There are only about 15 people left in David Sheet's neighborhood, once a thriving community of people who had lived there much of their lives. The reason: Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn's largest-ever proposed real estate development, which will cost 5 billion dollars and engulf three times the area of Rockefeller Center.
Jack-hammering, construction, and relentless noise have driven more than 600 residents from their homes, and many of those homes have already been demolished. But a few brave souls have decided to stay, choosing not to make it easy for their displacers. "I am going to stand in their way for as long as I can," says Sheets, looking both fierce and vulnerable against an ominous street-scape. "Do stadiums come before lives?" asks another resident, who refuses to leave. Hold Out is their story.
Hold Out is a product of the MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop, where participants work alongside MediaStorm staff to create an intimate, character-driven documentary in just one week. Learn more about upcoming MediaStorm workshops and online training at mediastorm.com/train.
Zachary Barr, Story and Audio
I work in radio but knew next to nothing about photography and video. No more! The MediaStorm workshop taught me how to take good pictures, and more importantly how to put it all together into one story. It was a chance to do the kind of work we so often wish we were doing: working without distractions, collaboratively with super talented people, all the while guided by dedicated, talented teachers.
Uma Sanghvi, Story
The team of MediaStorm producers were fantastic teachers - energetic, patient and thoughtful 'coaches' who tirelessly led our teams in story development, reporting and editing. I hadn't thought about story structure in such a rigorous way until this workshop. What I learned about editing and pacing will change the way I edit from now on.
It is a truly ideal situation - small teams of creative people with different kinds of expertise collaborating together to produce a high-quality multimedia product. This is the model our industry needs to be working towards now. What a joy to experience it in the field.
I also learned from my fellow team members; being around talented, smart and driven people is a treat. All in all this was an invaluable opportunity for me not only to develop my skills - but more importantly I left the workshop re-energized and newly inspired to produce better and better work. Plus, it was just a lot of fun!
Jeff Hutchens, Photography and Video
The absolute highlight of the week was working with both the fantastic folks at MediaStorm and the high-caliber of participants they brought in. One of the most surprising but effective techniques I'll take home was the emphasis on the radio edit as the primary backbone of the story. It's a shift in perspective when you come from a primarily visual background, but an extremely powerful one.
Nacho Corbella, Photography and Video
It was a privilege to work with such talented professionals. The workshop provided us room to play and explore our expertise in an ideal learning environment.
It's always refreshing having reinforced the fact that the story is the most important thing, especially in a media world plagued by the necessity of getting content done under pressure in which sometimes the story itself is not explored deeply but just superficially in order to get the content up. Here, we had that pressure too, but it was about finding the elements to make that story better and not just about fulfilling a deadline.
In few words, it was freakin' awesome!
The MediaStorm One Day Master Class provides a general, yet precise, overview of documentary video and multimedia storytelling approaches. MediaStorm founder Brian Storm will walk you through specific examples as well as proven tips to improve your interviewing, editing and distribution techniques.
These are the upcoming one day workshop dates:
The MediaStorm Methodology Master Class gives participants a chance to look inside the workings of a successful film and interactive production company, while taking them step-by-step through both the creative and business aspects of digital storytelling.
Founder Brian Storm will share MediaStorm’s workflow and storytelling methods and discuss essential elements of project organization and storytelling concepts.
You can attend the workshop in Los Gatos, CA in person or online via Zoom.
Upcoming date:
A family is determined to give their disabled son a whole and vital life. In the midst of a great burden, one small child – with a seemingly endless supply of love – is the blessing that holds a family together.
Virginia Gandee's brilliant red hair and dozen tattoos belie the reality of this 22-year-old's life. Inside her family's Staten Island trailer her caregiving goes far beyond the love she has for her daughter.
For Walter Backerman, seltzer is more than a drink. It’s the embodiment of his family. As a third generation seltzer man, he follows the same route as his grandfather. But after 90 years of business, Walter may be the last seltzer man.
Using humor and a love of fantasy, "The Amazing Amy" Harlib connects with audiences through performing strenuous yoga-based contortion acts in New York City.
Benny is a “certified” garbologist. He collects what others throw away. Benny is also at war with his family. Here is a man sharing a house with his wife but living as a stranger. This is a household on the edge.
