Research

I have been slowly taking steps away from my film project in the attempt to keep the idea fresh and not to drive the story into the ground. Last week was our fall break and I purposely did not write in my blog to give myself a chance to get away from my film. My blog is designed to keep up to day anyone involved in the film project.

I began my research paper for my broadcasting capstone. I feel that finding twentyfour sources about film festivals, “how to” manuals of filming, and what not is going to be a chore in itself. I will be honest and I am worried about having enough sources. I don’t think having enough information and knowledge will be an issue, it think finding different people saying the same thing over and over again is going to be the challenging aspect.

I was lucky and by chance got a hold of Mary Cardaras, from the New England Institute of Art. Mary freelances for CNN, Boston, and has worked for CNN, Atlanta, CNN London, and numerous other television stations in five other major markets over more than 25 years. She is the recipient of two EMMY awards for excellence in spot news producing and feature producing and has been nominated numerous times during her career in news. She continues to produce documentaries and is establishing a new non-profit organization to support the work of independent cinematic artists, The South End Cinema Foundation for the Arts. She is a member of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Communication, and the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators. She works with the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation, the American Repertory Theatre, and the Press & Information Office of the Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations.

The reason why I contacted her was totally different. During my first round of gazing for film festivals, I found a student festival called the Naked Eye College Film Festival, and she is an organizer of the event. Books can only tell you so much and I think that first hand knowledge from an expert is the best way to get information. Plus it allowed me to work on my interviewing skills. I contacted her and she agreed to interview with me. I learned a lot about how the film festivals are organized and ran. Mary is a source that I know if I run into a rut I will be able to contact her again.

I also been spending a lot of time in the Library and well frankly Akron’s public library was a pain in the but to find anything but they had a lot of information. I found a few books by Chris Gore. Chris seems to be a jack of all trades in the film industry. Reading his bio. he has a lot of experience in the entertainment and film industry. I picked up a good amount of his books and began to thumb threw them. I have been trying to set up an interview with him but so far no luck.

I am on the right track with my research. I have internet articles, magazines, books, and interviews. Next week will be back on track to getting the pre-production done.