Investigates the nature of documentary work, arguing that the work of an observer is not only to represent, but also to interpret reality, and uses examples from literature and photography to show how the observers' personal frame of reference has influenced his or her work.

** A New York Times Bestseller ** NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library "A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019" Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

Outlines each step in creating documentaries, from conception to final film, and offers advice on capturing human behavior and recreating past events, with advice on how to get started in the field, a section on researching and developing a project, and current resources.

This fluent and comprehensive field guide responds to increased interest, across the humanities, in the ways in which digital technologies can disrupt and open up new research and pedagogical avenues. It is designed to help scholars and students engage with their subjects using an audio-visual grammar, and to allow readers to efficiently gain the technical and theoretical skills necessary to create and disseminate their own trans-media projects. Documentary Making for Digital Humanists sets out the fundamentals of filmmaking, explores academic discourse on digital documentaries and online distribution, and considers the place of this discourse in the evolving academic landscape. The book walks its readers through the intellectual and practical processes of creating digital media and documentary projects. It is further equipped with video elements, supplementing specific chapters and providing brief and accessible introductions to the key components of the filmmaking process. This will be a valuable resource to humanist scholars and students seeking to embrace new media production and the digital landscape, and to those researchers interested in using means beyond the written word to disseminate their work. It constitutes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning field of digital humanities, as the first practical guide of its kind designed to facilitate humanist interactions with digital filmmaking, and to empower scholars and students alike to create and distribute new media audio-visual artefacts.

From David Graeber, the bestselling author of The Dawn of Everything and Debt—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).

As Alan Rosenthal states in the preface to this new edition of his acclaimed resource for filmmakers, Writing, Directing, and Producing Documentary Films and Videos is “a book about storytelling—how to tell great and moving stories about fascinating people, whether they be villains or heroes.” In response to technological advances and the growth of the documentary hybrid in the past five years, Rosenthal reconsiders how one approaches documentary filmmaking in the twenty-first century. Simply and clearly, he explains how to tackle day-to-day problems, from initial concept through distribution. He demonstrates his ideas throughout the book with examples from key filmmakers’ work. New aspects of this fourth edition include a vital new chapter titled "Making Your First Film," and a considerable enlargement of the section for producers, "Staying Alive," which includes an extensive discussion of financing, marketing, festivals, and distribution. This new edition offers a revised chapter on nonlinear editing, more examples of precise and exacting proposals, and the addition of a complex budget example with explanation of the budgeting process. Discussion of documentary hybrids, with suggestions for mastering changes and challenges, has also been expanded, while the “Family Films” chapter includes updated information that addresses rapid expansion in this genre.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.