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Underground > Creation >

The Barbelith Documentary

  
 
electric monk
14:56 / 07.11.06
So I mentioned here my nebulous idea for a Barbelith documentary. A few others have expressed interest in the concept and... here we are.

Some salient points from the linked thread:

me - "Quickly, here's some general thoughts I had on this:

Title - "A New Kind of Community"

We'd need to shoot a loooong interview with Tom and smallish interviews with whichever 'lithers were willing and able. It may be possible to have teams around the world shoot the interviews. This brings with it a concern about quality of footage, so there should probably be some specifications set out for filming so that most of the footage has the same feel. The mini-interviews could pretty much follow a list of questions we all decide would be interesting, and the interviewees should feel free to rattle on as they liked about the board and cover subject areas that the initial round of questions didn't cover.

Tom's interview could be used as a framing device for the rest of the interviews. At least one Barbemeet should be filmed, if possible.

And Haus only appears in voiceover. We'll get a brain in a jar to stand in for hir on film."

***

solid~liquid onwards - "Most people will have some device that records video, from phones to webcams to digi cameras to video cameras. Just get people to speak a little about themselves and their connection to barbelith. a sort of community montage.

perhaps blending the different video standards and qualities will better represent barbelith than a uniform quality."

and

"What steps would we have to take to make the concept into a reality.? Proposal\/

1) Get Tom onboard. And interview him

2) Spread the word and get people to ramble about themselves in relation to barbelith. or perhaps just about themselves. or mabye anything they want to talk about.

3) This should be 1), i think. Consider wether the concept should become reality. Who would it be available to. Just 'lithers? free to share? youtube? what the potential implications are etc."

***

I think solid~liquid onwards' point 3 above is probably a good a place to start. If we can determine how and where we want a documentary about us to be available, I think that'll give us a good idea of what the thing should be and how we want to proceed.

Feel free to throw any other ideas you have into the mix as well. It's early in the process and I don't think it'll hurt to "blue sky" this thang a little.

*hand shakes*

*a pause*

*clicks 'Post Topic'*
 
 
electric monk
15:35 / 07.11.06
Random thought-scrawls:

*Would definitely like to have music from Withel, Hunting Lodge, Morning Bride, Lepidopteran, grant, etc. Withel's "Sonic Generator" would be great for the opening credits.

*Opening credits make use of the current frontpage colors and fonts.

*Contributors are welcome to produce and edit their contributions as much or as little as they like. A few of these contributions may get uninterrupted screen time. Others will be divided in sections so that we have some stretches of thematic tying-together (as in a montage of people answering the same question).

*Trolls and ugly incidents of the past will have to play some part. Not sure of the best way to incorporate these. No troll gets screen time.

*Occassional use of Barbequotes throughout, read by their authors in voiceover. These must link to the narrative and may be used for transitional purposes.
 
 
Spaniel
15:56 / 07.11.06
So, following on from my post in the other thread, how are we gonna handle trolls? From a populist point of view they'll almost certainly be considered entertainment, but even if we don't want to go that route we will still need to focus on them as they represent one of the biggest ongoing challenges to communities like ours.
 
 
electric monk
16:21 / 07.11.06
I agree that it's an issue that needs to be discussed. It can't all be shiny happy "look how wonderful we are", can it?

If troll-posts are considered fair game (and I think they are), maybe we could have a pool of volunteers read some of the choice ones for voiceovers. Lay the vocal tracks over stills of the post/slow pans over the post?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:33 / 07.11.06
I know it's not strictly in the documentary tradition, but perhaps you could invent a troll for the purposes of the movie? He (or she, but realistically he,) could be based on some of the more illustrious figures in the troll back catalogue, (though not so closely as to cause legal problems, obviously,) so he wouldn't be entirely fictional, and then interviewed in silhouette in a comic-strewn bedsit, and so on. People could be filmed at their computers responding to his posts (the temperature rising in Haus' brain jar, various others responding to Barbelith when they ought to be working etc,) and the banning process covered from beginning to end. This kind of thing seems to turn out best when there's a narrative structure to follow, and in that respect, the troll's Barbelith life cycle would work pretty well, I think. You could begin with an interview with Tom Coates, discuss the board's history, objectives and such, and then lead into the story with something like 'Occasionally though, there are problems ...' Ok, this approach might arguably be focusing a bit heavily on the negative, but on the other hand, it would be amusing.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:47 / 07.11.06
And you could include the more positive aspects along the way. There could be Barbelith meetings on both sides of the Atlantic where the troll was discussed for example, (you could even have the troll showing up at one of the meetings incognito, well the possibilities seem endless ...) To a degree, this might mean heading into fictional territory, but then again, this sort of thing does go on all the time, and everyone else would presumably be playing themselves, and interviewed/filmed in their real flats and (if possible) workplaces.
 
