Collaborative UWOL Project?

[Simon Wood]

I posted this in another place, but though I should make a new thread about it. Just an idea, as something to do during the UWOL 'off-season' period.

Given that the current UWOL group often consists of people from USA, Canada, Brazil, Scandinavia, UK, Uganda, South Africa, New Zealand (Australia?) - that means that we have got 4 to 5 continents, from the Extreme North down to the Equator, and then on to Australasia.

How about we arrange a collaborative UWOL project, whereby we produce a single film that comprises footage shot from the various countries? Essentially we would need to work out a collaborative theme, where the different countries are connected by a common thread?

I had tried to do this once for a UWOL project (last winter I think) where I had been in Finland for 3 weeks of the UWOL project, and then would be in Uganda for the last week of it. I was going to try and make a movie about fishing - one in Finland (fishing in the ice-holes) and then 1 in Uganda fishing on Lake Victoria. The movie would have tried to show the connection between the 2 different extreme activities (one in ice, and one in the burning equatorial sun) - in both cases it was the fisherman's love for fishing that was common.

Obviously, I did not make that film (I still hope to!) - but perhaps we could brainstorm a similar idea for a collaborative UWOL project?

We would not have to only shoot new footage though, rather we would be able to make use of the archive of material we all have from previous UWOL competitions along with new material shot specially for the collaboration. That way we could use some of our best footage in the new film.

[Trond Saetre]

I'm definitely with you, Simon!
This can be a very interesting project.
And what a great way to bring the uwol gang even closer together. :)

[Mike Sims]

Well, I think it is a good idea. I proposed something quite similar a couple of years ago but it wasn’t well received at that time. I hope you get a big response. I’m certainly in to try and do my part.

[Simon Wood]

Well great; thats 3 continents and 3 wildly different cultures & habitats straight off-the-bat!

If we were aiming to get say 6 contributors in total, and each aiming for a 5 minute cut, then we would have a 30 minute documentary.

Mike; we had joked about doing a cattle based showdown; Texan longhorns vs Ankole cattle. How about something like that?

Essentially we all profile a rancher, or livestock farmer in our area. In Texas I'm sure you could get an interesting modern day cowboy to talk about life on the ranch?

Trond - how do those cows survive the winter up North? Are they brought indoors for the worst months? Do the famers ride around on snowmobiles? How do they get enough feed to last the winter?

I know I could pull together an interesting story about cattle farmers here.

Perhaps the common thread would be the cattle, but the theme would revolve around the vastly different lifestyles (and incomes) of the farmers?

Something like this might work, and allow us to focus in on something really specific (for instance we could ask all the ranchers or farmers in the different countries the exact same questions).

[Trond Saetre]

I believe the farmers keep the cattle indoors during the winter months, feeding them with grass from last summer, treated with "something".
I have not seen farmers use snowmobiles. They use their tractors all year.
Farms in my part of the country are very small. Some might have a handful cattle, some more. Other parts of the country have bigger farms, but still not even close to an average Texas ranch.

My knowledge and experience with farms and their work and the farmer's life, is very limited. (I live in a city)

[Simon Wood]

Hi Tronde - yes, I think the difference in the scale from a huge Texas ranch and a small Norwegian farm might be what would make it interesting; to see how people go about the same activity in such different ways, and dealing with different problems. I wonder if the attitude of the farmers would be different based on their culture, or the habitat they work in? Or would we find a common thread in the answers to questions?

But for sure; this is just one idea of a theme - hopefully we will see a number of different ideas kicked around!

[Trond Saetre]

Good questions you bring up.
Cultural differences are everywhere. We even see it between our neighbor countries, and to a certain degree within the country as well.

[Paul Wood]

Well, you can count me in -
I had the same thought seeing the boda boda, as moto taxis are a frequent for of transport here as well, and then with all this talk of longhorn cattle!

I don't think it would be difficult - maybe the technical part could be solved by using some of the tools in Vimeo - I haven't used them but it may be feasible.

I had also planned to shoot some footage for the ´trees´challenge in Spain, where I was before xmas, then finish in Brazil, hence getting summer and winter in the same film - but didn't have time in the end

[Lorinda Norton]

Sounds wonderful! Go for it, guys!

[Simon Wood]

Cool; with Brazil onboard we potentially have 4 continents!

[Mike Sims]

I like the cattle idea. There is definitely a video there. Perhaps we could even rope in some of the shooters from India which regularly post in the general UWOL forum but haven’t yet ventured over here (and possibly encourage them to do so). I also like Paul’s idea about forests. I’m doing a long term project in a forest type that once covered 18 million acres and is now almost lost. The largest of the eleven remaining stands (where I am working) covers just over 100 acres. Depending upon who gets in, we have a lot of scope for that project as well. I think we should all try to come up with ideas for a subject and then we can decide which is doable without anyone over-stretching themselves and that also includes the greatest number of willing participants. (We don’t want to get into a situation where the whole project fails because one person has difficulties or is forced to drop out.) Perhaps our goal might be a video aimed at one of the major festivals.

