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It's time to take Understanding Media (1964) and The Medium Is the Message (1967) off the shelf and reread them. If you haven't delved into Marshall McLuhan's media studies, it's never too late to learn. McLuhan was a Canadian sociologist who researched mass media while on the faculty at the University of Toronto. His core conclusion was that choice of media affects how the audience perceives the message. McLuhan's books were bestsellers, and he became kind of a media star to the point of portraying himself in a cameo role in the 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall. Producer/director Steven Jack

'The Unknown Known' opens April 2 through RADiUS-TWC.

When filmmakers discuss "shooting," they usually mean "using a camera." But when working in combat zones, shooting may suggest something entirely different. Documentary director Ross Kauffman described reviewing material from his latest film, E-Team (co-directed by Katy Chevigny), with editor David Teague. The footage, Kaufmann says, was overwhelmed by the sounds of gunfire. While that effect might suit a film that follows human rights workers through dangerous areas of the world, it seemed a little much to him when he asked Teague to remove the gunfire sound effects, the editor responded,

I think the best description I've heard of the RealScreen Summit is that it resembles the now iconographic "bar scene" in the first Star Wars movie—creatures from many worlds coming together at the television equivalent of an intergalactic crossroads, bridging boundaries of language and culture, meeting, feeling each other out...you get the picture. Now in its sixth year, RealScreen has become a "must attend" event for many producers, programmers and distributors of nonfiction television programming. While begun as a cable-only venue, this year's conclave drew almost 1,000 delegates from both

Front row: sound supervisor/mixer James LeBrecht. second row, left to right: filmmaker Alex Rotaru; editor Pedro Kos; Ken Jacobson, IDA's director of education and strategic partnerships; Glenn Kiser, Dolby Institute; filmmaker Lucy Walker; IDA executive director Michael Lumpkin. Photo: Humberto Mendes This past fall, IDA presented a daylong Doc U at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: "Creating Sound and Music for Docs: From Location to Final Mix." The best and brightest sound mavens—recordists, mixers, designers, composers and filmmakers—shared their experiences, wit and wisdom

As part of The Art of Documentary series, the IDA screened the award-winning film The Naked Room at the Landmark Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 13. The film shows a whole world without leaving a single space: the examination room in a children's hospital in Mexico City. Listening to the children, their parents and the doctors during consultations allows us to have a more profound and complex view of our social reality and of human nature. Filmmaker Nuria Ibáñez was traveling and unable to attend the screening, so we solicited questions for the filmmaker from our Twitter audience

What is a documentary film but the search for a truth or a representation of reality, past and present? In this pursuit, a director can take any number of approaches—using experimental techniques, archival footage and photographs, interviews with historians, vérité camerawork, animation and more. There is "no one way to do it," says Mary Lea Bandy, chief curator of Film and Media Art at New York's Museum of Modern Art. For Bandy, the documentary is a hybrid form. In fact, she has curated a program of films entitled "Hybrid" for this year's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, held in April in

Popular music is the soundtrack of modern life. But there's a perceived conflict in the creation of such art: in order to be successful, musicians must sell out and play the commercial game, losing the outsider status that once inspired them. The tension inherent in music's creative process is the common thread found in two feature documentaries that were showcased at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Ondi Timoner's DIG! won the 2004 Documentary Grand Jury Prize, and Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Metallica: Some Kind of Monster played out of competition in the American Spectrum category

Government elections and cultural events don't always go hand in hand. This year's Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival in Greece was rescheduled to take place a week later than planned, due to the elections. It also lasted a week instead of the usual ten days, but that didn't mean fewer films, just a more compact program—and less time to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee in the sun. But then again, the films offered several feel-good moments. The opening film, The Story of the Weeping Camel by Luigu Falorni and Byambasureb Davaa, a German/Mongolian production, was a hit. Inspired by the work of

South by Southwest began in 1987 as an effort by the local Austin music scene to promote itself nationally and offer a more laid-back alternative music conference to NYC's New Music Seminar, which had become both unwieldy and violent. At that first SXSW, there were 172 bands and 700 registrants. The film festival/conference came on board in 1994. By 1997, the festival showed over 100 feature films, and attendance was near 10,000. In 2013, with over 2,200 official musical acts (and seemingly as many or more playing unofficial showcases) and over 130 feature films, there were easily over 100,000