Nate+Dern


 * CS11. Nate Dern ** – (Tech Panel I) //Crowdsourcing Creativity:// The Amazon Studios Experiment

May 27 Friday 10:45-12:15 PM HM 150

This presentation takes a look at Amazon’s recent attempt to crowdsource the filmmaking industry with “Amazon Studios.” Focus is on the possibility of crowdsourcing creativity, and collaborative creative efforts in general. When does the web do it well? When does it fail? Moving forward, what can be learned from the Amazon Studios experiment? Affiliation/Bio: Columbia University, doctoral student, njd2115@columbia.edu. Nate Dern obtained his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 2007, where he studied social anthropology and religion, and earned a Spanish language certificate. His senior thesis was based on seven weeks of ethnographic field work at a mosque in Buenos Aires. Nate then attended Cambridge University as a recipient of the Harvard-Cambridge Fellowship, where he obtained an MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures and completed a dissertation which analyzed close readings of confessional video speech acts across three media: internet blogs, reality television, and personal documentary filmmaking. Before beginning his course of study, Nate worked for several years in New York variously as a video editor, a freelance filmmaker and an adjunct professor of film history. In addition to his academic interests, Nate is a resident performer on a house improv comedy team at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Manhattan. If you have made it this far in his bio Nate thanks you, dear reader, and suggests you visit his personal website, natedern.com, for more information. Research interests: Social Media, Internet Video, Confession Celebrity and Fame, Performance, Data mining, Documentary Filmmaking, Ethnography. Education: B.A. Social Anthropology and the Study of Religion (Harvard University); MPhil Screen Media and Culture (Cambridge University)