Free E-Book: Kevin Kelly's Favorite True Films

Looking for a good documentary to watch? Kevin Kelly has already done the legwork for you.

He's put together an entire free e-book of what he considers "the best general-interest true films I've found" -- along with a companion Website, TrueFilms.com, that keeps the list updated (and solicits suggestions from fellow non-fiction film enthusiasts).

I define true films as documentaries, educational programs, non-fiction cinema, instructional how-to's, and what the British call factuals - a non-fiction visual account.

As dogged as I have been in tracking down great true films, I have seen only a fraction of the estimated 40,000 that have been made. So I am ready for more. However I will only list true films and documentaries that are available as VHS tape or DVDs at consumer prices. In other words, films that are easy for most people to see upon request. I won't include films that are only shown in theaters, or available via high-priced rentals, or simply out of print.

Kelly has organized them into quirky yet useful categories, including: Artists at work; Competition stories; Culture Design; Disenfranchised / downtrodden; Explaining Science; Extremists; Hard to believe / extraordinary; History; How to do it; Investigative; Lengendary characters; Living history / reality survivors; Monologues/interviews; Music Performances; People at work / inside view; Play; Sports; True adventures; Visual anthropology; Visual wit / cinematic poetry; Wackos / crazies / eccentrics; Wonders of the living world.

This little book will steer you to the best true films in English. Each film gets a short review of why it is worth your time, and then I feature 4 or 5 screen grabs from the film to show you what the texture and style of the film is. I also include a picture of the cover and indicate where you can rent it (say on Netflix) or purchase it (from Amazon). All the films reviewed are available on DVD or tape at consumer prices.

This is the golden age of documentaries. Inexpensive equipment, new methods of distribution, and a very eager audience have all launched a renaissance in non-fiction film making and viewing. The very best of these true films are as entertaining as the best Hollywood blockbusters. Because they are true, their storylines seem fresh with authentic plot twists, real characters, and truth stranger than fiction. Most true films are solidly informative, and a few are genuinely useful like a tool.

What am I looking for in a great true film? It must be factual. It must surprise me, but not preach to me. If it introduces me to a world or subculture that I never thought about before, even better. There's a plot - a transformation from beginning to the end.

Kevin Kelly himself is a true renaissance man, judging from the fact that his status as co-founding editor of Wired magazine is probably his least impressive credential!

You can download the free 201-page PDF file of True Films 3.0 (2007) here.

True Films 2.0 (2006) is available as a paperback from Lulu.com in black-and-white ($9.50) or color ($37.58).

Kelly's next book, What Technology Wants, will be published by Viking/Penguin in October.

'My Father' Photo Essay: From Blog to Book

One of the Web's most powerful photo essays is now available as a hardcover book.

Photographer Phil Toledano kept a photo journal of his aging father's dying years, chronicling his difficult decline and demise -- from severe memory loss, to loss of control of his own body.

What began as a daily blog soon became an astonishingly melancholy and whimsically humorous Website, DaysWithMyFather.com , that hooks you from the first page and doesn't let you go. Its universal themes of mortality, the cruel passage of time, and inter-generational bonds of love will instantly engage you -- and haunt you long after you have stopped looking. He illuminates the big picture by focusing on specific details of one man's life. In short, Toledano's potent combo of conversational text and intimate images embody the essence of masterful visual storytelling.

DaysWithMyFather.com is still online. For the new hold-in-your-hands print version, try Amazon, where it is a top-10 best-selling title in the health, parenting, and photography categories.

Either way, you will not be able to start following the father-son journey without finishing it, and you will not finish it without being emotionally moved and transformed.

A perfect Father's Day treat, for both fathers and sons.

Where Can You Find the Best Video Storytelling Lessons? Hollywood!

Most of what passes for videojournalism these days is a collection of shots of people talking and, if we're lucky, showing us what they do. Big snore! What can be done to make these pieces more compelling, engaging, and, dare we say, entertaining?

Videojournalists need to learn visual storytelling techniques from the masters: Hollywood filmmakers.

No sense reinventing the wheel here -- we have a century of experience to draw upon. We encourage aspiring vidjos to pursue the examples of great screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, and editors -- and apply appropriate techniques to their non-fiction endeavours.

Here are three inspiring titles to get you started -- and collectively pull you through the three major aspects of telling stories visually: creating/composing your story, shooting it, and editing it. Ideally these should be intertwined endeavours, in that each step informs the others, and at every stage you should be contemplating all of them.

Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee

McKee's popular screenwriting course has been attended by thousands of wannabes -- but also most of Hollywood's top studio execs, actors, directors, and filmmakers of all stripes. This is that class's best-selling bible, and it's chockablock with the basic dramatic fundamentals that will help you shape and structure your video story.

Replete with script examples from more than 100 modern films, most will find McKee an easier read than Aristotle (who was the first kid on the block with these lessons a few centuries ago). Though this is obviously targeted for fictional moviemakers, any videojournalist who embraces its lessons in story elements and principles -- and how and why they hook audiences -- will find themselves far ahead of the game.

