A DOC'S JOURNAL by Scott Solary

Here's a couple videos we did over the past few days to test the viral waters. Enjoy!

Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones are selling videos of themselves "chatting" about their sexual encounters with Bill Clinton. Huh? What else could this kind of wierdness need? A commercial, of course.

Buy them all at $1.99 per download at their website: www.genniferandpaula.com

I cut this one today in response to E.D. Hill, host of the freshly canceled Fox News show, America’s Pulse, connecting presidential candidate, Barack Obama’s hand gesture to terrorism.

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MobLogic took a crew down to Georgia to get a first-hand look at the Death Penalty and the execution of Samuel David Crow.

We've posted five shows so far, three of those were today(!) and we'll continue to post multiple shows daily through the week! They've sparked a great conversation on our site. I encourage everyone to come be a part of a very important issue and a landmark event in web video.

Here they are:

Execution Day: What Would You Do?

Lindsay Vlogging to the Airport

Georgia Covers the Death Penalty?

For or Against in Georgia?

and an awesome inerview with the Southern Center for Human Rights President and Lead Counsel, Stephen Bright

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This is an awesome piece the regional network, SNN was running through the weekend of our screenings:

Here's an inciteful podcast from Noralil Ryan Fores who interviewed us for her excellent site ShortEnd Magazine: thoughts on independent film. To listen to the interview please click here: shortendmagazine.com/content/view/536/71
or find ShortEnd Magazine on iTunes.

From the Good Hard Working People blog:
She asked some really great questions, not only about All God's Children and our process, but also about other projects and our thoughts on documentaries and changes in that market in general.

We talk rather candidly about some of the obstacles and frustrations in making this film. It makes it sound a bit worse than the experience really was. At first I wasn't sure if it's such a good idea to talk about the struggles, because it may make us or our film look bad. But then I think that it's important to be honest with other makers and the audience: it's not all just fun or easy and we all go through difficult times with our projects. It's probably one of the bigger frustrations when you think to everyone else it's a piece of cake and you may be the only one struggling.

When talking about how "ill-prepared" we were or how difficult it was to conduct the interviews with the abuse survivors because of how emotional it would be for us, I missed to emphasize that a lot of the difficulty came from realizing that this was causing pain to the interviewees and that we were lacking the psychological training to know if we were handling this and their stories well.

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Lindsay makes journalism personal. There's a great conversation happening on the comment board at MobLogic. After you watch the show, read Adam Elend's, one of ML's executive producers, blog post about the episode.

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I got my hands real dirty on the edit for this one and I'm very proud. We sent 4 cameras out on Wednesday that shot about 7 hours total The editors had selects picked by late Thursday morning. Roman, Adam and I pulled a 24 hour shift to get all the best B-roll into the cut before posting the show. I hope you enjoy it. There's lots of love in this one.

The follow-up episode is sure to spark a heated conversation about the boundaries of journalism. It'll run Sunday and Monday, so watch the show and join the conversation at www.moblogic.tv

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Our first interview on MobLogic and it's with the superstar blog aggregator and founder of the Huffington Post (the blog aggregator I'm referring to)!

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Sean Smith's animation talents really shine in our first animated episode of MobLogic. Our newest editor, Nick Paley, assisted.

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One of my favorite political online shows, "Political Lunch" showed me some love last week by listing the mash-up videos as their #1 story. I sent him a link to the videos through FaceBook. I love when the love goes around. Almost makes me believe in Valentine's Day again. Not really. Here's the show. Watch to the end:

Here's the URL for the YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/YouChooseCandidates

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The first of hopefully many more projects to come out from under our studio roof. Sign up and receive updates: www.moblogic.tv

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Our friends Clark Caldwell and Miles Kahn produced a video in the ECNY Awards this year. It's from the hilarious mind of Dave Hill. Check it out and VOTE for them. It's in the Best Short Comedic Film category with the title, "Little Michael Jackson and Me".

By following Dave Hill's links, I ran into this masterpiece of mash-up. WOW!

