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Appalachia
Enjoy this short film I shot and edited of my adorable niece experiencing sparklers for the first time.
Attend a special screening D.C. at the US Capitol with Senator Manchin on July 22. RSVP here HollowEvent@manchin.senate.gov
MORE NEWS
HOLLOW mentioned in Wired.UK
Interview with Grant Scott, of the United Nations of Photography
Interview on WMMT (Whitesburg, KY)
Shenandoah National Park
Beautiful morning in the Shenandoah National Park.
Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah National Park
Today is West Virginia's 151st year of statehood. While most Americans don't celebrate their native land's statehood, we West Virginians do. We're proud and weird people.
Last year, the Hollow team and I launched this baby into the world. It says everything I want to say about this state, so for today I will share some of my favorite (winter) photos of this place we call home.
This road didn't exist when I lived in Logan. When I drive through West Virginia I try to imagine the work involved to create roadways through these mountains.
Here I got my first fish, took bubble baths, wrecked my Barbie car, celebrated my 4th birthday, watched my baby sitter eat a whole jar of pickles, swam in the back of a pickup truck filled with water and built igloos when the snowed trapped us on the hill.
Downtown Logan, West Virginia.
Williamson, West Virginia.
Morgantown, West Virginia.
The building that used to stand here burned to the ground. Inside of said building was Saks Jewelry, my mom's place of employment. Today, they have relocated and a gravel lot occupies the space.
There really is nothing like a West Virginian sunset.
It's nice to take a moment and see the details.
Mom.
My uncle built this house in the 1970s. He is one of the most intelligent and creative people I have ever known. He has never been married, never had a driver's license and lives alone. The house is built on, and in between, a huge rock cliff in Nicholas County, W.Va. He used to have a dark room in the house but has since converted it into his computer room. Times change.
Great Uncle Roy (said uncle of story above).
I'm named after this sweet woman. Great Aunt Eva Elaine Russell. Known in the county as a fantastic school cook for decades.
My Paw Paw Doy's woodstack.
Silver and blue.
Paw Paw Doy taking a break from the swarms of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The newest grandchild.
One day I will learn how to play the fiddle from this man.
My favorite view.
And one from summer. My favorite season is fall but something about these winter photos felt appropriate for WV's 151st.
Happy Birthday, West Virginia.
Tomorrow marks ONE YEAR since we launched Hollow.
Since then, many of you have contributed to a gallery of 1,011 photos of "home" by tagging your Instagram photos with the #hollerhome tag.
We want to THANK all of you who have been part of this journey and encourage you to help us reach 1,500 images of "home" by tagging your photos for our one-year celebration! #hollerhome
See the gallery here: http://hollerhome.hollowdocumentary.com/holler-home/
The full, uncut ceremony is now online. We are in Part 2 (below) starting at 44:09 [vimeo 97143901 w=700 h=394]
Thanks to the Peabody Awards for this amazing honor!
Hello Hollow visitors, I wanted to write a short post and let you know that we are experiencing some issues with our server. These issues range from extremely slow load times, videos not playing, images and buttons being missing and redirect issues with Firefox and Internet Explorer.
We recently relocated the project to a new server and with that issues have presented some challenges to our users when trying to view content. We ask that you please be patient with us during this time.
Interactive storytelling projects are extremely frustrating and expensive to maintain. Issues with the website can change and occur at any moment without us knowing and we are now trying to figure out how to resolve some new bugs.
We invite you to visit our VIMEO page to view the video content in the meantime.
We have created channels for each sequence of the interactive doc. Some of the videos are still uploading but head on over and check out what is there!
THESE ROOTS: https://vimeo.com/channels/theseroots FOR EACH OTHER: https://vimeo.com/channels/foreachother FOR THE LAND: https://vimeo.com/channels/fortheland WHEN COAL WAS KING: https://vimeo.com/channels/whencoalwasking AROUND THE BEND: https://vimeo.com/channels/aroundthebend
Thanks for sticking with us,
Elaine elaine@hollowthefilm.com
Blue skies and green grass for Easter weekend on the Sheldon farm.
Two of my favorite things: 1.) My niece, Emeline Jane
2.) Evening light and lens flare
PRESS RELEASE: Peabody Award For Hollow
It was announced yesterday, but I am still grasping the reality.
What an amazing honor for our team and project to be recognized for this award.
I am so excited to announce we have won 3rd Prize in the World Press Photo Multimedia Awards in the Interactive Documentary category. It is such an amazing honor to be chosen for this award as an independent filmmaker and journalist. Congrats to the whole Hollow team and McDowell County community. Check out the winning projects here. Below, a jury member reflects on why Hollow was chosen for 3rd Prize:
"Some of the most impressive elements of Hollow are the depth of the content, the richness of the content. The characters that are portrayed are totally believable and I think it's these small stories told in a big way...it's not a large production piece but it has that feeling, it feels very much as if it was created by people who care about the subject that they are documenting." [vimeo 89865336 w=500 h=281]
Over the past couple days, some pretty cool awards have been announced. Check out the images/links below and thanks to everyone for your continued support of Hollow! HOLLOW is a finalist in the SXSW Interactive Awards in the "Activism" category
Green, governmental and non-profit projects striving to make the world a better place.
