Help, Suggestions, Future of The D-Word

plus, anything that takes your mind of your healing-arm pain gets my support...

OK, Rhonda, we're giving it a try. Here's the new Social Media Topic for Members of The D-Word.

We are but your humble servants.

In reply to Ben Kempas's post on Sat 30 May 2009 :

After reflection, we've decided to rename the new topic to Social Networking for Filmmakers
aka Social Networking so as not to confuse with films that campaign for social change

Sean Flynn should post about his use of Twitter. He has some good tips.

Yes, and there now is a topic for this, Rhonda: Social Networking !

Yup, calling all twits...

I'm having an iPhone glitch when trying to post on D-word. If I hit the back/delete button, it erases either the whole word, the whole sentence or the whole post. It only happens (so far) on D-word. Any suggestions?

Same thing here...

Is this a recent thing or has it been like this all along? Can other iPhone users confirm?

(Note to self: Start a separate fund-raising drive for a mobile version.)

suggest you join the rest of us plebs sitting calmly behind their computers interacting on the d-word.

Well, The D-Word was never designed for mobile phones. But it runs fine on mine (Nokia E90). However, we could do a poll and see how many people want a streamlined version with less data load for their phones.

The data load is fine. Actually, D-word is one of the faster loads at home on my slow connection. It's just the typing deal that is the problem.

I used to have that problem, but I'm not aware of it any more. Have you done a iPhone software update Mikal? That might help.

Huh, no, but I've only had it a couple months and they updated it when I bought it. I think the new software is available. I'll check on that...

Latest iPhone upgrade seems to have fixed it.

Just wondering if the category "Video Essay" has any traction? Not 'documentary' in the purist sense. I'd call the docu-drama sections of the video I'm working on "documentation of the future".

This topic is for questions about The D-Word, David- but FWIW, "Video Essay" is fine – although it might not ring everyone's bell.

Hi, John, Hope to see you at Folklife Festival. I'll be there mid-day Saturday. Will you?
I thought this section was also for 'ideas for future D-Word ... projects' ... such as attention to video essays. Where, then, would that suggestion best be made?

Your question could have gone in Developing Stories or Works in Progress

I was briefly at the festival today, off to NY tomorrow but back early July, maybe see you then...

Actually, the topics suggested by John are only accessible to Members of The D-Word, not to Enthusiasts. But there's always the Mentoring Room for these kinds of questions.

Hello. I am new to D-word and have just been employed by National Geographic in Washington as a Producer/Director. I have been asked to produce an insurance certificate for general liability and wonder if anyone has a broker I can contact or an insurance company who works with documentary filmmakers and can provide this kind of insurance. I live in New York and commute to D.C. thanks.

Celia, I highly recommend Charles Whelan Insurance Agency. Chuck works out of Washington State but handles my liability insurance. He's great to work with and gets good rates. Can't hurt to say I referred you:

ph: 253-840-5137
cwinsurance@comcast.net

Just to remind people again, this Help topic is about The D-Word platform, not about help with documentary questions... :-)

Here's a little bug, Peter, in case you don't already know about it. Underscores at each end of the word italicize the word, but it doesn't work to try to italicize part of a word. E.g. to highlight a difference in emphasis such as "_re_volution vs. evolution." It renders with the underscores instead of "re" being italicized.

I suppose that is by design... The underscores to italics feature is part of an open-source text-processing plug-in we are using, and the rules are designed to work in most cases while ideally not breaking special formatting (such as urls). If we made it always italicise characters between 2 underscores, we could make some mistakes, which is why the feature is designed to only italicise if there are spaces around the underscores. If you've followed discussion here about the strikethrough feature you'll see why it could cause problems to allow formatting of partial-words.

I'm working on an outdoor sport documentary series, my second series actually. Both have been for non-profit organizations, so often no permit is required by the US Forest Service, US Parks, BLM, Etc. However, some representatives will flat out refuse to give a permit- say for following 1 person through a wilderness area with a small camera and tripod and two crew members. I have three frustrations with the process- 1. Responses are inconsistent- sometimes yes, sometimes no. 2. There are no rules that apply to non-profit- they only talk about commercials where there are paid talent or products being sold, and 3. Isn't that a violation of free speech to say you can't document someone's experience?

Nikia, this topic is for questions with our discussion software. Your question could go into topics like Directing , Production , or the Legal Corner .

Is there a way to sort the members list by location? I'd like to see who else (if anyone else...) is living in Santa Fe.

Go to the People Page and click on "Advanced Search" Seem to be 6 of you living in Santa Fe.

Wish I were.

thanks!

come visit, Doug.

okay, so I couldn't figure it out. Once I've clicked on "People", I have only "search". If I click the upper 'search' button without entering any info, I get 'advanced search' option, but then I'm not on the 'people' page, but have a list of topics to choose from. Both searches I've done from here ('tags and content' or just 'tags') don't get me the list...do I have to be a full member perhaps?