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I first saw the Hilary video on The Peeled Apple blog, where Amanda Elend gives a great feminist take on Hilary's "moment of weekness."

Before I watched the video, I thought this was a contrived move to gracefully coast into the VP seat, but after watching it, I felt she really showed a human side. A side that no man could show without being considered weak and feminine; ultimately blowing his chances of winning. She may have blown her chances as well or done exacly the opposite. Only time will tell. Although I still hold her vote for the war against her, this cast her and the Presidential role in a different light. What a concept: to have a President that actually displays human emotions. Of course, the skeptic in me can't escape the thought that this too may have been a PR move. Judge for yourself:

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Lindsay Campbell, our big-hearted host of Wallstrip, spearheaded the "Wallstrip 5k Challenge." Despite its marathon-like title, it's really Web 2.0 philanthropy at its best. Just in time for the holidays:

Invest in something that will always have positive returns! We've collected 12 amazing teacher-initiated projects which aim to teach students about money laundering...er...sorry, money and its many uses. Please help us meet our goal by the end of 2007. CLICK HERE

From their site:
DonorsChoose.org is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.

Here's our interview with the sites founder.

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Karina Longworth, author of the Spout blog and New TeeVee's, feature series, "Karina's Capsule", had this great analysis of the "Speechless" videos being hosted on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog over the Thanksgiving weekend. "[...] Speechless, a series of short videos starring A-list talent that was produced and conceived by B-list talent and designed to promote United Hollywood’s position by dramatizing the impact of the writers’ strike on the art form."

The "Speechless" videos achieve many things on many levels and are definitely worth a quick look. The series has an exclusive deal with Deadline Hollywood, so I couldn't embed the videos. Instead, I decided to do my part of the blog chain and provide links to all them below:

#1: Holly Hunter

#11: Laura Linney

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I seem to have leftt out.. ahem... overlooked some key points to the Hulu launch.

1. Besides NBC content, Hulu will carry News Corp.'s content as well.
2. Hulu will be serving as the licensed distributor of said content.

This second point was the major discrepancy in my post. Hulu can, and surely will, distribute this content to the likes of AOL, YouTube, MSN et. al.

If I had only read SILICON ALLEY INSIDER first.

The article sums it up on my side:
Although we are slightly more optimistic about Hulu's chances to build a profitable, stand-alone business, we're still skeptical. Hulu may eventually have some negotiating leverage as a third-party aggregator, but in the meantime, NBC and News Corp hold most of the content and most of the cards. The biggest problem? There are dozens of cooks in the Hulu kitchen--and not enough food.

Matt Dentler started started a conversation right off the bat on his BLOG.

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So I didn't get to see David Cronenberg's latest film, "Eastern Promises" in his home town of Toronto, but I did get to see him at the beautiful DGA Theater here in New York tonight.

Although it's very hard to tell from the picture, he sat and talked quite a while afterward. Kinda looks like Bill Maher talking to Sigmund Freud.

I liked the movie, but I wasn't as impressed as I hoped I would be. It just never quite reached the tension I think it was trying for. Great performances, story, direction and effects though. All very Cronenberg.

I really wish I could embed this video of a Cockatoo dancing, but alas, not everyone is into sharing. Too bad, because it's simply amazing. But since I can't here's a still to tempt you -

And the link: CLICK HERE!

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As expected I was unable to see any more films due to shooting and editing. The timing has just been bad. The plus side is that the films I wanted to see will be coming to New York's screens and soon after, Netflix.

Back in Brooklyn, Luci has diligently finished digitizing all the footage for her upcoming doc, "All's Well and Fair." Somehow while attaining that feat, she is also keeping ReelerTV alive and well amongst all the outlets (too many to link to) . She's the epitome of work ethic.

I was still exhausted today from Thursday's night late edit . I finally got to sleep around 4am, but had to be up and taping the Scott Hicks interview by 10am. You can see the results of that interview in episode 2 just below this post.

