Jules Beesley

One of your earliest and most-recognized projects is Radio Free Steve, an independent sci-fi comedy which you wrote, directed and co-produced in 2000 about the FCC taking over the United States after World War III. How did you come to be involved in the movie, and what drew you to working on it?
The star of the film and hometown friend, Ryan Junell, and I were excited by the possibility of shooting a low-budget guerrilla feature on the road from Austin to LA (via Marfa and Burning Man) with the freedom afforded by the inexpensive digital video tools just becoming available. We conceived of Radio Free Steve on the eve of the new millennium amidst the exuberance of the dotcom boom and the apocalyptic fears of Y2K. We synthesized these into the comedic story of a mullet-haired 1980s radio pirate rebel who drives his customized van across a post-apocalyptic wasteland on his way to audition to become a Music Video Veejay in “New Los Angeles.” Pursuing him is the FCC: the sworn enemy of anti-commercial radio and unregulated free-speech. The story gets rather tricky, but basically it’s Smokey and the Bandit meets The Road Warrior.

On the one hand, we were interested in connecting the democratic and disruptive potential of the internet to grassroots pirate radio activism and pre-cellphone CB culture of the 70s and 80s. We were in a sense mapping the migration from Old Media to New Media. On the other
hand, we wanted to make light of our childhood fears growing up in the shadow of nuclear annihilation by relegating the anticipation of that horror to the past, along with Trans Ams and hair-sprayed glam bands.

Though we shot the movie in only a few weeks it took almost a year post-production to finish. That led directly my to my career as an editor. In the end, making Radio Free Steve taught me to value the creative collaborative process itself without worrying too much about the outcome.

You were also an editor on Cartoon Network’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars series. What was that experience like?
Working at Lucasfilm Animation at Skywalker Ranch was a joy. I was a huge Star Wars fan and so thrilled by the opportunity. Never had I worked with such talent. The quality of the animation, especially for a television show, was impressive. The overall artistry, from concept art, to modeling, to lighting, really inspired me. I have come to love and respect the art of animation. What’s more, I learned quite a lot working for George Lucas, who is certainly a master of classical
film-making.

Editing with computer animated footage was a challenge at first, but ultimately I found it liberating. If you needed a shot for a particular scene, you just asked one of the layout artists to generate it and a few hours later it would arrive. The editor also has the freedom to recompose and re-time shots, a creative luxury you simply do not have working with live action footage. I was also privileged to work with the entire Star Wars sound effects library from Skywalker Sound, everything from Jawas and Wookies, to epic space battles and lightsaber duels.

Perhaps what I appreciate most about my experience working on The Clone Wars was how it has connected me to a younger generation of Star Wars fans. I love talking about episodes with my little cousins, giving them the inside scoop of how the show was made. I hope such encounters inspire youth to tell their own stories, and so I encourage them to do just that.

You recently moved from San Francisco and are now living and working here in New York City. What are you working on now?
I am freelance editing on commercial works, the demands of which are admittedly new to me. It has been gratifying, however, to see how all I have learned in narrative editing still applies. I continue to tell stories, only without dialogue and condensed into a few minutes or seconds.

I am also using my free time to flesh out a book I have been working on set in a parallel universe and within a kilometer-wide domed school revolving around the cultivation and celebration of the individual human imagination. It serves as a story-filled sandbox where I can explore unrealized possibilities within education.

How and why were you drawn to media literacy, and working with The LAMP in particular?
My interest in media literacy began as a Radio/TV/Film major at Northwestern University. I wrote a paper exploring the reasons why media literacy curricula encountered resistance in schools. I learned that it often came down to the fact that parents did not want their kids watching TV at school when they already watched too much of it at home. That research led to my writing a proposal for a children’s show produced by children themselves, to be aired on a local station in my hometown in Texas. I understood from my own experience making movies that best way to understand how media are formed by sets of choices was to empower students to make similar choices themselves, in this case by creating a TV show of their own. What better way to overcome media’s passive consumption than through its active creation?

When I discovered the LAMP shortly after moving to New York, I was excited to learn that one way it teaches students how media is made is to encourage youth to make media themselves. Learning how to tell a news story or make a documentary video leads students to ask questions and make decisions in the same manner as media professionals. They might then connect their own experiences making media to those seen on television or online. What had been a media artifact taken as given, might now be questioned and interpreted. In a time when all our information arrives heavily mediated, edited, packaged, and targeted – often from dubious or anonymous sources – the ability to parse, analyze, criticize, and comprehend media and its messaging is critical.