This may be slightly off topic – but I tried to join the D-Word "network" on Facebook. It asked for a valid email address, which I supplied. But nothing worked.

The Network is only for people running The D-Word who have a d-word.com email address. You could join The D-Word Group .

By the way, I made sort of a surprise visit to Peter yesterday and checked on his progress with the next milestone of The D-Word software. Everything is on track, film profiles and embedded video look great, and most new features will be ready for our 10th anniversary.

In reply to Molly McKinley's post on Fri 21 Aug 2009 :

Advanced Search is a feature for full members.

Dear Sirs – Can you tell me where I would post incriminating photos from Indie Film Week? Thank you.

The Photo Album?

Or in the fifth trashcan in the alley behind the boarded up store between the two Chinese herb shops around the corner. Please deposit the photos in a fastened purple envelope which should say "Mr. Jones' x-rays" in Sanskrit on the cover.

Will do. Thank you.

Can I remove or edit a post of mine? I thought I saw someone do this once but looked through the help topics and can't find my way...

Just be sure to tell everyone which one it was so that we can read it first before they remove it. :)

Sorry Gregory. You can't edit or remove after 15 minutes or if someone has posted after you.

That'll teach me.

That's the idea :)

How do you paste a vimeo movie directly into a post. It's not clear from any of the instructions.

Nigel, it seems like some topics have the Attach Video boxes at the bottom and others don't. Not totally sure why, myself. Peter Gerard, are you out there?

Thanks Doug, thought I was losing it there.

Also just noticed that topics that don't have Embed Video capabilities do when you go into Edit This Post mode. What's up with that, Peter?

Doug, in an attempt to prevent an inflationary "myspacing" of our beautiful D-Word, we haven't switched on the Embed Video feature for all topics (as you should know). Email me if you can't find the switch.

For the time being, Video Embeds are switched on in those topics where they make the most sense. But we're open to reasonable requests. :-)

Cameras maybe, for test footage.

Good point, Nigel. I switched on video embeds in Cameras.

in response to a personal request from Boston-Red-Sox-lover Aron Gaudet, i've decided to change my profile picture back to my own ugly mug. so i went to my profile page, clicked on "Pictures", and made something else my primary photo. however, the photo has not changed at all for my postings. does it take a day or so to kick in? or is this a bug?

I am seeing your ugly mug. :-) Maybe the old photo is stuck in your browser's cache or something?

I am seeing it too now, but when you posted the original question (20 hours ago according to the tag) it was indeed stuck on your team shot.

guess there must be a delay when updating profile pic...

Funny, I just came in to ask the same question. Can't seem to change my profile picture here even though I changed it to "Make Primary." Even tried logging out and back in again. No different. I'll sleep on it and see if I am different tomorrow.

what a difference a day makes

Same problem here? I made the new pic primary, but no change. When I logged out and back in, still no change.

Maybe the d-word topic cops are investigating allegations of copyright infringements with profile pics?

Fair use, officer, fair use!

oh no, mine is now fixed!

Faster, faster, I need to get to a meeting.

Like I said before, this is because your old picture was still in your browser's cache. Try reloading the page or emptying the cache. It's all fine.

Sorry that last line was a caption for my new profile pic, not a reference to my problem with the profile pic, which is indeed cured.

16 marks to Ben – clearing the cache cures the pic profile blues

profile question

D-Word use to work on my Blackberry, but now i cant seem to log in, anyone else having this problem?

In reply to Ron Osgood's post on Mon 23 Nov 2009 :

Only works for those with the premium d-word membership.

Ron, you can easily edit your profile. Just take out your birthdate under Bio.

I removed the date of birth for you, Ron. And just for the record, David was joking.

Andrew, does the problem persist? If so, can you give us more specifics? Anybody else with a Blackberry out there?

how about switching embed video in the P.I.S.S topic...

You'll need to ask someone who accesses that topic... :-)

great... that means i'll probably have to wait until baseball season!

How do you upload new profile photos? There doesn't seem to be an option to do that. Is there a maximum number I don't know about.

Upload here and click "Make primary".

Ben, you must see something as administrator that I don't. That page takes me to my current photos and I can make any of them primary, but I don't see a button to upload a new photo.

?!? Have you scrolled down?

Is anybody else encoutnering this?

Nothing apparent when I scroll down. I'm going to e-mail you a screenshot.

The maximum number of profile pictures is 6. This limit was added a few months ago, so you may have more than the maximum if you added them before the limit was introduced. You'll need to delete all but 5 of your photos before you can upload again.

Aha, that must be it.

Mr Gerard, glad to see you alive and well. Waiting dearly to see a pic or two of the d-word crowd waiting for the free ride in Amsterdam etc.

