UPDATE

This blog was created to provide a space to informally share ideas and projects with the museum video production community. We can’t say we have sustained the initial excitement: we had 26 posts in 2013; 4 posts in 2014 and none so far this year. Most of the posts with no comments at all. But hey, see how we care about metrics and evaluation?

Maybe it’s the right time for you and me to give the blog a second chance. With the freshly rebranded Media Production and Branding SIG and the Educational and Interpretive Media SIG it’s the perfect time for a reboot. (Side note: be sure to get yourself officially included in the SIG by signing up via the form link on the above linked SIG page that you want to be involved in)

Personally, we are excited about this change and look forward to seeing how this fosters expanded conversations about the media production process in context of the institution and its story (MPB) or the context of interpretive and educational tools found within and beyond the gallery (EIM). We also look forward to the inevitable collaborative opportunities we will have with one another as well as with other groups like Metrics and Evaluation. I look forward to hearing your ideas for collaboration and discussion topics here on the blog and at our upcoming annual meeting, more on that soon!

The official communications for the MCN Special Interest Group on Media Production and Branding will (like all the others) continue on the MCN list-serv. This blog is an informal place for capturing our conversations that can be easily shared throughout the community. So we look forward to continuing to hear about projects, technologies and provocations about the production of media content for museums here, but it’s only gonna be fun if you're here.

I am working on a post about the real scriptwriting process, not the idealized one we reference when describing our production process at conferences. And Luis is working on some interesting stuff about branding to get the conversation going on this new aspect to our group.

It’s gonna be FANTASTIC.

Let’s rock and roll.

September MCN Pro Session

This past week Emily and I brought together some wonderfully smart people to talk through file organization and the specific challenges we have when working with audio and video media. I learned so much from our guest presenters, and I look forward to incorporating tools and techniques from their presentations into my workflow.

Session Description: Have you ever gotten tangled in a web of disorganized video and image files? What are the best practices for organizing and storing images, audio and video? What is the difference between interpretive content and collections content? What constitutes a work of art and a backup work of art when discussing file types?

Anna Chiaretta-Lavatelli and Emily Lytle-Painter, co-chairs of MCN’s Media Production SIG, will explore issues around digital file storage and organization in cultural organizations with the follow speakers:

Heidi Quicksilver, The Jewish Museum
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution
Patrick Heilman, DIA Art Foundation

This is an informal “radio show” style chat with short “presentations” and Q&A.

MCN2014 Proposal: Iron Editor

Here is a potentially fun/ridiculous idea for a panel:

A group of video editors are given a shared set of assets and a few different challenges (no animation, use only still images, same b-roll from an iPhone, keep it under 1:00, use only creative commons licensed materials for anything additional, etc). Those editors sit in a public location (maybe in the conference room) and have their screens projected while they edit for an hour (?) prior to the session presentations, (perhaps with a moderator providing Iron Chef style play-by-play?). The participants then discuss their thoughts in general about editing and storytelling, and the works are presented, questions are answered.

Anyone game for being a part of it? It would all be in the spirit of fun and not harshing judging your chops. I'd down to be a moderator, announcer, or editor and hand over the reins to anyone. 

MCN2014 Proposal: Collaborative Video Production

I'm interested in talking about collaborative videos produced between multiple entities, to look at how they create a more rounded story that fosters partnerships and allows the museum to engage community. It creates connections between the museum and participants by acquiring greater exposure, and engaging people who may not necessarily ever be in a museum video otherwise.

Collaborative video production has the potential to create more exposure because the videos become more engaging stories rather than self-serving promotional videos (even though the collaborative videos can be self-serving, it may not seem as such since it's not just the museum promoting itself).

Lastly, I'm thinking about discussing how important it is to think about video being internally collaborative and not just something per department. It's not just an educators/curator/marketers tool, but rather should be a collaboration between all of the above and more.

I'll be looking at a few collaborative videos I've made at the Balboa Park Online Collaborative and how they have all differed in some ways but all created a very meaningful and powerful story that united different groups.

MWA2013: Making it Pretty and Easy: Video for Museums on the Cheap

This is a very late update about my presentation at Museums and the Web Asia this past winter, I encourage those who were able to attend to share their experience of the recent MW conference in Baltimore!

