A Moment on Earth

This semester I took ENG 921: Narrative in a Digital Age.
Never have the readings for an English course been so cool! All the "readings" have been digital media, digi art and digital archives of one form or another.

This week we had to look at, among other things, a digital text called "A Moment on Earth." It's the website for two movies that were made a few years ago.

-- 60 filmmakers around the world shot their film at the exact same moment in time around the world, and then did it again 12 hours later
-- On August 5, 2004, at 12 p.m. GMT and again at 12 a.m. GMT, simultaneous moments were caught all around the globe.

It's the perfect demonstration of global synchronicity, and it beautifully shows how we're all connected. Global village and all that jazz.

(Click the cool link-y picture below to check it out.)

We also had to be writing a blog for this course about the readings and our reactions etc. I may post bits and pieces of it here if I have the time.

NFB's Screening Room: Leading the Way for Canadian Content (re-posted from school blog)

The National Film Board of Canada's Screening Room launched last year, making Canadian films accessible to the world. But it's only a small portion of an already minute amount of Canadian content available on the web.

Michael Geist wrote about NFB in his article NFB Unreels Online Smash Hits.
"The NFB may never replace YouTube in the minds of most when it comes to Internet video," Geist wrote, "but a series of innovations have highlighted the benefits of an open distribution model and the potential for Canadian content to reach a global audience online."

Having a Canadian website, available to the entire world, showing intelligent, well-made and creative Canadian videos is great.

"There's a lack of Canadian content," says Willow Knoblauch, formerly the head of managing live videos on BlogTV.ca (now only available in the United States as blogtv.com).

Videos posted on sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV and BlogTV are often unintelligent or uploaded illegally by "excitable 14 year olds".

But YouTube and other user-generated-content sites can still include intelligent, innovative material. "For people that actually use it for what they're supposed to, it's a stepping stone to launch themselves into what they really want to do," says Knoblauch. That could be anything from acting to short films, animation or production. "It's a good platform for creative people."

So far, NFB's Screening Room seems like the best Canadian video site out there. Knoblauch thinks its a huge step in the right direction. "It's guaranteed, original, Canadian content."