UVa Meeting - nolauren/pmproject GitHub Wiki

Overall Context

Project To-Date

What is PM?

Participatory Media interactively engages with and presents participatory community media from the 1960s and 1970s. The project will explore:

  • how to provide access to community-made, rare, and often publicly-funded moving images and their related archives
  • provide a model for community involvement in digital public humanities work, specifically participatory archival, curatorial, and exhibition work
  • and employ innovative technologies to enable digital participation on multiple levels. 

Focusing on sites where:

  • Working with communities to create media (Len Kammerling, etc)
  • Teaching people to use equipment and make films (workshop)
  • Community members controlling the camera on their terms (resource)

Overview of Meetings

Yale Meeting/ NYC Meeting:

  • Young Filmmakers Foundation:

    • Explain YFF history briefly.
    • Elena Rossi-Snook at NYPL to discuss rights and digitization. They hold the YFDC collection. They want us to do due diligence to find the filmmakers to retrieve a release form. We have agreed to digitize ~10 films and are talking with them about applying for a Hidden Collections Grant. Planning a YFF Reunion event at NYPL in the fall.
    • Rodger Larson: Met to interview on camera and see what he and Michael Jacoboson (a young filmmaker at Film Club, a part of YFF) would like from the site. They are most interested in digitization and access. This need is shared by Luis Vale, a young filmmaker who Lauren has spoken with.
    • Kids Make Films: Lauren has spoken with Susan Zeig. They have sent films off for digitization that are just finished. This is a kids workshop with 8mm at YFF. Zeig would like to contribute to the site and work with Lauren to write the sections on Kids Make Films.
    • Otisville Boys School: Grace and Lauren met with DeeDee Halleck. Filmed an interview for the site. Films have also been sent off for digitization (2 and ~6 already digitized) that she has agreed to feature on PM. She is trying to find the filmmakers. She is currently claiming the right to post these films in part because funded by public funds. (Question here about films with incarcerated youth.)

  • Appalshop

    • explain Appalshop history briefly
    • Grace visited Appalshop this fall. (Grace discuss this meeting.)
    • Agreeing to clips and some full films. Never before seen outtakes. -"The Appalshop Show": tv documentary NET and Appalshop made in 1975 about what Appalshop does, will be able to stream parts of this doc and outtakes (about half the doc is clips from Appalshop films)--does good job of explaining one important model for community media workshops -use of film stills and photographs taken on site as films made -rich document collection--have permission to scan and use to provide context -will interview Appalshop filmmakers in spring for small video clips to add as context
    • Mountain Community TV (Held by Appalshop but actually a separate org. Talk of making this a module.)

  • CFWC - Chicago

    • Explain history.
    • Just received films and Margaret Caples claims copyright. Agreed to use.

  • Alaska

    • explain Alaska Native film project briefly
    • give overview of rich archive of materials available
    • explain unique ways films are being used in Native Alaskan communities today

  • General take-aways

    • Not just limited to digital. Consider some on-location public programming like event at NYPL in fall of 2017. Working with Appalshop to bring them to UVA, for example.

  • Questions?

Prototype ​ Shared Google Doc

Learning

  • Context of 1960s and early 1970s

  • How PM of this period fits into long history of media an documentary making: between Depression era federal government sponsored work and more recent citizen journalism and activist media-making enabled by smart phones and the internet

  • Explaining what we mean by PM

  • Context for each module/ site

  • Description for each piece of material on the site.

    • films
    • selection of documents (very much framed by copyright)
    • images (photos)
    • contemporary interviews (film and oral)

  • Questions:

    • Are there particular histor(ies) we should make sure we are engaging with? (Ex. Historian/ American Studies)

    • Are there other lineages and framings of media making we need to make sure we address?

    • Are there other materials/ site we should consider including?

    • how does understanding the process and practice of participatory media making change how we understand US cultural history?

    • how do we convey the radical nature and importance of this kind of media making in the past given its ubiquity today? How do we make it clear that this practice and these materials are a crucial early moment on the road to much of today's web-based media making?

Participating

  1. Working with the communities to establish their modules.
  2. Participation on the site.

  • Film Viewing and Annotation

    • Question about the kind of annotation.
      • scene, color, feature tagging, tags (to highlight themes/ subjects)
    • MediaThread offers a certain kind of functionality.
    • URochester Annotate Tool : Screen Shots
    • Include film captioning/ transcripts.

  • Sharing content through open data/ download films

  • enabling people to send small audio or video files about their participation in this kind of media making in the past or their interaction with/use of this older media in the present

  • Question:

    • Should we include these forms of participation? If so, are there ways they could be improved?

    • Are there other forms of participation/ engagement you'd like to see?

    • Are there forms of non-digital participation we should include?

  • How do we make participation central to both the content and the form of the site? ​

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Recommending / Browse

  • As users move through the site, we want to connect them across modules by topics, kind of materials, and time.

    • Allow users to search across different aspects such as geography and demographics (gender, age, race). Organize by technology (type of film, cameras), as well as time.

  • Strategy: Recommender Systems (Taylor talk about them briefly)

  • Questions

    • Types of browse/ search you'd like to see?

    • What kind of metadata should be attached to each piece of material?

      • Particular metadata schemas? Taxonomies? Folksonomies?
      • Particular fields?

  • Again, how to enable participation and make it central to the site?

Finding / Research

  • For some modules, the films are from an existing (often unprocessed) archive or collection. One suggestion has been a bibliography of PM materials. This would be organized around collection Information.

    • For example, what is the scale/provenance/ breadth of collection/ process status?

    • Suggestion includes building a participatory component in which people can add to the database on PM.

  • We are not the home repository.

  • Questions:

    • What do you think of the idea of a bibliography/ database of PM material where others can contribute?

    • Where applicable, are there particular ways we should facilitate access to the archives where materials are from?

How can we think about and build our site to enable/ support ongoing research and preservation?

Audience

  • the filmmakers and members of the organizations from that period
  • desires from some for this to be a "community space" for them
  • community members today in these same places
  • scholars (media/history/ etc) / researchers
  • film enthusiast community - orphan community/ archivists /
  • K-12, college education/ courses
  • Questions
    • Other audiences we haven't though of?
    • Is there a way to make this appeal to a "general" public?
    • Strategies for reaching these publics?

How can we, like our media makers in the past, think about how participation makes/ creates publics?

Last Session

We will focus on next steps for PM.

Questions:

  • What haven't we addressed? Other issues?
  • Issues we should anticipate?
  • Are there funding opportunities we should pursue?

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