Character, crisis, climax, resolution, scene development -- it's all here, and can all be applied to non-fiction stories. Just knowing these components will automatically help guide your story planning and structure.

Setting Up Your Shots: Great Camera Moves Every Filmmaker Should Know (2nd Ed.), by Jeremy Vineyard.

Every page of this cleanly designed book introduces you to a basic shooting style or technique (e.g. Jump Cut Sequence, or Split Screen), accompanied by illustrative line drawings and specific examples of movie scenes that incorporate it -- and why.

It's divided into sections such as "Composition Techniques" and "Techniques of Perspective" to help you sort out what's accomplished while shooting (e.g. with focus or camera movement) versus what's a byproduct of the editing process.

Even though you've seen and are familiar with many of these common techniques, just being visually reminded of their existence is often enough to get you thinking about the best way to shoot and edit your own videojournalism tale. You'll encounter ideas that may not have occurred to you, making it an invaluable reference work.

This new updated 2nd edition adds 25 techniques to the 1999 original -- along with references to 200 new films. It's guaranteed to improve your visual vocabulary and cinematic language, and hence expand your pallette when it comes to finding fresh, innovative ways to paint your story.

In our spare time, we've been fooling around with some of the simple shooting and editing techniques explained here -- Open Up, Close Out, Delayed Revelation -- and encourage you to be similarly playful with the selections as well. The more you try, the more you'll have "ready to go" when you need them. But as any professor would remind you, in actual practice don't go overboard -- it's also important to know when to exercise tasteful restraint.

In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (2nd Ed.) , by Walter Murch.
Murch was Frances Coppola's go-to guy for all those years-long masterpiece projects. Though he is celebrated for his painstaking technique, it's also his vaunted aesthetics that makes this volume a must-read for anybody who sets a finger on Final Cut.

You'll get both philosophical musings and hardcore advice from the master whose work distinguished The Godfather II and III, Apocalypse Now, and a slew of celebrated films that owe their success, in large part, to their brilliant (if seemingly invisible) editing.

Murch's colorful career spans several generations of technological progress. This volume was originally published in 1995, the year that digital editing overtook linear editing. The updated second edition includes a lengthy Afterword devoted to digital that more than doubles the length of the book!

Although technical skills are critically important for editors, immerse yourself in Murch for a perfect blend of pragmatic and artistic considerations. After reading this, you'll never think of a simple "cut" in the same way again.

(NOTE: Instead of linking you to Amazon, we're encouraging you to patronize an independent bookseller or your local library.)

KobreGuide Showcases 300th Video Story

We just re-counted to make sure, and, yep, we just posted our 300th video story on KobreGuide !

Go team!

We've been showcasing the Web's best videojournalism for nearly a year now, finding and selecting a compelling new one every weekday from the world's top media outlets.

It's a good time to take stock.

As you can see by clicking our Channels tab on the navigation bar, we've featured videos from 55 different media outlets, ranging from big newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times to equally meritorious ones that don't often get widespread attention, such as the St. Petersburg Times or the Detroit Free Press.

Click our "Topics" tab, and you'll see our 20 categories are far-ranging, from Adventure to War, with lots in between.

As you can see from our "Award Winners" section, we've been prescient when it comes to selecting prestigious honorees.

When we launched last fall, we offered a "Got a Minute?" section where time-strapped viewers could find short shorts for a quick hit. Curiously, we're finding that producers and audiences instead are building an appetite for longer online videos... and so we accordingly created our "Got an Hour?" section, where you can find high-quality long-form videojournalism.

To see any of our 300 posted video stories, visit the "Hall of Fame" archives -- or use our handy Search function.

We didn't want the creme de la creme to get lost in the fray, so we created a special room for our "Top Ten." Yeah, we know, there's actually 13 there at the moment -- sometimes it's hard to decide what's the best of the best. Don't sue us!

What else?

Obviously you found your way to our KobreChannel blog, but have you joined our Facebook group yet? Now's a good time, before the venture capitalists seize upon us -- you can say you knew us when.

Meanwhile, KobreGuide is still a labor of love, so please show your support by shopping at our Amazon store for all your videojournalism needs!

On a non-commercial note, the best way to help us in our mission to champion videojournalism excellence is simply to keep us posted when you spot it. We're small but mighty, and appreciate the extra eyeballs. Just click the "Recommend a Story" link on our navigation bar -- and please be sure to read our guidelines first.

So that's our tour. Looking back on our earliest stories, we are fascinated by how this hybrid media form has evolved over the past couple years.

For us, it all started with the Los Angeles Times' powerful multimedia account of the "Marlboro Marine" (above), whose iconic photograph became an emblem of the Iraq war. The soldier and the photojournalist who snapped his portrait relate how it changed their lives and connected them in ways neither could have imagined. That potent combination of audio and images constituted an exciting new form of communications; as well crafted as the text story was, it couldn't carry the emotional impact of the haunting voices and sights that augmented and fortified it.

