July/August 2003

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to loosen media ownership laws, allowing one company to own television stations that reach forty-five percent of the American viewing audience (up from thirty-five percent). The new rules also permit cross-media ownership. Now, one corporation can own both a television station and a newspaper in the same market.

Chrissie Iles is the curator of film and video at the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been curating for twenty-three years. Before joining the Whitney in 1997, she was head of exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. Her Whitney exhibit, Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977, is currently touring Europe.

Indianapolis is a city best known for its Motor Speedway and the Indy 500. But the “Racing Capital of the World” is also home to a growing film and art scene. It’s true, there is more than corn in Indiana.

A new breed of tool has recently appeared on the DV filmmaking landscape. Unfortunately, these new devices do not share a common name and are known by various manufacturers as DV Direct to Edit Disk Recorder, Video Disk Unit, or Direct to Disk Recorder (DDR) which is how I will refer to them in this article. DDR’s allow DV filmmakers to bypass the time-consuming process of logging and capturing footage and go straight to the editing process on a non-linear system. As simple as that sounds, filmmakers often find the purpose and process of using a DDR confusing.

Almost every film that is released these days has its own website. Filmmak-ers, distributors, and studios have all learned the promotional value of the web when it comes to getting their films out into the world. One can go to a film’s site and view trailers, read the credits, the reviews, and experience the “hype.” But independent films are not Harry Potter 1, 2, or 3. Too much hype-oriented promotion and advertising can actually dilute from what makes independent film independent.

The past few years have seen significant advances in the tools for creating visual effects with desktop computers. Yet these tools cost at least a few hundred dollars and can quickly move into the thousands with the addition of plug-ins and ancillary tools. For the independent filmmaker interested in creating the illusions of visual effects in their work, there is no cheap way to experiment with these programs and learn the concepts of visual effects production.

What is Facets?
Facets Multi-Media is an arts organization based in Chicago, Illinois. We also have the world’s largest and most unique collection of foreign, classic American, independent, experimental, documentary, cult, fine arts, and children’s videos and DVD’s. The Facets collection represents over fifty thousand individual titles.

Little Rock, Arkansas, became a national focus during the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, but Little Rock has always been a state and regional hub, not only for politics (before Clinton, there was Fulbright, McClellan, and later, Bumpers), but also for the arts and for artful living. Its redesigned riverfront features fine dining, live music, and an upscale marketplace. The city’s Quawpaw Quarter offers living in restored antebellum homes. The Arkansas Arts Center houses a superb permanent collection in addition to its many changing exhibits.

From American Splendor’s first shots, you know you are watching something unusual: It’s Halloween, 1950, and the neighborhood runts are trick-or-treating, all done up as their favorite superheroes—except for one rebellious runt, who has stubbornly donned his street clothes. “I’m Harvey Pekar,” he tells a curious neighbor. “I ain’t no superhero, lady. I’m just a kid from the neighborhood. Why does everyone have to be so stupid?” And with that, he stamps a foot and turns his angry, prepubescent back on the festivities.