Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 8
The Rise and Fall of Black Velvet Flag
An “intelligent” system for youth
culture documentary
Sheldon Schiffer
Georgia State University, Atlanta
A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must
be stored, and above all it must be consulted.
Vannevar Bush
Making order and telling stories
I have a habit of spending as much time organizing my materials to make a film
as I do actually shooting and cutting it together. I realized 10 years ago from
the pleasure that I experienced that this organizational process was a creative
one. I made complex libraries that would enable me to try hundreds of possi-
bilities without losing a single image or sound clip. This was in the days when
nonlinear editing was cost-prohibitive to the documentary filmmaker.
Depression set in when I had to dispose of many ideas and intriguing pos-
sibilities to serve the needs of a primary narrative. Brenda Laurel refers to the
FlyingWedgemodelwhereeveningameplaying,asparticipants(orspecta-
tors) engage further, the scope of interest narrows to accommodate the more
precise objectives of the players (Laurel 1992: 78). And so, as is the case in most
media production, a lot of precious things (and useless things too) end up on
the editing room floor because they do not serve the purpose of the author(s).
When I began to see that querying a database was a request to be told about
something, I realized multimedia powered by database engines might allow for
an autonomous reconstitution of narrative and the audiovisual materials on
