Lauren Lazin began her tenure at MTV in 1992, when she formed the MTV News and Specials Department after having created MTV's longest running documentary series Sex in the '90s. She has directed, produced and executive produced the documentary series MTV Rockumentary, the health series Mega-Dose and the indie film series alt.film@mtv. Currently, she executive-produces MTV Ultra Sound, Cribs, Diary and the Emmy-nominated Uncensored series, as well as True Life, a documentary series that chronicles social issues affecting young people. She also serves as executive producer on all the
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The Visions du Réel Festival ( www.visionsdureel.ch), held in Nyon, Switzerland, last spring, is stunningly located beside a lake with snow-topped mountains in the distance. The short walk between the two festival sites is up a lilac-covered lane. And if these were not advantages enough, a break between films offers a sunny câfé terrace where it is easy to make new friends. Festival Director Jean Perret believes that "people need to be awakened. The way they perceive things needs to be turned upside down." And his selection of about 100 films, from some 1,500 submissions, supported his creed
This spring, The New York Times Company and Discovery Communications, Inc. launched a new venture: Discovery Times Channel. It seems a natural match—one that marries the editorial prowess of the Times with the visual abilities and experience of Discovery. "Its principal purpose is to extend the journalistic vision, tone, approach of The New York Times to television," according to Michael Oreskes, assistant managing editor and director of electronic news for The New York Times Vivian Schiller is the senior vice president and general manager of the Discovery Times Channel. The following are
From Borderland (Dir./Exec. Prod./Wtr.: Ivan O'Mahoney; Exec. Prod./Wtr.: Nial Fulton). Courtesy of Al Jazerra America On August 20, 2013, with a click of the remote, American households were able to get their news and commentary from a new venue: Al Jazeera America. Starting a new channel in an already overcrowded cable news scene seemed risky, but the high quality programming soon silenced the naysayers. The day it launched, Al Jazeera America aired Fault Lines: Made in Bangladesh, about American retailers turning a blind eye to the dangerous practices of overseas subcontractors. The
I'm fascinated by sound and how it can transform a documentary program. The creative sound concepts that excite me most are usually the more specific nuts and bolts suggestions. These often involve the structure of a program and need to be implemented early on. In these days of digital wizardry, "we'll fix it in the mix" can be a true statement. My view, however, is that you can more significantly enhance your production values by thinking about sound starting in pre-production. Thus, the sound design of your doc is an integral part of the concept and outline of the entire project, not
It's one of the longest running festivals in the United States—and one of the biggest. And in its 29 years, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF; www.seattlefilm.com) has held its own against a proliferation of festivals that have positioned themselves in the late spring/early summer slot that SIFF has always held. "Ultimately, what we keeps us strong and true is that this festival maintains the same identity it started out with," observes Darryl Macdonald, the festival's director and co-founder. "It's an audience festival and it's geared squarely at the Seattle film-going audience."
A review of 'Creative Filmmaking from the Inside Out: Five Keys to the Art of Making Inspired Movies and Television,' by Jed Dannenbaum, Carroll Hodge and Doe Mayer.
If you want to see the future of documentary film, hang out with a 13-year-old for a while. I've just spent the past two weeks prowling my neighborhood with my son Max and the family DV camera. It was an eye-opening experience that made me realize just how much things have changed since I was his age almost 30 years ago. When I was 13, I messed around with Super-8 film. It was expensive to purchase, and expensive to process. It had no sound, and the coolest thing about it was the ability to do stop-motion animation films. I did a ton of them. Max's toolset is DV. It's cheap (if you can snag
In 1999, I called up R.J. Cutler, and I puzzled when he answered the phone, saying, "Actual Reality," which is what he'd christened his production company. In reality, the company amounted to Cutler's rented Hollywood house and a handful of agreements with Fox Television. But that would change quickly. Cutler was already a well known documentary maker, one of the major forces behind the Oscar-nominated The War Room (1993), and director/producer of A Perfect Candidate (1997) . He'd gotten into television through MSNBC, creating and producing Edgewise, a weekly documentary program. But the Fox
International travel just as war is breaking out is never a good idea. The day before I was to leave for Cannes I found myself at the IDA's reception for the Oscar nominees. I found out the war was about to break out from Michael Moore, who had arrived late because he had been listening to President Bush declare war. Not that this was any surprise. About 10 days before, almost all the American broadcasters canceled their trips to Cannes for the 2003 MIPDOC (March 22 and 23) and MIP-TV (March 24 -28) markets. Polite emails were sent out to all the distributors from Discovery Channel, TLC