 
Feverfew
17:47 / 07.11.06
For those who may not want to just talk to a camera, I'm willing to travel around a little and "Interview" people, should they so desire.

Granted, it's a little limited to the south of England, but I can reach London and all sorts of places, given enough notice. This is just a thought, though.
 
 
Feverfew
18:24 / 07.11.06
Sorry, just re-read that and it does come across as a little creepy. I hope my meaning and intent is clear, rather than the posit of "I want to stalk lots of those lithers, yes, I do, my precioussss..."
 
 
solid~liquid onwards
10:23 / 08.11.06
Im happy to do the same in scotland.
 
 
petunia
10:42 / 08.11.06
Hehe. The talk of a fictional troll is reminding me of an episode of Brass Eye...

'Linda only agreed to be interviewed if her sister, dressed as a troll, would speak for her'

I think this would make for an excellent interview.
 
 
Tom Coates
16:01 / 08.11.06
I'm not anti the idea, although if you were going to do it you'd want something warts and all, really - I think it's entirely appropriate that I should be taken to task, for example, for not being able to give the community the attention it deserves. Cal would be a good person to talk to as well. Getting Grant to comment on his general disappointment with what we've accomplished might also be interesting.
 
 
Char Aina
20:11 / 08.11.06
is making it all about the semi-fictional deep-gloat_23(or whatever) glorifying trollism, kinda?
maybe a little?
 
 
Spaniel
21:28 / 08.11.06
Well, I think it's arguable that trolls have an important place in Barbelith's history, so, while I wouldn't want to glorify them, I do think that role should be thoughtfully represented.
 
 
iamus
00:49 / 09.11.06
Well, I think it's arguable that trolls have an important place in Barbelith's history

I wouldn't even say it's arguable. Many aspects of Barbelith (the removal of multiple suits, community attitude, invitation-only membership) are direct or indirect reactions to past troll activity.

I'd say what's arguable is whether the ways in which these issues were dealt with was ultimately benificial or harmful to the community.
 
 
electric monk
11:42 / 09.11.06
I wonder if we could invent a generic poster instead of a troll. I'm not quite convinced that using a fictional troll for the narrative POV is glorification, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea either. If we use a fictional everysuit in good standing, I think we'd keep the advantage of a single overarching POV that's able to talk about the issues we want to cover including trolling and the effect it's had on the community.
 
 
Ganesh
21:21 / 09.11.06
Mmm. I reckon it all sounds a bit... 'self-congratulatory' isn't quite right, but somewhere thereabouts.
 
 
grant
12:56 / 10.11.06
Antidote: Make it internet Spinal Tap.
 
 
Char Aina
14:07 / 10.11.06
even that still feels a little 'we're worth it'.
how would we counteract the smugness that comes with making a movie about you and your friends?
i can see what ganesh is saying, and i think there is a danger of making a movie that appeals only to barbelith.

what's that, a distribution of three hundred?
so a raisable budget of say, fifty, sixty quid?

don't get me wrong, it''d still be kinda cool.
i reckon world sized would be better than board sized, though.
 
 
Sax
14:19 / 10.11.06
Then it should be a proper MOVIE, by God. Explosions, car chases, Ganesh walking seductively out of the Serpentine with a gun strapped to his head, people in big coats talking and smoking a lot, and a horrific denouement that can't even be talked about.

Fiction's the only way to go. We're too ridiculous for a documentary.
 
 
Char Aina
16:26 / 10.11.06
fiction dressed as documentary?
or documentary dressed as fiction?
or documentary dressed as fiction dressed as documentary?
 
 
electric monk
17:03 / 10.11.06
Docudrama in a science fictionsuit.
 
 
Olulabelle
18:00 / 15.11.06
I think a documentary about Barbelith might be interesting if it incorporated some of the relationships people have made via the board.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
21:15 / 15.11.06
As a documentary about Barbelith I suppose it might, but if that was going to work in terms of general appeal, wouldn't it need to be made by someone outside 'the community,' who essentially saw us guys as not much more than bugs on a slide? Otherwise ... well who'd want to watch an hour of lo-fi footage of people getting smashed in The Plough, and so forth. And then going for walks with their cats the next day.

I realy feel (and ok, I suppose I would ...) that this subjects's best approached as a comedy.
 
 
Olulabelle
21:39 / 15.11.06
I think it relies on the people making the documentary to be objective, and as artists in the medium of movingness I would hope that they would be. I would assume that what is being suggested is not a "Barbelith aren't we great" wankfest but more a bit of social commentary, from an objective angle. As one would expect from anyone serious about making such a thing.

