29-07-2009, 06:45 AM
John, kudos to you and good luck. I will work to follow this in its development, support it, etc.
Mark, gather your facts and information and write it up for John and present it in depth and detail for him and others, and don't be too quick to prejudge the product in its early phases. It'd be like telling a two-year old that, based on his DNA, he'll be a stunted failure in life.
Ken Burns' approach is good, seems cheap, is certainly entertaining and informative, but I have some reservations as to whether that approach will fit this particular subject.
Script-writing is ALL in this case; everyone has 'seen the artwork', and your conceptualization and outline suggest that pictures and graphics are less important. I agree.
Narration then becomes a big factor, so hire a solid but unknown professional from out of a good, high-quality professional sound and recording studio, not the TV or radio biz. Will Lyman, featured in many PBS shows, is a good example but now is too well-known and too identified with PBS to be your man.
Ditto with Burns, and I doubt seriously he'd be interested, as the nature of his demand/work/audience may prevent him from risking his name on a controversial project like this. Then again, perhaps he's older and, having "made it", more willing to stick his neck out. He is good. But there are others. I will keep my eyes peeled. I'm not your guy, though I have a degree in the field and a modicum of experience, but I am anything but au courant in the technologies of this decade and century. But I'm certainly willing to test read and help draft a script. But you should have a squad of people for these functions.
Burns is with Florentine Films (http://www.florentinefilms.com/ ) in Walpole, NH and he has three associates and a large crew.
P.O. Box 613
Walpole, NH 03608
USA tel: (603) 756-3038
fax: (603) 756-4389
There is no e-mail.
Better bet is to look for and find a top near-graduation student and crew at a film/TV production school nearest where most of your filming and interviews will be done. If that is in the USA, it probably would be relatively easy to find them, contact them, contract with them, etc. They'd love the work for their portfolio, they'll work cheap, you won't have to pay union wages, and you'll find someone who'll be interested (I hope, or I will lose faith in our youth). I went to UMass Amherst only to realize far too late that Burns was just down the road at Hampshire College. I bet most of these top students could be found for free via Craigslist.
Contentwise, it'd be interesting to see a spider network map of people, contacts and connections as is done in the movie Who Killed John O'Neill? (about 9/11).
Mommadona, my colleague over at EPU, uses another similar mapping technology here: http://z7.invisionfree.com/E_Pluribus_Un...topic=7604
Or some form of concept mapping, as is found and explained here:
"One type of “advance organizer” is a concept map, another digital tool available for free to learning communities. As a “map”, it allows the individual learner or learning team to forecast where it is going, chart its progress, and forge an individualized learning path. It combines “… text, graphics, audio, video, links to Web pages, etc., that are associated with concepts.” It is “… essentially a meta-cogntive tool" and “… has significant utility to support just in time learning for performance support.”
“CmapTools is a software suite that is in ongoing development at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), The University of West Florida. This tool was built as a distributed knowledge modeling system that enables learning and collaboration over the Internet. [It] has been used to acquire knowledge for expert systems, for institutional memory preservation, performance support, and potentially, as content for instruction in a course.” [For further information, see www.ihmc.us and http://cmap.ihmc.us/]
Another resource is a book which contains a CD: Architect for Learning: Utlizing The Internet as an Effective Educational Environment, Philip J. Palin and Kari Sandhaas, Saint Thomas Didymus Corporation, Ruckersville, VA (Teleologic Learning Company, www.teleologic.net).
Lastly, one of the things I'd like to see explored, if not put into the project, is some sense of how the assassination of Kennedy parallels or seems to utilize similar techniques in operations management, in cover-up, in the management of press and commission(s), and in other ways, with later "deep politics" events. This may be too much of an extension. The constant need will be to boil down the material to fit the audience based on some assessment of their interest and prior knowledge. The key question is to ask why an audience of today should watch or access your material when there is so much old stuff, when people may be tired of us 'conspiracy theorists', etc. The critical question seems obvious to me: How does this relate to us and how we live today in the global political socio-economic climate (pardon the pun)? How will watching this prepare me or my children for life in the next five years? Some of us might be able to answer those questions lucidly, but the question is how you are going to package and promote the project. Think backwards from the end, of how the event/product will be seen and received. Write the script of what the consumers of your product will say and do after they turn off the PC at the end, and then construct your product in reverse to meet that script without compromising yourself, the message, or the truth.
