presents

Freestyle Love Supreme:

Purpose Party for New Orleans

VideoVoices Project




Freestyle Love Supreme and COMIX are throwing a Purpose Party to raise funds for the New Orleans VideoVoices Project! Join Tony Award-winners Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bill Sherman plus Chris Jackson, Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan, Utkarsh Amudkar, Wade Allain-Marcus and Anthony Veneziale along with special guests for an evening of amazing hip-hop comedy for a great cause. Directed by Thomas Kail.

We will be having some awesome silent auction items up for bid (ITH Tickets and more!) and it’s going to be an excellent show.

The New Orleans VideoVoices Project works to build a groundswell of voices for change using community media, inspiring hard hit communities to tell their stories.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 8th
@ COMIX COMEDY CLUB
355 West 14th Street
7 pm and 9:30 pm

Tickets: $50 Advance / $60 (day of)
Students: $20 Advance / $25 (day of)


www.comixny.com

The New Orleans VideoVoices Project is a  REACH NOLA, VideoVoice Collective and community partnership.

For more information please visit:
www.video-voice.org or www.reachnola.org

-Freestyle Love Supreme

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• Friday, August 22, 7:pm at Ashe Cultural Center, New Orleans
• Saturday, August 23, 5:pm (previously scheduled 3:pm screening has been changed) at Zeitgeist Multimedia Arts Center, New Orleans

Executive Producer Matt Wisdom and Digital Filmmaker Tim Ryan hope to help convey that vision in a new short Internet documentary about recent successes within New Orleans public charter schools. In addition to an insiders look into what makes public Charter schools successful, the short film addresses the impact current public school reform will have on the future of New Orleans.

Moderated by NBC’s “Today Show” anchor and “Dateline” host, Ann Curry, the panel will discuss the impact activist journalists, filmmakers, writers and artists have had in ending human rights abuses and how we can refocus our energy to address the present crisis in Sudan.

Please come with your questions, observations and ideas to contribute to this important discussion.

EVENT DETAILS

When: Tuesday, February 19. 2008, 6:00 pm
Where: Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge
40 Washington Square South, New York, NY
FREE, but please register by emailing Kelly Ryan at: kellyr@juris.law.nyu.edu
Reception to follow

PARTICIPATING PANELISTS

Professor Ben Kiernan, Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Professor of International and Area Studies at Yale University, author of numerous books on genocide, most recently Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur.

Marie de la Soudiere, former Director of the Children’s Unit at International Rescue Committee (1997-2007), she has worked with UNICEF, UNHCR in war torn countries throughout the world and acted as a consultant to numerous NGOs on child refugee issues.

Susan MacLaury, executive producer of “War/Dance,” 2008 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature and executive director of a non-profit organization called Shine Global, which is dedicated to ending the exploitation and abuse of children worldwide.

Sam Gregory, Program Director of WITNESS, is a video producer, trainer, and human rights advocate. In 2005 he was the lead editor on Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and Activism (Pluto Press), and in 2007 he lead the development of the curriculum for WITNESS’ first ever Video Advocacy Institute. He is on the Board of the US Campaign for Burma, and the Tactical Technology Collective.

December 17 marks Martyrs’ Day in Bahrain, a day which pays tribute to past victims of state violence. During last month’s demonstration, Mr. Ali Jassim Mekki was killed, and a wave of protests and brutal arrests followed. Eight human rights defenders remain in detention. Reports claim those in detention have been subjected to physical and psychological ill-treatment and torture. Please click on the HUB link above to take action on behalf of human rights defenders at risk in Bahrain.

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!

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.

New media offer an incredibly unique and new opportunity to address our current public health crisis. There are countless examples of this already happening with enormous success around the world. Sharing videos about condoms online can educate people in India about HIV, despite the mass media ban on such conversations. Blogging about outbreaks can get information about deadly epidemics to the World Health Organization well before a national government would admit to having a problem that might discourage tourist from coming to their coasts. Social networking sites can facilitate community organizing and mobilization of diasporas, such as Mexican migrant workers, that would otherwise not have the numbers to be a political force to demand healthy working conditions or access to medical treatment.

Caricia Catalani

First and foremost, your action keys are no longer the same. So say goodbye to (command) T for a cut. In order to make a cut you now have to select the clip to the point where you want to make the “cut” and then go to your edit tab and select Split Clip. It looks like this:

As you can see the Split Clip option is not lit in this picture and that’s because this version of iMovie will only allow you to do that with video clips and not photo clips. The movie that I was working on was entirely made of photos from my iPhoto Library.

There is a really good tutorial page on the apple site and that link is here: iMovie Tutorials

You can find a plethora of little quicktimes on how to use editing techniques, lay down multiple audio tracks, sharing your movies, etc. Oh, and there is one way around moving your dialogue if you want to go through the extra work: you can make a sound file of your dialogue and then export it to iTunes. Then, when you have it saved in your iTunes library you can import it back into your timeline as a separate sound file (it will appear as a green sound line in your editing window of iMovie) and then move it to wherever you want. Just remember to adjust the volume on your video clip so that it’s not doubling or echoing the same sound.