Coincidentally, our 300th story is also about war. It's an Associated Press video series that takes a closeup look at "Wardak Soldiers: On Foot Patrol" (right), the personal stories of American troops in Afghanistan, coping with the dangerous daily task of loosening the grip of the Taliban.

Numbers 2 through 299 cover a lot of ground -- and a lot of issues that impact all of us. We are perpetually astonished at the variety of storytelling approaches explored in this fledgling field -- visually and journalistically.

Video is proliferating like crazy all over the Web, just as we had anticipated. It's getting harder to find the good stuff, the stories worthy of your limited time. We're here to find those needles in the haystack for you.

So start catching up on any of the 300 you've missed... and we'll be busy hunting for the next 300 gems.

Happy viewing!

CJR Does the Math: Kindle Doesn't Add Up

The Columbia Journalism Review did the math and demonstrated that there's no way that Amazon's Kindle DX is going to save the newspaper industry -- corroborating our previous thoughts on the subject.

Then CJR re-did the math the next day, taking into account the previously overlooked fact that a whopping seventy percent of revenues will go to Amazon and also to the wireless service that powers the whole concept ... and found that the results were even more dire than they had calculated. If a reader pays $14/month, the newspaper pockets only $4.20 of that.

CJR also factored in a Bloomberg report about a visionary Knight Ridder experiment conducted in 1992, designed to culminate in its own portable newspaper-reading device intended to boost readership and revenues. After three years, the project fizzled and the 10-person lab was shut down.

A key flaw in the Kindle plan is the absence of any way to display full-color non-text advertising -- a necessary source of revenue. But others are undeterred.

Gannett Co., which stopped home delivery of its Detroit Free Press four days a week, said it will distribute the newspaper on another e-reader being developed by Plastic Logic Ltd. ... Hearst Corp., which owns the Houston Chronicle, also invested in a company developing a reader.

[But] the Kindle just looks like another way for newspapers to turn profitable customers into unprofitable ones.

What's the Advantage of the NY Times Reader?

We really wanted to love the new updated New York Times Reader.

We downloaded the free Adobe Air software, fired it up, and click-flipped through the pages.

Yes, it looks nice -- the pages are certainly less cluttered and easier to read than those on NYTimes.com.

But it leaves us perplexed.

Except for a few free "trial" sections, you only get a teaser headline and first graf of every story; for the whole enchilada, you have to fork over $15/month. Yes -- a paid subscription. True, only about a quarter of the price of home delivery. But why bother when the whole thing is FREE on the Web?

Also, the Reader archives only a week's worth of issues, whereas the Website will search back to 1851!

Moreover, we experimented and found that the Website consistently updates its pages faster and more frequently than the Reader.

On the positive side: Unlike Amazon's touted Kindle portable e-reader, the New York Times Reader features full-color images (not just "16 shades of gray"). But then so does its Website. And, best of all, unlike the Kindle, the Reader plays video. But, again, so does its Website!

All we can figure is that, since the New York Times is partnering with Kindle to lure long-distance paid subscribers, its push to familiarize readers with its own proprietary Reader is perhaps the first step towards conditioning us to pay for content. As we all know by now, it's the proliferation of free content that's undermined the fiscal vitality of newspapers everywhere.

Is the Reader a step in the right direction? Will it work? It's certainly worth taking a look at. But, we hate to admit, we can't see any advantages that would make us pay for a subscription while we can still see all the newspaper's content -- faster and fresher -- on the Web.

(But, yeah, we're glad that it does include video -- a serious shortcoming of the Kindle.)

Here's a peek at the NYTimes.com homepage (top) and the NY Times Reader front page, captured at the exact same time. Click on them to see them full size.

Can Kindle Rescue Newspapers & Magazines?

Will Kindle be able to rescue the newspaper and magazine industries, the way that iPod rescued the music industry?

We'll get an inkling this week when Amazon introduces a larger format version of its book-reader gadget that's designed to enable users to see their favorite publications exactly as they would have appeared on the printed page -- but without the print or the (paper) page.

(A number of periodical publishers, including Hearst magazines and the News Corporation, have announced that they've got their own proprietary e-reader devices in the works.)

Kindle's current six-inch black-and-white model offers paid subscriptions to about five dozen newspapers and magazines, but functionality is limited -- and certainly less than what you can get for free on each publication's own Website. (The Kindle itself cost a whopping $359.)

So we eagerly await this next-generation version to find out how Amazon plans to lure that endangered species known as "subscribers" to actually pay for what they've gotten used to receiving for free.

Still to be determined is whether Amazon's newest Kindle will enable viewers to enjoy the high quality videojournalism that print publications are increasingly producing -- and just about the only truly unique content that a publication can reasonably expect viewers to pay for.

What do you think? Can you imagine perusing your favorite newspapers and magazines on a 10-oz. wireless electronic screen that's the same size as a magazine page? Remember -- that one portable page can potentially "contain" all your favorite subscriptions, updated daily! What would it take for you to convert? Would video capability make a difference for you?