Introduce Yourself: Sign In Here First

In reply to Marj Safinia's post on Mon 16 Nov 2009 23:50 UTC :

Marj, glad you enjoyed it! When I showed the film at the detention ctr. last month, the new crop of girls LOVED Whitney too. She's doing pretty well, actually– set to start city college classes in January. And Rosa's working two jobs and looking at going to school next year. Crazy proud of both of them.

Hi everyone,

My name is Jason Reid and I am a documentary filmmaker from Seattle. I completed 2 feature documentaries in 2009.

The first film is called Man Zou: Beijing to Shanghai (http://2rfilm.com/manzou). Myself and three other American friends, along with a 23 yr-old Chinese guide/translator, bicycled over 1,000 miles from Beijing to Shanghai (without permits or support vehicles). Our bicycle trip and the documentary serve as a vehicle to explore the environmental, economic and sociological issues facing China today. The film intersperses the experiences of our team with the opinions of residents, expats, and academics.

My second film is called Sonicsgate (http://sonicsgate.org), exposing the truth behind how Seattle lost the SuperSonics NBA basektball team following a heated legal battle in 2008. We had two sold out screenings in Seattle last month, followed up by an extremely successful internet release. In the first month, nearly 60,000 people have watched it online. The full 2 hour film is streaming for free at http://sonicsgate.org. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Also, you can take a look at my d-word profile at the link below.

http://d-word.com/people/reidster

Looking forward to networking with other filmmakers here.

Jason Reid
reidsterreid@gmail.com

hey Jason -
glad you made your way here – i did hear about sonicsgate – supercurious to hear how you guys came to the decision that you'd give the movie away online.

i hadn't heard about 'man zou' yet. are there any screenings coming up?

Jason, Riley, potential Seattle F2F on Monday... would be great to see/meet you and chew the fat. ?

Good evening, everyone. I'm Sara Westrate Barnes and I'm a documentary transcriptionist. I know many of you, but am joining d-word for the first time. I've been a documentary transcriptionist since my sister (hi Beth!) sent me a machine and my first job about 12 years ago.

Some of the films I've been proud to work on are: 51 Birch Street, The Kids Grow Up, A Family Undertaking, e2 series (PBS), Out in the Silence, Vagina Monologues, Raymond Scott: Onto Something, Blueprint America, Terra Antarctica, Whatever It Takes, Promised Land, Lemon, Wait For Me, and Ruth Gruber-The Movie.

I also have several private clients in the medical field and do regular work for Spike TV and NOVA.

Thanks for reading and take care!

Warmly,
Sara
www.yourbesttranscription.com

Hi Riley,

Would love to chat about Sonicsgate sometime. We decided to release the movie for free so as many people as possible would be able to watch it. While not a great financial plan, I wouldn't have done it any other way. It has been a great way to get the word out about the film.

Also, I looked at your site and was interested in the Wonderland film you did. Looks cool. Check out the website for my film Man Zou (http://2rfilm.com/manzou) if you haven't already.

Also, Lenville...would like to meet up sometime as well. This week is looking kind of busy, but sometime soon for sure. Let's stay in touch

Jason

Greetings, Jason, and a big hello and hug to Sara, who I've been working with for years. Sister of d-goddess Beth.

...so seattle is something like the 24th most populated city in the country behind places like columbus, memphis, el paso, charlotte, jacksonville, and detroit.

so based on d-word demographics, it seem that something like one third of the city of seattle must be documentary filmmakers. it's incredible, really.

And 99% of that one-third is male. Take that, statisticians!

despite being the 24th biggest city, we are absolutely the #1 coolest city in the country – thus explaining why we have so many doc filmmakers. but i can't explain the lack of d-women.

Maybe it's all those mountain man beards. Although it looks like they've got a few of those in Chicago, too. Jason, I liked that Sonics jersey in the Man Zou trailer.

