Research for Hunt Angels

I had a long chat to the Director of Hunt Angels (Alec Morgan) last night about his new film Hunt Angels. Here's the synopsis :

In 1939 Rupert Kathner and Alma Brooks began a movie-making spree that took on the Hollywood barons, a corrupt police Commissioner and the cultural cringe all in their passionate pursuit to make Australian films. On the run from police across thousands of miles, they would stop at almost nothing to get their films made.

Much of the film is composited for a large selection of still photographs that Alec spent six months researching, using the Internet almost exclusively. He tracked down a huge number of stills for the production using online databases for the various archives and museums in Australia. He said that he couldn't have done it without the online archives.

This film is a great example of how you can recreate historical scenes without building sets (and assuming you don't have a King Kong budget to build 3-D models). It's also a charming and witty film so see it if you can!

Selection of Research Databases

The Research Department at AFTRS has provide us with a list of academic databases. Please note - the ones that are listed as available from AFTRS are also mostly available from within other institutions.

Databases available through AFTRS Library

Factiva

The database contains more than 8,000 overseas and Australian newspaper and newswire publications and more than 9,000 web sites. For Australian news sources, the Fairfax publications archive is 13-22 years [SMH 1986+, AFR 1982+] and the News Limited archive is 8 years [Australian 1996+]. There is also a briefer archive on media transcripts for the ABC, SBS and Channel 9 (up to 1 year archive). Overseas media transcript archives are longer (up to 5 years). Pictures of major news events and reports also are available.

EBSCO Research Database

CMMC incorporates CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State)providing full-text and abstracted articles in the communication and mass media fields..

APAIS

APAIS contains a selection of indexes to periodical articles on Australian social science, law, architecture, sport, criminology, leisure and education. These indexes enable subject access to citations for a wide range of Australian journal articles, and reviews of Australian books and films.

APAIS - Australian Public Affairs and Information Service.
This database is useful when searching for information about the Australian film, television and radio industries.

FIAF

FIAF International FilmArchive Database is an international index of information on film and television published by the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). It covers film literature from more than 300 periodicals since 1972 and television literature from 1979, and includes the FIAF subject thesaurus. Additionally, the database features print sources for 22,000 silent films, a bibliography of FIAF members' publications and a directory of film and TV documentation collections.

Film Index International

Film Index International is a database that covers films, feature films, shorts, documentaries, television movies, cinema, biographies of personalities, awards, directors, production companies, credits, cast, genre, plot synopsis, actors, actresses, communication. Provides information on 90,000 films produced from 1895. Also contains a bibliography of citations to reviews and journal articles, as well as cast and credits.

Film Literature Index Online database covers approximately 700,000 citations to articles, film reviews and book reviews published between 1976 - 2001. 150 film and television periodicals have been indexed cover-to cover from 30 countries.

Other Free Public Access databases

International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication – Journal Database

A collection of free journals (some not in English), covering a variety of topics, hosted and/or produced by ICAAP (the International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication) - a research and development organization devoted to the advancement of electronic scholarly communication.

http://www.icaap.org/list_journal.php

BUBL

Selected internet resources covering academic subject areas

http://www.bubl.ac.uk

SOSIG - Social Sciences Internet Gateway

Selected internet resources covering Social Sciences.

Section on ‘Research Tools’ contains links to huge number of bibliographic databases, as well as journals, research centres, data sources and research organisations

http://www.sosig.ac.uk/

Intute

Database of academic resources on the web

http://www.intute.ac.uk

H-Net

Academic discussion networks, for Humanities and Social Sciences divided by subject area. Good book reviews list (h-review).

http://www.h-net.org/

Directory of Open Access Journals

Covers over 2000 journals in a variety of subject areas

http://www.doaj.org/

Dspace at MIT

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Digital Repository, including pre-publication versions of articles, technical reports, working papers, theses, conference papers.

https://dspace.mit.edu/index.jsp

OAIster

OAIster serves as a search portal for digital collections of electronic books, online journals, audio and image files, and movies provided by the research library community. Indexed content includes the Library of Congress' American Memory Project, various pre-print and e-print servers, and digital thesis and dissertation collections.

