Toronto’s re-imagined vertical suburbs animate and take shape on subway screens and platforms across the city from January 2 – February 29, 2012.

Developed by curator and CFC Media Lab alumna, Sharon Switzer, this two-fold art installation is a site-specific version of the most recent edition of the NFB’s HIGHRISE project. Presenting the beautifully imagined transformation of a rundown Toronto highrise tower, with landscapes inspired by its inhabitants, the TTC installation asks Torontonians to envision a more livable city.

Reaching more than one million commuters, HIGHRISE/ONE MILLIONth TOWER on the TTC can be found across Toronto’s subway system, as a series of specially designed subway platform posters in 59 stations, and 30-second animated videos that play every 10 minutes all day on the entire network of Pattison Onestop screens.

The NFB’s HIGHRISE project, directed by Katerina Cizek, is a multi-year, multimedia, collaborative documentary experiment about the human experience in global vertical suburbs. ONE MILLIONth TOWER is set in an HTML5 virtual landscape that re-imagines the urban landscape, using the magic of cinema, architecture, animation and cutting-edge open-source web technology to transform a dilapidated highrise neighbourhood into a vibrant resident-led community.

Presented by Pattison Onestop, Art for Commuters, and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

Don’t miss this boundary pushing conference featuring presentations by leading international innovators and forward-thinking producers. Uncover new business, creative, and technical strategies and inject a fresh perspective into your cross-platform documentaries.

Two full days of inspiration, information, networking, and debate! Promises to be the most exciting docSHIFT program yet.

Some Guest Speakers:

Matt Locke from Storythings
The former head of multi-platform commissioning at Channel 4, and former Head of Innovation at BBC’s New Media takes us to the new frontiers of immersive storytelling. More about Storythings.

Welcome to The Goggles!
Meet Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, AKA The Goggles: the Vancouver-based creative team behind Adbusters, and the internationally acclaimed interactive documentary Welcome to Pine Point.

We would like to congratulate all the nominees for the Gemini awards, especially the ones listed below, some of these amazing people are alumni of CFC Media Lab programs and some have been associated with the CFC Media Lab in the past.  Way to go and best of luck everyone!

Best Cross-Platform Project – Non-Fiction

• Storming Juno Interactive, History Television (Shaw Media) (Secret Location) James Milward, Ryan Andal, Noora Abu Eitah, Pietro Gagliano, Steve Miller
• Museum Secrets – Digital, History Television (Shaw Media) (Kensington Communications Inc.) Robert Lang, David Oppenheim

Best Cross-Platform Project – Fiction

• Endgame Interactive, Showcase (Shaw Media) (Secret Location) James Milward, Ryan Andal, Pietro Gagliano, CJ Hervey, Alan Sawyer
• Flashpoint Training Day, CTV (Bell Media) (Xenophile Media Inc.) Patrick Crowe, Keith Clarkson, Thomas Wallner

Best Cross-Platform Project – Children’s and Youth – Sponsored by the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund

• Babar and the Adventures of Badou Interactive, YTV.com (Corus) (Watch More TV Interactive Inc.) Caitlin O’Donovan

Best Original Program or Series produced for Digital Media – Non-Fiction

• Highrise / Out My Window, NFB (National Film Board of Canada Festivals Office) Katerina Cizek, Loc Dao, Gerry Flahive, Rob McLaughlin

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Hot Docs in Toronto announced participants for Doc Talks; a new free series of conversations with international directors.  In this first edition of Doc Talks, innovative and influential filmmakers will discuss the impact of documentaries on the real world in three separate hour long conversations detailed below.

DOCS MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Can one film really change the world?
May 3, 5:30–6:30 p.m.

Documentaries have a long tradition of being a catalyst for change. Meet three directors who have sought to create films that help pave the way for social transformation.

Featuring:

Terence Macartney-Filgate – Up Against the System, The Back-breaking Leaf
Shannon Walsh - H2Oil and St-Henri, the 26th of August
Lee Hirsch - The Bully Project

Moderator: Katerina Cizek – Director, HIGHRISE/Out My Window, Filmmaker-in-Residence.

DOCS MODIFYING MINDS

Do documentaries change the way we see our world?
May 4, 5:30–6:30 p.m.

