Capturing the Stillness

The New York Times' Chang Lee has another breakthrough with his piece on Wonjun Park, an artist suffering with cancer at the end of his days. Chang Lee's video on the NYT Lens site is beautiful in its simplicity and moving in its silences. It sets the tone with comments by Park anticipating the ending of his life, as we see him submitting to another round of chemotherapy "My body started to leave my spirit."

Feeling numbed by Western medicines' attack on the cancer in his body, we see Park struggling to give meaning to his life through his art. Perhaps that is how he will be able to honor his spirit.

Once again in his Second Chance series, Chang Lee mixes photography and video to create an indelible portrait. But most profound are the moments of stillness and his use of photography to stop time and allow us to reflect, just as Park is reflecting on his art and life and art. They beautifully interwoven in this video haiku.

Women in Film and Video

This week WIFV DC celebrated their 30th anniversary. I was just starting out as a film editor back then and remember very well when it started. It was just a handful of women who came together to help other women in a business that was totally male dominated at the time. 30 years later it's a vital organization with over a thousand members who generate millions of dollars in projects through out the Washington Metropolitan area. It's still a great meeting place for those starting out as well as seasoned professionals. And a wonderful example of the concept, "if you build it they will come."

The New New York Times

Perhaps no other newspaper is as forward thinking about the Internet and "new media" as the New York Times. They've been running a lot of video on their website, much of which I've celebrated on this blog. But where is it all heading?

According to a WSJ article, they have been giving advertisers tours of the living room of the future. Here's how the WSJ described it:

"a small room with a brown couch, a large flat-screen TV and four smaller screens on another wall. The set-up is designed to mimic how a reader will be able to receive Times content. In a demonstration, a staffer receives a Twitter message from a friend recommending a video from Times food writer Mark Bittman. Mr. Zimbalist (VP of R&D) touched the recommendation on one screen and dragged it to the flat-screen TV, which plays the video. A recipe associated with the video then appeared on Mr. Zimbalist's iPhone with an ad for a nearby Whole Foods store."

Hard to tell where the content ends and the advertising begins. But newspapers are in dire straights and they have to find new ways of making money. That's also why they're considering charging readers for access to their online content. If they continue to improve and add to their online content it very well may work. I find there's always something interesting that catches my eye. And I'm planning to write about another NYT Chang Lee video next week.

Cost v. Quality

What do you do when you need to respond to outside pressures, like cutting costs for example? Something has to give, right, but the choices you make can have long range implications.

When Martin Guitar was faced with that question, they decided they could not compromise the quality of their instrument. After all, that's what their reputation was built upon, and they knew that if they reduced quality they'd find themselves on a slippery slope. After all, Martin guitars have been the first choice of music greats like Elvis, Gene Autry and Eric Clapton -- who once said if he could be reincarnated as anything, he'd want to be a Martin guitar.

So they took another approach. Quality guitars are made by hand, and Martin did not want to lay off workers during the downturn. So they decided to produce the guitars just as they always had, but without the decorative inlay pattern that added a touch of style but didn't affect how the instrument performed. They picked this option during the depression and it kept the company humming along. You can read the whole story in the WSJ.

So what's the takeaway? Cost and quality can meet in the middle. It just takes some flexibility and planning. And like Martin Guitars, keeping your eye on the big picture.

Seeing is Believing

What we observe is different than what we see. Because it's all about context. Walking down the street, for example, we notice someone's face. And we immediately recognize, yes, that face belongs to another person walking down the street. But within that moment of perceiving, we also often sense or create a context. People give off clues about themselves and we respond to those clues -- here's a business person, a student, an artist, a tourist, someone who's happy, sad, whatever. If we stop to think about how we respond to what we see, then there's a lot of additional information that kind of hangs around whatever it is that we are looking at. We only have to pay attention to how our thoughts are interpreting what we are observing.

A good example of what I'm talking about can be found in Jeff Scher's short animated video, "The Parade" Here's how Jeff describes his work in The Animated Life section of the New York Times website: We can’t help it. We are fascinated by faces and bodies alike. Every face tells a story, and the story is a mystery. The clues abound and we read them instinctively in the blink of an eye. Jeff is a painter and experimental filmmaker who sometimes uses his dreamy watercolors to animate his films. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts and at NYU Tisch School of the Arts

I like his work, it's playful, mysterious and insightful. And it reminds about how context operates like a shell around content. So you could say, seeing is believing. But the opposite is true too, believing is constantly shaping what we are seeing.

A Little Learning Goes A Long Way

I went to Yale University this afternoon to audit an American Lit class on one of my favorite writers, J.D. Salinger and his book, Franny and Zooey. As I listened to Professor Amy Hungerford plunge into the text to find deeper meaning in the story, I thought again about Salinger's terse style and his unique way of telling a story. And the really cool thing was that I didn't have to travel, or register or anything. I just listened to her lecture online, courtesy of an educational website, Academic Earth and their web video collection. Their site lists "thousands of lectures from the world's top scholars." And it's free! Prof. Hungerford's contribution is 25 lectures on the American Novel since 1945. What a great idea, placing all that knowledge and expertise online for for anyone who has a yen for learning.

Letter to Michelle McNally

(Michelle McNally oversees photography for the New York Times)

Michelle, I wanted to say how much I enjoy the photography and video on your website. I've worked professionally in the film and video world for over 35 years, primarily as a writer and editor, and think what you guys are doing is the best video work on the web, by far. I include not only the emotionally-rich work of Todd Heisler in the wonderful series One in 8 Million, but the Lens blog, the Vows series and especially the work of Chang Lee, who’s eye for the telling moment is helping him create a new style of story telling. Of course, the news pieces are great, but I would expect that. It's the wide-ranging variety of work outside of news that brings a richness and vibrancy to the site that distinguishes it from all others. And it’s exciting to see what video on the web can be, in the hands of experienced and talented people. So I just wanted to say, I’m a big fan of what you and your staff have accomplished and look forward to all the good pieces still to come.