Gerard Ungerman, recognized by AFI, the American Film Institute, among others, for outstanding work in the world of documentary production, will be teaching the upcoming Documentary Production workshop for Videomaker at our headquarters in Chico California this March.

Pulling in such high-profile narrators such as John Hurt, Dustin Hoffman and Edward Asner, Ungerman’s films have been featured in many international festivals and have been broadcast all around the world.

Ungerman does his own fund-raising, allowing him to be completely free of outside influence in telling the stories.

Ungerman’s bio states: His belief is that true democratic media should not be controlled or filtered by powerful interest groups, be them commercial or political. Determination and skills learned along the way have allowed him to give high production value to otherwise low-budget projects and to bring international visibility and recognition to controversial stories that commercial news and entertainment would not touch.

Ungerman created his production company, Free Will Productions, in New York  in 1995.  Formerly a print-media journalist with a  military background, Ungerman’s global travels have taken him to such places as the jungles of Peru and the oilfields of Iraq to find the truth about conditions in areas that aren’t covered by the mainstream media.

Among his recognitions are Sony “Visions of the U.S”. in 1996, Grand Prize at Cine Eco in Portugul in 2000 and “Best Enviro Feature” at ARTIVIST in 2009.

Ungerman’s Filmography:

Belonging (2008) [read more about "Belonging" here]

The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (2004)

Plan Colombia: Cashing in on the Drug War Failure (2002) [Read more about "Plan Colombia" here]

Sex, Ties & Lots of Video-Tape (2001)

Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (2000)

Confessions of a New York Call-Girl (1998)

Peru: Between the Hammer & The Anvil (1996)

Find out more about Ungerman’s production company Free Will Productions at www.freewillprod.com

There is still time to sign up for this 3-day extensive class on Documentary Production taking place March 19-21, 2010, but this class will be limited to just a few, due to the content size.  Check out the details at: http://events.videomaker.com/

How many times have you heard or uttered the phrase “The Show Must Go On!” in your video-producing world? It gets our blood pumping to know we can make the impossible possible.

This weekend we hosted one of our Basic Production workshops, and launched our newest class as well: our 3-day intensive Lighting Workshop. Everything was going well until about 11:15 in the morning when everything… raced… to… a… complete… halt.
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Hard to believe, but we just shipped the December issue off to the printers. This has been a busy week at Videomaker Headquarters, we’re also getting ready for another terrific workshop this weekend.

We’ve been getting all the gear together for the two upcoming workshops: Basic Production and Intensive Lighting. It’s going to be another full house at VMHQ!

We have a nice collection of HD cameras and Lights, tripods and other accessories to teach with, and have been teaching the Basic Production Class for several years. It’s usually a great success. Having the chance to meet and greet other video enthusiasts and spend the weekend working on a video project is great fun. Read the rest of this entry »