Jay Singer has been in love with one Brooklyn neighborhood his entire life. He grew up there, pined for it when he was forced to leave and returned when he couldn’t stand to be away. “Coney Island Jay” really loves Coney Island.
Tim Obert has been a commercial fisherman since he was 12. But regulations aimed at saving whales and salmon in California leave him struggling to find balance between his dream, his family’s needs and the industry he loves.
Kryssy Kocktail grew up in troubled family and, as an adult, followed the mythic path of joining the circus. Amid the lights and energy of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, she has found something that she never dreamed would be hers.
One evening, David Sheets read a story about a new basketball arena proposed for his neighborhood. Then he realized the plans were drawn right over his house. Hold Out is the story of a few neighbors who haven't been very easily dislodged.
Joe Soll has spent half of his life searching for his birth parents, in the process he uncovered a mystery that’s haunted him for years.
Diana Ortiz spent over half her life in prison for a crime she committed when she was a teenager. Now 45, she has turned her life around and works to help other inmates rebuild their lives. Exodus is her story.
MediaStorm's award-winning team of producers and cinematographers lead online training videos with lessons learned from their experience producing films and training groups and organizations around the world.
Developed over seven years and more than 100 projects, our downloadable post-production workflow covers every phase of editing, from organizing assets through outputting final projects and archiving.
Available for iPad on iTunes, the MediaStorm Field Guide outlines fundamental concepts for gathering multimedia content in the field for documentary films.
Once teetering on the brink of extinction, the Santa Catalina Island Fox made a dramatic recovery. Its resurgence marks one of the greatest conservation success stories in United States history.
In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold. Skyrocketing housing prices in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that impacts everyone in the community.
This page recognizing Zora J Murff for ICP’s 2023 Infinity Award for Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism features a film about his life, a slideshow of his projects and extra clips of his thoughts about his work and motivation.
Sebastião Salgado says "a good picture, a fantastic picture, you do in a fraction of a second, but to arrive to do this picture, you must put your life in there."
Esther Horvath has sent questions to the universe and she has received answers. She found her calling to tell visual stories that show the full research story behind our climate data.
See photographer Acacia Johnson’s growth from her earliest explorations of Alaskan landscapes to a National Geographic cover for a documentary project among indigenous people of the Arctic.
Sir Don McCullin never intended to become a photographer. He found it hard to believe he’d ever escape the poverty of North London. But a spur of the moment photograph launched McCullin into a career spanning 50 years in photography.
As the U.S. prepares for the final drawdown of soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Soledad O’Brien and MediaStorm take an intimate look at two veterans as they struggle with the transition from war to home.
Writer Zadie Smith pays homage to photographer Deana Lawson in the artist’s first Monograph for Aperture.
As a formerly incarcerated person, Michael struggled for work, and found purpose in being a husband, father, and activist. But 7 years since his release from prison, the cost of Michael’s activism is evident.
Benny is a “certified” garbologist. He collects what others throw away. Benny is also at war with his family. Here is a man sharing a house with his wife but living as a stranger. This is a household on the edge.
Photographer Amber Bracken recognized something deeper than a protest was afoot when hundreds of tribes gathered at the Standing Rock reservation in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
How does the death of a child change a parent? How does the death of a parent change a child? How do these moments change us as we develop and grow further away from who we were as children?
Maurice Berger–cultural historian, and columnist for the New York Times’ Race Stories–has spent his career studying and teaching racial literacy through visual literacy.
Japan’s Disposable Workers examines the country’s employment crisis: from suicide caused by overworking, to temporary workers forced by economics to live in internet cafes, and the elderly who wander a town in search of shelter and food.
Karl Ove Knausgaard is the celebrated author of a massive six-volume autobiography. But Knausgaard remains confused by the attention. This is a portrait of a man who has achieved massive success yet still considers himself unworthy.
Michael Thomasson has devoted his life to video games. It’s been his passion and his obsession for more than three decades. He owns over 11,000 unique game titles for more than 100 different systems.
A film about Michael Christopher Brown for the 2017 ICP Infinity Awards.
