Moved to Wordpress

We've decided to run this blog from WordPress from now on. Not that we have a complaint about Blogger. It's a subjective thing - better templates, open source, a bit more control over things. Go to http://kssvideo.wordpress.com/

Finance - the Odyssey

Making a documentary in a single location is not as expensive as making Australia ($150 million), but it does cost money: for insurance, videotapes, travel, printing, contractors, equipment hire, salaries and even the occasional lunch. Much of this project will be self-financed, however we’ve invited local businesses and government departments to sponsor the project and applied for production funding from the ABC, Screen Australia and ScreenACT. So far no enthusiastic replies. There is a growing file of responses such as: “... having reviewed your request we are unable to offer assistance at this time”, “... unfortunately we will not be able to take up your offer of sponsorship...” “This letter is to let you know that unfortunately you were not successful.” “There are currently no funds available... I wish you well in your endeavours and thank you for sharing your proposal.” We’ll keep at it, but I anticipate an expanding Rejection file rather than a blossoming bank balance.

Not to be deterred, we’ve decided to take the project to the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) Meetmarket in Adelaide, February 2009. This is competitive, so we need to make a 2 min “pitch” video and provide a 500 word description. Material for the pitch came from the official naming of the school by Julia Gillard and Jon Stanhope, a breakfast for local businesses at the West Belconnen Leagues Club and the last Open Day at Holt Primary School. (Holt and Higgins Primary Schools will close at the end of 2008). A couple of fortuitous inclusions - emphasising the “universal themes” - from Rupert Murdoch’s 2008 Boyer Lectures and Kevin Rudd’s Australia Day talk.

Kingsford Smith School

Now it’s official. The Belconnen Super School is to be named Kingsford Smith School. Richard Powell proposed it to the interim school board and P&C and it was then submitted to the Department for approval. Kingsford Smith
The name plaque was unveiled by Richard Powell, the new Principal and Hon Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, together with Jon Stanhope, the ACT Chief Minister (pictured). In attendance were groups of Year 6 students from Holt and Higgins Primary Schools who will be among KSS’s first students.

Test podcast

A test podcast to check on formats, compression, etc. It begins with the official appointment of Richard Powell as the Principal of the West Belconnen Community School. Richard lays out his vision for the school both to the media and to a parent meeting at Higgins Primary School (one of the schools that will close at the end of 2008).

Filmed and edited on HDV 16:9 then compressed as MPEG-4 4:3 letterbox to the Google Video specifications, then uploaded to the Google server and embedded on the Blog page.

Belconnen Super School

On this site stood Ginninderra High School, unfairly maligned in its time, but now gone (the shell having been used, for a time, for anti-terrorist training). In its place is a building site of the new Belconnen Super School. For a history and background reports visit the Canberra Online site.
West Belconnen Regional School (the name will change) will open for Business in February 2009 with up to 1,000 students from P-10 (ages 4 to 15). Hartbeat Multimedia put up a proposal to the ACT Department of Education to shoot a documentary recording the first year of operation of the school. The outcome is to be a series of interwoven stories about students, families, teachers, school leaders and the community that might reveal some universal truths about the state of Australian education.
The project was agreed at a meeting with the ACT Education Department and the newly-appointed Principal, Richard Powell (previously Principal of Hawker College).
A documentary about a school is not a new idea. In Être et Avoir Nicholas Philibert covered a year in the life of a one-teacher school in rural France; Frederick Wiseman’s High School is a fly-on-the wall observation of the life of a school in Philadelphia; more recently Chen Weijun’s wonderful Please Vote For Me shows a class of 8 year olds in a Wuhan school voting for the position of Class Monitor – a microcosm of modern China.
I don’t know whether our School for the Future project will achieve this quality. It will be an ethnographic documentary, not structured by interviews or set pieces. The narrative of the course of the year will shape the content of the film.

What do we mean by "Documentary"?

John Grierson first coined the term “documentary” in the 1930s and defined it as “the creative treatment of actuality”. Since then a great deal of ink has been spilled on arguments about documentary practice and the ethics of editing and manipulating real events. These days the term has become debased by broadcast television to describe any non-fiction program from news and current affairs to wildlife; from illustrated lectures on science to oral history. Even reality tv is included and it has spun off new formats such as docu-drama and mocumentary.

On television the majority of “serious” documentaries are personal interpretations of reality by an on-screen personality such as Michael Moore, David Attenborough, and Robert Winston or by a film maker who pretends objectivity through the use of an off-screen narrator. Such programs hold up a picture of the world and essentially tell you what to think about it.

