Does HTML5 Offer a Montage Moment for Web Cinema?
Imagine if you could weave the sum of all human knowledge seamlessly into your film or documentary. New technologies like HTML5 make this possible. Video, audio and animation no longer need to be in a "black box", separate from other elements on a page. Recent works like The Wilderness Downtown, 3 Dreams of Black, and hypervideo experiments from Mozilla's Popcorn project point to a radical shift in how we think of moving images. In the same way that montage pioneers like Eisenstein and Griffiths showed us that new formal and technical possibilities could blow our perceptions of cinema wide open, this panel will bring examples and ideas that point to the storytelling potential when the web is fused with the power of cinema. The panel will include a brief presentation of a few innovative examples that feature high quality story and aesthetics as well as advanced technologies like: WebGL, Popcorn.js and the upcoming HTML Stream Processing API (an open standard for browser access to camera and microphone).
Presenters
Editor-in-Chief of Shooting People - an international networking organization for independent filmmakers with over 38,000 members. Also teaching Digital Bootcamp workshops for filmmakers on technology, storytelling and audience engagement. New Media Consultant for the TFI New Media Fund, funding interactive documentaries. I love documentaries and I love the web.
Jigar Mehta is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and digital entrepreneur.
He is the co-creator of the collaborative documentary project, 18 Days in Egypt, about the ongoing Egyptian revolution. It was a project developed while Mehta was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, Mehta was a video journalist for The New York Times. His passion is for telling stories through strong characters and accurate reporting. He is a believer in collaboration and building community, and as 2009-11 president of the South Asian Journalist Association, he fostered programs that reflect those ideals.
Mehta is a double graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Journalism.
Brian Chirls is a Brooklyn-based troublemaker and hacker of code, video and stories.
Brian Chirls is a Brooklyn-based creative technologist with a broad range of experience ranging from finance and construction to documentary film. Brian achieved recognition in the film industry for his work as technical lead and distribution manager on the cult independent film, "Four Eyed Monsters," a pioneer in social media, crowd sourcing and Internet distribution. His work on the film led him to create Crowd Controls, a distribution tool used on the films "Pariah," "Girl Walk All Day," and the upcoming "Iron Sky." In the past two years, Brian has worked closely with Mozilla in developing tools and story models for interactive web video based in HTML5 technology. He is a major contributor to Mozilla's Popcorn.js library and has recently released Seriously.js, a library for real-time video compositing. Brian continues to present his work at film festivals and conferences around the world.
Brett Gaylor runs Mozilla's Popcorn Project, an open video laboratory researching the intersection of video and the World Wide Web. Before working with Mozilla, Brett directed the award wining documentary Rip! A Remix Manifesto, created Open Source Cinema.org, helped found homelessnation.org, and was a key creative at the Montreal-based production house EyeSteelFilm. Brett lives on an island with his family.
Sunday, March 11