Mark, gather your facts and information and write it up for John and present it in depth and detail for him and others, and don't be too quick to prejudge the product in its early phases. It'd be like telling a two-year old that, based on his DNA, he'll be a stunted failure in life.
Ken Burns' approach is good, seems cheap, is certainly entertaining and informative, but I have some reservations as to whether that approach will fit this particular subject.
Script-writing is ALL in this case; everyone has 'seen the artwork', and your conceptualization and outline suggest that pictures and graphics are less important. I agree.
Narration then becomes a big factor, so hire a solid but unknown professional from out of a good, high-quality professional sound and recording studio, not the TV or radio biz. Will Lyman, featured in many PBS shows, is a good example but now is too well-known and too identified with PBS to be your man.
Ditto with Burns, and I doubt seriously he'd be interested, as the nature of his demand/work/audience may prevent him from risking his name on a controversial project like this. Then again, perhaps he's older and, having "made it", more willing to stick his neck out. He is good. But there are others. I will keep my eyes peeled. I'm not your guy, though I have a degree in the field and a modicum of experience, but I am anything but au courant in the technologies of this decade and century. But I'm certainly willing to test read and help draft a script. But you should have a squad of people for these functions.
Burns is with Florentine Films (http://www.florentinefilms.com/ ) in Walpole, NH and he has three associates and a large crew.
P.O. Box 613
Walpole, NH 03608
USA tel: (603) 756-3038
fax: (603) 756-4389
There is no e-mail.
Better bet is to look for and find a top near-graduation student and crew at a film/TV production school nearest where most of your filming and interviews will be done. If that is in the USA, it probably would be relatively easy to find them, contact them, contract with them, etc. They'd love the work for their portfolio, they'll work cheap, you won't have to pay union wages, and you'll find someone who'll be interested (I hope, or I will lose faith in our youth). I went to UMass Amherst only to realize far too late that Burns was just down the road at Hampshire College. I bet most of these top students could be found for free via Craigslist.
Contentwise, it'd be interesting to see a spider network map of people, contacts and connections as is done in the movie Who Killed John O'Neill? (about 9/11).
Mommadona, my colleague over at EPU, uses another similar mapping technology here: http://z7.invisionfree.com/E_Pluribus_Un...topic=7604
Or some form of concept mapping, as is found and explained here:
"One type of “advance organizer” is a concept map, another digital tool available for free to learning communities. As a “map”, it allows the individual learner or learning team to forecast where it is going, chart its progress, and forge an individualized learning path. It combines “… text, graphics, audio, video, links to Web pages, etc., that are associated with concepts.” It is “… essentially a meta-cogntive tool" and “… has significant utility to support just in time learning for performance support.”
“CmapTools is a software suite that is in ongoing development at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), The University of West Florida. This tool was built as a distributed knowledge modeling system that enables learning and collaboration over the Internet. [It] has been used to acquire knowledge for expert systems, for institutional memory preservation, performance support, and potentially, as content for instruction in a course.” [For further information, see www.ihmc.us and http://cmap.ihmc.us/]
Another resource is a book which contains a CD: Architect for Learning: Utlizing The Internet as an Effective Educational Environment, Philip J. Palin and Kari Sandhaas, Saint Thomas Didymus Corporation, Ruckersville, VA (Teleologic Learning Company, www.teleologic.net).
Lastly, one of the things I'd like to see explored, if not put into the project, is some sense of how the assassination of Kennedy parallels or seems to utilize similar techniques in operations management, in cover-up, in the management of press and commission(s), and in other ways, with later "deep politics" events. This may be too much of an extension. The constant need will be to boil down the material to fit the audience based on some assessment of their interest and prior knowledge. The key question is to ask why an audience of today should watch or access your material when there is so much old stuff, when people may be tired of us 'conspiracy theorists', etc. The critical question seems obvious to me: How does this relate to us and how we live today in the global political socio-economic climate (pardon the pun)? How will watching this prepare me or my children for life in the next five years? Some of us might be able to answer those questions lucidly, but the question is how you are going to package and promote the project. Think backwards from the end, of how the event/product will be seen and received. Write the script of what the consumers of your product will say and do after they turn off the PC at the end, and then construct your product in reverse to meet that script without compromising yourself, the message, or the truth.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"