However.

I also think a documentary about online communities in general would be very interesting, perhaps one which featured Barbelith? We could find communties which had something in common; perhaps created by people of the same age and compare and contrast them. Or even choose completely different communities with nothing in common whatsoever.
 
 
solid~liquid onwards
22:11 / 15.11.06
High Priestess of Pantmustache:

I also think a documentary about online communities in general would be very interesting, perhaps one which featured Barbelith? We could find communties which had something in common; perhaps created by people of the same age and compare and contrast them. Or even choose completely different communities with nothing in common whatsoever.

This is something ive considered offhand myself. has a doumentary ever been done on mmorpg's?
 
 
rizla mission
08:40 / 16.11.06
As a documentary about Barbelith I suppose it might, but if that was going to work in terms of general appeal, wouldn't it need to be made by someone outside 'the community,' who essentially saw us guys as not much more than bugs on a slide? Otherwise ... well who'd want to watch an hour of lo-fi footage of people getting smashed in The Plough, and so forth. And then going for walks with their cats the next day.

Agreed. There's definitely a potentially great film waiting to be made about Barbelith and all the craziness it's given birth to over the years, particularly re: the way it's formed a lasting bond of community between geographically/culturally/socially disparate individuals united only by, well.... what exactly?? - that would be the tricky question a decent documentary would seek to address.

But any film actually made BY Barbelith members would be inherently self-indulgent, in-jokey, cringe-worthy and generally a BAD IDEA, no matter how well it was put together. Far better to sit back and wait for the extremely unlikely event of being approached by some independent filmmakers interested in the concept.

Also of course there's the issue of a film's wider appeal; I have a vision that it would begin with various interviewees holding forth about Barbelith is this, Barbelith is that, Barbelith has improved my life immeasurably etc., by which point the viewer will be thinking "wow, this Barbelith must be pretty hot stuff!" and imagining some kind of revelatory Ubik-esque concept... cue the inevitable realisation that "what?? it's a MESSAGEBOARD?? These people need to get a life!" - and mass walkouts from the screening room inevitably ensue.

So thus I say let's drop the idea of a serious documentary and instead just film various Barbelithers acting out a goofy and contrived plotline full of improvised drunken antics, pop music, zany chases and Hard Day's Night style japery for no apparent reason... which of course wouldn't be at all self-indulgent.

= and that's why people don't tend to let me make films.
 
 
Spaniel
12:34 / 16.11.06
The problem is one individual's "objective take" is unlikely to match anyone else's, so whoever steps up to the plate will almost certainly get into hot water, and, frankly, the distance that Alex talks about would very likely make for a more entertaining doc.

I suppose a 'lither with very little invested in the community could tackle it.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
14:40 / 16.11.06
The best thing to do would be to get on and make the damn thing and not ask too many people about it, or get too many other people's opinions. Everything gets a bit bogged down otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, if it crossed my transem I'd watch it whatever, but if everyone on the board suddenly feels that they should have say in how a film about Barbelith gets made then it just won't get done.

And the Brighton vs rest-of-the-world Barbe-British Bulldog match is going to be included, I take it?
 
 
Feverfew
17:00 / 16.11.06
Agreed.

Why not mix, meld and match the Barbelith Film ideas and Barbelith documentary ideas? Get people in certain areas to meet up and record completely unrelated scenes, which are then edited together, and then the different groups submit the footage to be further edited into a longer project...

Sorry. That sounds like a pyramid scheme. But if you started out with groups of four or so coming up with single scenes, then submitting up one level to four scenes edited together, then up again another level to four edits meshed together, then eventually to one completely glued project, might that work?

It would end up looking bizarre and it wouldn't have a plot, but every single person involved could present their own part of Barbelith, or their own part of life, or, well, whatever they wanted to present, really.

Thoughts?
 
 
Olulabelle
18:28 / 18.11.06
Regarding objectivity, it's perfectly possible to be objective about something you are heavily invested in or involved with or however you want to put it, you just have to concentrate on doing it objectively. That's not to say it's easy to do but it is possible and documentary makers do it all the time. In order to make a documentary you first need to give a shit about the subject you are covering. You don't just dispassionately go, "Aha, now I think I'll make X, and I'll do it from a very neutral point of view." Plus also you need some sort of opinion to come across in a documentary, in the end. There is such a thing as a cold dispassionate look at a subject, but it's called news reporting.

Solid~Liquid, I have never seen a documentary about MMORPG's. Doesn't mean there isn't one though, but there definitely should be!
 
  
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