Afternoon

// Margaret Drain, WGBH. Recruited 200 Native Americans and provided them phones with video recording and editing capability. Heard Musuem (Phoenix) is their partner. We Shall Remain (American Experience) will post the films online. Using the phones, films can be transmitted from cell phone to cell phone. Smithsonian is also a participant.

NOVA’s Car of the Future. How can today’s drivers transition to a new breed of vehicle. Shows a clip from the video. Stars Click and Clack. Open production. WGBH put up a draft script, list of potential interviewees. Audience suggested changes, questions for the interviewees, and so forth. High participation from academics. Also received input from people who have contributed their own car of the future concepts. Video and transcripts will be available for streaming, not unfortunately for open content. Interviewees are reluctant to provide mix/mash rights.

Teachers’s Domain website provides multimedia resources for classroom use. Some, not all, resources can be remixed. Received funding from Hewlett to facilitate clearances. Four different levels of usage.

Adoption Families. Isn’t in production yet; it will start online and will then move to production for television. Selecting three families who will be given video cameras, who will record their experiences with the adoption process. The audience can contribute their comments, advice, and commentary. A 90-minute broadcast will be produced for broadcast sometime in 2008.

// Thomas Lucas, Independent Producer. Makes science films. Been working at the Advanced Visualization Lab at NCSA. Numerical models, e.g., fluid dynamics, etc. Showing advanced visualizations on tornadoes and science-museum based stellar life-cycle demonstrations.

// Curtis Wong, Microsoft Research. Works at a program called "Next Media." What does showing “more” mean in video? Traditionally meant more – longer – video. Used to work at Voyager; moved to Continuum, for enriched CD media creation. These were layered architectures. Story: Context: Information from top to bottom. Demonstrating a Corbis Leonardo da Vinci creation. Fascinating and innovative uses of interface – e.g. a sliding translation window that is relocatable by the user. (The Codex is unique and owned by William Gates III.)

Various other experiements, e.g., with an American Experience project. Used Closed Caption text to drive linkages down to enriching layers.

Evolution to a layered contextual narrative. An ability to explore deeper information. Web/network based production provides a richness of interaction, e.g., manipulation of PoV, that are not accessible to traditional broadcast media.

Demonstration of World Wide Telescope, an interactive sky browser, expected to be released in the Fall.

Q: Is there something in between user-generated and high value production content? A: Example is Frontline’s Rough Cuts – low cost production with high quality appearance. Increasingly easy, but expectations continue to rise.

Q: What about performance art, and can more high quality PBS production be made generally available to universities, particularly for students? A: Rights clearances sometimes have to be triaged – e.g., broadcast and A/V distribution use (at libraries and educational institutions) might become available, but home distribution clearance costs might be too high. Eyes on the Prize is a famous example. Q: Could distribution be made more available to students for online access? A: Possibly. Generally, rights vs. fees is a difficult fulcrum. A: Performance art is particularly difficult to negotiate. A: Increasing support for distribution and wider access will likely require legistlative action.

// Obie Greenberg, YouTube and Education. Responsible for partnerships with higher ed and cultural institutions. YouTube (YT) is already used heavily for education. Evolved beyond pure entertainment. UC Berkeley has extensive offerings on Google Video. Google Video is an aggregator; YT is a service. Viewership is in the hundreds of millions per day; uploads in the hundreds of thousands. (Displayed numbers date from 9/2006 and are obviously greater). Long form video is possible, but viewership drops quickly with duration. Possible branding options available for content partners. Can sequence videos on Playlist. Can create subchannels. YT’s How-to/DIY channel is the closest thing to an education channel presently – obviously user contributed content. Partners also get promotion for right-bar content. YT is new, and so there a chance to help invent what the space becomes.

// Stacey Seltzer, Joost. SVP for Content Acquisition. Introduction to founders (Kazaa and Skype). Skype has 181 million registered users. Joost is a downloadable software client, with a closed network (no user contributed video, currently). Demonstrating a National Geographic video. People can create widgets to interact with content. Could be used by students in a classroom to share notes and observations amongst themselves and with the instructor. Building capacity for ratings, etc. Scalable and sizable display window. Editorial, algorithmic means for discovery. Joost is early stage, but is working with some NGOs such as Witness. Joost is based solely on an advertising model for revenue, with insertion points placed within the content, worked out with the contributors.

Q: What are the requirements to run Joost? A: Any relatively modern computer (within two years). Joost uses fairly low transmission rate (380 kbps). Uses H.264. Q: What is an acceptable content partner? A: In part, compliance with rights clearances and policies.

// Andrea Kalas, British Film Institute. Co-produces features with the BBC for wider release. (BFI is not a distribution platform, one reason they co-produce with BBC.) One example of their collaboration: Mitchell and Kenyon were two portrait photographers in Blackburn, UK. They possessed early moving image equipment, and recorded scenes of ordinary people in everyday situations. Over 800 non fiction titles from 1900-1913, on original nitrate negatives. Filmed where they might have big casual audiences, such as factory gates, faires, fires, and so forth who would then later pay to see themselves on screen. In exceptional condition, with few scratches and little damage. It is amazing to see contemporaneous Edwardian England. Reels were nearly thrown out, when they discovered in a coal cellar of a house being torn down.

Another of BFI's restoration projects is The Open Road: Claude Friese-Greene utilized an early color process known as Biocolour, or Kinemascope (there were conflicting rights claims).