July 15, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 11, 1429

KARACHI, July 14: Pakistan’s media might be proliferating but not many have been able to delve into the mechanics of producing effective media, where the consumer has an intimate and knowledgeable relationship with the respective form of media.

Hence, the British High Commission in Karachi organised a day-long conference titled “Towards a citizens’ media” at a local hotel on Monday, enabling independent film-makers and other media personnel to interact with a distinguished panel which the hosts had flown in for the conference.

Having an early start at 9am, the conference began with a welcome note from British Deputy High Commissioner Robert Gibson, after whom the speaker of the event Fiddian Warman took over. In pursuit of a “dynamic and interactive meeting,” Warman called upon acclaimed British documentary film-maker Paul Watson. Surprisingly, Watson is a force back in England, revered as the forerunner of the fly-on-the-wall documentaries which became the basis for reality television, and the recipient of the 2008 BAFTA Special Award for a lifetime of outstanding achievement. Watson basically dealt with the poignancy of documentaries which revolve not around war zones or refugee camps but rather in a middle-class home, or an old home. He discussed how – technically and creatively – a simple story and setting, with a one-camera arrangement can manifest a masterpiece based on your way of storytelling. Interspersed in his presentation were clips from his hard-hitting work: The Family (1974), Malcolm and Barbara (1999) and Rain in my Heart (2006).

After a timely tea break, the conference resumed with two new entrants: director of the London International Documentary Festival Patrick Hazard, and renowned documentary film-maker and journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

Hazard discussed the reciprocal relationship of how the society affects the subject matter of a documentary, and how the film itself brings social change within the people it is targeted towards. He went on to show four documentary clips, two belonging to the 1930s and the issues faced by people of Britain then and the other two being from Italy – regarding the garbage issue – and Iran, namely Tehran Backyard.

Sharmeen took the cue from where Hazard left off, asserting that documentary film-making is an accessible medium and the barriers to it can be overcome by sheer determination. Her speech had a radical undertone, different from the preceding gentlemanly elocution. She also showed clips from her documentaries encapsulating global issues such as the future of Iraq, South African apartheid, Afghanistan etc.

The third session posed a different stance and revolved around the audience and the general consumers of media rather than the producers. Chaired by David Steven, who himself gave quite a few interesting statistics on Wikipedia and the hours spent by an average American in watching advertisements, the session began with senior partner of TW Research, Terry Watkins, who explained in a rather humorous PowerPoint presentation about the predicament multi-choice brings to a television consumer.

The ‘breaking news’ culture

He also explained how the burgeoning “breaking news” culture is low on providing knowledge in the information it supplies, hence losing consumers. Watkins also presented the old-and-new contrast of television cultures and its effect on consumers. This was followed by Manisha Aryal, who represents an international organization that works with journalists and media outlets worldwide. She chronicled her company’s step-by-step efforts in introducing local news bulletins to entertainment radio channels in the metropolitan cities of Pakistan. After her came Austria-based social software developer Alex Kohlhofer, who talked about ways of sieving out extraneous information, or noise, found on search engines and concentrating your search through various simple applications found on these search engines but blind from an average consumer’s knowledge of internet usage.

This rounded-up all the panellists whose talks were followed by Q&A sessions. This led to a one-hour workshop with the panellist of choice and respective area of interest. Watson was a clear choice, demonstrating rather comically the aspects which bring effectiveness to a documentary and answering technical questions of aspiring film-makers.

Upon conclusion, the panel presented reports of their workshops followed by a rather tedious plenary discussion, in which a few cynics only brought frustrating and irrelevant details on how this could be improved.

Finally, in the concluding summary of the conference, Warman said that this event has been a “curtain-raiser” for more interactive events to come.