Looks like Mikal will be in town Friday night, so that's when we'll be meeting up. Tentatively, 7:00 at the Alibi Room. Enthusiasts and members welcome (if you're an enthusiast and can't access the F2F topic, feel free to contact me at aschocken at gmail)

Greetings all, I'm very happy to join the mix here on D-Word. I look forward to sharing ideas and hopefully collaborating with many of you. I am an experienced producer and cinematographer with a couple of Emmy Awards and over 20 years worth of film and television projects for PBS, Discovery, National Geographic and others.

A big thanks to Julia Welbourne for bringing D-Word to my attention. I look forward to meeting some of you at the Alibi Room get-together this Friday evening.

2nd best bald Jewish cinematographer to come out of Seattle in a long time. Seriously.

Welcome Howard. Funny, Andy :)

I how are you doing? My name is Shazard; I’m originally from the Bahamas but currently attending graduate school in Florida. At this time I’m pursing a Masters of Business Administration with one more class to go before I graduate. I’m interested the field of documentary filmmaking but I don’t have any experience. I purchased the book Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger, it’s my intention to teach myself how to make or go about making such films. It probably will take me a while to get the hang of things, but from now I plan to do a lot of reading and will purchase equipment later to get my feet wet. It look as if the website is full of professionals, so I don’t know exactly where someone like me would fit in. I hope to interact with the members on my journey to one day complete the documentary projects that I envision.

P.S I came across the website through the book Directing the Documentary By Michael Rabiger, which I recently purchased

Greetings, Howard and Shazard. Welcome to The D-Word!

Hi Everyone,

New to the site and wanted to introduce myself. My name is Rob, and I recently started up a documentary production company with some friends called Gatling Pictures, based in Los Angeles.

Our first project is "SANDMAN: At Your Service" – about Mark Sandman, the late lead singer of the band "Morphine." Please watch our new promotional featurette at www.gatlingpicturesinc.com (or here: http://vimeo.com/7804512) and let me know what you think!

We're new to the field and welcome all words of wisdom and criticism.

Thanks,
Rob

Good to have you aboard the good ship D-Word, Rob. Welcome and all best with your project.

good luck with your film Rob. I'm a big Morphine fan, so my interest is piqued.

Hi All

Sonja here from Scottish Documentary Institute. Thought I was registered ages ago but have just reinstated myself.

We are a research centre for documentary at Edinburgh College of Art, and run training and production initiatives such as Bridging the Gap and Interdoc, and produce short and feature documentaries.

www.scottishdocinstitute.com for more info
You can watch our films at www.docscene.org

If you're coming through Edinburgh at any point, please say hello!

Welcome (back), Sonja! Good to see you here again – well, a photo would help ;-) Hope all's been well.

Hi Sonja, welcome! Do make sure your filmmakers know about the International Call production fund. There's a deadline coming up in February. If you have any questions, send me an email.

Hello everyone,

I am the new Online Project Coordinator at reelisor.com, the MEDIA sponsored social networking site for European documentary professionals. If you have any suggestions or questions for the site, please let me know.

We are beginning another round of programming and so some new features are slated for the next few months. Training Initiatives and Festivals will be able to manage their own information, and Funding Groups will be able to create their own funding guides. We are also looking to improve our wiki (http://wiki.reelisor.com/) so if you teach a documentary class and are a looking for a good assignment for your students please get in touch me.

I am also going to be chronicling some things that I think will be useful for the documentary community on a site here (http://themadmaster.blogspot.com). Guides, news, etc. Maybe interviews too. We will see.

Looking forward to getting to know the community a bit better,
Christopher

Welcome, Christopher. We don't encourage double posts, but feel free to re-post your note about the wiki in the Teaching Docs topic. Good luck with all your reelisor initiatives, they sound great.

Hello everyone!
I am Beatrix Mugishagwe, a producer/director from Tanzania. Currently I am producing a series called Unsung Heroines – African Female Leaders.
I am excited to join you since being in this business in my part of the world it can be real lonely.