Oh, I've got a few pics of that... You'll have to wait for a few months though before I can post them... Remind me.

Will try to scan some this week.. I just got the film developed... maybe I can get mine up before Ben gets back from the boat!

(excuse me if this is not the right page for posting this message)

Hi my name is Hashim. I study Video production in Leicester, UK. I would appreciate it if any professionals could give answers to my questions regarding new media technology and documentary film industry. It's for my current assignment.

Q1
How many years of experience do have in filmmaking?

Q2
Have you experienced the shift from analogue to digital? If so, what has changed in your work routine? How different do you work now?

Q3
What equipment do you use (currently)?

Q4
Do you choose equipment that you are comfortable with and meet the standards of broadcast? Or are they determined by the nature of the documentary you are making?

Q5
Do you feel it is necessary to be constantly aware of new technology or do you think that current standards are sufficient for you?

Q6
As a filmmaker, do you set yourself moral principals? Do you have lines drawn? Are there projects that conflict your principals and how do you deal with them?

Q7
Do you set yourself new goals and new standards every time? How do you move up-market?

No, it's not the right place, Hashin; as it says at the top of this page, this Topic is for queries about the D-Word itself. Your post would be better suited to the Mentoring Room .

Having said that, D-Word Members are working professionals and the majority are freelancers at that, so given the extremely broad nature of your survey (you could write a whole book on Q6 alone!) it's asking quite a lot of busy people to sit down and fill in a questionnaire like this. Practically, you may get a bit more feedback if you can get people on the phone for a few minutes.

Finally, it would be good to know a bit more about your background and what your own interest is in all of this; The D-Word operates as a community of filmmakers, so there has to be a bit of give and take.

PS Note on spelling: Q6 should be "principles" not "principals".

Thanks for your feedback. I'll try and keep the questions down.

Whenever there is a routine update to the site, I'd like to put in a vote for moving the
"Back to Topics" button at a slightly greater distance away from the
"Hide 'This Topic' From Now On" button at the bottom of the page.

It's very easy to unintentionally hide topics when all you wanted to do was go back to the Topics page. Especially when using D-word on a hand-held device like an iPhone where it can be easy to click the wrong link. I wind up periodically going into my settings page to Un-hide all the missing topics. I know it sounds silly – but I also know I'm not the only one having this [minor design] issue.

It's true. I do this all the time when checking D-Word from my iPhone.

this may be a little greedy, but what about a d-word app?

D-word is actually working okay on the iPhone as-is, but there are a few little things that could make it smoother.

On the other hand, it would definitely be cool to be able to post photos and videos taken with the iPhone, or to be able to "opt-in" to a d-word network that would tell you when other d-worders were nearby, so you could organize an impromtu f2f. Or something.

I'm sure I can move that button. Any other small screen issues? I can't imagine there's enough demand for a full-blown iPhone app. How many D-Worders use the iPhone? A mobile browser enhanced version may be more useful.

Sure – like Google has a special version of their site that pops up when you're using a iPhone/blackberry/etc – that would be cool. And it's clearly something for which there will be an ever-increasing need.

I use the iPhone, though not for the D-Word, but mostly because it doesn't have a small-screen-specific site (although as is, it's nice & low-bandwith & nice spare design). Making an iPhone or mobile version would be very cool, probably fairly straightforward, and I bet it would help if you're ever interested in licensing this whole system out to other groups...

However, given that we're all only supposed to be checking this thing once a day (right?), is minute-by-minute mobile access really a direction that should be encouraged?

I actually read The D-Word on my iphone, but using the email digests that I get each morning in my inbox. I've got some other updates to work on soon, so will look at the feasibility of using the email layout for users with mobile browsers... I can't promise a release date though!

D-Word on your iPhone? That's like watching Avatar on your iPhone.

I tried to post with embeded video in the topic 'funding (europe or elsewhere)' with the help of attach file option. But that didn't work. It says 'done with error on page' . Is there any restriction on video attachment? my file size is 87 MB and its .dat file.

I think embedding video's is restricted to certain topics, but the techno guys better answer that.

I'll wait for Peter to confirm, but I think the limit is much lower, probably about 10% of what you were trying to upload. Secondly .dat can be just about anything, a text or graphic file. There are more useful video formats – best of all is to upload to your own website or Youtube/Vimeo and paste a link – we don't have the resources right now to host large video files on our server.

I have a friend who is looking to hire a local cameraperson in Nairobi. I am new to d-word and wanted to know the best place to post a message for this. Classifieds? Can anyone lead me to the right place? Thanks

Classifieds is exactly the right place, Christopher. We have both a member's only and public classifieds, and you could post in both. The Classifieds are actually the only place where we encourage double posting.

Thanks Doug.