Screen Shot 2014-02-05 at 8.14.43 AM
Screen Shot 2014-02-05 at 8.43.03 AM
Hollow is featured for Eastern Oregon's Film Festival's Online Selection.
The rise of digital cinema has shown that 20th Century exhibition models are increasingly insufficient. Cinema is in constant flux, and without adapting to changes in the distribution landscape, most filmmakers cannot survive. We believe that festivals’ inclusion of online works is progressive, and vital to independent cinema. The Internet also serves as a temporary home for some of the more intimate, experimental works that move us.
I have also been invited to lead a discussion and screening at the following places, this spring:
- Davis & Elkins College
- iDocs Conference (Bristol, UK)
- Appalachian Studies Conference
- Alice Lloyd College
- Shepherdstown University
- Vermont College of Fine Arts
- iDoc Workshop (Nyon, Switzerland)
- Wheeling Jesuit University
Hollow was chosen for the 2014 FIFE film festival (in Paris) as part of their Web Documentary category. We're out of competition (because of English-only/no subtitles) but very honored to be selected for this French film festival! Check out the full competition here.
Thanks everyone for joining us! If you missed the hangout, you can check it out below in two parts.
Part One: research, building an audience, pre-production, funding and on-the-ground production.
Part Two: production, participatory video, sound design, visual design, development, launch and outreach.
As promised, here are some helpful links mentioned in the hangout:
NYT Op-Doc: West Virginia, Still Home
Nathaniel Hansen's Kickstarter Guide
Tribeca Sandbox (great resource to find funders/festivals)
MIT Docubase (great resource for inspiration)
Welcome to Pine Point, Clouds Over Cuba (inspiration for us)
Parallax Scrolling Sites of 2013
The Creativist, Zeega (storytelling platforms)
ELAINE’S DOCUMENTS TO SHARE
Quick Guide (to take with them in the field)
McFarland Guide (not written by Elaine)
Participatory Method and Evaluation
ROBERT'S FULL TECH STACK
Node.js SocketStream Redis MongoDB Jade Stylus Engine.io AWS and CacheFly for hosting
Synopsis: West Virginia stands in a state of emergency after a potentially harmful chemical spilled into a local river and contaminated the water supply. And no one knows how long it will last. More than 100,000 customers in the nine counties receiving water from the 1,500-mile affected network were ordered to stop using their water for almost everything.
I produced this piece for the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday. If you need caught up on what has been happening in West Virginia, during the past 36 hours, take some time to watch the video.
I traveled down to McDowell County, West Virginia yesterday to hold an intense (yet small) workshop for two high school students. Cody and Josh were chosen for the Opportunity Launch program, supported by Scott Widmeyer and WVU's School of Journalism. I taught Cody and Josh the basics of what makes a story newsworthy, compelling and the process to research and develop your story. They practiced their interview skills and learned how to use the Canon 5D. I was very impressed with the quality of their work and the amount of dedication they brought to the workshop. Over the next week, we will be working on their video segment and interview with Linda McKinney (featured in Hollow), photo gallery with caption, and press release. You can download my Storytelling 101 presentation here.
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Over the next couple months I will be adding to a series of microshort films (1-2 minutes) that focus on observing life in Appalachia. The footage from the series was shot in 2012 while I was filming for Hollow, an interactive documentary about the residents of McDowell County, West Virginia. From May to September, I filmed seven terabytes of footage in the coalfields.
Many of the interesting moments and awesome people I met did not make it into the interactive doc so I'm happy to find a new home for these people and places in this series. You can expect to observe church services, front-porch haircuts, residents wandering through abandoned buildings, riding on golf carts with the elderly, tent revivals and moments at home. I am very excited to share some of these slices of life with you.
You can view the first five shorts and read my artist statement here. Enjoy and stay tuned.
2013 has been an amazing experience. I am extremely grateful to all of you who have supported, shared and helped bring Hollow to life. There is still work to be done, but I can safely look back on 2013 with full satisfaction and gratification. I feel so lucky that we have been invited to screen and present Hollow 23 times in a 5-month period. We have traveled from California to NYC and from Appalachia to Amsterdam. We have won several awards and were most recently chosen for IDFA's DocLab. Nearly 80,000 people all around the world have experienced Hollow online since June 20. We're looking forward to experiencing what 2014 has in store for the team and community. We have several more Kickstarter-backer screenings to hold, but here are some university and conference screenings that are already lined up (starting in January): OSU, Davis & Elkins, Shepherd University, Wheeling Jesuit University, iDocs, Appalachian Studies Conference and Vermont College of Fine Arts.