July 15, 2011
In the months ahead, DGA Monthly will feature articles on how to best make use of the functions and services offered on the new website. This month we review the new Visual History Program.
Founded in 2000 to build a comprehensive, searchable, online databank on the art and craft of production, the Visual History Collection currently numbers nearly 140 and continues to grow, with new peer-to-peer interviews conducted monthly in Los Angeles, New York, and other locations. The interviews will be posted to the DGA website on a regular basis.
At present the site has hundreds of hours of videotaped interviews with directors and director’s team members discussing their careers and reflections on all aspects of the creative process in film, television and other media. Each month, more of these peer-to-peer interviews exploring the art and craft of the director and the director’s team are added to the online collection.
What’s in the Collection?
- Visitors to the Visual History Program may browse the Collection for video highlights of the interviews, as well as biographical information and credits for the interview subjects and their interviewers.
- Users may also view complete interviews and search them by terms and topics.
Searching Made Easy
- Each interview is cataloged and indexed by time code so that users may quickly retrieve and view segments on specific topics of interest within a particular interview or across the entire collection without searching through many hours of material.
- To further aid the user, the program provides a thesaurus of terms and topics for guided searches related to the art and craft of the director and the director’s team.
Who’s Online Now:
- Full interviews currently available for view include: Herb Adelman, Robert Altman, Gilbert Cates, Hal Cooper, Stanley Donen, Bill Duke, Walter Hill, Arthur Hiller, Lamont Johnson, Sidney Lumet, Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn, Carl Reiner, Gene Reynolds, John Rich, Michael Schultz, Edwin Sherin, Gary Shimokawa, Penelope Spheeris, Robert Wise, and Michael Zinberg.
- New interviews are posted to the site weekly. Please return often for updates.
- A list of new Visual History additions will also be printed in future editions of DGA Monthly.
To access the Visual History Program, visit the Craft section.