In recent months (at some point recently, I’m not sure when), YouTube added an annotation feature to their video uploads, which allows users to add notes and links in their videos. I was initially intrigued by this as a good marketing tool and a way to make a video not dated (e.g. a promotional video for an event now can be a video with no date-related text with annotations added over it on YouTube). Then I stumbled upon a really cool thing people are doing with this function: Games. Check out this one (just an example of the interactive feature):

Yes, it’s rather clunky, especially if you have a slow internet connection, but it’s a really interesting concept. So I got thinking about the idea of ‘authored space’ that Evan talks about, and how I’m very interested in applying that idea [very roughly] to a space that’s important to me, but in someway different than using computer graphics – some way to integrate video with some of this new/digital/interactive media in an interactive documentary game.

So here’s my rough plan: I’m going to make an interactive video tour / exploratory documentary that lets users navigate around Plymouth via YouTube. It won’t be entirely interactive (i.e. there will not be direct control of motion), but the video will be from a first person perspective as though the viewer is the character walking down the street. I’m still working through the concept, but I hope to make this an ongoing project about my hometown (and America’s Hometown….), for which I will create a frame work as my final project in VM606. I plan on this being a web-based documentary piece about Plymouth touching on ideas of sightseeing, tourism and home (like calling such a destination home) – it will have a dedicated Web site where users can play it embedded in a page.

Anyway, I’m getting toward the end of my first year of grad school (what??) and I figured it was time for a very quick recap. Recap: This is incredible. I spent that past 4 years in college not really sure what I was going to do, or what I wanted to do, and ended up miserable a good chunk of the time. Now I’m sitting in Boston, down the street from my girlfriend (who’s in my very first 16mm piece), and going to class everyday to learn about and make art. It’s pretty much paradise. I’m planning on doing a lot of work over the summer, maybe a couple short films, and some skits. I’m also working on a music video for The Eagle Hill Band, that I hope we’ll get to shoot over the summer – it’s going to be a ton of fun. I’ve been exposed to a ton of new awesome art in just my few months here at Emerson and I feel more flowingly creative than I ever have.

I also just did my first couple projects ever using actual 16mm film. It’s been a really cool experience, and I’m definitely going to keep using film when I can afford it in the future. I’ll be shooting my first big film project in a couple weeks down in Plymouth – it’s tentatively called “Please and Thank You” and it’ll be up here at some point along with “Straight Face”, which I did about a month ago, but is still sitting on a spliced-up roll of film in my apartment. Time to take it digital.

I’m just about to submit “Tourist”, which I completed last December, to the Woods Hole Film Festival. Who knows if it’ll make it in, but I figured I should start submitting stuff if making films is what I want to do.

If I can find some time, I’ll blog about shooting “Please and Thank You”, which will be starring Kathleen Doherty as a vagabond teenage girl.

Happy spring!
Jon

Welcome to the brand new site of Four String Films, a brand new production company, with a brand new first official film online. The site’s pretty straight forward, so take a look around. I just finished up our first short film, “Tourist”, which features some great performances from Harry Quinn and Scott McEwen. We shot it at the Pilgrim Sands Motel a few weeks ago, and I finished it up as my final project for VM613 at Emerson College. I’m planning on polishing it up a bit and submitting it to some festivals or other random short film things. It was a really fun experience filming in the motel – we had two days of shooting, and the first night we ended up finishing up at 3am, which was cool.

So enjoy the new site, and keep checking back for videos. I’ll be posting videos as they go up online, and I’ll be making various blog posts about stuff we’re working on. Peace!

- Jon Dorn
Four String Films