short documentary

"The Bike Maker" is the fifth installment in the documentary web series Made By Hand. The touching short focuses on Ezra Caldwell who, in addition to building cutstom steel bicycles, is also a cancer patient and amateur photographer.

The film is directed by Keith Ehrlich. Watch below. (via Creative Review)

Andre-Pierre du Plessis' 40-minute documentary "Day 1: A Social TV Documentary" explores the rise of Internet video viewing and social TV, especially in the world of 24-hour broadcast news.

Watch it below.

Watch the short documentary "The Film Before the Film" which tells the history of opening titles. The short was made by Nora Toes and Damian Perez as part of a research project. The video documents how opening credit sequences went from the perfunctory to the sublime and came into an artform all their own.

Watch below.

Logan Kelsey shot and edited the below short documentary in 4K with the RED Scarlet and Final Cut Pro X. Explains Kelsey, "My RED workflow for short-form projects (in the up to 5min range) is a direct shoot-to-edit workflow using the native RED media. I don't have a RED Rocket card and I've already completed about six 4k projects using this method - the results are brilliant. For long-form pieces, or when you are not connect to an external Raid, I would recommend using proxy media. I'm using an UltraStudio Mini Monitor and I get a nice 4k to 1920×1080 down-convert to my Panasonic HD broadcast monitor."

The Ross brothers created the 4-minute NFL Game Day short all about Super Bowl host city New Orleans. The film stars baker and Beasts of the Southern Wild star Dwight Henry, who explains how New Orleans recovered after Katrina. "The thing about New Orleans people, we're always facing some of the worst circumstances in the world and we always seem to bounce back," he says.

Watch it here.

ESPN has spun off its 30 for 30 documentary series into 30 for 30: Shorts, an online exclusive series for Grantland that makes short sports documentaries accessible to the public. Its latest episode is "Ali: The Mission" which recounts the little-known story of Muhammad Ali negotiating the release of 15 hostages in Iraq in the leadup to the first Gulf war.

Says Connor Schell, vice president and executive producer of ESPN Films, "30 for 30 created a branded destination for quality storytelling. With 30 for 30: Shorts we aspire to do the same thing in a different format...It’s a way of telling a story on a subject that deserves 15 minutes and takes two months to make instead of 50 or 100 minutes and takes eight or nine months to make.”

Patrik Wallner shot most of this gorgeous travelogue from a hot air balloon over Burma, capturing the beauty of both a culture and light itself. See more of his travel video work (often involving skateboarders) on his site visualtraveling.com. (via The Atlantic)

Filmmaker Alison Chernik presents this short portrait of music uber-producer Rick Rubin who contemplates his spirituality and philosophies on life and music. Says the meditative Rubin, "The power of nature is such that it's what all art strives to be."

Watch below and read more here on NOWNESS.

Rick Rubin: Music and Spirituality on Nowness.com.

Philip Bloom's short documentary "Ponte Tower" tells the incredible riches to rags story of an iconic building in Johannesburg. Bloom used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera to shoot the whole film. He writes, "Why the Blackmagic camera? After all, I had access to lots of cameras here...The smart choice to be utterly frank would have been to take the C300.

This short documentary on Diane Arbus made in 1972, a year after her death, features interviews with some of the people who knew her best including her daughter, teacher and colleagues along with a voiceover featuring some of Arbus's own words. "Going Where I've Never Been: The Photography of Diane Arbus" provides a complicated portrait of the photographer, who by all accounts was a complex artist who continues to elicit strong reactions to her work.

The fascinating history of the affable Jeff Dowd, a.k.a. the real-life inspiration behind The Big Lebowski's The Dude, is told in the below short documentary made last year by Jeff Feuerzeig. Fom an apropos reclined position, the Dude tells the story of how he went from an infamous teenage protester to an early proponent of indie films to the man behind one of cinema's most enduring cult characters.

Watch it below.

Before Alison Klayman helmed the feature-length Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, she made the short documentary "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei" for PBS' Frontline. Says Ai in the film, "My political involvement is very personal. If you don’t speak out, if you don’t clear your mind, then who are you?”

Director Eddie Schmidt's uplifting 3-minute documentary "Good Bread" focuses on an unusual rehabilitation project that hires ex-cons to work at a bread shop in L.A.

Says Schmidt about making such a short piece with substance, "The trick - and I think we did it - was that I wanted the piece to both feel like it was tightly paced and yet have time to breathe. It's about people so you don't want it to be rushed; you want to feel something."

Filmmaker Ron Dawson turned an audio mishap into a short documentary. Inspired by a lecture from Chick-Fil-A's Dwain Cox given at the free monthly Creative Mornings lecture series, Dawson created "Sweet Spots & Racing Saddles: Inspiration for the Professional Creative in Four Acts."

He writes, "I hope the film and the story behind the film inspire you in whatever field you practice. Listen to Dwain’s advice. As he says in the video, even if just ONE of his insights resonate with you, do it."

The short documentary "Augmented Reality" explains the concept of projection mapping and documents some of the myriad ways it has made its way into the world of art, advertising, live events and more.

The film was directed by Dane Luttik. Watch below. (via PSFK)

The cameras have turned on famed documentarian Ken Burns in this short 5-minute documentary in which Burns reveals his thoughts on storytelling. He says, "All story is manipulation. Is there acceptable manipulation? You bet. People say 'Oh boy, I was so moved to tears in your film.' That's a good thing. I manipulated that. That's part of storytelling. I didn't do it disgenuinely, I did it sincerely. I am moved by that too. That's manipulation."

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the two guys behind Catfish, bring us this short, subversively comedic documentary about artist John Baldessari, who claims he will best be remembered for putting dots on people's faces.

Says Short of the Week of the film, "Playful, provocative, down to earth and surreal, this film prods at the notion that art is solely for critics, academics, and other artists. Art, in Baldessari’s world, speaks to everyone."

Saul and Elaine Bass' Oscar-winning 1968 short documentary, Why Man Creates, is now available for free online viewing. Explains Open Culture, "An eight-part meditation on the nature of creativity, the film mixes animation and live action, using Bass’ advanced repertoire of optical techniques, to look at the issues surrounding how and why humans have, throughout the history of civilization, kept on making things."