Constant access to information can lead us to think we know the whole story. But docs like Mighty Jerome (Charles Officer), Hot Coffee (Susan Saladoff) and You’ve Been Trumped (Anthony Baxter) take us deeper than the nightly news. Prepare to be surprised by stories you’ve never heard, and transformed by the ones you thought you knew.

Featuring:

Charles Officer - Mighty Jerome
Susan Saladoff - Hot Coffee
Anthony Baxter - You’ve Been Trumped

Moderator: Sarah Spring – Producer (Parabola Films), St-Henri, the 26th of August

DOCS FUELLING DEBATE

Documentary films: Igniting dispute or dialogue?
May 5, 5:30–6:30 p.m.

Documentaries can be controversial; films such as Wiebo’s War (David York) and Blood in the Mobile (Frank Piasecki Poulsen) delve into religion, politics and ethical dilemmas. Attend this session and add your voice to a spirited debate on covering and creating controversy.

Featuring:

David York - Wiebo’s War
Frank Piasecki Poulsen - Blood in the Mobile

Moderator: Katerina Cizek – Director, HIGHRISE/Out My Window, Filmmaker-in-Residence.

PRESENTED BY THE NFB AND HOT DOCS in collaboration with the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund.

"Neighbourhood Watch" by Sean Yelland, courtesy of Ingram Gallery

Out My Window won the 2011 Interactive Emmy for Digital Non-Fiction, the inaugural IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling, and is available along with other HIGHRISE projects on the NFB’s site: http://highrise.nfb.ca/

For the past year I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with the National Film Board of Canada on the marketing of a project called Out My Window. Directed by Filmmaker in Residence Katerina Cizek, the project is one of the first to launch under the umbrella of the HIGHRISE program at the NFB; a multiyear and multimedia exploration into vertical living in the global suburbs. Out My Window is comprised of several 360º virtual environments representing highrise apartments in 13 cities around the world, and explores how people living in similar architectural structures around the world have customized their space in response to physical, psychological, social, and political factors.

Led by veteran production and coordination teams at the NFB, and brought to life through the creative input of dozens of artists and technicians around the world, Out My Window is a flagship production for the Film Board (an institution internationally renowned for its documentary content) and for Canada. The project advocates Canadian values around storytelling, equity, and diversity while meaningfully engaging with global audiences.

What drew me to the project was how it represented an attempt, sometimes explicit and sometimes emergent, to experiment using multiple systems at the foundation of documentary cinema, all at once: production technique, distribution strategy, and audience engagement. During the creation of Out My Window, all of these “tools” that support documentary projects were rounded up and brought in for analysis, and in many cases, reinvention.

The central interface of Out My Window seems elegantly simple: 360º panoramas of apartments in highrise towers all over the world, within which viewers can interact with objects, people, or views of the cities outside. Most of the people who I’ve shown the piece to over the last several months have remarked at how simple to understand and engaging the panoramic interface is. Asking those same people to explain how they might actually go about filming that 360º panoramic action shot tends to result in a bit of head-scratching.

The wizardry behind Out My Window’s innovative interface came out of a collaboration with the Dutch 360º camera company yellowBird (they also happen to have the best domain name ever: http://www.yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com). While Stanley Kubrick utilized an f/0.7 lens (allegedly machined for use in U2 spy-planes) to film his epic Barry Lyndon using natural light; and James Cameron developed the Pace/Cameron Fusion Camera System to bring the virtual world of Pandora to life in Avatar; it’s unusual for a group of filmmakers to reinvent the technology with which they capture their scene for a one-off project. But experiments in technology is a part of what Highrise is all about. Some of the content at the heart of Out My Window has already been adapted into a physical installation called StorySpace (in collaboration with the CFC Media Lab, of all institutions… I swear that I’m not part of any recursive linking conspiracy). The living panoramic visuals are probably the aspect of the project that most directly illustrates how its execution was dependent on innovative uses of new tools.

But for all of its benefits, access to new production technology certainly isn’t something to be assumed or taken for granted. Aside from the NFB’s working relationship with yellowBird, creative collaboration with freelance photographers from 13 cities was central to the production of Out My Window. Musicians that appear on the project’s soundtrack were also as much participants in the film’s creation as subjects for its cameras and microphones. I came to the project as a fan of digital storytelling interested in thinking about big issues, and I was welcomed aboard the team to help define strategies for engaging audiences new kinds of media experiences.

