So here it is, my first sculpture installation. I think I called it “Great Blue Heron” or something profound like that.

VBS.tv has produced an insightful, yet unorthodox, example of advocacy journalism in “Toxic- Garbage Island.” This 12-part video series is about a trek the film makers took to The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a place rumored to be as big as Texas. What they find is not what they expected, and not what I was expecting either.

One of the main strengths of this documentary in its story telling is that it introduces an obscure subject to the main characters at the same time we the audience are introduced. They wrestle with the same questions I did- why should I care? How bad is it? What can be done? Are we screwed?

(Warning- strong language)

Of special interest to me was Ira Glass’s vCast on Storytelling.

Ira Glass in a master of storytelling. I’m a huge fan of his radio show, This American Life. If you haven’t had a chance to hear it, definitely listen to it for really solid, interesting storytelling.

I was able to hear her speak twice today here at my college. Her speeches were wide ranging, covering everything from immigration to Venezuela to NAFTA. You can hear the first speech here.

Huerta took quite a lot of time to talk about immigration in light of a new bill that has passed the Indiana House of Representatives which would severely hurt the immigrant population in the area.

I was grateful that Huerta brought up the fact that NAFTA is a major cause of immgration, I topic I have written and talked about.

Huerta also spoke about the dignity due to people who work with their hands, which by chance I had written about for last week’s editorial in The Record. I have wondered, then, what my role is as I graduate from college and become a professional media producer. Huerta said it is the role of professionals to help the people who work with their hands, the people who society does not give the respect due to them.

And is this not what Socially Aware Media should be? I have these talents, and I need to make sure I use them to help, and not to hurt.

Huerta also spoke in support of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, which prompted a Venezuelan immigrant to refute some of what she said. This brought up what Huerta called a “schizophrenia” about world leaders – select ones are demonized, but other ones who are much worse in many ways are supported by the United States.

My main critique was that MediaStorm doesn’t go quite far enough on large
issues. Storm responded, saying, “I don’t agree with you that we don’t
touch on big issues. Big issues are all over our site,” mentioning
stories from the site that do touch larger issues. Some of these
include AIDS, Immigration, Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder, and more.

Storm goes on
to say, “If we can help people gain a better understanding of these
issues, isn’t that a worthy goal? Do you really believe the stories
don’t inform or educate? If our stories help people see or understand
something they’ve not seen before, I think we have succeeded. To me,
the statistics are less relevant than creating human
connections.”

I agree that a better understanding
of the issues is most definitely a worthy point.

But I would also like to suggest that Socially Aware Media perhaps
should go a step further. Often, with these larger issues, there is
something that is simply not right about the situation. In these cases,
why should we be content to stop short of including some kind of
proposed action? While watching several of MediaStorm’s stories, I
found myself wanting more than just knowledge; I wanted to know what I
could do about it, or at least what could be done by somebody about the
situation.

MediaStorm has a pretty interactive Web
site, with links for everything, comment forms- a whole slew of ways to
be involved. Some (but not all) of the stories, including Chernobyl
Legacy, have links to Web sites where people can find out
something more to do. These links are adding what I think is a
necessary aspect to the viewing experience. I think that this kind of
information would be appropriate and is needed within the actual
presentation. On the other hand, MediaStorm seems to be concerned that
including this may detract from the real story, the human experience.
What do you think?

As for me, I’m planning on adding
a bit more in the way of follow-up on my movie pages, by adding
relevant links and the like.

I’d really like to thank Brian Storm and MediaStorm for being willing to respond as I critique the
site through the lens of Socially Aware Media in order to understand a bit more of what that phrase actually means. They really do excellent work, and do contribute to increasing understanding of complex issues.
Continue to check them out as they release more.

First of all, the story telling is amazing. Pieces are generally 10 minutes or more, and according to founder Brian Storm, most people who start the pieces end up finishing them- a rarity, even with much shorter videos. Love in the First Person is one great example of their story telling, showing the life of a college couple who find out she’s pregnant.

Another thing that sets MediaStorm apart is their use of photography in video. At first, I asked, “Why not just use video?” But I’ve come to the conclusion that photos can do a lot that photos can’t do, as they are able to capture just one moment in a way that is much more artistic than with video. Iraqi Kurdistan uses photos to show the daily life in that part of the world. This story was the result of a photojournalist who, after taking all of the pictures, wanted to make a video with them. The photos are used almost as a flipbook in places, showing motion.

Another stylistic thing I picked up for my documentary, “The Other Side of Paradise”, was the use of white text on black to move the story. This helps avoid more narration, which can be rather distracting. MediaStorm uses them well in their documentary on AIDS, BLOODLINE.

A few other good ones they have are Finding the Way Home, The Marlboro Marine, and The Ninth Floor.

Now while their style and storytelling is very well done, I have one major qualm: What is the point of the stories? It doesn’t inform, at least not of anything bigger than a few stories, removed from the rest of reality. It definitely doesn’t educate on any issues. It doesn’t try to persuade the viewer of anything. It does entertain. But is this enough?

While watching these videos, I felt like they got close to touching on big issues, but they never quite took that extra step to actually do it. No larger context is given, so it isn’t really known if, say, there are places like the ninth floor all over New York, all over the US. It makes it seem like an island. And if someone is persuaded to do something, what can they do?

MediaStorm presents the stories as an end, where I think they would function better as a means to an end.

As most of the reviews have noted, “Sicko” is on a different level than Moore’s other documentaries, coming across a lot more intelligent and less divisive. Moore takes more of a back seat role in this production, and lets the subjects speak for themselves. It doesn’t come across as twisting like Fahrenheit 9/11.

While I definitely saw his case for socialized medicine (and some flaws in his argument), Moore also touched on a much bigger issue- the general apathy of the country. Moore says that in many countries, the governments are afraid of the people, whereas in the U.S., the people are afraid of the government. We can not expect to sit back and expect the government to give us what we need- we need to be willing to fight for it. And when the government makes fighting for what we want hard by undermining the democratic system, we need to be willing to speak the truth ever louder.

He talked about the role of a documentary maker in light of that film, where the big question was whether 4-year-old Marla actually paints the amazing abstracts that are selling for big money. By the time those allegations arose, he was already 6 months into filming and quite close to the family.

The family is not happy with the end result, which Bar-Lev let open. He said something to the effect that he couldn’t say what the family wanted him to say, only what he saw from his experience. So his experience was that he had no idea what the truth was, so that’s how he reported it.

I agree with this approach- in Socially Aware Media, you are presenting the truth as best as you can figure it out, in other people’s words. Even if that doesn’t go with what people want you to say, it is your responsibility to say it.

It uses the tempting crutch of documentaries to make the process of making the documentary a significant part of the story-telling. The filmmakers traveled for a year, talking to bands and fans all over the place. Interesting, but maybe save it for the extras. It also started out with the filmmakers’ motivation: each had a musician sibling who died (and here’s a leap of logic for me) so they wanted to take a good look at the music industry.

The story telling is rather weak- although there is general layout, it jumps around, and seems to hit the climax several times throughout. Also a bug for me was rather sloppy use of images- the images often did not add to the story telling, which should be a must.

As for content, it was pretty good overall. I can’t pull one main theme from it (again pointing to the writing). My one beef was when it suddenly turned into a promo for the record label Dave Matthew’s Band is on.

I think this duo of Andrew Shapter (director) and Joel Rasmussen (editor/writer) have the potential to do some great work- they just seemed a bit green in Before the Music Dies.?

They also just added a Pig Latin course. With 61 Sections. Crazy people exist in this world, that’s for sure.