There won't be a show on Sunday, but we'll return on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to wrap up the festival coverage. Not to take away from the first two, but I am especially excited about these last 3 episodes. You won't want to miss them.

My exhaustion was compounded on Friday by a couple of parties. The great people at Renew Media, namely our friend, Brian Newman, had an early celebration. There, I was able to catch up with a few people I haven't seen in a while, namely film critic, Anthony Kaufman, Florida Film Festival's Programming Director, Matthew Curtis and NewFest's programmer Basil Tsiokos.

For you cigar fans, there was a vast display of Cubans for sale on the patio. I took this picture for my cigar-loving friends to salivate over:

After a quick bite to eat, I walked to the Control party. I was expecting to hear lots of Joy Division and New Order, but, alas just the typical 80's party music. Despite how tired I was, I was glad I went. I made a handful of new friends. Doing so much work at home lately, it was great to be able to get out and socialize. I also don't go to too many film events in New York, so I was happy to be able to see everybody face to face in the offline world.

Regarding my review of "Captain Mike Across America" check this post on the Toronto blog site that has nothing but praise. Biased?

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We are making yet even MORE changes to the film. Or at least, we will be soon. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a video tape full of Super 8 footage of children at Mamou!! This is what we feel our film has been so desperately needing and we can't wait to integrate it into the cut. We hope it will really liven up some of the interviews and replace some of the static photography.

Having migrated to Final Cut Pro from Avid, I feel lost going back to the interface. It feels so archaic and clunky. Avid requires you to click so many times before you can do a task, whereas Final Cut, you can one-click the same task most of the time. I really don't know how I ever did it and liked it so much.

I feel like I've been out of the doc scene for a while since I've been concentrating so much on online video production. I just came across this mention in an indieWIRE article from March -

Here's an excerpt:
And let's not forget about some of the fine doc-focused blogs housed right here on indieWIRE, including Steve Rosenbaum's Docu-Blog/Steve's POV. Although there is a lot about documentary film in the blog, Rosenbaum also offers his unique take on everything from Web 2.0 to the fate of television as we know it. Amy King, Associate Director of SILVERDOCS, provides her own fresh perspective on the world of documentary film on King Blog, managing to incorporate welcome doses of humor while writing about festivals, seminars, and things in the news of interest to doc makers and lovers.

Sounds right in line with our plans. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

i was thrilled to read this article and quite honored to be mentioned along side all these other bloggers. It gives me all the more reason to commit to updating more often.

And here's something funny:

Posted by Scott Solary at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you don't see the right column-->>
CLICK ON THE "MAIN" LINK ABOVE TO GO TO THE HOME PAGE.

The last tweaks (for now) are finally on the blog just in time for Monday. While you're here, leave a comment letting me know what you think.

CHECK OUT THE NEW FEATURES:

- Video introduction featuring me. Be kind.
- I've got links! Click around. Be my friend.
- We've got shows. Shows from the past and more to come in the near future!! Click 'em. Watch 'em. Let them entertain you.
- Subscription services. RSS or email updates delivered directly to your inbox. Never open your browser again!
- MyBlogLog. Something fun for all you fans of blogs. Check it out!
- Recent posts. In case you don't feel like scrolling.
- Look! I've got categories now. Want to read only about my personal faves? Now you can.
- Search! For what? I don't know.
-Technorati tag cloud. This is what the people are looking for. Are you?
- A lengthy Archive list by the month. Not sure I'm going to keep this here. I'm definitely going to shorten it.
- That's right. A Creative Commons License. It's cool. Read about it. Use it. Support it.

and more features to come... I just have to figure out more secrets of the code.

