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The Echo Chamber documentary interview with Reed Brody is now posted online here.

Brody is a lawyer with Human Rights Watch and has an interesting take on the human rights justification that is not heard very often within the mainstream media discourse.

I based this interview upon an article called "War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention" written by HRW's executive director Ken Roth. It was released on January 26th 2004 with little fanfare.

One really helpful link that one of my advisors gave to me was from an article that Peter Broderick wrote about "Maximizing Distribution."

Broderick emphasizes the importance of creating a web presence and reaching the core audience before the project is released:

During the filmmaking process, the filmmakers will have one to three years to learn how to reach their core audience most effectively. They will also have time to create an effective Web presence. This will enable them to build a valuable mailing list as they are creating awareness for their film within the target.

I have been contacting potential advisors and producers over the last couple of days in order to get a strong foundation for the post-production and distribution phases. Having a strong and experienced team around the project makes a huge difference in the final product. It will also open a lot of doors down the road.

I have been talking to professors in the sociological academic community who are interested in the project as well as some independent film producers that I’ve met in my film festival travels.

The producers want to see a trailer (anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes) -- I have been receiving more and more interview transcripts back from my volunteers which will help me parse down the 38+hours of material into a coherent summary of what the project will entail.

indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez subjectively lists the top 15 docs coming out of the International Documentary Filmfestival in Amsterdam.

Hernandez also excerpts Ally Derks, the IDFA festival director, pointing out how documentaries are picking up the slack of the failures of the mainstream media:

"It seems that the lack of adequate information in that land of infinite possibilities is taking its revenge. But filmmakers are no longer prepared to accept this." Continuing, she definitively, "The documentary is the supreme means of discussing, questioning and examining the world we live in."

The Echo Chamber documentary interview with Sean Murphy is now posted online here.

Murphy describes himself as a moderate International Lawyer from George Washington University. His GWU bio shows his impressive credentials including representing the US government before the Hague and working for the State Department.

Murphy's background brings even more credibility to his following statement:

"I would say that the vast majority of scholars in the field of international law would say that the justification asserted by the United States and its allies for invading Iraq is not regarded as being adequate under international law."

I’m starting to integrate some of the feedback given to me on my business plan (Thanks Bill!)

I plan on contacting a number of friends within the filmmaking community to put out a call for some producing help.

I also have another transcript to post this morning.

The increasing rate of natural resource consumption seems to be a "vital issue of the day" that is often ignored by the elite political leadership and therefore the mainstream media. The sustainability issue is still an unanswered question, and many would argue that it is the biggest challenge facing everyone on the planet today.

It is probably safe to assume that in the context of US "National Security Interests," that oil at least played into the equation of going to war with Iraq. It also probably safe to assume that access to water and oil are going to cause many future conflicts.

I have been noticing that there are a number of articles questioning the relevance of network news since tonight is Tom Brokaw’s last broadcast as the NBC Nightly News anchor.

The Echo Chamber documentary focuses on the network news because of the influence that the media logic of the electronic medium of news has on the national political discourse...

The Echo Chamber documentary interview with Jim Lobe is now posted online here.

Lobe is the Washington Bureau Chief for Inter Press Service, and he has been following the neo-conservative movement for over 30 years. His writings became very popular after 9/11 and were picked up by many non-interventionist websites ranging from the Libertarian Lew Rockwell to Anti-War.com. IPS also has a compilation of Lobe's Neo-Con articles

A number of people had questioned the color coding on the interview index page, and so I cleaned it up and posted some thumbnail pictures.

I am cleaning up the site a bit as I am posting a draft of my business plan and some new interviews.