In the human research field, there has been an effort in play for decades to recast subjects as participants – it’s at the core of the evolution of modern research ethics. But to see the same shift occurring in documentary production – of subjects and audiences into active co-creators – is exciting. Last week, Kat Cizek posted to the Highrise blog about the interplay between technology and citizen journalism in the Los Angeles Riots of 1992.

A flurry of online activity emerged last month when Paleofuture posted part of a 1987 OMNI Magazine interview about the future of cinema with Roger Ebert. Most of the ruckus was due to the accuracy that seemed to be attached to some of Mr. Ebert’s forecasts about then-emerging revolutions in entertainment. One of his forecasts is particularly interesting, I think because it’s the one we most easily forget to remember as a huge leap – the sheer diversity of cinematic content we have access to, through the Internet (or even Netflix, Canadian content agreements be-damned). What Ebert was most excited about in terms of the digital cinema revolution ahead was how films would no longer only open in a handful of cities around the world. They would open everywhere, in homes and on the go, to roars of applause from Non-Angelinos everywhere. Out My Window is a decidedly international story, and it’s (appropriately) available, online and free-of-charge, to audiences equally scattered across the globe.

Of all the systematic “tools” that act as the foundations of documentary, the one presently under the most intense reinvention is actually the audience. Global audiences are great, but globally connected creative audiences are even better. Out My Window: PARTICIPATE, a side project to the original documentary, invites people from all over the world to contribute views and stories from out their windows to the experience; widening the net of contributors to the project, and ultimately resulting in a completely different viewer experience. Photos and stories submitted to the Flickr Participate pool are fed into an interface on the NFB’s site allowing visitors to interact with a tapestry of views on the world by window-framed image, keyword text, or landscape colour.

While Out My Window is highly innovative in terms of its experience and packaged form, its release also highlighted one of the key benefits of an adaptive online documentary: the option to respond to relevant “Black Swan Events” (an idea developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to reference high-impact events that are extremely difficult to predict with much accuracy) on the global stage. Participate has had a number of submissions inviting online viewers into the surging unrest in Alexandria earlier this year, as well as the resulting celebrations in Tahrir Square.

If you haven’t experienced Out My Window yet, I recommend you dim the lights, come to terms with your fear of heights, and get ready for a moving and deeply innovative interactive experience.

Trevor Haldenby is a producer and photographer living in Toronto. He has attended Wilfrid Laurier University, Rhode Island School of Design, CFC Media Lab, and is presently completing a Master’s of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation at OCAD University.

You haven’t forgotten about this, have you?

All Proposals are due after the weekend! December 6th!

Really… Was there ever any doubt? CONGRATS TEAM!
(Check out our original post here: stabletalk.cfccreates.com/2010/11/26/out-my-window-nominated-for-idfa-doc-lab-award)

More deets on the Highrise blog: highrise.nfb.ca/2010/11/omw-wins-idfa-doclab-award

Jacqueline Nuwame, Sr. Training Programs Manager at the CFC Media Lab, had the honour of speaking at last week’s HTMlles Festival of Media Art and Networked Practices 2010 in Montreal.

Founded in 1997 and produced by Studio XX, the HTMlles Festival of Media Art and Networked Practices explores various facets of digital technology and the web as a medium for the creation and exhibition of women’s digital artworks. The festival occupies the singular position of being one of the only Quebecois and Canadian events entirely dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of independent media art, its particularity also being emphasized by its feminist approach, concerns and engagements.

Also featured at the festival was First Person Digital, produced in partnership with the NFB, which featured some amazing female-only work.

Take a peek at these other great projects:

www.itschinesetome.net
www.otandayanaan.net
www.perfectplum.com

A big shout-out to Studio XX for organizing this great event!

Congrats to NFB/Interactive and Gerry Flahive, Kat Cizek, Branden Batuhin, Heather Frise, and the hundreds of photographers and researchers that made HIGHRISE: Out My Window happen! You deserve this nod!