Big thanks go out to Brent, my code guru friend who helped put the icing on the cake! He taught me some killer tricks and cleaned up my wretched code. He did it all for a few homemade brownies and some Gorilla coffee. My kind of friend. This was light work for him and he caught a mean sugar/caffeine buzz in the process. He and his wife, Teresa, have their own web design company. They custom build and design all their stuff. Tell them I sent ya and he'll work for you too (he'll have to charge $$ though). Check 'em out: Mimo y Mima

I hope to really start utilizing this blog as it was meant to be used. No promises, but I'm going to really try to update more frequently and work as much vlogging in as I can stand (it still pains me to be in front of the camera). We were joking earlier that maybe I'll cast an actor to play the part of me for the vlog stuff. Stay tuned.

Oh, and I promise to fix that whole "MAIN" link thing too. Sorry about that.

Posted by Scott Solary at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't know who said that, but by making some simple changes in my life, I've been reminded of it's power to get the creative thoughts flowing again.

artist: Tommy Kane

For the past three days, I have been fumbling my way through remodeling the blog. Despite all the problems and frustrations, I'm so much happier with the new look and feel. The page is so much more open and airy than before. I've wanted to shed the confines of the text boxes and color scheme of the old blog for a very long time, but in order to do that, I would have to venture into the treacherous waters of HTML and CSS code (read previous post). This weekend, I jumped in head first wearing concrete shoes and what you see are the results.

Perhaps the biggest change is that I put myself in front of the camera and posted it online for the world to see (if they were only watching). When I had to decide on which picture I would use in the right-hand column, I figured why just have another headshot? Why not make my headshot speak? The results are waiting for you to click on to the right. If you haven't already, check out my video introduction.

I have a new found admiration for all the vloggers who make it look so easy. I thought it was a unique opportunity to introduce myself and the freshly painted blog with a video. Kind of like a Grand Re-Opening of sorts.

I don't want to make any claims, but I haven't ever seen someone do this before. Usually it's one or the other: a text blog or a video blog. I'm hoping to find the time to integrate the two. And to do it often.

Posted by Scott Solary at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the past 2 days, I've been trying to undo an attempt to spruce up my blog. It was a disaster! HTML and I are mortal enemies. What you see around this post is the result of battling both HTML's unreadable language (I know, it's not THAT hard) and CSS's proprietary nature.

I consulted all my closest sources (thanks Jimmy, Stu and Brent) and even put a question out into the LinkedIn cosmos, but to no real avail. You would think that there would be endless posts by bloggers using Movable Type ("the most difficult blogging software to customize") with template code and style sheets, but NO. Just the opposite is true. What there is is a lot of inside speak about tags and headers and such. You have to have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS to understand and perhaps if I did, I would've had this thing back up and sailing in an hour instead of the 2 days it took me.

Then I finally came across this STYLE GENERATOR! It took a few tries of customizing to get the CSS that worked, but this is the "code generating savior" to all people like me who find HTML a daunting enigma.

(IMPORTANT: Before you go changing your code, open a Stickie, Word Pad or Doc and paste the old code into it. If I would have done this, I would not have been in this situation in the first place. Once you have all the code in a safe place, do what you want, because you can always go back! )

Once you have generated the code, paste it into the template called "STYLE SHEET". Check all your templates, Go to the pull-down menu and "REFRESH TEMPLATES" & "REBUILD TEMPLATES". I don't think both steps are necessary, but that's what I did. I then clicked "REBUILD SITE". Refresh the blog and voila!! A "new" blog.

After that worked, it was time to try and tweak the HTML again. The "Monthly Archive" was above the "Recent Posts" and "Categories" was after that and there was no field to insert a picture. I opened the MAIN INDEX template and found the blocks of HTML that mentioned the aforementioned sections and started re-arranging (cut and paste) them in the order I preferred. The "Search" field seems to hold all the info for the column and couldn't be moved easily without messing the whole column up, so I left it there. I also decided to paste the code that MT generates when you upload a picture with the "Search" code. It worked!!

I hope this info helps others like me who are not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination.

** obviously some of this has changed since I first publish this post. The search box doesn't hold the info for the column. The column info was just directly above it. Your best bet is to have someone that can come over and decipher the code. This will work if you find yourself in a bind like I was. Good luck.

Posted by Scott Solary at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)