There is another type of documentary, rooted in the views of the early documentarians such as Grierson, Dziga-Vertov, Robert Flaherty and the cinema verité of Jean Rouche, Fred Wiseman, D.A.Pennebaker and the Maysles Brothers who believed that the film maker’s job is to present his “creative interpretation” without the intervention of a presenter or narrator and the audience is invited make up its own mind. This is also my approach to documentary.
In many ways this ethnographic or direct cinema is more complex than the scripted and narrated documentary. At the shooting stage the film maker is not in control; the events dictate what is filmed (and it certainly uses a lot more videotape!) Most of the creative decisions occur at the editing stage. Some of the best modern documentarians, where education is concerned, are Nicholas Philibert (Être et Avoir), David Macdougall (The Doon School Chronicles) and most recently Chen Weijon (Please vote for me)

Albert Maysles describes his approach:

As a documentarian I happily place my fate and faith in reality. It is my caretaker, the provider of subjects, themes, experiences—all endowed with the power of truth and the romance of discovery. And the closer I adhere to reality the more honest and authentic my tales. After all, knowledge of the real world is exactly what we need to better understand and therefore possibly to love one another. It’s my way of making the world a better place.
1. Distance oneself from a point of view.
2. Love your subjects.
3. Film events, scenes, sequences; avoid interviews, narration, a host.
4. Work with the best talent.
5. Make it experiential, film experience directly, unstaged, uncontrolled.
6. There is a connection between reality and truth. Remain faithful to both.

Call me old-fashioned, but this is also my approach to documentary practice. Here is the Synopsis of this project we have submitted to the AIDC

No school would say that it is not focused on the future, but Kingsford Smith School in the ACT has a fresh opportunity to set the priorities. KSS will open for business in February 2009. It will house 800-1,000 students aged between 4 and 16 from a local community that is a microcosm of Australia’s multicultural society. This documentary series will cover the first year in the life of the new school from close-up observation of classroom dynamics and staff room sociology to the big picture issues of steering a complex enterprise with a diverse clientele and – sometimes – conflicting expectations.
At the micro level it is a set of stories about individuals – students, teachers, administrators, parents – who are connected by the thread of school community. At the macro level it is a report on the state of Australian education: its expectations, achievements and shortcomings.
The bottom-up perspective encourages the viewer to identify with the various players and their stories, at the same time perceiving the complexity and universality of the education process. The style of the film is observational, rather than editorial; cinema verité rather than structured around interviews and set pieces. The one-year time scale allows us the freedom to investigate details, to develop narratives, to amplify themes. For example:
To follow a number of students throughout the year: pre-schoolers to teenagers, from a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, with different talents and intelligences. We observe their learning, their friends, their families, their successes and frustrations.
To observe the lives and work of teachers (the quality of teachers is now recognized as the most important factor in the success of any educational process). Generalist and specialist, neophyte and experienced, we follow a number of teachers throughout the school year and register the interactions with their students.
To document the work of the Principal and his team, the bureaucrats and planners, the community leaders (school board and P&C) building a complex enterprise and then navigating it through its first year of operation; bringing the big vision into existence while dealing with the everyday petty details and frustrations of school life.
The school experience is common to all of us and a number of celebrated documentary film makers have provided unique interpretations: Fred Wiseman (High School) viewed the school as an agent for social control; Nicholas Philibert (Être et Avoir) romanticised the small rural school as a microcosm of traditional French life and values; Chen Weijun (Please Vote For Me) portrays the class of Wuhan 8 year olds as a microcosm of modern China. Our aim is more prosaic but no less ambitious: through the presentation of a series of individual but interwoven stories about a new school to come to some universal truths about the process of education.

The film makers

Ian Hart (Director, videographer, editor)
Ian has been a social and educational documentary film maker since 1968. Over the past 40 years he has made over 50 documentaries on subjects ranging from rural schools in France to SARS in Hong Kong, from flying boats in Sydney to life in a Thai Buddhist monastery. Ian has taught film and educational technology at universities in Canberra, Poitiers, Beijing and Hong Kong and has researched media and learning at the INRP in Paris and the University of Wollongong. He is a graduate of the London Film School and has a PhD in Education. Ian is the owner of Hartbeat Multimedia. For a complete videography and samples of recent work go to http://www.hartbeat.com.au

Helene Walsh (Videographer, sound recordist)
Helene is a professional photographer, cinematographer and editor who has worked in a wide range of media formats since 1974. She was Media Facilities Manager at the University of Canberra Division of Communication, instructing undergraduate students in the technical aspects of digital video production and editing. Helene also has experience in Audio and TV studio operations and vision mixing. Since leaving the University of Canberra, Helene has obtained a degree in Visual Arts from ANU and is currently enrolled in a pre-Masters course in Visual Culture.