Polygoon newsreels were shown in Dutch theatres from the 1920’s onwards. Subjects of the daily life in the Netherlands supported with compelling visuals were central to its (nowadays) typical format. To keep the audience interested Polygoon had to renew itself throughout the years. The latest inventions on communication, technology and innovation served the newsreels well as interesting subjects. Further, attention was paid to the mass consumption of the Dutch people in the ‘age of automation’. Innovations and developments which offered new opportunities in solving problems concerning the increasing use of energy, often found their way to the Polygoon newsreels.
These new techniques and innovations were often announced with great optimism. Take for example the introduction of a new sort of an electricity factory, the atomic power station in Dodewaard, announced with quit some enthusiasm. As where nowadays nuclear energy generally appears in an unfavourable light, in a news item from 1966 no attention was paid to the possible dangers entailing nuclear energy. The emphasis lay on the new possibilities: the station would supply the people with all the conveniences they needed in a time of mass use of energy.
Not only new methods to meet the growing need for energy among the Dutch were searched for. The need for better communication techniques became relevant in an age of mass communication. More and more people found their way to Schiphol airport and air cargo traffic grew continually. These developments put much pressure on the air traffic controllers. With the introduction of the radar, the Dutch airspace could be mapped in great detail so that the air traffic controllers had a better overview of air traffic approaching and leaving the Dutch air space. A Polygoon newsreel from 1951 shows how an air traffic controller from Schiphol ‘talks an airplane down’ with the assistance of a at that time new radar technique.
Attention was also paid to remarkable ‘close to home’ innovations which would make life much easier. As early as in 1963 Polygoon made a news item on the precursor of the contemporary late-night shops: the automatic store in Boxtel.
The ever more industrializing Netherlands provided its inhabitants not only with more energy, but also with new consumer goods. Many of these products came onto the market thanks to new technological innovations. New techniques were often shown in the Polygoon newsreels, and in retrospect can now give an indication on how fast new technologies follow each other up. For example, in 1978 a precursor of the contemporary DVD, the videodisc, was shown in a Polygoon news item. As was often the case with Polygoon news items, this particular item had a highly educative character, but with a comic flavour. In the item is demonstrated how with videodisc equipment connected to a regular television, among other things, images can be winded back in slow motion. Thanks to this new technique the bottom of a model walking on the catwalk can be seen again in slow motion. Putting the news in this ‘visual’ way, Polygoon continually captured the attention of its viewers.
Sound and Vision has been preserving, digitalizing and opening up Dutch audiovisual heritage together with 5 other institutions since 2007 for the Images for the Future project. In 2010 the central theme for Images for the Future will be Indonesia. Therefore almost 50 items with this theme from the Polygoon collection have been added to Open Images.
Polygoon newsreels did several reports on the former Dutch East Indies and Indonesia over the years. In these reports the Dutch viewers got an impression of the day-to-day life in the Dutch East Indies, for example of the market in Batavia in 1946:
Besides the day-to-day life, Polygoon newsreels also captured the difficult road to independence. Reports were made on the politionele acties (police actions) as well as the diplomatic negotiations. One of these was the signing of the truce agreement on the American ship ‚Renville’ in 1948 (from 00:46):
In the Netherlands there was also interest in the rich Indonesian culture. In 1948 the youth of Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg could get acquainted with the Indonesian culture at a traveling exhibition, showing a.o. wayang puppets and the gamelan:
After the independence of Indonesia, reports about the life in Indonesia were still made. For example a report about the opening of a new research institute for tea and cinchona with development aid from the Netherlands and the World Bank in 1975. In this report are shown beautiful images (in color) of the tea and rice fields in West Java:
The first selection of audiovisual material for Open Images is now completely available online! The 469 items that can now be found on Open Images are mostly from the Polygoon Dutch News collection and some from the RVD collection. The current selection is mainly centered around a number of themes, namely: the city, summer, nature, water, food, sports, education, religion and labour. The subjects of these items are very diverse, such as an item about a caravan that can also be used as a boat, but also a video about the Tour de France in the Netherlands or about the first residents of Almere city. The material is from the period 1919 until 1980 and ranges from black and white material with no sound to colourful images with the caracteristic voice-over by Philip Bloemendal.
