The Jazz Journalist Association’s jazz video project, now named eyeJAZZ, has enlisted “JazzVideoGuy” Bret Primack and noted Chicago videographer Floyd Webb as trainers and project organizers. Primack and Webb are working with JJA President Howard Mandel and JJA online media adviser JoAnn Kawell to plan the curriculum and the application process that will be used to fill the thirty slots in the upcoming project training program. Applications will be available about December 1; sign up for the project email list, Facebook page or Twitter account, or consult the (still under construction) project website at www.eyeJAZZ.tv to get application updates.
Like the “guerrilla” or “underground” filmmakers of past decades and like today’s backpack journalists, eyeJAZZ video makers will use portable and online tools–such as pocket cameras and cell phones–in new ways to create new forms of visual reportage about jazz. Accepted applicants will receive a “pocket” video camera and instruction in basic video production and editing, as well as in on-camera interview techniques and other reportorial skills.
The emphasis in the training program will be on producing high-quality video on short deadlines with easy-to-use tools and on learning to distribute the result as widely and quickly as possible using online and social media. The project will also explore development of new paid markets for jazz videos. Training sessions will be done online, via streaming video and webinars, and some sessions will be open to the public. Most of the sessions will also be made available online for later study.
[pullquote]eyeJAZZ videos will ‘show the audience to itself’ as well as showing musicians performing[/pullquote]
“We want to foment the development of a new genre of jazz video,” says Kawell, “one that shows jazz musicians in the process of developing their music as well as performing it, and that also shows something about the varied places and communities where jazz is made. We also want to show the jazz audience to itself –to frequently turn the camera around, away from the stage, and show how many of us are listening and what we are thinking about what we’re hearing. Most videos about jazz and other music don’t do this, and in the case of jazz, this has reinforced the idea that the audience for jazz is tiny and fixed in its tastes, when we know that’s not true.”
Another offshoot of the project, called “I eyeJAZZ”, will encourage videomakers not formally enrolled in the program to share their own work that fits the eyeJAZZ criteria by posting to the project Facebook page.
eyeJAZZ is funded by a grant to the Jazz Journalists Association from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
