As part of our program, the Neighborhood Video Project, works with two consultants (a filmmaker and a local historian) in each neighborhood. We try our best to work with people who live in the neighborhood in which we're working and people who are knowledgable about the history of Saint Paul. These consultants don't come to every class, but they contribute invaluable perspective and experience to our program. They act as resources and sounding boards, as interview subjects and cinematography coaches. Most importantly they help connect us to the neighborhood. For our West 7th class we are lucky to work with filmmaker John O'Brien and historian Joe Landsbeger. Both have spent time in the neighborhood. Joe has a long history in West 7th and and is the current president of local cultural institution Sokol Minnesota and John is a former resident.

This past week at NVP John O'Brien met with the class to show us some of his work, which encourages the viewer to interact with history through a really cool interactive interface. John's pieces operate differently than normal movies in that you animate the frames with your mouse by dragging the movie frames left and right. The still above is from a piece called The Citizen: Interactive Surrealistic Media, which you can view, and interact with here.

During his presentation, John talked about how you have to develop trust with documentary subjects in order to get them to share their stories. He talked briefly about finding creative commons or public domain images, sounds, and video and about using the Library of Congress’ materials in his videos.

The class tries out one of John's interactive movie projects.

It's hard to believe, but the class has already finished it's first project. It's a small documentary on Sokol and the CSPS Hall, for which they interviewed our historical consultant, Joe. We screened the piece last Tuesday and will include it in our next blog post. This weekend we're heading to the Minnesota History Center to learn more about West 7th and hopefully get inspired.