To give an impression of what is now available, a small selection of the available content will be shown below. From the early years, when the material was still without sound, is for example this item about the floods in Ridderkerk and Barendrecht in 1928:
From the 1930’s onwards there were more and more items with sound. During the Second World War the Polygoon newsreels were primarily used as propaganda material for the Germans and the NSB. An example of this is a series from 1941 called ‘The Netherlands feeds itself’ which makes propaganda for the national socialistic idea that every country has to be able to provide their own food:
After the Second World War the newsreel is accompanied by the voice-over from Philip Bloemendal. His typical voice is inextricably linked to the Polygoon newsreels:
From the 1970’s onwards some newsreels are in colour. A fine example of this can be seen in the beautiful colours of the butterfly collection of amateur entomologist Hermans:
The selection described above is all the material we’ll be adding to Open Images in 2009. But from next month it will be possible for users to add material to Open Images themselves. This can be material that is based on material from Open Images, but also original work.
In the 2010 we will continue adding audiovisual material to Open Images. We will also actively collaborate with other collection keepers to expand and diversify the content on Open Images and make it even more interesting.
To be able to view the examples in this blog post we kindly recommend you to use Firefox 3.5.
Yesterday was the kick-off for the StrangerFestival 2009 in Amsterdam. During this festival young filmmakers are invited to participate in workshops to improve their skills and produce a movie in only three days. Open Images is very proud to be the starting point for one of these workshops! Under the name “Old Story, New Me” nine young film makers will produce new works based on the material available on the Open Images platform:
Old Story, New Me
How does history influence your life today? This “mash-up” workshop uses old copyrighted news footage that will be mixed with new created content–and thereby placing history in a more current and personal context. Open Images is an open media platform that offers access to a selection of audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative recycling. And in turn, these new works will be added to the platform. Open Images is based upon the Creative Commons licensing model which enables others to freely use the material under the artist’s conditions-and the artist to be flexible in using copyrights. This “open” approach is carried out throughout the platform, by using open formats, standards and software. Every bit of software developed for Open Images will also become available as open source code.
We are very curious about the works these talented youngsters will produce! After the workshop we will of course showcase their work on the Open Images platform and on this blog.
On September the 15th Open Images will be presented as a case study and launched as a public beta during the Europeana Plenary 2009 meeting in The Hague:
Europeana is about ideas and inspiration. Europeana plenary 2009 “Creation, Collaboration & Copyright” will bring ideas and inspiration to the next level – it will explore different possibilities of content re-use, mash-up and APIs. The plenary will also address public domain and associated copyright issues.
With Charles Leadbeater as a keynote speaker and a focus on giving open access to cultural heritage this promises to be a relevant event to present Open Images. The whole programme can be found here.
FLOSS Manuals is a great initiative that creates, maintains and gives access to a collection of manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source software. The manuals are friendly and simple, and they are intended to encourage people to explore the wide range of free, open source alternatives to expensive and restrictively licensed software. Since Open Images adopts FLOSS in general and the open video codec Ogg Theora and related open source software in particular, the upcoming Book Sprint looks very valuable:
We will hold Book Sprint about Ogg Theora in August (10-15). We will write a really good manual (book) about Ogg Theora in 5 days. The event will be in Berlin.
We want to cover a lot of stuff, but we hope to get our teeth into at
least some of the following :
about
-what is theora?
-why do you want it?
-codec basics streaming
-tss (theora streaming studio)
-commandline ffmpeg2theora, dvgrab, oggfwd
-icecast
-gstreamer
-vlc
-jroar transcoding
-firefogg
-ffmpeg2theora
-thoggen
-ogg convert editing
-oggchopz
-pivitv
-oggtools video conferencing
-empathy
-ekiga
-linphone distribution
-wikipedia
-archive.org
-html5 subtitling
-cli embedding of subtitles in ogg
-web based subtitle replay with jquery.srt playback
-vlc
-ff
We are keen to get anyone to the sprint that wants to come. There is
some limited travel funds…if anyone would like to attend please let me
know!
