One of the widely disseminated photos on the #IranElection hashtag

However something that also fits into the scope of user-generated content (and our mission) is user-generated news, and the recent events in Iran surrounding the apparently falsified election results have proven that the tides are turning - users have more ability than ever to change the focus of the news.

#IranElection - the power of a hashtag

Undoubtedly the star of this new media news spectacle was Twitter. It proved its utility to new and old users alike with its ability to enable those inside Iran to quickly and efficiently share what they knew about the events that were unfolding around them.

Throughout the past few nights and days, the Twitter users of Iran (who were spawning the tweets) made use of the hashtag #IranElection to effectively share what they knew about the situation. It became a central source for all news related to the event, and has become one of the top trending topics on Twitter for several days now. #IranElection became a news network unto itself (and in fact spawned some interesting mashups, including one particularly detailed one at Twazzup).

Just as #IranElection told stories of the event, #CNNFail told stories of the failure to tell stories of the event (figure that one out!). While Twitter spent its Saturday and Sunday discussing the event, disseminating information, and spreading photos and video about the event, CNN and other major American cable networks were showing repeats of other programs, and altogether missing out on crucial coverage of the event. In a story aptly titled “Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran“, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb stated:

One quip we’ve seen is that “Tienanmen + Twitter = Tehran.” Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It’s really strange that the network is absent from this story.

People Power

There was another important element that added to Twitter’s success too - what I’m dubbing “people power”. The ability of us to directly connect to people involved in the situation and experience empathy for their situation is unparalleled and offers a new dimension to newsgathering. I tweeted about this phenomenon, and Twitter user Steve Garufi replied:

I must say, it is really touching to be able to connect with people in Iran on Twitter - to encourage them.

He added after that…

This is the most touching personal benefit to this - that we can build relationships with Iranians.

Denice Szafran also tweeted…

I think you’re right - we are watching real people tweet from Iran. It makes a difference.

The connection to real people in Iran (in this case) is incredibly visceral and offers perspective on the situation. We can put ourselves in “their shoes” and get a small taste of the horrors of what this situation is like. I also experienced this firsthand back in February, when a plane crashed in Clarence, NY (near the University at Buffalo, where I attend school). My fellow Buffalo-area tweeters and I spent the night sending out news as we heard it, sharing our eyewitness reports, and connecting with people around the country. This same “people power” applied.

The Dangers

Of course, the standard problems apply - these are only citizen journalists who aren’t working with proper credentials and thus don’t verify stories. With the stakes raised last night, as citizen tweeters were providing other citizen tweeters information in a tense, life-or-death situation, accusations flew back and forth that one poster wasn’t reliable, or another was providing mis-information, and in one instance a protest that was being hyped on Twitter was declared a potential trap (the circumstances are still unclear).

The immediacy of Twitter in covering news is both a benefit and its downfall. As with any other citizen journalism system, the immediacy causes a lack of fact-checking and the potential for the spread of wrong information (although not necessarily with malicious intent). This is common in the mainstream professional news industry as well - the likelihood of mistakes increases as you get closer to the event itself (the more immediate the news). The difference is, the news tends to take more time to collect facts and information (as CNN apparently did).

Further, that same “person power” that attracts us to Twitter can cloud our judgement, and prevent us from seeing the whole picture of a situation. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of affiliating ourselves with one side and take up their cause, without pausing to try to understand what the other side is enduring or see their position. Further, we tend to more openly trust those who we empathize with, without verifying the facts they present (as addressed above).

Regardless, the world wants immediate information. They want to know what is happening as it’s happening, and Twitter was able to provide that last night. But that doesn’t mean we should count out the main stream news networks yet - they provide measured analysis and carefully fact-checked information that is crucial to understanding the broad aspects of the situation at hand. They lose the narrative, and give us the facts.

By combining these two resources, the cautious, careful mainstream news media, and the fast, immediate power of tools like Twitter, we have even more options at our disposal to understand our world in new and fascinating ways.

Let us know if you have any problems accessing the mobile site, or if something comes through garbled. We’ll do our best to fix the problem, or work with the Mofuse team to make sure it gets sorted out.

Thanks for your continued support!

Just released is version two of this amazing application. The basic version is free, like previous versions, with premium add-ons available. The change list is impressive, with a host of upgrades, bug fixes, and new features joining the ranks of the already impressive featureset.

What it is

We haven’t written about QLab before, so I thought it’d be good to give a brief outline for those of you who aren’t familiar with it.

QLab was designed primarily for theatre, concerts, and other situations where you need to have recorded cue-based playback of audio and video. QLab lets you import audio clips and assign them all sorts of properties: length, fade times, wait times, names, targets, etc. You build a show, then when the time comes to perform you simply load it in and every time a new sound or clip is needed the program will automatically ‘cue it up’ and launch it. QLab handles your levels, fades, effects, output, etc.

What’s new

The new version has a brand new GUI, and it’s great. It’s streamlined from the previous version, and brings a lot of controls back into the workspace. You can now output to 48 channels per cue, allowing you to create complex multi-track effects.

As you can imagine, syncing in a live production is important, and QLab 2 improves synchronization features. There are new vamping features so if a transition or set change is taking a little longer, you can allow your music to continue indefinitely until the next cue is ready. Don’t be tripped up by cues going off at the wrong time! And a new fix prevents computer calculations from impacting the timing your cue: there’s now minimal processing interruption whenever you launch a cue.

Changes have been made to the way you look at audio: there’s now a waveform display, making it infinitely easier to trim, select sections of audio, and (also new) draw your own fade curves.

