home  articles aesthetic The plugincinema Interview: Stephen Marshall
|
|
The plugincinema Interview: Stephen Marshall |
|
|
|
|
Written by plugincinema
|
 In an attempt to assess the state, future and direction of on-line filmmaking, plugincinema.com has been chatting to a variety of practitioners and experts throughout the field to get their views.
Stephen is Creative Director at the Guerrilla News Network (GNN). GNN is an underground news organization with headquarters in New York City and production facilities in Berkeley, California. They're mission is to expose people to important global issues through guerrilla programming on the web and on television. GNN won the 2001 Streaming Media Festival Audience Award and 2002 Sundance On-Line Film Festival for their political documentary with a radical pop-video feel entitled 'Crack the CIA'. Stephen himself is a writer and video director as well as the creator of Channel Zero, the world's first global VHS newsmagazine.
PC: Just to establish yourself in our minds; name your top five of any media (can be films, books, artwork, websites, games and so on...) that have influenced the work you do?
SM:
1. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and Media (the film by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick)
2. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (the book by Thomas Kuhn)
3. Letters to a Young Contrarian (Christopher Hitchens)
4. Underworld (and Tomato Design Collective)
5. The Pillow Book (film by Peter Greenaway)
PC: To balance it out, what five of any media (can be films, books, artwork, websites, games and so on...) were the worst things you've ever had to experience?
SM:
1. Fox News
2. MTV
3. Clear Channel
4. South Park
5 Diesel Ads
PC: How did the Guerrilla News Network come about?
 SM: I was DJing up in New York after the failure of Channel Zero, a global, guerrilla film-maker video-magazine venture. Josh Shore - who I had worked with on some show concepts before - had been in touch with Peter Gabriel about doing some activist oriented design-media. When I got a gig to direct a hard-hitting doc for an upstart web venture, we decided to cover the war in Sierra Leone. Garbriel opened the doors of his New York-based WITNESS Foundation and we got radical footage of child soldiers, amputations and firing lines. We cut The Diamond Life in the WITNESS studio and when the original acquisitors went belly up, we launched GNN. That was the summer of 2000.
By the time Bush was 'elected' we had teamed up with Anthony Lappé and Ian Inaba to form the core group. Now we have studios in Berkeley and NYC and we're making a run for it.
PC: What is, in your opinion the most valuable asset of the Guerrilla News Network and why?
SM: The most valuable asset is really the combinative talents of the four partners. Between us we are a video director/designer, television producer, Columbia J School grad and published writer and investment banker.
Whenever you engage in the process of a start-up you really need to build consensus around a shared mission and then assemble talent that can functionally accelerate the goals of that mission. It doesn't matter how beautiful or cutting edge your product is... especially if the long-term goal is a global network. In our case, we generate a lot of heat around the NewsVideos. But what keeps our audience coming back day-to-day is the published (text) news content and chaotic community vibe of our Forums. The general design and ethos of GNN is total. That's a reflection of the four of us... and if we are going to be successful in building some lasting, transformative enterprise, it will be because of our collective energy and drive.
PC: Do you think filmmaking technology is being driven by the producers of the technology or the people who create the films?
SM: That's an amazing question. I think that the initial wave of (Mac) desktop media products... and I am talking about the grandfather formats like AVID, Radius Telecast and Adobe Premiere... these were the brainchildren of technology companies who saw a niche and wrapped their creative emphasis around exploiting that. Same with the initial 3 CCD cameras from Sony and Canon. But - sticking with the desktop tech - with the exception of AVID, a lot of those initial programs were really more tailored to a low-end video production model. They were never meant to enable a competitive field of independent film-makers who could compete with the industry or with those cutting on traditional analog systems.
But once the actual filmmakers began to interact with the technologists, the newer formats began to evolve. You started to see color correction filters and keying plug-ins in the lower end more affordable programs.
Now, I tend to focus more on the programs that grant filmmakers a wide array of effects and filters. So that we can create films and videos that really appeal to the younger audience. That's why I never really took to AVID. We had a Symphony and a Composer at Channel Zero. But I just never got into the interface. It just wasn't constructed that intuitively, in my opinion. But when you have a program that is designed by people at Apple, who are all about design integrity, then you see the manifestation of a filmmaker-driven technology. So... long answer to a short question. I think that the modern suite of editing programs are really products of a long-evolving conversation between media producers and programmers to maximize the potential of the creative process.
PC: Have you become aware of any particular point in the development of the internet when you decided, "wow, this will change the world!"?
SM: There wasn't ever one crystallizing moment when it all just made sense. I was actually a relative latecomer to the so-called digital revolution. My first sense of the power of the net came when I met Anna Melnikoff who was the architect and designer of Channel Zero's website. Once she was able to bring all the experiential quality of my guerrilla filmmaking onto the web... so that people from around the world could access it... even in their respectively limited capacities, then I stated to see that the rest of my life could be about learning to express my self thru the limited interface of the net.