The Long Night, a feature film by Tim Matsui and MediaStorm, gives voice and meaning to the crisis of minors who are forced and coerced into the American sex trade.
Jonathan Harris and Greg Hochmuth have a complicated relationship with the internet and have worked together to develop an artwork that explored some of the more difficult consequences of what it means to live with the internet.
In 1977, Robyn Davidson walked 1,700 miles across the Australian outback. National Geographic sent Rick Smolan to photograph her perilous journey—a trek that tested and transformed them, forming an immutable bond that continues to this day.
Once at the center of the U.S. economy, the family farm now drifts at its edges. In Iowa, old-time farmers try to hang on to their way of life, while their young push out to find their futures elsewhere. Driftless tells their stories.
The American family farm gives way to a subdivision - a critical cultural shift across the U.S. Common Ground is a 27-year document of this transition, through the Cagwins and the Grabenhofers, two families who love the same plot of land.
For Walter Backerman, seltzer is more than a drink. It’s the embodiment of his family. As a third generation seltzer man, he follows the same route as his grandfather. But after 90 years of business, Walter may be the last seltzer man.
Larry Fink has spent over 40 years photographing jazz musicians, wealthy manhattanites, his neighbors, fashion models, and the celebrity elite. His archive is a thoughtful collection of American history, and Fink’s experience of it.
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s body of work “The Notion of Family” examines the impact of the steel industry and the health care system on the community and her family. Collaborating with her mother and grandmother, she uses her family as a lens to view the past, present and future of the town.
Tomas Van Houtryve wants there to be a permanent visual record of the dawn of the drone age, the period in American history when America started outsourcing their military to flying robots. In order to create this record, Van Houtryve sent his own drone into American skies.
Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in the magical town of Tiksi, Russia. This barren, arctic landscape influenced Arbugaeva in almost every aspect of her dreamlike photography.
Surviving the Peace: Laos takes an intimate look at the impact of unexploded bombs left over from the Vietnam war in Laos and profiles the dangerous, yet life saving work, that MAG has undertaken in the country.
A family is determined to give their disabled son a whole and vital life. In the midst of a great burden, one small child – with a seemingly endless supply of love – is the blessing that holds a family together.
Inspired by the photographs of the Farm Security Administration growing up, Lynn Johnson has spent nearly 35 years as a photojournalist working for LIFE, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and various foundations.
Resetting the Table takes a unique, personal look at the impact Starbucks’ Create Jobs for USA program has had on the American Mug & Stein pottery facility in East Liverpool, Ohio.
Hungry Horse captures the spirit of renewal, peace and serenity through stunning landscapes and intimate oral histories.
Using humor and a love of fantasy, "The Amazing Amy" Harlib connects with audiences through performing strenuous yoga-based contortion acts in New York City.
In many countries, girls as young as eight are forced into marriage by their families, culture and economic situation. This practice destroys their chance at education leading to tragic results.
Surreal and mysterious, North Korea was a black hole to outsiders wanting a glimpse of the country. That all changed in 2012, when AP photographer David Guttenfelder led the opening of the bureau's newest office inside the North Korea.
Virginia Gandee's brilliant red hair and dozen tattoos belie the reality of this 22-year-old's life. Inside her family's Staten Island trailer her caregiving goes far beyond the love she has for her daughter.
Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan is the work of photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His work chronicles a people caught time and again in political turmoil, struggling to find their way.
In Rwanda, in 1994, Hutu militia committed a bloody genocide, murdering one million Tutsis. Many of the Tutsi women were spared, only to be held captive and repeatedly raped. Many became pregnant. Intended Consequences tells their stories.
To those who serve in the armed forces, what is the aftereffect of war? The Marlboro Marine is photographer Luis Sinco's portrait of Marine Corporal James Blake Miller, whom he met in Iraq. For Miller, coming home has been its own battle.
Zakouma National Park is one of the last places on earth where elephants still roam by the thousands. In a land where poachers will slaughter the huge animals for their tusks alone, it takes armed guards to keep them safe.
Kingsley's Crossing is the story of one man's dream to leave the poverty of life in Africa for the promised land of Europe. We walk in his shoes, as photojournalist Olivier Jobard accompanies Kingsley on his uncertain and perilous journey.
The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet.
The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet.
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