Here’s news about two recent k-films produced by grad-students, one in Toronto, the other in London, both of them dealing with particular music scenes, but in very distinct ways. The first one, titled Not Just Boy’s Fun: The Rad Ladies Project (An interactive documentary), is an intriguing work by media maker Cynthia Shulak. It was created while she was studying for her MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University in Toronto. Cindy describes her film as “an online documentary project which is attempting to stir up conversation between, and document the personal experiences of, women who were and/or still are involved in the hardcore/punk scene and communities associated with it.” Check out the associated project blog here too. To my mind, Shulak’s k-film is designed to be listened to as much as watched: the stitched-together video diaries suggest a kind of evolving, informed conversation about this particular music scene, by virtue of the piece’s sequential, rather than cloud-like, structure.

The second k-film is a really nicely shot behind-the-scenes “essay documentary” about an English band called the Rocket Dolls, who describe themselves as ‘Alternative Post Grunge Riff Metal’. It was created by Kai Clear, who is, in his own words, “a London-based filmmaker currently studying for my masters degree in documentary film at the London College of Communication.” He describes this project as “an experimental film documenting the recording of The Rocket Dolls ‘Frame’ promo video. This K-film is influenced by the essay documentary style of Chris Marker, the non-linear Korsakow documentaries of Florian Thalhofer and surrealist films of Maya Deren.” The Rocket Dolls k-film ably conveys both the fleeting excitement – and the particular tedium – of shooting a music video. While the music video itself offers few aesthetic surprises, breaking it down into a nonlinear narrative effectively disrupts its flow, producing a viewing experience which is more contemplative than visceral. (A slight frustration for me is that the Main Media widget seems unnecessarily small – a real loss considering how good the cinematography looks!)

Great to see people out there – especially film students – finding interesting ways to use Korsakow in their creative work. Bravo.

Korsakow 5 is one year old today.

We’re currently working on a new feature which should be ready for the next release of Korsakow. It’s an idea Florian came up with as he began work on his ARTE project in Istanbul. The goal is to provide a way for viewers of K-films to be able to leave comments on specific SNUs. Dave’s creative solution was to design a WordPress plugin to handle the commenting. The downside is that SNU commenting will require a WordPress installation to accompany the k-film; the upside is that we’re using a hugely popular, opensource CMS with a great developer and user community behind it. The WP install could also be used to blog about a Korsakow film project or simply to provide context and background information.

Let us know what you think. Meanwhile, Florian is back in Berlin editing, Dave is off to Lisbon to lead a Korsakow workshop at UT Austin | Portugal, and Matt is back in Montreal after half a year spent hiding in the Languedoc.

This award-winning Korsakow film – an experimental narrative – was made in early 2009 using version 3, and is now finally available online, having been re-exported using version 5. It was created by four students in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University. While Fragments shares its title with Adrian Miles’ current k-film, the similarities end there. The creators, influenced by Julio Cortazar’s nonlinear novel Hopscotch (1963) and Chris Marker’s short film La Jetée (1962), use the backstreets of Montréal to tell a poetic story of love and near misses.

Fragments: Created by Amy Ball, Myriam Descormiers, Saulo Madrid, and Saba Shahsiah, COMS374 Intermedia II, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University. (Instructor: Matt Soar; TA: Katja Philipp.)

Intimate and interactive, by Anna Sarkissian, describes the genesis of Korsakow version 5, and offers perspectives from Monika, Florian and Matt.

Our new point release is packed with Korsakow goodness. Check the Download page for all the details. Highlights include: two new interface widgets (Playhead and Media Controls); the ability for viewers to link directly to specific SNUs in your k-films or even embed them; an alert if media assets can’t be found, and help relinking them; an option to create draft exports for quickly viewing work in progress; a reminder if your version of Korsakow is not the latest one; and, an .exe application download for Windows.

We’ve also added some updates to the Manual including: a new section called Viewing a Korsakow Film, which explains the new linking and embedding function as well as some hidden viewing controls; and, some very simple k-film demonstrations (eg for Keep Links and SNU Rating).