Finally, I tried to take an iMovie file and then burn a DVD of it using iDVD. This proved harder than it should have been. There is some confusion as to what iDVD considers your media and so iMovie asks you to go to the Share tab in your top menu bar and then select Media Browser (should look like this):

And then when you select that another menu will pop up and that looks like this:

This menu gives you options to save your project as either tiny, mobile, medium or large (corresponding to how large you want the final format to be and it gives you handy little correspondence icons). Then, when you have it saved as one of these sizes and stored in a place you’ll remember open iDVD and add your movie:

You can do this several ways but I like to get into the menu drop box mode of iDVD and then click on the little + symbol at the very bottom left corner of the page, a new box will pop open on the drop box page and then you simply drag your saved file of the movie into that new box and there you go!

Blip.tv is an online video sharing site for videobloggers, podcasters and Internet TV producers. This year, Blip.tv was rated the #1 online video sharing site by PC World. What makes Blip.tv stand out from the crowd is its superior video feeding (meaning that it loads really quickly for viewers) and its revenue share standards. If you are willing to accept advertisements on your video page (which is optional), Blip shares the profit with you 50/50. Advertising is the only proven profit-maker in the online video world and so, unlike the Veoh standard which relies on user pay-per-view, it is pretty certain that video creators will benefit from this deal. Blip is very open about the fact that they do not claim rights to your creative work and that they cannot sell your work for a profit without your express consent. To add to this, video producers will like the fact that viewing quality is very high, but still not as good as DVD, like you may be able to get through a .Mac membership.

Other benefits of Blip, according to Blip, are:

• Fair Terms. We believe that you should own the product of your hard work. When you upload to blip.tv you give us the right to distribute your video until and unless you delete it from our systems. You don’t have to give us any kind of exclusive rights, and we won’t sell your work or advertising on your work without your express, specific permission.
• Direct to TV. We’re sending our top shows directly to the television set with Internet video on demand. And that’s just the start. We believe that your show should be indistinguishable from a show on a broadcast network in terms of how people find and watch it. We’re working hard to make this happen.
• Multiple Formats. You shouldn’t have to choose between great quality Flash video and compatibility with iTunes. Your videos should work everywhere, no question. That’s why blip.tv supports every video format under the sun, from Flash 8 (much higher quality than most Flash video) to Quicktime (for the all-important iTunes) to DivX and 3gp (we think cell phones are cool, too).

Blip.tv Case Example

For nearly 25 years, the organization MADRE has been fighting for health, education, food sovereignty, and long-term solutions to the crises of women around the world. Now you can watch their video, see some of the results that MADRE has created, and join their effort. The video, as you will see, loads very quickly and the picture is high-quality although it is likely that the video was produced with basic digital storytelling software. Through Blip’s syndication options, you can post MADRE’s video to your own website or blog. MADRE opted not to have advertisements on their video page, so you can enjoy an unencumbered view of their work. If they had opted to include ads, MADRE would receive 50% of the profits earned by Blip.tv.

How do I use it?

One of the best things about Blip.tv is that they have a Learning Center, that walks you through the basics about uploading videos and using Blip.tv. As a part of this Learning Center, Blip provides mini-training videos on video production and online sharing by experts, like this one:

“We’re not video experts,” said one project participant, “but we do know what we’re talking about.”

“No, You don’t know how we feel” - A film facilitated by Insight. UK, 26mins. This video was created in collaboration with kids in England who are facing the serious illness of a parent. Their film, funded by Macmillan Cancer Relief, is now being distributed to families, professionals and schools.

Insight is a UK/France based organisation pioneering the use of Participatory Video as a tool for empowering individuals and communities. Insight’s Participatory Video methods value local knowledge, build bridges between communities and decision-makers and enable people to develop greater control over their own development and the decisions affecting their lives.

’If you announce a date a day in advance, the army and police show up’ and they ’beat the hell out of you,’ Dr. Alvi told the show. So he concluded it made more sense to organize very brief protests through telephone calls and other communication channels. At an appointed time, the protesters show up, pull out signs and shout slogans demanding an end to the state of emergency. After 10 minutes, they put away their signs and leave before the authorities can interfere with them.

’These flash protests are basically citizens protesting in a very smart way,’ Alvi said. So far the largest protest attracted around 50 protesters, who were quickly joined by random passers-by on the street. Pedestrians, though, have been somewhat puzzled by the brevity of each event.

’It’s almost called a guerilla protest,’ he added.

The media could be an effective way of disseminating this information and stemming the tide of this deadly epidemic. However, educating the public on such controversial subjects as safe sex is very challenging and has been made difficult by social and legal limitations on what can be televised in India.

So, when I saw this video on YouTube, I knew that it was an enormous win for participatory media and for the fight against AIDS.

And, did I mention, it is also hilariously entertaining. If you like bollywood and you like public health, you will love this music video.

–Caricia Catalani

Most importantly, Insight found that such work is most effective when funding resources allow for a project’s life to extend beyond a minimum period of a few days or weeks, and participants are able to develop a videomaking agenda without the interference of funders or program managers. Co-Founder Chris Lunch argues,

“Without the pressure of producing predefined outcomes, the facilitator of a creative project can open up to the unexpected. Of course the best results occur if you can take your time when the focus is on the process, not the product.”

As such, most of the videos produced through these efforts are not made for widespread viewing, but rather small and targeted audiences. However, the following video is online:

Woodland Peace - UK, - A 10 minute film by Nick Cottingham, a highly creative person living with schizophrenia in Oxford UK about techniques people use to generate positive space in the mind. Mr. Cottingham hopes this film will be the first of a series of participatory videos made by mental health service users & Insight, promoting and spreading personal therapeutic tools for finding peace. This film is also available through the Mental Healthcare Trust.