This weekend, we held our world premiere of “In Harmony” in the very New Orleans neighborhood that gave it voice and vision.  It was amazing!   Over 150 supporters, many of which starred in the film, came to watch it on the big screen at Ashe Cultural Arts Center and Zeitgeist Multimedia Arts Center.

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In true New Orleans style, we started with an incredible food, mostly provided by our friends at J’Anitas BBQ.  I am a big fan of the movie, of course, but this pulled pork, brisket, and bourbon bbq sauce was nearly the best thing about the evening!

After the screening, we held an awards ceremony for the filmmakers.  Eleven participants were awarded certificates of recognition for achievement in community documentary filmmaking and their own digital video cameras.

Both evenings culminated in a fiery discussion about how we can move forward on the issues that neighbors care about, including housing, schools, and economic empowerment.

It was an incredible weekend!  We look forward to sharing the film with all of you through online viewing, DVDs, and screenings in more locations during the next months.

As our New Orleans VideoVoice Project enters the post-production phase, we are discovering that there are countless ways to coordinate editing. When we first set up our program plan, Anthony and I proposed that the community participants might play a kind of director role. They would select footage, collaboratively develop the storyline, identify key characters and their traits, and then give many rounds of feedback on rough versions of the final film. Although this path might have some benefits, particularly in the way of saving post-production time, there are some real draw backs. Michele Otis, a videographer and community leader in the New Orleans VideoVoice Project wrote this very thorough argument on the importance of building community capacity to use editing software and, ultimately, to edit films independently of professional outside editors.

Hello All,

My name is Michele Burton-Oatis. I am a participant in the Video Voice Collective in New Orleans. The reason I’m sending you all this e-mail, is to address my concerns about the editing process of the documentary. It is my understanding, that the editing will primarily take place outside of New Orleans. And that we the participants are to identify parts of the films that we have shot and state what we would like to see. At that point, Anthony will then take our selections, edit them together and then submit the film’s rough edit for our approval. If my assessment of the editing component of the project is correct, I must express my concerns. The best way for me to do this is to use what I have read from your web site.

“Train them to produce their own media around health and resilience issues that are important to them and their neighborhoods in which they live.”

If this quote is true, then editing is a major component in the process. Each participant has taken the time to go out into the community and shoot things that were important and sometimes very dear to them. This gives you the VIDEO. The editing is how we will express our VOICES. By not fully investing the time to teach us the techniques as stated in your proposal and allowing this film to truly reflect what we have learned would be an insult to our commitment.

“Forming a partnership among these disparate groups is a community-building process that results in collective envisioning, filming, editing, and dissemination of films.”

If this is no longer a goal in this project, are we not just test subjects. If that is the case, than I see little that makes this project and the film any different than the others of New Orleans.

“Freire argued that every individual, no matter how “ignorant” or consumed in the “culture of silence”, is capable of looking critically at the world through collective dialogue with others.”

This statement is very powerful. I truly thank all of you for this project. Because of my involvement, I view the rebirth of my city very differently. I am invested in this project and my community. That is why I along with any other participant who desires, deserves to have every opportunity to gain the knowledge and hands on experience to complete what we have set out to accomplish.

I ask you to consider the most important part of this project if you all are truly interested in hearing our voices.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Michele J. Burton-Oatis

Check out these new research articles, particularly the first one, for some very helpful info about the way that digital structures, policies, and culture impact its use and its utility for advancing public health and wellbeing.

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. A new SSRC edited volume on culture, technology, and power in the digital era.  The book comes out of the Culture, Creativity, and Information Technology program, which focused on changing forms of cultural agency and the changing roles of cultural institutions.  Full text available free online (and for sale!)

The Bellagio Global Dialogues on Intellectual Property, or, How to Build an International Policy Research Field.  A report on Rockefeller Foundation IP Policy Initiatives, 2001-2006.

Although we’d normally recommend a slightly more sophisticated camera for community projects, like the Panasonic GS35 (+/- $250, 1-chip, audio input), Pure Digital Technologies is offering an amazing deal to nonprofits on their Flip Video YouTube Camcorder.

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One of my favorite participatory documentary films is Maquilapolis, a film by Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre with the participation of factory workers along the US-Mexico border. I saw it just this year and I was so impressed with the films’ integration of participant footage with very technically sophisticated helicopter shots and artsy scenes.

To create Maquilapolis, the filmmakers brought together factory workers in Tijuana and community organizations in Mexico and the U.S. to collaborate on a film that depicts globalization through the eyes of the women who live on its leading edge. The factory workers who appear in the film have been involved in every stage of production, from planning to shooting, from scripting to outreach. This collaborative process breaks with the traditional documentary practice of dropping into a location, shooting and leaving with the “goods,” which would only repeat the pattern of the maquiladora itself. The process embraces subjectivity as a value and a goal. It merges artmaking with community development to ensure that the film’s voice will be truly that of its subjects.

The filmmaker’s ongoing commitment to the community participants and organizations that they work with led them to hold an intensive video editing workshop just this year. Each participant created a short 3-5 min documentary about their life histories. They will have them posted on the site soon!

In September of this year, I joined a team of graduate students from various disciplines at UC Berkeley to learn about participatory new media and to engage in collective action. As journalists, environmental justice advocates, mass communications specialists, information theory researchers, and public health researchers, we brought a lot of perspectives to the table. Our professors Howard Rheingold (a renowned new media philosopher and collective action maven) and Xiao Qiang (a public scholar and activist blogger from China) led us through many months of new media bootcamp.

After months of reading, analyzing, discussing, blogging, and tagging, we are happy to announce our final project: The Participatory Media Guidebook.

We created the Participatory Media Guidebook to introduce a range of participatory media tools for collective action to activists and social justice organizations around the world. The guide discussed what tools to use and when to use them. It is a wiki, so it will always be evolving and updating. Please participate by adding your own expertise on how to use new media to change the world.

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