Subj : Re: The Documentary... To : textfiles From : Time Warrior Date : Fri Aug 05 2005 06:34 am From Newsgroup: alt.bbs.synchronet To: textfiles Re: Re: The Documentary... By: textfiles to alt.bbs.synchronet on Thu Aug 04 2005 02:23 pm If The Documentary itself does not completely make my point that you deserve every dollar coming to you, then I think your appearance here and what you've said in this post makes it better than I ever could. > Jason Scott, BBS Documentary director here. Saw some nice discussions > and debates and, well, accusations. Thought I'd jump in here. I, for one, am thankful that you did. *glares at SX* > First of all, I want to thank, again, Rob Swindell and Frank Vest, who > both opened their homes to me and my equipment, knowing nothing of my > "work" before then. In Rob's case, I showed up many hours late (I > misjudged travel time from San Francisco to Los Angeles) and in > Frank's, well, there I was jamming a lot of lights and cameras into his > home, and after his marked reticence to being interviewed at all. I > appreciate both of your allowances for this, and of course for the > hundreds of others I interviewed. It can't be any worse than Chicago traffic! :-) You did get to experience "The Kennedy Parking Lot" when you were here, did you not? :-) > I think it's important to note what function the BBS Documentary is > attempting to fulfill and what it took to achieve that function. > Previously, and I am not exaggerating, there was nothing like it. There > were written articles about BBSes, a few scattered photographs and > collections, and there were names and concepts in danger of fading away > forever. There was nothing to hang one's hat on, no work to say 'It was > like this....'. That's what I shot for, basically an overview of a 25 > year history that at first blush seemed impossible to really capture. > This is, basically, why we didn't see something like it before and why > an amateur with a film degree had to do it. > I didn't expect it would take 4 years to accomplish; had I known that, > I don't know how much I would have taken on, or if I'd try to do what I > did, but there we are, I started in 2001 and ended work in 2005 and > that's more than 10 percent of my current life spent making the film. > The focus of this documentary is the experience and the situation of > dial-up BBSes. It's not meant to be about Internet BBSes, not meant to > be about web forums, not meant to be about current "scenes" that have > their roots in BBSes, and it's certainly not meant to cover the cutting > edge of BBS technology. This isn't hard information to garner, and if > someone thought that the video format would be the way to tell this > story, then they would do so, or even better, have the assembled people > available an e-mail or website away to do so. Wait, a Historical Documentary is about the past?! Damn! Why am I always the last to know?! :-) > Applying that standard to > the BBS Documentary will inevitably lead to despair. Agreed. *glares at SX yet again* > Also, it's important to take into consideration the issue that > "complete is the enemy of interesting". In the case of these episodes, > they are meant to be INTRODUCTIONS to their subjects, to cover them in > as universal and straightforward as possible, without getting captured > into that horrifying geek loop of "but this exception... and this > one... and these.... and this..." and then each episode is a three-hour > laundry list of every variant concept. I am fully aware, and I state so > in the commentaries of all of these episodes (all the episodes except > COMPRESSION have director commentary or statements) that the episodes > represent a scoop, a sliver of the "full story". As i've said prior, 100 or even 1000 or even 100,000 Documentaries on any subject could never come close to telling "the whole story". Too many people, experiences, scenes, lives, events, etc... to make that humanly possible. You could write Documentaries on WWII for the next 200 years and you still wouldn't come close. You could do this with the assistance of a time machine and STILL not even come close. In short, I agree with you. > The lack of non-north-american coverage was a decision, one I made > months into the filming when I determined that just trying to capture > the nature of BBS activity in the United States and Canada was going to > be a years and years effort. How good could it have possibly been for > me to travel to countries I'd never been, in languages I do not know, > arbitrarily interviewing people with no knowledge on my part of who did > what (due to the aforementioned lack of language skills)? It would have > been a disaster beyond disasters. So I pulled away from a global view. To me, this was a no brainer. For others, well, glaring a third time would be redundant > When I said "a few hundred BBSes" were left, I meant in the United > States, and I meant dial-up. This number came from consulting fidonet > and other BBS lists. And I think I was being generous. I was impressed that you mentioned anything about "the present" at all, for that mater. As you said, this is a Historical Documentary and thats how i've preceived it from the get-go. WWII documentaries don't suddenly jump to the current situation in Iraq, now do they? :-) > Now, all this aside, there are two things I've worked to do to make up > for obvious deficiencies in the documentary's coverage. > First of all, there's over 250 hours of interviews, of 205 people. With > one exception, I have full rights to do with these interviews as I > wish, so I will be making pretty much all of them available! I have > made a deal with ARCHIVE.ORG to have a large sub-collection of all > these interviews, with salient points covered in them and who and what. > For example, there's two hours of Rob Swindell where I only used > roughly 45-60 seconds of this footage. Same with Frank Vest. In their > interviews, and in dozens of others, MANY subjects were covered, many > of the same ones people are unhappy I didn't put in the documentary. > ALL OF IT WILL BE AVAILABLE, under a Creative Commons Attribute > ShareAlike license, meaning they can be used in almost any way people > would want to, including as the basis of further documentaries. This > will hopefully put to rest the idea that my documentary quashes > additional BBS concepts that were covered. 250 hours. That's 10 solid > days of BBS discussion. I figured you were going to do that, and i've been looking forward to the day you announced it. My wait is over :-) > Again, it's history, I focused on the past because the past wasn't > being told in this fashion. I do not pretend, anywhere, that it's the > final word. It's the first syllable of the first word. The problem I > attacked was that the first word wasn't even being spoken. Now it is. > So keep talking. Amen to that! -- .---------------------------------------------------------------. | [TiME WaRRiOR] aka [Dave Kelso] AIM: Twar782 | +o Malkavia BBS | | www : synchsupport.net - malkaviabbs.com - xpresit.net | | www$: josephsjewelersonline.com - preferedinsurance.com | | @: time.warrior@malkaviabbs. com | \______________________________________________________________/ --- Synchronet 3.12a-Win32 NewsLink 1.76 * Malkavia - Chicago, IL - telnet://malkaviabbs.com --- Synchronet 3.12b-Win32 NewsLink 1.83 .