HOME MOVIES/ Workshops and Events: March 3 to April 17 Life on the Water 3435 Army Street Suite #222 San Francisco, CA 94110 The HOME MOVIES Workshop begins Thursday, March 3 at the studio of Joe Lambert of Life on the Water and Dana Atchley of D3TV. Five weekend workshops, taught by various multimedia artists, will focus on personal narrative, the electronic family album, and the tools needed to help create your own Quicktime home movies. As Joe Lambert explains. "After Dana led a series of workshops at the American Film Institute last year, we became intrigued with the idea that people with little or no experience in Adobe Premiere could complete a finished one or two minute piece in a single weekend. It occurred to us that we could take the LA workshop as a model and create a similar series as an ongoing part of our collaboration with the Bay Area multimedia arts community." Each Thursday night Dana Atchley will perform "Next Exit," a set of interactive stories about growing up and a life on the road, as well as showing participant's work from previous workshops. On Friday nights, Joe Lambert will be cooking good Texas roadside cuisine and hosting "Joe's Digital Diner" featuring presentations and discussions by each of the workshop instructors, each of whom will show their work and present their individual approaches to the convergence of personal storytelling and the digital arts. Both Thursdays and Fridays are open to the public. The schedule for the workshops is as follows: March 5-6 Abbe Don March 12-13 Dana Atchley March 19-20 Norman Jayo Easter Weekend/No Workshop April 9-10 Harry Mott April 16-17 Mark Petrakis Cost/Single: $295 Partnered Pair: $395 For more information contact: Life On The Water, 415 824-9394/ fax: 415-824-9396 or E-mail ----------------------- MEDIA FAMILY VALUES While devouring the new technologies, I also want the freedom of an old time campfire storyteller who could conjure up any vision from the flames. My flames are the cool flickering of a video campfire. (-- Dana Atchley) The approach that we all seem to agree on, involves finding a story that demands being told and then telling it in such a way that it makes sense, even to a high-speed RGB-headed RAM-hog. If you can do that, you walk away a winner. (--Mark "Spoonman" Petrakis) Since my great-grandmother's death, I have been searching for a way to re-create the experience of sitting with her as she weaved a tapestry of inter-related stories. Each time I show my interactive multimedia work, it acts as a catalyst for the audience to tell their family stories and so the cycle continues. (--Abbe Don) I think the family focus has stuck because it's where we find readily available content. Also, it's episodic, which is the way our memories seem to play out, and everybody can relate, so it's instantly recognizable. The short length (one or two minutes) is conducive to sketches or fragments which can then be decompressed by each listener in the light of their own personal recollections. At the same time that we are focusing on family albums, I see no reason to get caught up in attempting to simulate reality or mimic the obvious. Personally, I fully intend to use a multitude of very "real" sources to make memories that never happened, to people that never existed. It all comes down to how we each see the future of personal media. Digital tools are not simply a new form of scrapbook that preserves our every mistake for eternity. They are rather a new form of scissors, pen, brush, glue, paint, and kazoo. It is at this fun-da-mental arts and crafts level that this technology seems destined to invade the screaming insides of those with something to say. 'What can I do with this?' is the timeless question that each of us asks in moments of curiosity and doubt. (-- Mark "Spoonman" Petrakis) .