3rd Seminar: Wednesday February 15, 2012 at 12.00 EST / 17.00 GMT

“War, Politics, Fashion”

Dumbo based VII Photo and Blue Barn Pictures have teamed up to create free web seminar series in which VII photographers talk about their expansion into new areas of creative and commercial work. The third seminar (of five) is by photographer Christopher Morris who has embraced conflict photography, political coverage, portraiture and fashion during his career. Christopher will lead the workshop through the process of working in several platforms. He will demonstrate his assignment process, which typically includes shooting stills in color while simultaneously shooting mono video from which he can subsequently edit stills for additional markets.

From VII:

CHRISTOPHER MORRIS, one of the founding members of VII, will lead the third of VII’s Visual Journey seminars, in which he will talk about his process of working in several platforms simultaneously and learning to see afresh in each. He will demonstrate his assignment process, which typically includes shooting stills in color while simultaneously shooting video from which he subsequently edits stills for additional markets.

Christopher Morris’ first career was established as a conflict photographer responsible for some of the seminal images of the 1990’s; his second career was made in Washington where he developed a new and insightful style of political coverage. And since 2009 he has forged yet another career in fashion. He has worked for leading fashion magazines in Europe, been commissioned directly by fashion houses, most recently Robert Cavalli and won the “The Look” award for editorial fashion photography.

To register, go to viiphoto.com/news/the-visual-journeys-seminars.

Previously:
{VII and Blue Barn Pictures Visual Journey Seminars}

Writer Kay S. Hymowitz’s article titled How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back on City Journal is a fascinating read into what changes took place in the past few decades that brought Brooklyn to the forefront of the creative-class in NYC. Ms. Hymowitz asks, “How did the Brooklyn of the Lehanes and crack houses turn into what it is today—home to celebrities like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Adrian Grenier, to Michelin-starred chefs, and to more writers per square foot than any place outside Yaddo? How did the borough become a destination for tour buses showing off some of the most desirable real estate in the city, even the country?”

She answers them by showing how Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Dumbo, grew from being an industrial area into a creative-class gentrified neighborhood and “one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing neighborhoods in Brooklyn”.

In 1981, though, developer David Walentas took a look at the brick warehouses and factories (most dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and, taking a cue from his recent development successes in another former industrial area, Soho, bought 11 of them—almost an entire neighborhood. Or what he hoped might someday become a neighborhood: like Red Hook, Dumbo was still zoned solely for manufacturing, despite manufacturers’ indifference to the area. Walentas had to wait 17 years for the city to pronounce Dumbo “mixed-use” and for the area to come alive.

Walentas’s prescience—and patience—put him in an unusual position. Like many successful developers, he was able to make a lot of money: space in the buildings he bought for $6 per square foot now sometimes sells for $1,000 per square foot. But unlike other developers, Walentas owned so much of a neighborhood that he could play God. Also, since he was making so much money from the properties overall, he could give rent breaks to commercial tenants that he viewed as desirable—for instance, upscale retailers like West Elm, the modern-furniture outlet, and Jacques Torres, a high-end chocolatier—while refusing chains like Duane Reade, which, he felt, set the wrong, down-market tone.

Read the article for more about Dumbo’s digital-media marketing and startup firms, Williamsburg’s gentrification, and Park Slope’s literary center.

Looks like the viral marketing group at thinkmodo have done it again. They’ve created a marketing campaign for a new movie, Chronicle that’s gone viral. Three human shaped RC planes were launched around Dumbo Brooklyn to make it look like real people were flying.

According to Techcrunch, Michael Krivicka from Thinkmodo explains “Since the three main characters of the movie have the ability to fly, we came up with the idea of staging a few “flying people” sightings around NYC. We achieved that illusion by having 3 custom-made aircraft (which were shaped like human beings) fly above designated areas in NYC and NJ.”

Thanks to the many people who have sent this video to us.

Permit # TV-82: Monday, 1/30/2012 between 6am-2am

Filming for SMASH is back today in Dumbo Brooklyn. They were in the neighborhood last week.

