#Vanguard the best doc series you might never see again
This is a special Tuesday’s with friends. In fact it’s more like a Tuesday’s with former colleagues in honor of the great work done by the Vanguard team at our alma mater Current TV.
Vanguard is an institution of of investigative journalism, and the jewel in the crown at Current TV. Unfortunately, due to shrinking revenues and a change in format, Current is moving away from in-house production of the series. That means layoffs and a questionable future for investigative journalism at the network.
On Saturday we saw a tweet from one of the Vanguard staff saying that the series was not being renewed. That was followed by this article in Sunday’s Media Decoder section of the New York Times, where Brian Stelter wrote that:
In what some called a cost-cutting move, the channel last week dismissed most of the roughly 10 “Vanguard” employees. Some were offered other jobs. The channel will continue to produce “Vanguard” documentaries, but with freelancers.
David Bohrman, the president of Current TV, said in a statement that production was not being canceled. “But given the network’s new focus on political news and analysis, we have chosen to change the present in house production model for ‘Vanguard.’ ”
After that article hit the interwebs several tweets and Facebook posts from our friends and former colleagues still working on the series followed (along with lots of support sent to those folks from all of our peers in the ex-Current TV community).
We understand the economics behind this decision. We also want Current to succeed. However, we still see this as a sad moment for Current TV. Vanguard represented that last ray of idealism that propelled us to working for Current early on, and we aren’t alone in feeling that way. In truth, the scale back of Vanguard is just another example of media landscape abandoning expensive investigative journalism in favor of rambling pundentry. And that’s sad for more than just Current TV.
Our best wishes to all the Vanguard staff entering the “freelance” world. The water’s not bad out here, especially not for talented folks like y’all.
In the meantime, you can still check out episodes of Vanguard on Current (if you have it) and you should.
Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy out on DVD
Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy takes you inside a hillbilly skateboarder “commune” in Appalachia where anything goes. The self-declared cult-leader of Skatopia converts punk skaters into volunteer labor, battles bill collectors, does a stint in jail and raises his own family amidst the chaos. Not just for skateboarders, the film explores the glory and the challenges of pursuing your own dream.
Back in 2006, Jeremey happened to be at Skatopia with his partner at the time, Allison Muir. They were filming the Bowl Bash for Current TV.
88 Acres of Anarchy was in production then. The filmmakers, Laurie House and Colin Powers had been camped out at Skatopia with their Headlamp crew for a few months and they were planning to be there for a few more, which blew Jeremey’s mind. If you’ve ever seen any footage of Skatopia than you know what a commitment to filmmaking that was. JADED’s been following the progress of the film ever since.
In fact, we had the pleasure of premiering our short documentary Make It Happen: Lowcard a few slots before the North American premiere of 88 Acres of Anarchy at the 1st International Skateboard Film Festival in Seattle a couple of years ago. Then we hung out with Laurie and the Skatopians during the after party at Marginal Way. It was great talking to her about filmmaking, and we are now excited to share the news that Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy is out on DVD at skatopiathemovie.com and it hits the stores on July 12.
The Collector’s Edition features over 90 minutes of material not found on the retail version. If you order before July 12, they’ll throw in a sticker pack free.
The retail edition ships free in the US with the discount code: freeship
They also need some help getting it up on Netflix. Click here and hit “Save” or “Add to My Queue”.
Oh yeah, and like them on Facebook
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Hurricane Katrina: Skating the Aftermath
Shot and Produced on location by Jeremey Lavoi
Skatopians at the Gate
Skatopia’s dictator and chief, Brewce Martin has been seriously injured “with major head trauma in a freak accident at a tire shop near Skatopia. Apparently, he was standing next to the tire mounting machine and it exploded. All we know at the present time is that he’s in surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.” (Taken from the Slap message boards.)
TeamJaded wishes Brewce well, and hopes for his speedy recovery.
I did a three day shoot at Skatopia when I worked for Current. The shoot took place during Skatopia’s annual “bowl bash” when hundreds of hillbilly punks and skaters descend on Skatopia for a few days of complete mayhem. It was one of the most intense field production experiences of my life. I often liken it to shooting video in a combat zone.