The first Open Video Conference was held at NYU Law School on June 19-20. Eminent speakers and practitioners shared their thoughts on the emerging open video movement. The impressive line-up included: Matt Mason (author of The Pirate’s Dilemma), Yochai Benkler and Jonathan Zittrain (both Harvard Law School), Xeni Jardin (Boing Boing), Peter Kaufman (Intelligent Television), Mike Hudack (blip.tv) and Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla Corporation). The conference was put on by Kaltura, Yale Internet Society Project, Participatory Culture Foundation, iCommons and the Open Video Alliance, in partnership with Mozilla, Red Hat, Creative Commons, Level 3, Akamai and many more. Open Images was also actively involved, as Sound and Vision and Kennisland hosted a session “Audiovisual Archives” that investigated how memory institutions could provide access their holdings in a way that enables creative reuse. read more »
Today we’ll give an exclusive preview of the Open Images platform at the exiting Open Video Conference in New York City. This preview is part of the Birds of a Feather session on Audiovisual Archives we are co-hosting. Read more about this session here.
Other interesting cases presented during the session are:
In March we started the development of Open Images. The first task at hand was drafting the Functional Design for our open media platform together with our MMBase developer André van Toly, d+g design. We finished this first phase in the development in April. Since Open Images is an open source media platform, we will also share our Functional Design document under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license!
We expect to have a beta version of Open Images online at the end of this June. We will present the platform at the Open Video Conference (more on this in an upcoming post).
The Open Video Alliance is now accepting proposals for panels, workshop sessions, demo sessions, and other programming for the inaugural Open Video Conference in New York. Join us and over 400 participants during our groundbreaking two-day conference and make your imprint on the online video space.
Open Video Conference
June 19-20, 2009
New York City
40 Washington Square South (NYU Law School)
The Open Video Conference The conference is a co-production of the Yale Law School Information Society Project, the Participatory Culture Foundation, Kaltura, and iCommons.The conference will feature talks from internet luminaries, panels and discussions, screenings of video art, and demonstrations of the newest internet video technology. We expect more than 400 participants. Here are some goals for the gathering:
1. Bring together stakeholders in the online video space (video makers, coders, lawyers, academics, entrepreneurs, etc.) for cross-pollination and development of the Open Video movement.
2. Raise public interest and awareness around the Principles for an Open Video Ecosystem, a community effort to define best practices in online video.
3. Raise the public profile of video creators and artists working in the online space.
4. Foster a narrative — why should organizations and individuals value openness? How does it affect their work?
What Types of Proposals are You Seeking? We are requesting proposals and ideas for panels, presentations, workshops, and other sessions that will address how we can shape online video and the public debates around the medium. Proposals may be intended for the main conference track, or for more focused unconference-style sessions. Proposal topics may be legal, technical, or cultural in focus, though we encourage proposals in all relevant areas. The more complete and fleshed out a proposal, the more likely it will be accepted—but we welcome the submission of all good ideas.
We are also seeking submissions of video art to showcase the creative potential of artists in the open video space.
To submit a proposal or idea for Open Video, please visit http://openvideoalliance.org/proposals/. The deadline for submissions is March 19, 2009. If you have any questions about the Alliance, the conference, or the submission process, please contact Ben Moskowitz at conference@openvideoalliance.org .
Why is Open Video Important? YouTube and other online video applications are rightly celebrated for empowering end-users; however, online video lacks some of the essential qualities that make text and images on the web such powerful tools for free speech and technical innovation. Email, blogs, and other staples of the open web rely on ubiquitous and interoperable technologies that have low barriers to entry; they are massively decentralized and resistant to censorship or regulation. Video, meanwhile, relies on centralized distribution and proprietary technologies which can threaten cultural discourse and innovation.
Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and participation in online video.These qualities provide more fertile ground for bottom-up innovation and greater protection for free speech online. Many organizations are already taking steps to change the nature of video on the web: Mozilla is moving to support open video formats in Firefox, the Participatory Culture Foundation promotes open source and standards in video publishing and distribution, and Wikipedia has increased its focus on the open Theora codec.
Yet Open Video is more than just having a functional open source video codec. It’s all the legal and social norms surrounding online video. It’s the ability to attach the license of your choice to videos you publish. It’s about media consolidation, aggregation, and decentralization. It’s about fair use. In short, it covers the new media gamut—and that’s why this conference is guaranteed to be very stimulating.
About the Open Video Alliance The Open Video Alliance is a coalition of leading organizations dedicated to fostering the growth of open infrastructure, tools, and standards for the online video medium. Yale Law School’s Information Society Project hosted a stakeholder meeting on October 31st, 2008; representatives from nearly 30 organizations convened to discuss common goals for technologists, maker communities, and legal experts.