According to the IMDB summary of SMASH, “There is more drama behind the scenes than on stage, as the team prepares an ambitious Broadway musical on the life of Marilyn Monroe.” SMASH stars Debra Messing, Jack Davenport, and Katharine McPhee.

All filming posts are tagged here: DumboNYC.com/tag/filming

Conde Nast Traveler magazine has a feature article about Brooklyn’s literary scene: “All great cities have their defining tribes, whose mores and tastes permeate the urban landscape. Los Angeles has its movie people, Paris has its fashion designers–and New York Has always had its writers. Boris Kachka maps their new stomping ground.”

In a related feature of the article, there’s a slideshow of “Brooklyn Writers’ Favorite Local Haunts“. A few of Dumbo’s bookstores pictured – powerhouse Books (37 Main St), P.S. Bookshop (76 Front St), and Melville House (145 Plymouth St).

On Dumbo, Author Boris Kachka writes:

“The death of publishing is lamented right alongside the death of the literary party, and in that arena, too, Brooklyn (particularly DUMBO, the neighborhood just east of the Brooklyn Bridge) is proving the naysayers wrong. A couple of upstart book publishers have bookstores at ground level—in the tradition of bygone spots like Scribner’s in Manhattan. PowerHouse Arena is a lofty and beautiful gallery/bookstore as well as a publisher (37 Main St.; 718-666-3049), and tiny Melville House has a little storefront—possibly the only shop in New York devoted exclusively to independent presses (145 Plymouth St.; 718-722-9204). P.S. Bookshop isn’t affiliated with a publisher but offers one of the borough’s most comprehensive selections of used books—in a new, larger location—and is definitely worth a lengthy browse (76 Front St.; 718-222-3340).”

Check out the article for more on the literary scene in Brooklyn.

Permit # TV-82: Monday, 1/23/2012 between 6am-2am

There is a filming today for a television series for NBC titled “SMASH” in Dumbo today, Monday, January 23, 2012 from 7:00am to 2:00pm.

The following streets are marked for filming:

• Both sides of Plymouth St, between Main St & Washington St
• Both sides of Washington St, between Plymouth St & Front St
• Both sides of Front St, between Dock St & Main St
• North side of Front St, between Main St & Washington St
• East side of York St between Front St & Washington St
• Both sides of Water St, between Dock St & Main St
• Both sides of Main St, between Plymouth St & Water St
• West side of Main St, between Water St & Front St
• South side of Front St, between Washington St & Adams St
• Intersection of Adams St & Front St
• SW Corner of Plymouth St & Adams St

The film crew will be filming driving scenes on Washington St between Plymouth St and Front St.

According to the IMDB summary of SMASH, “There is more drama behind the scenes than on stage, as the team prepares an ambitious Broadway musical on the life of Marilyn Monroe.” SMASH stars Debra Messing, Jack Davenport, and Katharine McPhee.

All filming posts are tagged here: DumboNYC.com/tag/filming

Episode 9: Sarah Walko (www.sarahwalko.com and triangleworkshop.org)
Directed by David Castillo
Produced by Blue Barn Pictures, Inc. for DumboNYC on vimeo

In this episode of Crossing Dumbo, Blue Barn Pictures interviews Dumbo based artist Sarah Walko, artist and Executive Director of Triangle Arts Association. She was awarded a scholarship during graduate school, and as part of it, she took an internship at Triagle. “The focus of Triangle is about process and experimentation over product. The emphasis is not on what is the actual thing that comes out of that but it’s about the entire journey. All of that together under one umbrella is art.” Isn’t the journey what life is about?

Crossing Dumbo, a web series of video portraits of artists, entrepreneurs and residents in Dumbo Brooklyn. This is a collaboration between DumboNYC and our talented friends over at Blue Barn Pictures. Different directors from Blue Barn Pictures, a creative content agency, bring their own approach to each interview to create a distinct profile of the person being interviewed and place them within the Dumbo community. Blue Barn Pictures truly love what they do and support the community in a positive way, and for that we’re grateful to have them be a part of Dumbo.

