Auckland: Mobile and Augmented Reality Film Workshops/Journalism Symposium

(and a title so long it reminds me a really must sort out my WP template…)

Oz/NZ Week Three

Many of the contributions to last week’s MINA 2013 Mobile Film Screenings and Symposium explored locative media and geo-located production practices. Carrying on the same theme, for the past week I’ve working alongside iCollab/ELVSS collaborators Thom Cochrane and Laurent Antonczak, with the welcome addition of Vik Narayam from AUT. We’ve been running a series of Mobile and Augmented Reality Film Workshops (#marmw2013) for academics from AUT and beyond.

It’s been a packed week, where we’ve covered many aspects of mobile/locative media creation with guest speakers from around the world dropping in via Google Hangouts. Together we’ve explored collaborative mapping and augmented reality applications (similar to the recent #iCollab project); collaborative movie making using Vyclone; Vine and a range of mobile film apps; Vimeo and YouTube (or rather Vimeo vs. YouTube); mobile film history and aesthetics; mobile filming techniques; mobile audio production tools and practices; and transmedia narratives for audience engagement.

Guest speakers via hangout included:

• Vernon Rive (NZ but currently at Cambridge University in the UK) – as an environmental lawyer, Vernon’s use of social/mobile media in his casework is a real eye-opener as he uses online platforms to highlight community issues in relation to legal cases. This led to Averill Gordon musing on the blurring of boundaries between law and PR if lawyers are using digital media to engage people/raise awareness of campaigns – reminding me of Ron Burnett‘s writing on transdisciplinarity in networked spaces, which I find myself referring to on a regular basis, including in our paper “New Global Learning Cultures: Interdisciplinarity through Networked Technologies“
• “The Swedes” (Sweden, funnily enough) who told us about the ways they’re using mobile and social technologies at Umea University – they’re wonderful, as is Thom’s blog post which tells you more about them…
• Dan Wagner (UNITEC, NZ) who gave us a live demo of filming techniques (from the great outdoors – well the lush grounds of UNITEC at least – complete with a serendipitous tui birdsong accompaniment) particularly focusing on the technical capabilities/limitations of camphone lenses.
• Everybody’s favourite German mobile filmmaker Max Schleser (Massey University, NZ) who gave us an entertaining yet erudite perspective on mobile filmmaking, including a sample of his mobile-mentary “Frankenstorm“, filmed at the Jersey Shore, two month after hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast and caused an estimate of over $71.4 billion in damage.
• Catherine Cronin (Ireland) – a member of the iCollab team, who talked about our international collaborative google mapping project, raising important issues around trust and identity in online networks. It’s always good to hear Catherine’s graceful musings on learning and teaching through social and mobile media…
• Finally, Mark McGuire (University of Otago, NZ) joined us on Friday afternoon and gave a rich overview of digital media practices and possibilities before spending time talking to each participant individually about their projects, which was much appreciated and ensured that people went away brimming with ideas.

While the workshops ran Monday to Friday, we also spent part of the day on Wednesday at the AUT Journalism Symposium, where Thom was presenting on the use of mobile technologies in L+T and I was a panellist (Innovation and The Future) along with Jeremy Rees (Editor-In-Chief, APN-online/NZ Herald) and Richard Pamatatau, expertly mediated by Helen Sissons, where we discussed, debated and occasionally disagreed on the role and impact of social media on mainstream journalism.

Danni Mulrennan, who organised the Symposium (and is doing great stuff with mobile/social in journalism ed.), also gave us a tour of the fantastic journalism facilities at AUT. Myself and Laurent had a great time playing around with the VidyoCast system and making… erm… screen art…

All in all it’s been a packed week, and we’ll be seeing the workshop participants again on 5 and 6 December to view their individual/group projects, which I’m really looking forward to.

Here is the G+ Community for the workshops, which gives an idea of the kind of things we’ve been covering, and for a visual summary see this Flickr set.