So I have this production philosophy, and I know that at least several of you are on the same page with me on this-

Anyone can do it.

Consumer technology has come such a long way that we should not hesitate to put the camera in the hands of the curator, conservator, any professional at your museum, even (and perhaps especially) if they are completely inexperienced with video. Video is just another language for sharing information ideas and stories, augmenting text or replacing it.

As a video artist I was always toying with inexpensive technology to see how I could push it to behave either in a stylistic way that blindsided quality or as the technology has dramatically improved (understatement) using consumer cameras with my production know-how to create something that looks great. This wasn't any kind of revelation, it has been happening all around me over the past decade. In 2003, two years before YouTube was even born, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation was released in theaters. It is a feature film created from years and years of footage captured on handicam as his own video diary dating back to childhood, and to further underscore the role of consumer technology, he had edited the whole thing in iMovie.

I didn't realize the relationship of my independent video practice to the work I was doing in museums until I began working on the Conservation Reel project, www.conservationreel.org. This Kress Foundation funded project provided the opportunity to explore the landscape of conservation video as it currently exists and then imagine up what the future of video production and conservation looked like with the voices of the Advisory Committee expanding my perspective. It became a two year endeavor to understand how video can be used by the conservation community, and how to teach someone from scratch to make great looking video quite simply with minimal tools.

I took this philosophy with me to Museums and the Web Asia in Hong Kong and a second abbreviated version of the conference in Beijing. It was a wonderful experience bringing these ideas to the broader community and I hope that it is just the beginning of a longer and broader conversation that will help us move forward in considering best practices for content production in museums.

My presentation from the conference is available on SlideShare:

MWA2013 Making it Pretty and Easy: Video for Museums on the Cheap from Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli

SIG Lunch at #MCN2013

During MCN2013 in Montreal, Quebec, the Media Production SIG met for the first time to discuss the needs of this newly formed Special Interest Group. 

Here are the notes from the meeting: 

How can we reach people year-round to create a network of media professionals?

Start year round discussion on Twitter. Have a permanent hashtag for people to use (#museumvideo) and install widget on the blog. 

There is a desire to keep blog long form and public to be able to share more 

Should we start a ListServ? Who would host/manage? It should be archivable and easy. Maybe Google Groups? Consider having people apply to the listserv to avoid heavy sales focus?

Topics for Next Year:

• Accessible Production: Logistics of Content Production and Guidelines for Creativity
• Video Project Process: Tips and Tools for Organization and Management
• Long Form Video for Museums
• Hiring Media People: What skill sets do digital media creative teams need?
• Process Inspiration: Tips from Other Fields on Making Digital Media
• Educating Leadership: How to teach your boss about video and digital Media
• Forced Outsourcing: How to manage Digital Media projects (creativity and when you have to use an outside company
• Importance of Video: Setting Context of Video in Museums
• Telling Stories with and without media
• Evaluating Video

Are we missing anything? We hope to create a year round program of discussions and communication to make the SIG a valuable resource for our members.

MCN 2013

Hey Y'all! Members, new members, members to be, and the media curious:

We have been officially established as the Media Production Special Interest Group (SIG)! We have sponsored two sessions at this year's conference and look forward to collaborating on the the development of panel topics for next year.

We have a new look for the blog that includes a twitter feed drawn from our newly established hashtag #MuseumVideo. The Media Production SIG while having a focus and strong presence of video producer members is not just for video makers, it is for anyone telling a story with digital content, we all know audio, images and text are also used to develop content to share with our visitors on a variety of platforms. We are here to support each other in our practice in all ways, from advice on specific projects to major equipment purchases.

I look forward to meeting more folks and getting more of you contributing to the blog! contact myself or other users to get added as an author to this blog by emailing annachiaretta(at)gmail.com. I would like to encourage those near eachother to start scheduling regular gatherings, and even google hangout gatherings.

When you first join the blog, please take time to share a little bit about your production philosophies and an example of content you have produced, help produced, or even simply want to produce.

This blog is public in the spirit of open dialogue and knowledge sharing.