I have a couple of acquaintances that shoot video and also work part of the year in Antarctica. I have been encouraging them to get into the challenge because I would really like to see one with entries from every continent. They have expressed interest but, so far, haven’t found the right combination of opportunity and theme to jump in. A collaborative project covering every continent would be really cool. One area the challenges seem to regularly miss is Asia. There are a number of Asian shooters on the general UWOL forum.

I think this has turned into an interesting discussion but it needs more voices. Jump in!

[Simon Wood]

Originally Posted by Mike Sims

I like the cattle idea. There is definitely a video there. Perhaps we could even rope in some of the shooters from India which regularly post in the general UWOL forum but haven’t yet ventured over here (and possibly encourage them to do so). I also like Paul’s idea about forests. I’m doing a long term project in a forest type that once covered 18 million acres and is now almost lost. The largest of the eleven remaining stands (where I am working) covers just over 100 acres. Depending upon who gets in, we have a lot of scope for that project as well. I think we should all try to come up with ideas for a subject and then we can decide which is doable without anyone over-stretching themselves and that also includes the greatest number of willing participants. (We don’t want to get into a situation where the whole project fails because one person has difficulties or is forced to drop out.) Perhaps our goal might be a video aimed at one of the major festivals.

I have a couple of acquaintances that shoot video and also work part of the year in Antarctica. I have been encouraging them to get into the challenge because I would really like to see one with entries from every continent. They have expressed interest but, so far, haven’t found the right combination of opportunity and theme to jump in. A collaborative project covering every continent would be really cool. One area the challenges seem to regularly miss is Asia. There are a number of Asian shooters on the general UWOL forum.

I think this has turned into an interesting discussion but it needs more voices. Jump in!

Yeah, I think we should put in as many ideas as we can think of. However, I think there ought to be a limit to the number of stories in the movie. Given the attention span of the average internet audience, I think anything over 30 minutes would be too long. So I guess it would be a balance between many stories of shorter length (like 10 stories at 3 minutes each) or less stories at a longer length (like 6 stories at 5 minutes each).

We could also look at possibly running 2 different themes simultaneously; in the spirit of friendly UWOL competition; so we would have 2 different UWOL 'teams' with a different theme, with different filmmakers in each 'team'. This would allow us to have more people included.

Lots of options!

Paul: would you be keen on doing a cattle based film - I know ranching is a big deal there with the deforestation and so on.

[Paul Wood]

Hi Simon,

Yes, in fact it would be the easiest theme for me, as I live on a farm!

I have several ideas - I presented one, in my first entry, but of course there is also the high tech end of dairy (well, relatively) so lots of possibilities.

Of course, the forest theme also interests, as Mike mentions.

But, without wishing to ¨cool off the idea ¨, perhaps we should try something simple first - perhaps between a smaller group - one of the things that occurs to me, if we plan to make this into a finished 20 - 30 min film, is a consistency of putting it together.

I haven't quite worked out how that workflow could happen, apart from a Vimeo project, with 3-5 min individual episodes.
How would we pull all our efforts into one film? Or is that really necessary?

I'd love to see how we could make it work, as I think the idea is brilliant, and I think would enable us to reach a bigger audience, but of course it has to look, and sound good!

The best ideas I think work by osmosis - people see a good thing working, and want to join - maybe we should start with a trial project?

I guess if we all had fibre optic internet connection, it would be much easier!

[Trond Saetre]

I like Mike's idea about the forest too. Would be easier for me as well.
But I'm in regardless of what theme we end up with.

To make this into one single film, I guess the easiest way would be to send all the edited parts to one of us, who then put it all together.
(I volunteer to do this, if this is what we end up with)

As for publishing the final product, if we ask Chris, maybe we can use the uwol vimeo page?

[Simon Wood]

Well, the idea I had would certainly be to try and have one long movie with many locations from different contributors, rather than having a bunch of small individual movies. So yes, in this scenario the idea would be to individually edit our own pieces, and have the footage sent to 1 editor who would combine all the movies, along with an introduction, an ending, and final mix-down with the music and sound levels normalized across the different movies etc.

I have done movies before where people have sent footage to me by Dropbox (and vice-versa) and I am in the middle of a project now where footage was sent to me by courier (in a small 32gb flashcard, so it is inexpensive) - so there are lots of options available.

As some themes would be more suitable to some people based on convenience, perhaps we could look at running 2 themes concurrently with 2 teams competing against each other in the spirit of the regular UWOL challenge?

This would be more inclusive as more people could get involved?