Whatever streaming audio and video technology lacks in quality, it more than makes up for in diverse and interesting content.
While CNN flooded television screens all over the world with haunting images of Albanian refugees fleeing their war torn country and Serbian news showed the devastation caused by NATO bombings, a Serbian filmmaker used a Sony Hi8 and a Panasonic DV camcorder to shoot and broadcast a documentary of the crisis via streaming video over the Internet.
Armed with a Sony Hi8 and a Panasonic DV camcorder the filmmaker (named A.G. to protect his identity) documented the initial bombing crisis in three video shorts. There are no dead bodies, exploding bombs or otherwise graphic images in the shorts. Instead A.G. depicts the day-to-day life of ordinary people caught in the throes of war.
The first short, documents the escalating crisis just days prior to the first NATO bombing. The second clip, Nicolai Doesn’t Look at The Sky, focuses on a three-year-old child and his mother as they leave their home to seek a safe haven. The third short takes place in a bomb shelter during an air raid.
The filmmaker works at a Belgrade radio station that broadcasts over the Internet. He took advantage of the digital editing facilities and Internet access
he had there and used Adobe Premiere to edit the shorts along with FAST’s AV Master to digitize and capture his video clips. A.G. then posted them to Webcinema, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the Internet as a way to “finance, create, produce, distribute and market independent films.
You can view the streaming videos and read the accompanying written journals at www.webcinema.org/war_diaries.
