Make Your Documentary Matter
by Michael HoffmanThursday, February 1st, 2007
Today I am in Washington and will speak in a couple hours at the Make Your Documentary Matter conference. This conference, put on by the excellent folks at the Center for Social Media at American University, started with a very interesting program last night about video on mobile phones. We heard from someone from PBS who did a literacy test using Sesame Street characters to send letter information to cell phones that parents will share with their kids. This seems quite ahead of it’s time and while the program showed that the kids learned their letters, I wonder if that was simply because their parents were engaged in the issue - something that could have been achieved more simply and cheaply another way.
An even more interesting talk was given by someone else with a PBS affiliate, talking about the upcoming American Experience event, We Shall Remain, which will document Native American history. As part of this project, they are giving cell phones with video cameras in them to Native Americans around the country. These phones, the Nokia N93, are amazing. With 30 frames per second video, high level optics, and even editing capabilities within the phone, these are way above what we have seen to-date in this area. What is also interesting is that the phones have removable memory cards, so you actually don’t even need the cell network to use them. The participants can mail the cards in when they are full or complete a shoot. The speaker, Benjamen Walker, pointed out that some of the most viewed videos on YouTube were shot with cell phones — Saddam’s hanging, Michael Richards, the UCLA student who got Tasered.
I will try to write more later from here or on the plane home later today.