Every week we hear from people creating exciting new Korsakow projects, or using Korsakow for class assignments (such as Dan at ITP, and Adrian at RMIT), or planning workshops. This makes us very happy. Please take a moment to let us know what you’re doing with Korsakow, too: introduce yourself or your project in the Forum, or drop us a note.

We’re now a few days from our next point release (5.0.4), which includes several new features and fixes: a long-overdue .exe application download for Windows users; an inconspicuous playhead for SNU playback (thanks to Adrian Miles for the suggestion); a way to relink ‘lost’ media assets (ie files that have been inadvertently moved during production of a k-film); and, an application update checker so you’ll always know if you have the current version installed.

Best of all, in 5.0.4 viewers will be able to link directly to specific SNUs in a k-film using auto-generated HTML code. This means, for example, that the reviewer of a k-film posted online can link directly to one or more SNUs, in the same way one might embed a YouTube or Vimeo video in a blog entry. (The embed code is revealed when any viewer hovers over a SNU as it plays.)

Stand by for another announcement very soon.

The Korsakow workshop held this past weekend at Concordia University was, by all accounts, a huge success. The participants came away with a much better sense of the possibilities offered by Korsakow, and we (the development team – Florian, Dave and Matt) got some valuable feedback in terms of the current strengths and weaknesses of the application.

The workshop also served as a reminder about how confusing it can be simply to prepare video files for specific uses. The wonderful world of video codecs (literally COmpression and DECompression), with their mysterious names (eg H.264) can be intimidating even to the most savvy tech person. With this in mind, we’re making available a small set of preprepared video clips that can be used by anyone to allow them to just get on with exploring Korsakow, and not to have to worry about prepping them so they’ll work properly. These were originally put together by the very talented Steve Anderson for the recent Korsakow workshop at USC. All the files are at a manageable frame size and file size, and have been lovingly compressed using H.264. They were sourced from quirky old public domain films found at the invaluable Prelinger Archives. (Like all Public Domain materials, they are free to use for any purpose whatsoever without asking anyone’s permission, ever. Including us. So don’t ask. Just. Do. It.) Download the entire package here (143MB, zip).

Finally, one of the participants at the workshop, PhD student Mél Hogan, produced an intriguing k-film which riffs on the cultural mythology of an impending 2012 apocalypse. It also demonstrates the flexibility offered by Korsakow in terms of conceptual approach and interface design. And it deserves extra points for being entirely type-based.

Take a look now, or begin by reading Mél’s background notes.

The context

This is a project completed during a 2-day workshop at Concordia University (Jan 2010). Over the course of a few weeks, I have collected comments on YouTube about 2012 prophecies. Contemplating the end of the world, these comments debate and emote our global fate.

The motive

While the Korsakow System is a computer program for the creation of database films, this project happily thwarts the process by using text-based stills all the while cashing in on the system’s incredible capacity for balancing rules with randomness. This was important for this project which I organized according to meaning and intensity. Scenes relate to one another according to these two organising principles: intensity of emotion (based on a colour scheme) and meaning (based on categories like science, history, religion). Where you end up, when the ‘x’ options disappear, may reveal something about your subconscious hopes and fears. Korsakow was an ideal tool for this project because of the conceptual interactivity it provides, allowing me also to send this project back out to where it came from.

Adrian Miles is doing some really interesting stuff with Korsakow right now. In Fragments, he’s assembling a free-form ‘vog’ (video blog) of everyday video clips which has already expanded noticeably in its first week online. The loose associations between each SNU become apparent the longer you stay with it, and the use of allusive (one might say ‘coy’) text adds another layer of meaning. Adrian’s also blogging about it as he goes.

Tonight we released Korsakow version 5.0.3 for Intel Mac and PC users. This point release comes with some great new features, including a way to control the video export codec settings, plus heaps of fixes. Simply download the new version and delete your old one.

We’ve also got a comprehensive new Manual which explains every single feature, setting and option (better late than never), a better-organized Quick Start guide, and a growing list of Tips & Tricks to help you on your way.

Finally, we’re as frustrated as you are with the slowness of the current website, and we’re poised to rebuild the whole thing in the next few weeks days. Stay tuned!