{DumboNYC.com/category/crossing-dumbo/}

(Photo: Emily Berl for The New York Times)

Two Trees Management principal Jed Walentas was featured in The New York Times Sunday Real Estate. At 37, he looks “more Silicon Valley entrepreneur than big-city real estate tycoon”, but runs the real estate management firm his father built by buying two million square feet of former factory and warehouse space between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in 1981 (for $12 million) and creating the most expensive neighborhood in Brooklyn. Mr. Walentas tells the NYTimes that he wants “to find ways to better connect Downtown Brooklyn with the thriving neighborhoods that ring it. With so many college-age students attending classes — but often not living — in that section of Brooklyn, he said it mystified him that more hadn’t been done to keep them there.”

He not only has influence on Dumbo, but neighborhoods stretching from the West Side of Manhattan to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. He also supports entrepreneurs and the tech community, when he helped present the Dumbo incubator last summer. He also contributed a piece on Brooklyn Eagle on how AT&T, an international corporate entity is supporting the local community.

Bruce Ratner, the president of the Forest City Ratner Companies, which is developing the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn said

“Battery Park City is a great place, but it does not have the same sense of character as Dumbo. Rockefeller Center, on the other hand, has a definitive sense of character, because “the Rockefellers had some idea of what they wanted that place to be.”

In Dumbo, he said, the guiding vision was to retain the area’s industrial flavor (without the industry), while providing a street-level experience both diverse and interesting — even if it means subsidizing rents for small-business owners and declining the high rents offered by big-box stores, or selling off properties and cashing out.

“Jed holds firm to the vision,” Mr. Ratner said. “And that is not a minor comment.”

High praise from one of the more well known develpers. However, Judy Stanton, the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association has been a critic has battled with both David and Jed Walentas over numerous projects, including the controversial Dock Street project.

Read the article to find out why attracting diversity is important for NYC, why real estate prices are so high, and how he and Donald Trump differ in their styles.

Dumbo based VII Photo and Blue Barn Pictures are teaming up to create free web seminar series in which VII photographers talk about their expansion into new areas of creative and commercial work.

From VII Photo:

With long experience at the forefront of photojournalism, the photographers of VII Photo Agency have adopted the new approaches to making dynamic creative output in the areas of FASHION, MUSIC, LIFESTYLE, NARRATIVE and DOCUMENTARY. Since the agency’s foundation in 2001, VII has been responsible for creating and relaying to the world many of the images that define the turbulent opening years of the 21st century. Now the photographers are applying their photojournalistic skills in surprising new contexts and in this series of seminars they will talk about their creative processes and share the techniques behind their visual journeys.

In the live interactive sessions the photographers will discuss new visions, new audiences and new equipment, and will answer questions from participants. The seminars will be free to all participants.

Webinar information:

The first webinar is on Friday, December 16, 2011 at 12:00 EST.

“Poetry in Motion”
Seamus Murphy talks with Brian Storm of MediaStorm.com about how his experience of shooting video in Afghanistan using a new generation DSLR has lead him to a new and unexpected career opportunity in the music business. Since 2010 he has shot 12 short films for PJ Harvey, the music sensation from UK, for her album “Let England Shake”. Central to this will be a discussion of his innovative approach to the project, how to work with a musician and how the project eventually turned into a creative tour de force with screenings at multiple international film festivals. Attendees will learn how to develop their vision, which in association with the right gear can transform their professional practice.

Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP) is celebrating the opening of its new administrative offices at 334 Furman Street, with an open house on Thursday, November 17 from 6:30 – 8:00pm. Join BBP to toast the beginning to a beautiful park.

Part of the celebration includes a screening of New York’s Next Great Park, a collaborative effort from BBP and BRIC’s Brooklyn Independent Television. New York’s Next Great Park is a documentary that chronicles the design and construction of the first phases of Brooklyn Bridge Park, offering insights on its sustainability features as well as featuring interviews with some of the key figures in the design, planning and programming of the park. After the open house, BIT will air New York’s Next Great Park on Friday, November 18 at 7pm. Tune in to Cablevision 69, Time Warner 56, Verizon 44, RCN 84 or watch online to see how BBP was built on the shores of Brooklyn.

The first webisode is shown above, titled, Brooklyn’s Next Great Park.