But it wasn't until we got GNN rolling and we saw daily visitors go from 30 to 300 to 3000 to 12,000 and 20,000... to feel the rush of that acceleration of participatory viewers that I really bought into it. Let's be honest. Without the internet, there could not be a GNN. We are a product of the net. It is our launching platform. It is the nexus for our global community. It is the testing ground for all of our programming and news technologies. If we have any hope of impacting or 'changing' the world, it will be because of the internet.
PC: Are there any current developments that you see as a threat to online filmmaking (with online films, we mean film made for the Internet!)?
 Not really. I mean, there is going to be a push by the major networks and their bitch Michael Powell at the FCC to shut down the current paradigm of on-line underground culture. They have to do it if they are going to stave off the wide public realization of their drastically reduced market value. We are seeing a what is basically a crash in the value of the 30 second spot and the ability for television networks to make money from advertising. People just don't watch the shit. And so they have to control every platform. Look at what has happened to radio.
It's so they will come in with their new super-lane info highway and make everyone ante up to the extent that smaller, indie groups cannot compete. But... you know what? It just comes back to us again. We need to step up and make films that people demand to see. Ultimately, if there are 100,000 people who want to see your videos and read your stories, the major networks will find a way to profit from it. Then it's back to you to make sure you are getting your work out without corrupting the original message.
But let's take it a step further. Every year the tools of production get cheaper and more advanced. We are almost at the point where we can produce better stuff than the Establishment can... but with way more intellect and critical enthusiasm. It's like food in the supermarket. Once you know the difference between chemicalized, genetically mutated vegetables and the pristine organic produce, you tend to choose the latter. Or, at least give it a second look. It may be more expensive, or harder to find. But in the long run, it's better for you. No matter what they do to shut us out, we have to remain competitive with our product. Then it just comes down to faith. You know that cheesy epithet. Build it and... they will come.
PC:Where do you see the Guerrilla News Network heading in the future?
SM: We have a lot on our minds right now. Growing pains are the most dominant issue. The site is being overwhelmed and we need a massive overhaul. We just finished AfterMath, our new 1/2 doc on 9/11 and that is seling briskly off the site so we need to learn more about e-commerce solutions. But... longer term?
I am about to start work on a new feature length documentary project. It's an adaptation of Christopher Hitchens' Letters To A Young Contrarian (read more here: http://gnn.tv/bunker/bunker_archive/doc992.html). That's a long story that we'll save for another time. Suffice it to say, he's brilliant and the book is so artfully written that every aspiring (r)evolutionary should make it a mandatory excursion.
We are also talking to potential partners who might want to take the GNN vision offline and into the network culture. Some people think we are ready to be a more omnipresent news organization. I am not sure yet but we'll see. We're talking about that. And that would really take us up for the next five years or so.
Other than that... it's just about maintaining our momentum. Increasing our traction. Galvanizing our audience until we reach our next goal of 100,000 unique viewers per day.
PC:On the same lines, where do you see the future of online filmmaking heading?
SM: Oh... I'll let that one go. It's limitless, really... the potential of it. I will say that I feel, in a very serious way, it will be determined by the way that the political forces choose to deal with the independent culture. The harder the crackdown against dissent and alternative, competing viewpoints... the more progressive and creative the underground culture will become. At least I hope so. The security of our future is going to depend on it.
PC:At the Sheffield International Documentary Festival plugincinema speculated that GNN was, though the website and DVD/Video sales, creating an not just radical content, but an alternative financial model for filmmakers to look to. How do you feel on this issue?
SM: I think that's a really perceptive interpretation. It is becoming increasingly evident that alternative/guerrilla filmmakers cannot depend on the mainstream media and their declining number of art house outposts to support their work. Especially if they are challenging the core assumptions and foundations of the corporatist system. We just aren't compatible anymore.
But... while the bulk of left-wing and libertarian pundits decry the current wave of conglomerate empire building, we see it as a really positive thing. Where there once was active and tangible competition between the major networks and studios, now they are all entrenched in one set of socio-political values. They are increasingly becoming the servants of the State and thus have really lost the power to be innovative, controversial and progressive. They are all assembled together, huddled together like one herd of finely groomed sheep.
So what is happening is that a vacuum has opened up where there was once this vibrant competition between the dominant media houses. And there is suddenly room for a highly branded, charismatic and controversial set of challengers. To take up the challenge and compete with the din and sparkle of the mainstream spectacle. But we have to come with our best stuff and not cry about being marginalized when we show Noam Chomsky at a podium in shaky MiniDV. You know? Now we have the tools and the techniques. They gave them to us. It's ours to lose. We have so much more vibrant creative energy within us and it is because we are on the outside and on the perimeter that we have the edge.
Think Rome before the Fall.
But key to this is the new economic model. Independent mediasts have to engineer their own self-sufficient economic realities. We need to be serious about the business of sustaining our visions. In our case it is about selling our products to the critical mass who have assembled around our virtual hub. And tapping into the profits generated from our brand equity thru directing music videos for major artists and record labels.
But without falling into the trap of diluting our message or our integrity. That's the challenge. At least, that's ours. And you can just visit our Forums to see how seriously adamant our core audience is about keeping us to that promise... that pledge of non-commercialism. Trust me, the second we we sell out, GNN is dust.
PC: Thanks for you time Stephen! |
|
|
|
