

GitHub Cofounder Tom Preston-Werner on Founder.ly - al3xbio
https://github.com/blog/859-github-cofounder-tom-preston-werner-on-founder-ly

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mrchess
Not a fan of this interviewing format. To me it seems terribly awkward when
the person asking questions isn't even on the same screen.

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tableslice
Thank you for the candid feedback. We appreciate it.

I cannot argue with your sense of aesthetics or taste, but I will attempt to
explain why we film in this manner.

We film documentary style, in a manner pioneered by legendary documentary
filmmaker Errol Morris, where the interviewer is behind the camera and the
subject is in front of the camera telling his story.

The reason we chose to film founder stories documentary style is that we want
to focus solely on the founder, not on the interviewer.

We recognize that most interviews have an interviewer in the film, but we
think this can distract from the story.

FounderLY is an open source media project. Our mission is to showcase
authentic founders with no distractions. We are creating an online library of
founder stories freely available to anyone.

You could think of us as a cultural repository of founder stories. Thus we
want our interviews to be timeless and not associated with anyone but the
founder.

Prior to launching FounderLY, we had never filmed anyone in our lives. We had
to hack our way through the process and hack social networks to get access to
founders.

Resource and time constraints forced us to think hard about what we were
trying to capture on film. With only a $200 camera and no filming experience,
we determined that filming documentary style yields the best picture and sound
quality.

We hope our method of storytelling contributes a new perspective of showcasing
the individuals forging this renaissance in entrepreneurship.

I hope this explains our approach to filmmaking.

We appreciate you taking the time to watch our stories.

~~~
mrchess
"With only a $200 camera and no filming experience, we determined that filming
documentary style yields the best picture and sound quality."

Not trying to pick a fight here but if you don't have any filming experience
at all who are you to argue that this style is the best? But anyway, I hear
you, and you're right, to each his own :).

One last suggestion is you switch to youtube. It's unfortunate you can't skip
directly to a sections of video due to the limitations of the vimeo player.

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tableslice
Thanks for your feedback.

We never claimed that our style is best or that our sense of aesthetics is
best.

We do claim that filming documentary style yields the best picture and sound
quality based on our technical constraints and our goal of filming a large
volume of founder stories.

When you introduce more subjects in the interview it requires a wider area
view. You can achieve this by having a wider lens camera or being further away
from the subjects.

In our case, we do NOT use a wide lens camera and we want to be up close and
personal to the subject.

We use a low-tech microphone that comes standard with our $200 camera. You
have to be very close to the subject to ensure that sound quality is
sufficient.

Thus we film documentary style.

These are examples of technical constraints that can hinder quality. Prior to
filming these interviews, we had no idea the breadth of variables that can
affect capturing good quality footage via video camera.

Because we often film in suboptimal lighting conditions, we want to deliver
the best picture quality.

We use Vimeo player because their algorithms render picture quality brighter
than other video players. We distribute on Youtube, iTunes, and most video
platforms.

You can find all of our videos on Youtube.

For our purposes, filming documentary style reduces variables and aligns with
our mission.

At the end of the day we had to make hard and fast decisions 80/20 and produce
something. We have been operational for 1.5 months and filmed 80 founder
stories. We have received feedback from many founders and we have consulted a
few professional filmmakers to improve our product.

Things may change in the future and we are always open to suggestions.

We hope you enjoy our founder stories : )

~~~
patrickaljord
Vimeo offers one the worst video experience for people in 3rd world countries
like me with slow connections. Even if I opt out of HD it's still very slow
and I can't skip or come back to a moment in the video so I have to reload the
whole thing, horrible. With youtube I can switch to the 240 resolution and
skip and bookmark to anywhere. Please use youtube instead, it's just an
interview, I don't care about the picture quality.

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coffeejunk
On the other hand, vimeo gives you the ability to download the movie (if you
are a registered user) which is great, especially when you have a slow
internet connection.

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patrickaljord
[http://www.chromeextensions.org/music-videos-
photos/youtube-...](http://www.chromeextensions.org/music-videos-
photos/youtube-downloader/)