There are changes in video too: new animation cues allow you to create effects associated with opacity, scale, rotation, and transitioning. And you can even insert live video feeds now: great for broadcasting your event across a large venue in real time. Mac users might be familiar too with Quartz Compositions and Core Image filters (those are the sorts of things that power Photo Booth): now you can render your video and live video through those effects.

That’s just a brief overview: as the change list says, QLab2 has been rebuilt from the ground up and there are a vast number of exciting new features that you can check out.

Get it!

As previously mentioned, the basic version of QLab is totally and completely free - no pop-ups, interruptions, or obstructions. Check it out - even if you don’t work in live audio/video production you can probably find some cool use for it (create a video/audio slideshow for a party for example).

QLab is highly recommended, and version two looks like a tremendous step forward.

Check out the video of the talk on Vimeo.

The discussion that the initial presentation spawns is really thought-provoking, and although it doesn’t directly relate to film or media production it is definitely something to think about as you expand your presence online. Certainly, social media is going to be (if it isn’t already) a key part of marketing your media, and having a thorough understanding of the space will make you more effective.

Expect more posts here in the weeks ahead. Thanks for your dedication!

On the tech side, not a lot has happened since the last update. Most exciting is the new development of a new internet app I’m working on to help me organize a cast and assemble a crew for the production. I’m learning Django (thanks Jacob!), a powerful framework for developing web applications. With this new application I’m working on, people will be able to log in and upload their resumés, headshots, and all sorts of details about themselves so I can easily organize auditions, contact potential crew members, and more. I’ll also be able to post a schedule and the latest news from within this application, allowing it to serve as a sort of virtual production headquarters. Developing this is also useful for expanding the scope of my freelance web development work (aka, the financing department of this film!).

On the story side: Joel has finished another tremendous draft of the script (number five!) and I think we’re on track to make either draft six (or 6.5, after draft six revisions), our final. I’m assessing the script and the original short story this week, going line by line to ensure that the emotional integrity of the original story line is still maintained in the script; five drafts later it’s easy to lose sight of the original goals. Once the script is locked, I’ll start making the preparations and we’ll ideally audition in mid-late November. Because we aren’t shooting until at least February (possibly March, it depends on when we can get all the locations) this will give us plenty of time for rehearsals, which we’ll definitely take advantage of.

Hopefully that’s a sufficient update. If you have any more questions, email or post them in the comments and we’ll answer them straightaway.

Thanks for following us through the production process, and we’ll keep updating as we move futher along.

Sometimes though, Celtx has its problems. One such problem is the easy ability to overwrite a project while you and your screenwriter are working on the script and decide to upload at the same time. When you’ve just written up a slew of notes on the latest draft of your script, it can be a pain to have to type them all in again. As you might expect, Joel and I ran into this issue while working on our script. We needed another alternative for sharing notes on drafts of the script.

The solution came from Preview, the PDF and image viewer that’s built into Mac OS X. Apple has built annotation features right into Preview, so you can easily write and draw basic shapes on your PDF. With a PDF generated from Celtx’s TypeSet tool, I easily was able to start adding in my notes. When done, I just sent it off as an email to Joel.

Here’s an example of how some annotations look in Preview.

Click for larger view.

It’s very clear and readable what my notes are, and additional features like highlighting. strike-thru and underline (not shown) make it even easier to communicate about the script. You’re even able to change what colors and icons you want by opening the Inspector (Command+I).

Hopefully this can help you get an idea of one way collaboration is possible. It’s easy, fast, efficient, and there’s no risk of overwriting someone else’s material! Best of all, it’s still cross platform, meaning you don’t have to worry who’s on the other end. Any platform using Adobe Reader (and other third-party PDF reader) can easily access the annotations.

Are you a Windows or Linux user? We’ve shown how Mac users can easily annotate PDFs, share how you do it on your platform! Are you making use of PDF annotations? Show us how and where. We’re always curious to hear the cool ways that collaborative technology is being used in media production.

The script featured in the screenshot is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada license.

Hey everyone, Chris here. Steve said it best; but we’re saying it again: even though we’ve had light posting over the past few months (network efforts have shifted to FOSSwire, which is a smash hit; check it out!) we’re not dead yet! There are still a lot of folks hanging out here, so we brainstormed and came up with a cool way to keep the site alive and kicking.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be entering into production for a new film with Joel. The film, entitled “Dead Space”, is a look at a relationship, and the changes it undergoes over time and when affected by loss.

We thought it’d be cool to chronicle the production, and give reviews of and guides for the tools we are using. We’re launching into pre-production now, so expect lots of posts about screenwriting apps, scheduling tools, how to conduct auditions, and that sort of thing. In a few months, look for some details about the production process, as well as some details about making the most out of that consumer camcorder, how to shoot some basic test shots, a basic guide to directing, and other important production tips. When we enter post, we’ll share our tips on how to create a fast and efficient capture workflow, Final Cut Pro basics, a quick guide to color correction, and more.

Of course, we won’t always be so linear; if an interesting post crops up about the editing process while we’re shooting, I’ll be sure to post it. If I get a chance to try out a cool camera while we’re still working on the script, I’ll share my experience. Just be aware that we’re making a movie, and as such we’ll probably be posting about what we’re working on.

This is my first time directing a production of this scale (a true multi-camera, multi-set shoot with an established script) so we’re learning too. Take advantage of the comments to give us tips, share your stories, and suggest alternatives to our directions. YMM is about educating folks in new media, and one of new media’s basic tenets is strength in community. We’re nothing with out you, so take advantage of this unique forum.

Thanks again for being a devoted follower of YouMakeMedia; now let’s make a movie!