During my short encounter with Brewce at his “anarchist resort,” he came off like a compete lunatic, but a lunatic who was somehow in control of what looked to me like utter chaos. He gave my co-producer Allison Muir and I the standard Skatopia hard time. He even went so far as to tell us that we could film, but we couldn’t keep the footage. In the end he not only let us keep the footage, he even granted us a short interview, AND signed a release granting us permission to use the footage on Current TV …thus proving that he was a stern, but fair dictator. (Most of the footage never actually made it to air, but that’s a whole other story.)
…Seriously Brewce, get well man.
In other Skatopia news, the documentary “Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy” is finally set to premier on July 11 at Acefest 2009 in NYC. The trailer looks amazing. Allison and I had the pleasure of working along side the film crew for the three days we spent at Skatopia. They told us they had been there for months, and were staying for a few more after we left. I couldn’t understand how any human would volunteer for that, but I knew it was going to make a great documentary. If you get the opportunity to see it, don’t pass it up.
Below is an old trailer. There is a new one here. I highly recommend watching it.
Photo taken from Skatopia’s myspace.
Free Laura and Euna Video Project
On March 17, 2009, our friends Laura Ling and Euna Lee were captured by North Korean border guards in the Yalu River region that loosely defines North Korea’s border with China. They were arrested while shooting a story for Current TV about North Korean refugees.
Since then we have been anxiously consuming every bit of news we could get while feeling scared for our friends and also frustrated with our inability to help them.
Today we found out they were sentenced to 12 years in a dismal North Korean labor camp. This simply cannot stand.
This is our call to action:
IMPORTANT If you get an error message at registry try going straight to Seesmic.
Join us. Reply to the video thread above (it will take 2 seconds to sign up for a Seesmic account). Tell us your name, where you live, and hold up a sign demanding the freedom of Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
(edit 6/9/09)
Some people are having trouble signing up to Seesmic. If you can’t get on Seesmic, try Youtube and leave a video response to this video:
Embed these videos, tweet them, and post them on your Facebook. It’s time for everyone around the world to stand up and show support for Euna and Laura. Let’s bring them home.
OTHER WAYS TO HELP via freeroxana.net
FOLLOW ON TWITTER
http://twitter.com/liberatelaura
JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60755553149
SIGN THE PETITION FOR THEIR RELEASE
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-euna-and-laura
WRITE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
WRITE YOUR SENATOR
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
WRITE YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
READ AND SUBSCRIBE TO
http://liberatelaura.wordpress.com
Update on Laura and Euna
They’re going to be put on trail for illegal entry into North Korea and hostile acts.
It looks to me like they’re being used as bargaining chips. I hope the U.S. government acts quickly to get them back.
Detained in North Korea
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, journalists for Current TV’s Vanguard unit are missing after being taken into custody by North Korean border guards at the Chinese – North Korean border. They were detained in the Yalu river region while producing a piece about North Korean defectors to China. At the present time their exact whereabouts are unknown. The U.S. State department is working with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang to get more information.
To learn more about the story read this ABC article.
Both Laura and Euna are friends of TeamJaded. Laura was largely responsible for getting my first pod’s to air at Current. She used her limited budget to send me, an unproven skater kid to Louisiana during the Katrina madness to produce my first significant work. Her help launched me on the path that I’m still following today, and for that she has my eternal gratitude. I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for her.
So here at TeamJaded our hearts go out to both Laura and Euna. We hope that they are safe and being treated fairly. Hopefully this situation will be resolved quickly.
To Laura and Euna, we are awaiting your safe return.
DIY Days
Abby and I just got back from the DIY Days event at Minna. We had to go because, you know DIY was in the name, which has me thinking a lot about the nature of that term, but I’ll save that for another post.
The event was put on by the Workbook Project and From Here to Awesome, and was sponsored by Current. It was hosted by Arin Crumley from Four Eyed Monster. The purpose was to bring independent filmmakers together for a one day event and get them talking about how to use the web for funding, marketing, and distribution.
Since we were once employed by one of the sponsors (Current), and now I work in social media (Seesmic), and Abby is involved in web marketing for Harper Collins; it follows that we might have some knowledge about the stated topic of the conference. It also follows that we might be able to apply that knowledge to our own film projects (Make It Happen and Mulch).