http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/

PANDORA

Australia’s web archive

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/index.html

Subscription sites (possibly available through universities)

Expanded Academic ASAP

(Link is to list of journals indexed in database)

http://www.gale.com/tlist/sb5019.html

JSTOR

Scholarly journal archive

http://www.jstor.org

FirstSearch

Worldwide Library Cooperative, access to range of databases and full-text articles

http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/

SAGE full text journals

Journals published by SAGE

http://www.sagefulltext.com/home.aspx?id=1

Taylor and Francis journals

Journals published by Taylor and Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/

Blackwell Synergy

Journals published by Blackwell

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/

Cambridge Journals Online

Journals published by Cambridge University Press

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/home

ISI Web of Knowledge

http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com/

Ingenta Connect

http://www.ingentaconnect.com

Science Direct

Mainly science, technology and medicine, but some arts and humanities.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/

Summary of Online database discussion

Why use an Online database?
• Instant updating of a common research
resource
• Distributed team has instant access to latest
materials
• Seamless integration of Internet as a
research tool and a storage/retrieval tool
• Possibility of a wider network of contributors/
researchers

Types of Database assets you can store and retreive
• Media
– Pictures (jpg, gif…)
– Audio ( mp3, mp4)
– Video (mpg, wmv)
• Text
– Free text in fields
– Scanned text documents
– Emails
– Word documents, PDF files
• URLs
• Live links to source materials
• Location docs - maps/googlemaps/whereis

Protocols for Online Databases

• All participants must
– have the tools
• Broadband
• Scanner
• Digital camera/mobile phone?
– Be trained in the database the tools and the protocols
– Have an online ethos (?)
– Respect the security issues

Setting up an Online Database

Using Filemaker Pro 7.0+ or Microsoft Access, you have the
following options, depending on hardware and cash.
– Personal web sharing - uses your computer as the host
( cheap, must always be on..)
– Hosted solution (always on, backups, faster, more
expensive)
– Semi-online - set up a Blog with the latest version to be
downloaded and updated
– Use one of the collaboration tools like Backpack

How to use the AFTRS trial database
• Use database for filing assets for the
pitch or other work
• If in groups for pitch use one name for
login
• Would be good if we could show the
class how you have used the tools

• NOTE : There are some interesting
alternatives to this database - online
collaboration tools, blogs

Accessing the database

Launch a browser and type in the
URL http://59.167.194.16:1050/aftrs/
default.htm (NOTE: there is no www in this URL)
When prompted for a name, enter
your name.
Go Crazy!

Brokeback Mountain used Filemaker online

Staying Organized on Brokeback
By Sharon Kennedy
March 1, 2005 Source: Film & Video
"There?s so much to organize in a film cutting room," says editor Dylan Tichenor (Jazz?34, Magnolia) from his studio in Rye, NY. Managing and tracking movie dailies, visual effects, and music/scene continuity are among his chief concerns, but Tichenor, who took the job of editing Ang Lee?s forthcoming Brokeback Mountain after Geraldine Peroni (The Player) passed away, revealed one strategy he employs for staying efficient: ditching the main hand-written codebook.
Using FileMaker Pro instead, Tichenor and his team have added fields and constructed and evolved three separate, relational databases they have shared access to via a LAN. Tichenor considers two databases crucial to workflow. One serves as the "codebook," a record of each shot detailing information such as negative numbers and the camera roll and sound roll the shot relates to. "In the past, as the assistants sunk the dailies, they?d have to write down key numbers and then check and re-check," says Tichenor. The second database manages effects and opticals.
For Brokeback, Tichenor and his assistants work off three Avids with high-speed media drives connected via fiber. He stresses that the media itself does not connect with FileMaker, although he will export a JPEG still from every take from the Avid into FileMaker as a visual reference. "We have 1.5 TB of media. Avid itself has a powerful database, where everything also gets tracked. Where the Avid falls short is searching through the whole project. FileMaker tells us all the information about the media and allows us to make any kind of report or organize the information in any way."