Trying to Publicize our Upcoming Film Festival

During the past couple of weeks, i've been contacting the media (mostly small, local) to publicize our upcoming screening (digital shorts festival). I was informed by UCSF Director of Communications (Rachel Kagan) that it would be a huge challenge to get press coverage these days due to shrinking media outlets. So i advised to start out with more independent outlets such as KALW radio (San Francisco), Public Press (Berkeley) and the SF Weekly. Given all the competition, she said that it would be unlikely that our event would attract the attention of the major media such as Chronicle, Examiner, network news, etc. By the way, I also contacted KoreaAm Journal and AsianWeek. 

The only "media" person that returned my e-mail was Chi-Hui Yang, the film festival organizer for Center for Asian American Media (of San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival fame).  I felt very honored to hear from him actually. I've been a huge fan of the SFIAA film festival since 1997. He was kind enough to say some nice words of encouragement and that he'd try to attend our screening. I was also very glad to hear from Ravi Chandra (psychiatrist and film writer) who may be attending as well. 

Flier for the Upcoming Film Festival Completed.

Just finished the flier for the film festival. As soon as we get an "okay" from UCSF, we will contact the press.

Intermedia Arts Project

Intermedia Arts Project sounds like an apt name for our emerging group. Must we limit our work to video or the digital realm? Why not embrace as many different artistic disciplines as possible? The main thrust of this project is that it is inter-disciplinary in the truest sense, always in between different media. Neither completely this nor that but in between. Marginality. New Marginality (as theologian Jung Young Lee would describe that liminal state). New marginality is the state of moving from "being marginalized" to "embracing marginality". 

Changing Our Name?

I'm toying with the idea of changing our name from "The Digital Storytelling Project" to "Intermedia Digital Arts Project". I feel that our project is more than about simply doing "digital stories" (e.g., as espoused by The Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley). I see our project as involving a wide variety of approaches to storytelling employing a variety of storytelling techniques ranging from the simple to complex and artistic. I want to run this by our team, though.  

May 27th Pre- Screening at Citywide Community Focus Center

(notice the white bedsheet we used for the "screen." I got it from Target for $14.00)

Panelists during Q/A session after the screening (above)

The Pre-Screening was a huge success. 3 out of 6 participant-consumers showed up for the screening. All but one of our crew members showed up. Despite some initial sound issues early on, the screening went smoothly, and the reception was positive. The staff/audience gave us a standing ovation afterwards. 

Thanks to Alex Alvarenga for the still pics of the event. 

DVD for PRE-SCREENING COMPLETED!

I have just finished burning the DVD for the upcoming Pre-Screening. I am happy to report that all 6 shorts plus the mini documentary look VERY GOOD, and I think we have something very special going on here. I've made some minor revisions to the videos that have been assembled such as adding some musical scores (original music by our own Cheth Rowe) and adding credits. The total run time is 20 minutes. So we are now 3 days away from our pre-screening (our test screening) which will take place this coming Wednesday May 27 from 2:00pm-4:00pm at Citywide Community Focus Center where I work. This event is co-hosted by our Cultural Competency Work Committee and is being doubled as a Cultural In-Service workshop. The first hour is to be devoted to the screening with Q/A following. The second hour will consist of small group discussions where our clinical staff will discuss the films as well as diversity issues in general. This portion is handled by the cultural competency work committee.

2nd All Crew Meeting

Had our 2nd Meeting on Last Saturday. 

(1)  In our meeting we shared ideas about where we are headed, where we’d like to go, and we relished the idea that our future is open-ended. At this point, more questions than answers. But the notion that our digital storytelling project can evolve into a truly collaborative “intermedia arts project” (blending film, art, psychiatry, social work) was particularly exciting to me. 

 (2)  Thanks to Cheth for a copy of his music CD with some really interesting improvisational pieces. It was particularly refreshing for me to listen to Cheth’s feedback about our videos/slideshows as he reminded me how broad a concept we are dealing with when it comes to the musicality that is already inherent in our videos/slideshows. Elements such as language, editing, dialogue, etc. all possess “musical” qualities already, so most of our pieces may not necessarily need additional “music.”

(3)  Thanks to Scott for the wonderful slideshows and all the hard work that was put into it—meeting our clients twice a week is no easy task (especially commuting from the East Bay). Scott is also putting together some conference papers which will deal with our current project. Scott has been our resident scholar and theoretician. 

(4)  Sekyu—just checked his blog. He arrived safely in Korea and is enjoying his family. Per our conversation during yesterday’s meeting, I will insert the text into the slideshow to highlight the poem Debbie is reading. 

(5)  Last but not least, Vince stuck around after our Saturday meeting to help me fine tune one of my videos. He is such a technical whiz and a great Final Cut tutor! Thanks to Vince, again, for letting us use the LCD projector. Hopefully Vince will be able to come to our clinic this week to check out our sound system.  

(6)  Now that I have all the pieces assembled into my final cut pro, I am ready to burn them into the DVD. I just need to finish the documentary piece which will be very short. So here is the order of the lineup: (a) Eddie’s story, (b) Debbie’s poem, (c) Mike’s tunnel story, (d) The Bird’s Nest, (e) Cancer treatment, (f) and finally the documentary at the end. Probably 15-17 minutes long!