden. De Nederlandse filosoof Henk Oosterling zegt: “Dasein is design geworden.” We zijn allemaal scheppers geworden, die ons eigen universum vormgeven en manipuleren.’
Grote woorden, die zich in de praktijk vertalen in een eenvoudig feit: iedereen filmt, iedereen bewerkt beeld. Toen Rogier de Blok zeven jaar geleden aan de Filmacademie begon, had hij nog nooit een film gemaakt. Maar, constateert hij: ‘Tegenwoordig hebben nieuwe filmstudenten vaak al honderden filmpjes gemaakt, al is het maar met hun mobieltje. Het kan niet anders of er komt in de toekomst meer talent bovendrijven. Ik vind het goed als een kunstvorm democratiseert, dat filmen zoiets wordt als schrijven. Nu heb je nog minimaal acht ton nodig. Dat gaat veranderen. Binnen tien jaar wint in Cannes een film die voor minder dan veertigduizend euro is gemaakt.’
Als docent op de Amsterdamse Rietveld Academie maakt Cyrus Frisch die studenten van dichtbij mee. ‘Ik heb het gevoel dat we er midden in zitten, in de digitale revolutie. Toen ik studeerde, waren er dertig drempels die je moest nemen om een film te kunnen maken. Die zijn allemaal weg. Als ik tegen mijn leerlingen zeg: maak een filmpje, dan is het de volgende dag klaar. Dat tempo is ongelooflijk. Er zijn natuurlijk altijd maar een paar talenten die overweg kunnen met alle mogelijkheden en kansen. Maar die mogelijkheden zijn de laatste jaren wel verduizendvoudigd. Voor hetzelfde geld verschijnt er morgen een film waarvan je denkt: ik vroeg me al af waar die bleef.’
ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2008) — Can radiation from cell phones affect the memory? Yes — at least it appears to do so in rat experiments conducted at the Division of Neurosurgery, Lund University, in Sweden. Henrietta Nittby studied rats that were exposed to mobile phone radiation for two hours a week for more than a year. These rats had poorer results on a memory test than rats that had not been exposed to radiation.
The memory test consisted of releasing the rats in a box with four objects mounted in it. These objects were different on the two occasions, and the placement of the objects was different from one time to the other.
The actual test trial was the third occasion. This time the rats encountered two of the objects from the first and two of the objects from the second occasion. The control rats spent more time exploring the objects from the first occasion, which were more interesting since the rats had not seen them for some time. The experiment rats, on the other hand, evinced less pronounced differences in interest.
Henrietta Nittby and her, supervisor Professor Leif Salford, believe that the findings may be related to the team’s earlier findings, that is, that microwave radiation from cell phones can affect the so-called blood-brain barrier. This is a barrier that protects the brain by preventing substances circulating in the blood from penetrating into the brain tissue and damaging nerve cells. Leif Salford and his associates have previously found that albumin, a protein that functions as a transport molecule in the blood, leaks into brain tissue when laboratory animals are exposed to mobile phone radiation.
The research team also found certain nerve damage in the form of damaged nerve cells in the cerebral cortex and in the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. Albumin leakage occurs directly after radiation, while the nerve damage occurs only later, after four to eight weeks. Moreover, they have discovered alterations in the activity of a large number of genes, not in individual genes but in groups that are functionally related.
“We now see that things happen to the brains of lab animals after cell phone radiation. The next step is to try to understand why this happens,” says Henrietta Nittby.
She has a cell phone herself, but never holds it to her ear, using hands-free equipment instead.
Wat normaal een dag vol mobile web experiences moest worden, werd een toegangspasje voor VRT’s technologiedag voor programmamakers. Een verleden in televisie hebben en de organisatrice, Eva Moeraert, kennen helpt natuurlijk. Nadat ik het programma in mijn handen kreeg, maakte ik een selectie van zaken die ik absoluut wou zien:
* Jonathan Marks over Cross-Media Thinking
* Wim Seghers over Nieuwe mediatechnologie in TV-formats
* Werner Ramaekers over Channl.tv
* Stef Wouters over Enlarging the experience
* Lode Nachtergaele over Mobile Top Gear
Vooreerst mijn oprechte complimenten aan het adres van Eva voor de opbouw van het programma. Het was een zeer evenwichtig programma met stuk voor stuk geëngageerde sprekers waarbij de ochtend eerder algemeen en laagdrempelig was en laatste sprekers zeer specifiek en vrolijk hun mening uiteenzetten over hoe technologie toegepast dient te worden.
Jonathan Marks, een Brit die voor de Nederlandse omroep werkte, lichtte recente trends in productie & distributie toe. Hij had een duidelijke waarschuwing voor de programmamakers van tegenwoordig. Creatief met diverse media omspringen wordt een noodzaak. Interactie is een sine qua non tegenwoordig en kan zowel positieve als negatieve gevolgen hebben. Zijn besluit was eenvoudig maar zeer duidelijk: De openbare media instituten zullen moeten evolueren naar een aanbieder van Public Broadcast Services. Professionele TV producties kosten eigenlijk veel te veel voor wat de reële kost tegenwoordig is. Een voorbeeld van creatieve invulling voor de huidige televisiemakers is, volgens hem het betrekken van de kijkers om mee content aan te reiken en zelfs te co-creëren. Media wordt een social currency.
Wat Wim Seghers vertelde, was minder vernieuwend maar toch heel concreet en boeiend voor televisiemakers. Hoe hebben kleine camera’s en andere tools een impact op de inhoud, de storyline en vorm van audiovisuele programma’s? 14 concrete toepassingen in TV formats werden toegelicht in amper een half uurtje:
The American presidential election is just over and the world is facing a new leader. But what if you were given the chance to rule the world for a day - what would you do? What would you change?
Dogma Mobile gives you the chance to tell us about your dreams and hopes for the future when we kickstart our first competition with the subject “If I were President…”.
All you have to do is sign in and join the festival, make your dogma vows and go film your story!
The first prize to the best film is 3000 Euro, which is awarded by a professional international jury consisting of:
Isabella Rossellini, famous actress and director of web films (United States) Aryan Kaganof, multi artist and director of mobile films (South Africa)
Ferhan Cook, mobile content expert (United Kingdom)
Jukka-Pekka Laakso, film festival director (Finland)
Søren Hyldgaard, film music composer (Denmark).
Last chance to upload your finished film is december 31st.
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