What were some of the most gratifying moments exploring news and media literacy with students at P.S. 107 in Brooklyn?
I had a blast working with the fourth graders at PS 107. We often think of children at that age as sponges, soaking up great gobs of information at incredible speeds, but what surprised me was how much imagination and ingenuity they employed to accomplish their tasks. Most had never shot video on a camcorder before or spliced together clips in iMovie. Yet, they dove into their projects with energy, enthusiasm, and an abundance of humor, surmounting technical hurdles quickly while grasping entirely new concepts.

Some struggled at times to stay on task. Yet once students understood they were in charge of making their projects happen, they felt empowered and became engaged. They were the ones making all the decisions, choosing the topic of their stories, coming up with questions, figuring out who would hold the camera and who would question the interviewees. They had fun playing the role of “real reporters,” often mimicking things they had gleaned from TV and movie reporters, and really enjoyed interviewing friends, teachers, and passers-by on the street to help tell their neighborhood story. When it came time to edit their footage on the computer, they seemed to know exactly what they wanted, and all I had to do was help them figure out how to do it. At the end each group had a cool news story they could show off and proudly call their own.

It is my hope that the students will build upon these experiences in the future, engaging media with a better insight into its construction, whether it is a news article or blog post, a TV news story or viral video, a Twitter feed or Facebook post.

What are you most looking forward to doing this summer?
I am really looking forward to volunteering at the LAMP camp in July!

The viral protest video is usually one which is shot from perspective of an ordinary person attending or observing the protest, and the ones which have the most impact tend to somehow encapsulate the entire conflict while touching emotional chords. As such, it’s an important part of the narrative–it gets our attention and offers a glimpse from the ground of a conflict which may be very distant to us. It is not edited and it is not shot using professional equipment; usually it’s made with a shaky camera of questionable sound and image quality, as compared to footage captured by broadcast news networks.

Perhaps one of the most notable examples of a viral protest video is the clip that came out of the protests which followed the Iranian elections. In it, a young Iranian girl named Neda Agha-Soltan is shot in the streets of Tehran and dies on camera. Most versions of the video on YouTube are less than a minute in length, but the impact of the video lasted much longer, as Neda became a martyr and was even mentioned in one of President Obama’s press conferences. For those of us on the other side of the world, the video of Neda’s death helped us to access emotionally a scale of violence which is fortunately rare in the United States, and offered a personal narrative from the streets.

Far less violent is the footage caught by Aaron Webber (above) of a black man passing through protesters outside Park 51. Members of the crowd wrongly assume that the man is Muslim, and as invectives fly, he becomes a symbol of so much confusion, hate and passion surrounding the issue of whether the cultural center with a prayer space for Muslims should be constructed so close to the Ground Zero site. Here is an individual plainly accused of somehow conspiring in acts he did not commit, and threatened for holding beliefs which are not his. It is difficult not to see this as exemplary of mob mentality, and how misinformation and prejudice have taken over the issue. Justin Elliott at Salon.com reports that the man’s name is Kenny, and comments from him suggest that he actually works at Ground Zero. While it is clear in the video that Kenny is not indifferent to the issue, there is no opportunity for him to explain his side to his detractors. It’s just this kind of calm, open dialogue that might actually be helpful but has been sorely lacking in mainstream media.

–Emily Long

When we arrived at the obligatory Q&A portion of the presentation, I raised my hand and asked if, among the various public awareness campaigns planned, they had anything in place to address misinformation from the media. The response was essentially that they have a PR department.

Really? That’s it?

When the H1N1 virus first broke last spring, the media descended on the story with zeal. Of course, it is part of the job of news media to keep us informed, but what happened last spring went far beyond adequate coverage, both in the volume of stories reported and the level of drama within them.  As reported by the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism, 31% of the news stories sampled in the week of April 27-May 3 were about the H1N1 virus–as PEJ further points out, this was the same week in which Barack Obama reached the 100-day mark of his presidency, Arlen Spector switched party affiliations and Chrysler declared bankruptcy. By April 26, before nearly one-third of the media was devoted to the flu, traffic to cdc.gov spiked a whopping 442%. Extensive coverage is no doubt a product of a 24-hour news cycle with space to fill, but as previously stated, there was plenty of other news in the spring that perhaps deserved more coverage and analysis.

With so much media coverage, it can be even more difficult than usual to determine what to trust. It would behoove the DOH not only to send messages about how to avoid or vaccinate against the flu, but to establish themselves as the definitive first source of information for New York residents. I know that this is partly the point of their public awareness campaigns, and that the DOH is not a news outlet (maybe they should be?), but they should be prepared to deal with misinformation and help people cut through the noise to get them through to what they need to know.

–D.C. Vito

That said, is the ad campaign going too far if it does succeed in getting people to drink less soda and sweetened drinks? Are cause campaigns exempt from common standards of decency if they effectively market against something which we can all agree is a problem?