…But as anyone who reads this blog knows, or biggest hurdle has been funding. So learning about where the money comes from is what sparked my interest in DIY Days.
An interesting point to note is that we only found about the conference through a random web search about something else… which leads me to wonder why a conference that seems so perfect for us, would miss us. Then again, I guess it didn’t miss us because we found it eventually.
So did we get from there to awesome? What did we learn? Where does the money come from? Interestingly enough, we found out that we are way ahead of the game in the marketing department that is.
The main points:
Use social media, like our myspace and twitter accounts.
Blog about your project, your problems, and your victories to build an audience who is personally invested… And while you’re doing that, post additional content related to your film, like side videos (our vlogs) and stills… welcome to teamjaded.com
Put your media everywhere: like our Youtube, our Blip, and our Current TV tagged page…
Make your films and let the film industry, your audience, and the monetization catch up to you… Well we’re still waiting.
But one thing we haven’t done and that we need to do is update regularly. So we are going to try our hardest.
Like many of the filmmakers at the event today, one of our problems is that we can’t work on our projects full-time because we need to have day jobs to pay our rent. When we’re not at work, we barely have time to log tapes, much less engage in hours of social media outreach… but we’re trying so hang in there. The conference did not really address this problem beyond “knowing rich people” who want to invest in film… which is what we already suspected and were afraid of… (Anybody know any rich people?)
In the meantime check out Four Eyed Monster because they succeeded in this crazy web/film marketing experiment and from the videos I’ve seen on youtube it looks like they made a solid film. So good for them.
Now we’re off to Cafe Du Nord to see Judgement Day who the San Francisco Bay Guardian claims is totally diy…
Jeremey
Rupa and the April Fishes
This is our holiday treat for y’all, produced by our friend Nicolette Bethea. Now you might be saying, this piece has nothing to do with the holiday’s… and you might be exactly right. So just think about it as our musical gift to you since we won’t be posting for a few days… it’s Christmas after all. We think this pod is sweet and heartwarming just like Rupa herself, and we hope it gets you through the Christmas madness.
However, giving props to our friend Niko isn’t the only reason we’re posting this pod. Jeremey actually helped out with the shoot. He shot the interviews and the practice stuff, and he also helped out a lot with drinking whiskey at the show. So this pod is sort of like second cousin to a TeamJaded Production. We hope you like it, and if you do, then head here and leave a comment for Nicolette, she did a rad job with it.
If you want to know more about Rupa and the April Fishes go here. They have free downloads, cd’s to buy, and all kids of other cool stuff on their website. We recommend hearing them live, their French gypsy thing is pretty enthralling. And Rupa… well she’s like some kind of musical doctor/ saint… definitely worth checking out.
In other Current TV news, their new website is all pimped out Web 2.0 steez, so we went over there and tagged all Jeremey’s old pods and the two TeamJaded pods “TeamJaded.” Now if you search for TeamJaded on Current.com all our stuff comes up. Go over there and leave us some comments.
We’re Currently on Current TV
No we don’t work for them anymore. Lets just say Current isn’t necessarily known for being Current… if you know what we’re saying. So this week is our long overdue flooding of the Current TV network. That’s right, we’ve got another Pod on air.
If you want more info about this pod, check out our post from June called Displace Us.
It’s now called Displaced Role-Playing. We called it Displace Me, cause like, that was the name of the event… we didn’t notice any LARPing… But hey, at least it’s on the air, seven months later… now if only they’ll send us our check.
We’re very excited and slightly embarrassed that this pod is on the air. Embarrassed because we’re in it and we look silly, but excited because the event was for an important cause. Namely raising awareness about the horrible situation in Uganda and bringing people together to help end it. We love the Invisible Children organization, and we’re happy to contribute to the cause.
Thanks to the Invisible Children movement for having us, throwing the event, hooking us up with the extra footage, and being rad people in general. Special thanks to Kenny Laubbacher and Susan Shrinkle. And thanks to the same Current TV team that helped get this thing through their very congested pipeline.