IDFA presents a new documentary award: the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling. The prize (Canon 5D Mark II camera, made available by Canon) is awarded to the DocLab project that uses digital technology in the most creative and effective way to tell a documentary story.

The award winner will be determined by an international jury consisting of Alexandre Brachet (Gaza-Sderot.com, Prison Valley 2009), Antoinette Hoes (Leylines) and Zach Wise (The New York Times).

Check out DocLab: the official new media program of IDFA, showcasing new forms of documentary storytelling, digital technology and media art.

The judging happens today! Best of luck, team!

WANTED: Canada’s next award-winning digital documentary!

Do you have a digital documentary idea? One that can attract a large community, win critical success on the world stage, or innovate with a successful business or creative approach? The docSHIFT Institute will support up to four experienced creators with innovative digital documentary project ideas. selected participants will receive mentorship, professional consultation and some financial support to complete their project or create a prototype.

docSHIFT is presented in partnership with Ryerson University, Hot Docs, CFC Media Lab and the National Film Board.

www.doctoronto.ca/docshift-institute

Out My Window Teleconference call:

Bloggers, tweeters, mainstream journos and general public unite!

Don’t miss the chance to join tomorrow’s social media teleconference about CFC Media Lab and NFB‘s Out My Window.
This project, mentioned on stabletalk last week, is a 360 panoramic video examining how global culture is shaped by the high-rise environment.

WHEN: Thursday, November 4, 2010
2:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (Toronto, Canada)

This teleconference will be a conversation with the director, Katerina Cizek, using collaborative web technology and the telephone (to hear the audio, you will need to call in via telephone technology, but you can use skype, gmail or any kind of VOIP). Get a tour of the Out My Window interactive film, and ask your own questions about the production or motivations behind one of the first 360º feature-length documentaries.

Out My Window:
CFC Media Lab co-produces with NFB the installation Out My Window: Interactive Views from the Global Highrise, one of the world’s first 360 degree webdocumentaries, set to premiere at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

This co-production brings together NFB’s Out My Window team led by Katerina Cizek with Artist Priam Givord, and CFC Media Lab team David Bouchard, Galen Scorer and Ana Serrano to create a more than life size version of Out My Window.

It explores the state of our urban planet through the people who look out onto the world from highrise windows.

Out My Window features 90 minutes of documentary material from 13 cities around the world, shot in 13 languages. As the director, it’s been an honour to work on this huge global collaborative effort over the last year: we worked with over 100 photographers, journalists, architects, residents, activists, researchers around the world to bring you these incredible stories of inspiration, community and resilience.

- Katerina Cizek
Director of Out My Window

(Quote from IDFA DocLab Article by Caspar Sonnen. Read the full article here: http://blog.doclab.org/2010/10/idfa-doclab-presents-out-my-window-by-katerina-cizek)

Green Screens partners films from the NFB with experts and panelists selected by the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy (www.cielap.org)

REMIXING OUR WORLD: Create your own short animated film and bring your vision to life! Participants will arrange cut-out images from magazines to critically address environmental issues and superimpose them on an untouched landscape – remixing the portrayal of our environment and challenging how we think about it. A fun hands-on experience with stop-motion animation, whether it’s your first or fiftieth time!

Follow the NFB Mediatheque on Facebook: www.facebook.com/?ref=home#%21/pages/Toronto-ON/NFBONF-Mediatheque/17608843063?ajaxpipe=1&__a=17
and Twitter: twitter.com/NFBMediatheque
and Foursquare! foursquare.com/venue/1062629
Sign up for the new NFB Mediatheque newsletter by email to nfbmediathequeonf@nfb.ca

Follow CIELAP on Twitter: twitter.com/cielap

ATTENTION ALL DIGITAL DAREDEVILS!

The most anticipated cross-media pitching challenge of the new decade has begun accepting entries for new ideas and techniques to engage audiences across digital platforms.

Finalists including independent producers, interactive agencies and digital designers will be invited to Cannes, France (April 12-16) to pitch ideas LIVE to major international networks, including the BBC, TF1, KCC, NFB, and the European Commission.

This rapid-fire competition sets the creative pulse for the Content 360 Festival, part of MIPTV’s all-new MIPDigital event programme.

Since its launch 4 years ago, the Content 360 Challenge has attracted over 1400 new ideas from 42 countries and awarded €400,000 in development funding.