I’m inclined to say yes. As we move closer to Halloween, I’m bracing myself for disgustingly graphic ads for movies like Saw. I don’t like ads that are overly graphic; I find them numbingly disgusting. However, until and unless formal standards are put in place to prevent graphic ads from being published, I think the Department of Health has just as much of a right as Saw. Let it also be said, though, that this where media literacy comes in, because I think it’s important for consumers to understand why an ad might be exceedingly graphic. The team that designed the ad campaign set out to make a point. And that, they did.

What ads do you think are too graphic? Share them with us by emailing info@thelampnyc.org, with a brief explanation of your thoughts and where you found the ad. Visit The LAMP’s Ad It Up! Ad Archive to comment on other ads.

–Emily Long

However, using class relationship-therapy speak, the apology amounts to little more than a statement saying, “I’m sorry you were hurt.” In no way do the editors take responsibility for the fact that they made a gross oversight by not anticipating the reaction and offense that the cartoon would elicit from all the Americans who celebrate the destruction of a significant racial barrier. With that in mind, I don’t think the Post’s editors are stupid. Insensitive, yes, but also cunning. They got us to turn our heads in their direction. I believe in free speech, and while the cartoon infuriated me, they do have a right to print it–what really got to me was the so-called “apology,” which feels more to me like a slap in the face with their inclusion of the below statement:

“However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.”

The accusation that those who spoke out against the cartoon are vengeful opportunists is nothing short of petty and childish. Not knowing the inner thoughts and secrets of every public figure who issued a statement, I can’t say for sure that their response had nothing to do with a grudge against the paper, but this is neither the time nor place for the paper to make that claim. If just one person, or even a few, were leading a crusade against the Post as a result of this column, that would be one thing, but the feeling I get from people I speak with about this is one of genuine disgust. Political cartoons are often meant to rile, and I’m a huge fan of clever satire that exposes something new (see: Thomas Nast). But there’s nothing clever about Delonas’ cartoon. There’s nothing witty. He absolutely has a right to print it. But, the New York Post should understand that we are no longer grade schoolers fighting on the playground, and take seriously the response to their work.

The MTA has already rolled out plans where they are placing ads on the floor and ceiling of subway cars, but also now they are placing ads on the exterior shell of the subway car. The bombardment of the captive commuting audience is reprehensible, blurring the lines between the real world and the advertised world even further. But, it doesn’t stop there.

The MTA plans to gobble up every available piece of its real estate, and slather it with advertisements. That means soon the turnstiles will be covered in Nike Swooshes, the platforms of the subways will be pasted with Absolut Vodka ads, and even the walls of the tunnels will serve up the latest Microsoft gadget they’ll do their damnedest to convince you that you can’t live without.

In a city where the average adult sees over 600 instances of advertisements already, how much more are we going to take? How much more can we handle? How much more invasion into our daily thoughts and activity will we tolerate?

• Amount of service – scheduled amount of service
• Dependability of service - % of trains arriving at scheduled time, breakdown rate
• Comfort/usability – chance of getting a seat, interior cleanliness, adequacy of in-car announcements

Based on how well a particular line does in these areas, NYPIRG gives the line a grade from A to F. I was contemplating these criteria, and felt that they fall just short of what should determine a subway line’s quality. Depending on where you’re going and how long your commute is, you are a captive customer which I am sure is something the MTA realizes when they contemplate the advertising they plaster all over their property. I’ve often looked at the ads, some that have run in one form or another since I first moved to the city over 8 years ago, as a nuisance and a contributing factor to how comfortable my commute is.

I believe that NYPIRG’s Straphangers should include an evaluation of the advertisements in subways, buses and stations. Perhaps the following criteria could be considered:

• % of ads that are Public Service Announcements for MTA policies
• % of ads that are timely or out of date
• % of ads that are inappropriate for the typical audience a particular line serves

This last one is particular important because the MTA acts as a proxy school bussing system, and i wonder how many parents would approve of the Department of Education consenting to let beer companies advertise on the big yellow buses.

With newspapers bearing headlines such as “Hooker Happy” and “Ho No!” being sold on every corner, lots of questions can come up in the mind of a kid. Ultimately, the most important thing is not to shun that conversation. Be an active listener. You don’t have to lie, but you don’t have to divulge every little detail if it’s not appropriate. Try to think of times like these as opportunities to get to know your son or daughter better, and to engage their sense of right and wrong.

For a great resource about talking with your kids about the news (and other things), check out PBS’s Talking With Kids series.

For examples of how some families discussed the Spitzer scandal, read this brief article from the New York Times.