Tag: engrec

Ira Glass: what makes an interesting story

Listening to This American Life host Ira Glass talking about, what makes an interesting story makes me regret, we didn’t talk much more about this in journalism school:

Making stories that are constantly saying: look how different this is, than you would think, look how interesting this is, look how much more interesting, this is than you would think it, constantly searching for stories where there would be little surprises all the way through, all along, what that’s doing is reasserting that the world, it is reasserting the world to its proper size, you know, reasserting that the world is a place where surprise and pleasure and joy and humour exists, it makes things hopeful, you know. This is my problem with most radio and television news, it is that they make the world seem less interesting than they are.

If you for some weird reason haven’t listened to every single episode of This American Life and Radiolab – I sincerely envy you and promise you, you’re in for a treat!

Robert nomination for A leaf falls to the sky

Since 2008 I’ve been working on a documentary together with my friend Anders Birch. In august we finally finished it, got accepted at CPH:dox and this sunday we got nominated for a Robert award for best short documentary. We are of course both happy and proud (and a wee bit surprised).

Unfortunately there isn’t planned any viewings at the moment, but we’re crossing our fingers that telly  *looking at you DR* will show it – as we (stating the obvious here) think the story is important. The documentary is called  “A leaf falls to the sky” (Et blad falder til himlen) and has the writer Knud Romer as main character in a story about life and death, growing up –  and most importantly about how we in our society treat the elderly like they don’t belong, like it’s okay to store them in facilities – “care” homes, like caged animals.

Introduction to McLuhan

As part of my MA studies I’ve been forced encouraged to read a lot about/of McLuhan and technological determinism. Some of it good, some great, some “in the future you should cut down on the LSD”. I’d never really had a reason to study his writings and to spare others from reading the real sh**e once I’ve collected some of the videos and writings I found most interesting:

Easy to read Playboy interview with McLuhan from 1969

“Marshall McLuhan the man and his message” – one hour documentary, introduced by Tom Wolfe from 1984:

Marshall McLuhan – the man and his message

Marshall McLuhan – full lecture: The medium is the message – 1977:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Marshall McLuhan – the global village – a short introduction – quite impressive for someone who didn’t live to see the internet take off and worth watching if you’re interested in Yochai Benkler and his theory of Social Production.
Also worth reading/watching is Tom Pettitt explaining the Gutenberg theory  – a theory which states that digitalization is causing a return to the oral era – or the culture of the oral era – which makes the printing press and Gutenberg a mere parenthetical sentence (this was food for thought for me!)

Tom Wolfe’s article about McLuhan “suppose he is what he sounds like, the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Pavlov, what if he is right?”

Enjoy!

I am Kloot

When it comes to I am Kloot I’m a lovesick teenager, I absolutely adore their records. Just got the new one by mail this morning – and… made my weekend (hell it made my month). You can stream if from the The Guardian (the first fix is free!): Let it all in

 I am kloot