Category: CONTENT 360 “Next Generation Audience Engagement”. A creative challenge for new talent, companies or freelancers, with truly new and unique application or content ideas with mass potential to attract and engage audiences.

Category: KOREA COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (KCC) “Engaging with children through the use of Connected TV”. Best educational content or service idea to engage with children through Wed TV, DMB and IPTV including any kind of connected TV.

Category: NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA (NFB) – “Next Generation Online Video Experience”. The National Film Board of Canada is on the lookout for the best and brightest to push the online video experience to a whole new level and imagine the next “killer feature” for the NFB.ca website.

Category: TF1 PUBLICITÉ – “New Advertising formats”. TF1 Publicité is looking for new advertising formats and/or cross media techniques to complement TV campaigns (TV commercials, billboards or short form programs) in order to maximize the efficiency of traditional TV advertising methods.

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: February 15, 2010.

European Commission Challenge details.

For more information on “Content 360 – MIPTV Cross Media Challenge” visit here or contact content360@reedmidem.com.

The National Film Board is offering a temporary 12-month position (with the possibility of extension) for an Assistant, Studio Administration, English Program, Ontario Centre.

JOB SUMMARY: Under the supervision of the Centre Administrator, supports the Centre Administrator in conducting, co-ordinating and following up all non-filmic activities of the Ontario Centre. Contributes to the production coordination activities and liaises with Business Affairs and Legal Services to administer production related files.  Acts as the Centre’s contact or resource person for activities related to tenant and building services and software familiarization. Provides administrative support in various areas for the Centre.

QUALIFICATIONS: Diploma of Collegial Studies in the office administration or secretarial field and two (2) years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience; good understanding of budgetary procedures; good mathematical abilities; good knowledge of Oracle; understanding of contracts and related issues. Knowledge of Word, Excel and Filemaker; speed and precision in data processing; ability to work in a team; ability to administer simultaneously several dossiers in an active environment and to maintain good interpersonal relationships; other personal qualities such as judgment, autonomy, speed, accuracy, good control of stress, tact and sense of organization. Knowledge of English is essential.

SALARY: Between $40,186 and $48,875

If these requirements match your profile and this challenge excites you, we invite you to send your résumé, BY JANUARY 19, 2010, quoting competition no. TT-10004687-V, by e-mail to rh-hr@nfb.ca, by fax to 514-283-5850 or by mail: Human Resources Branch, P.O. Box 6100, Station Centre-ville, Montréal, QC H3C 3H5.

View the job posting here.

Visit the NFB website here.

NFB released a free new NFB iPhone app yesterday. The app lets you watch hundreds of animated films and documentaries from NFB.ca, streaming, on your iPhone or iPod touch.

They also built in a “Watch Later” feature that lets you load films on your iPhone for up to 24 hours so you can watch them offline. Hopefully that will come in handy on subways and planes and other WiFi deserts.

The app is free and you can download it from iTunes.

Also, if you have time, please let them know what you think about the app – any features you’d like us to add / fix. Send us an email at webmaster@nfb.ca. Thanks!

http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/10/20/nfb-free-iphone-app/

THE NFB-TVO CALLING CARD PROGRAM INVITES ONTARIANS TO MAKE NEW-MEDIA
AND BROADCAST DOCUMENTARIES.

Winning teams receive $45,000 , mentorship and an online or broadcast launch.

Documentaries must be original, character-driven narratives with a focus on social, political and cultural issues.  Submission deadline is August 31st, 2009.

For more information please visit:  NFB.ca/callingcard

FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY GET 25% OFF THE DVD BUY YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE – LIMITED SEATING Friday, October 3 at 8 PM – Special Presentation

Play a creative and interactive role by navigating through the movie controlling the flow and direction of the elaborate sequence of events with a simple click.  Audience interaction, followed by a panel discussion on the making of an interactive film with Mateo Guez (director), Anita Lee (producer) Roslyn Kalloo (editor) and Tina Santiago (line producer).

RATED 18 + $6 | $4 students, seniors, NFB, DOC members 150 John street (corner Richmond) For more information 416.973.3012

www.nfb.ca/mediatheque

www.latefragment.com