MINA 3rd International Mobile Innovation Screening 2013

WEEK TWO: Auckland (post 2 of 3): MINA 3rd International Mobile Innovation Screening 2013

As well as working with some of the ELVSS team on our Mobile Augmented Reality Film Workshops (more of that later), I’m in Auckland as a keynote speaker (along with Prof. Larissa Hjorth from RMIT) at the 3^rd MINA Mobile Creativity and Mobile Innovation Symposium. I’m writing this after the event, which was so rich that I can’t fit everything into one post so I’ll write about the mobile film screenings here and the conference itself in a separate post.

SO, the films: The Symposium itself launched on Wednesday night with the first of three nightly screenings of mobile shorts from around the world. Each screening was held in a darkened theatre with films shown on a large screen. I’ve rarely viewed mobile films in this way before (having generally viewed films on smaller screens/devices – apart from when showing films to students, but then as standalone pieces rather than as a running showreel) and I was struck by the intensity of the experience. Because the films were so short, ranging from something like 15 seconds up to 3 minutes, we were immersed in mobile film in all it’s glory – a real cornucopia of genres, styles and aesthetics which showcased the rich possibilities of pocket cinema brilliantly. I’m more in love with mobile film than ever after this…

The depth and power of emotion in many of the short pieces is quite remarkable. These filmmakers really understand the medium and the art of telling a short story quickly. Interestingly, some of the films were virtually indistinguishable from big budget counterparts in terms of production values as a result of technological shifts (HD camphones) and were not only crisp and clear but also incredibly cinematic due to their framing and sweeping shots (for instance, Wilhelm Jerusalem – Kołacze by Lukasz Krysiewicz). Others retained a more lo-fi aesthetic, including several made using apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic. Max Schleser’s film “Midtown” was filmed on an iPhone 4 with mCAMLITE, the mobile video created with the Time Piles app, edited with the Splice app and the music was produced using the iMaschine app. It’s amazing to think what can be created with the devices in our pockets.

As is practically a defining characteristic of ‘pocket cinema’, the films had a sense of immediacy, intimacy and authenticity. Personal devices are ideally suited for telling personal stories, and the films were so imaginative and varied – the one unifying feature being that they all proved how compelling short-form content can be when the idea/story is really strong. It doesn’t have to take a long time to take people on an emotional journey, as proved by films such as “A Grand Mother” by Candy Elsmore, which conveyed her delight and pride knowing that her grandmother had signed New Zealand’s Suffragette Petition over 100 years ago. The spark and wit of pieces such as Kevin Logan’s “To Have and To Have Not”, and Paul Taylor’s “Digital Trust Hike” were palpable, without detracting from deeper messages. I won’t list all of the films here, but I’ll be searching them out online and if available, will write a follow-up post listing the contributions with hyperlinks (many are not in the public realm as this may compromise their eligibility for festivals etc.).

The final night (Friday) was a showcase of films from other/partner mobile festivals, including SEISFF (Korean Mobile Film Festival), the Cinephone Spanish Mobile Film Festival, the Macedonia Mobile Film Festival, the USA Mobile Film Festival, and the Ohrenblick and Mobile Streifen Festivals (Germany).

There’s something about sitting in a darkened room watching a succession of short-form films on a big screen. It’s intense, compelling, leading the viewer into a Zen-like state. It had me thinking about the Netflix model of releasing an entire series in one go (see Kevin Spacey’s speech here). Increasingly, audiences want to be immersed in a viewing experience, and in the digital age, we can be. However, this isn’t just about gorging on the latest epic (obvious examples being The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black – even though 3 of these were broadcast as regular series, many or even most viewers saved themselves so they could watch the entire thing over a short space of time). In the case of the MINA 2013 screenings, we experienced the depth and immersion in a much shorter time period, ideally suited to short form content.

As you can tell, the MINA screenings were truly inspiring. They made me want to go away and start creating there and then – and judging by the conversations I was having many others felt the same. These screenings were invaluable in terms of opening the mind to what’s possible – vertical and square formats, durations as short as 15 seconds, a huge variety of styles and genres – it’s a brilliant exercise in freeing the mind from the constraints of industry-led convention. I’m looking forward to showing the MINA 2013 DVD to my students next semester as I think it’s a powerful way to experience mobile film, and I hope that it will really open up their minds and get them thinking about what’s possible, pushing them to create in new ways.

Here’s the MINA 2013 Showreel as a taster – and some stills here.

