ITVS Joins Leading Bay Area Media Groups to Celebrate Teachers

This past month, over 100 media-savy educators attended the first Bay Area Media Innovators in  Education event in San Francisco. The event was co-hosted by ITVS, KQED, BAVC, and the San Francisco Film Society.

At a time when school budgets are tight, it is rare for teachers to get treated to wine, gourmet treats, and free media content. But ITVS and four other leading Bay Area media organizations decided they deserved some pampering and inspiration.

This past month, over 100 media savvy educators attended the first Bay Area Media Innovators in Education event at the Lab art space, co-hosted by ITVS, KQED, BAVC and the San Francisco Film Society. The event was a showcase for educational resources from each organization, and featured a panel discussion with four teachers who are using media creatively to engage their students.
› Continue reading

Tags: BAVC, community classroom, education, KQED, resources, san francisco film society, teachers

San Francisco Remembers The Blunder Years

The Blunder Years is an evening of live performance and video where Bay Area filmmakers, writers, musicians, and actors show/perform pieces influenced by the television and movies of their teenage years. The event is scheduled for the evening of August 12 at Z-Space in San Francisco. All donations will go towards BAVC’s The Factory — an advanced video production collective for motivated teenagers in the Oakland Bay Area.

Cinema Speakeasy and Friends with Benefits invites you to participate in The Blunder Years — an evening inspired by the pop-culture forces of our youth, to celebrate and benefit today’s youth. This is a live variety showcase in which each participant pays homage to the iconic movie or TV show of their teen years in the form of a reading, a live sketch performance, a musical interpretation, a comedy routine, or a short-film screening, to name just a few examples. The night’s performances will be punctuated by a cocktail hour, a house-band, and a DJ.
› Continue reading

Tags: BAVC, cinema speakeasy, events, San Francisco, the blunder years

LEADING THE CONVERSATION: Young Women’s Voices in the Media

ITVS, POV, BAVC, and Youth Radio will co-present a live chat on the future for women media makers, this Monday, July 11 at 3PM PT / 6PM ET.

The media industry is still largely a man’s world. In commercial film, only 7 percent of directors, 13 percent of writers, and 20 percent of producers are female. How will the next generation of women media-makers confront that reality? ITVS, POV, the Bay Area Video Coalition, and Youth Radio will partner to present a live chat on Monday, July 11 at 3 PM PT / 6 PM ET with talented young women from around the country who have won acclaim in the youth media world and beyond. The conversation will be moderated by independent producer Jen Gilomen (co-director of Deep Down).
› Continue reading

Tags: BAVC, community cinema, community classroom, ITVS, P.O.V., women and girls lead, Youth Media, Youth Radio

BAVC Producers Institute 2011: Indigenous Science

On Saturday, ITVS’s Jonathan Archer will be live blogging from the Producers Institute Public Conference Day at the Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco.

BAVC’s prestigious Producers Institute kicked off on Thursday and runs through June 18. Over the course of a week, teams of filmmakers and technologists representing six hand-picked films will develop a science-based interactive platform as part of a cross-media storytelling strategy that includes the participation of global communities. Read about the participating projects here, including next season’s Independent Lens film We Were Here.
› Continue reading

Tags: BAVC, bay area, crossmedia, ITVS, Producers Institute, science and technology, storytelling

The BAVC Producers Institute Extends Storytelling Into the Digital Realm

Wendy Levy, director of the BAVC Producers Institute

Filmmakers, do you know your alternate reality from your augmented reality? If not, you may want to get a glimpse into the future of documentary film by checking out what’s going on at The Bay Area Video Coalition’s Producers Institute for New Media Technologies.

The Producers Institute is a 10-day residency for independent producers who, in collaboration with teams of strategists, technologists, and NGO partners, develop and prototype multi-platform projects related to their documentary projects. Now in its fourth year, the Producers Institute has gained recognition as an incubator for cutting-edge content and thought leadership in public and social interest media. That’s why we’re especially excited that four producers are participating this year with projects related to their ITVS-funded films: Pamela Yates, Granito (Open Call, 2009); Roland Leguiri-Laura, To Be Heard (Open Call, 2008); Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen, The Revolutionary Optimists (Open Call, 2009); and Jehan Harney, Dream of America (Diversity Development Fund, 2008).

This year, ITVS staffers were lucky enough to attend some of the events and activities, including the day of final presentations. By then, producers’ eyes were bleary from a full week of non-stop brainstorming, whiteboarding, designing, wire-framing, and developing their prototypes. Despite the frenetic schedule, the producers presented some impressive work that ranged from the aforementioned alternate reality and augmented reality game prototypes, to geo-targeted mapping projects, to mobile social applications, and much more. Videos of the final presentations should be posted soon, but to learn about the specific project proposals, you can click here. To get a re-cap of the week from the archived Twitter feed and to see more pics, click here.

› Continue reading

Tags: BAVC, digital, producers, Producers Institute

Apply Now: Producers Institute for New Media Technologies

Are you a filmmaker looking to develop innovative and interactive ways to engage audiences?

The Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, hosted by the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), is a ten-day residency for eight creative teams (independent producers or public broadcasters) with a shared goal of developing and prototyping a multi-platform project inspired by or based on a significant documentary project.

Filmmakers who participate in the institute will develop socially relevant media projects for emerging digital platforms and have opportunities to participate in high-level industry roundtables, intense one-on-one project development with technical mentors, new media storytelling workshops and hands-on prototyping of their ideas.

Participants will adapt and develop film, video and audio content for delivery using a range of interactive formats, including video game applications, interactive web-based experiences, mobile streaming, multi-user communities and new educational software. Propose a range of delivery strategies, including cellphones, other hand-held devices, set-tops, Internet, portable software and more.

Check out the Second Life video below to get an overview of the Institute from Wendy Levy, director of creative programming at BAVC:

› Continue reading

Tags: BAVC, digital, Producers Institute