Some more of the films:

• The Girl with The Red Balloons: Nathalie Giraud + Timothee Corteggiani
• Break: Benoit Labourdette
• Sliver of Necessity: Marsha Berry
• Sincerely Yours: Anders Weberg
• North – A Korsakow/Instagram film by Patrick Kelly (interactive)

ELVSS13 – State of Being

The ELVSS collaboration/community of practice is now in it’s 3^rd year. Since #ELVSS12’s excursion into internationally collaborative mobile filmmaking on the topic of global sustainability, we’ve taken a different turn – and the community has extended as we’ve now welcomed the University of Bogota (Colombia) into the mix.

This year (#ELVSS13), over 100 learners from the UK (Salford), New Zealand, Colombia and France were brought together to further explore creative practice through mobile filmmaking.

Their brief?

To work in international teams in order to co-create the visual backdrop for Warwick Blair’s 8-act opera which was premiered at the Tete-a-Tete Festival at the Hammersmith Riverside in London:

“State of Being is an inspiring, sometimes harrowing, journey through the human psyche. The opera presents a powerful series of emotional states of being that depict an individual’s struggle for survival and redemption. The opera interpolates live and recorded music with video and theatre to produce a compelling synaesthetic experience.”

In order to produce the video element, the learners were divided into 8 teams, and once again had to negotiate not only time and space, but also a challenging creative brief. Each team was assigned an act and given the ‘soundtrack’ with a one-word descriptor (real right-brain stuff). They then had to produce the visual backdrop for their act, entirely filmed and edited on mobile devices.

This meant that learners from across disciplines and cultures had to negotiate not only the creative process, but also meaning, e.g. What is truth? How can we represent truth visually? As you can imagine, this is extremely challenging not only from a organisational/temporal perspective (as we had even more timezones to deal with this time around), but even more so from an aesthetic perspective.

As with #ELVSS12, the process was exhilarating, scary, frustrating and at times quite painful – but WE DID IT! Warwick Blair’s State of Being was premiered in August, accompanied by a stunning visual backdrop that had been co-created by over 100 students from across the globe. Congratulations to all involved!

You can see the final output here.

Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity

“An interface can be a powerful narrative device. And as we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data, we have an opportunity, and maybe even an obligation, to maintain [our] humanity and tell some amazing stories.” (Aaron Koblin)

Not sure how I managed to miss this when it came online back in May 2011 – but thankfully came across it this weekend: a brilliant presentation from the artist Aaron Koblin, who specialises in data and digital technologies, using real-world and community-generated data. You may be familiar with his work from The Johnny Cash Project and the Wilderness Downtown music video. In this talk, he presents these along with other projects – all stunning examples of crowdsourcing, collaboration and visualisation. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Learning through frustration – ELVSS12

We bring you… Entertainment Lab for the Very Small Screen

I love this project. I feel very lucky to be part of a committed team, working on something that is not funded – a genuine Community of Practice where our passion for mobile filmmaking has brought us together in an international collaboration which spans disciplines, levels… and timezones.

“I Need Nothing – a nearly useless odyssey” and “Sound”

Loving this video from Cãoceito, which I came across thanks to Maria Popova (@brainpicker), who says:
“Charming music video concept, where every lyric line of the song becomes an album cover”

Another nice find from @brainpicker is “Sound” by… SoundCloud! They say “We love sound. Hear from sound experts and friends of SoundCloud why sound is so important to the way we connect with the world. Enjoy.

Brunkeberg Tunnel

Mobile Films: Learning through discontinuity

Once again, our students did fantastically well this year through generating their own content – this time, making short films shot entirely on mobile phones 🙂

Audio and Video Technology students worked in groups to produce short practice-based films using the devices in their pockets, developing imaginative and innovative filming techniques through exploring the creative affordances and constraints of the technology. Groups were responsible for managing their own projects through wikis, which were also used to document the overall research and production processes and present the final project report, alongside online ‘making of’ photo-diaries which linked to the wikis, offering  a rich insight into their creative and technical processes. The films were presented in a mini ‘film festival’; full assignments submitted as QR codes which linked to their work online. Through using multiple media across a range of online platforms the students immersed themselves in the technologies as mobile and networked learners and content producers.