Instructions

click here for publishing instructions

Identify someone that you find engaging and compelling, a person that you would like to get to know, or know better, someone who does something interesting with their life but who is not well known--at least not outside of their own community. Make a documentary about that person and the activities that they do that you find worthy of letting other people know about. The documentary can take any form or combination of forms that are presentable on the web--video, sound, image, text, etc. You could shoot a fairly traditional documentary video about the person you selected, you could record sounds and collect snapshots from the person's life, you could make drawings based on a day in the life of your person, just make sure the focus is on documenting your selected person and their life (as opposed to making an interpretation or homage) so that the public can see why you find that person's life worthy of being documented.

You must be able to get permission to document the person you select. They must be alive and you must be in communication with them, the idea is to use the activity of documenting them as a way to form or enlarge on a relationship with them. Keep the project simple, it is much more important that you make a clearly understandable documentary about your selected person, than an obscure piece of art that is really just about you. Anyone can participate who wants to as long as you are working within the guidelines. You can do documentaries about multiple people if you want to. The documentary can be very brief or exhaustive. Take the project seriously and make something really good. The documentary can be funny, but should not be making fun of the person you document. Make sure that the person you work with sees what you have done and approves of it before you post it on line for the public.

You can work with someone that you have known for your whole life like a parent or sibling, or with a person that you have come across in your daily life like an auto mechanic or baker, or you can look someone up based on an interest you have like a geologist, or someone who volunteers at hospitals. But don't just select your best friend because he or she is your best friend, or select someone totally at random either. Work with someone who you really think other people should know about, not to make them into a celebrity, but instead to show what it is about them that is amazing and interesting, even if only in small, everyday sorts of ways.
- Harrell Fletcher

Publishing Instructions

Thank you for participating in Some People. Hopefully we've created a site that's simple and easy for you to introduce your person to the world.

1. In order to get started you need to create an account. Do this by clicking on the "Register" button at the top of the page. Once you have registered we will email you an activation message. Click on the link in the email and your account will be activated.

2. Go to this instructions page and read everything carefully. There is information here that will ensure that your work gets published successfully.

3. Log into the site to access your administrative area where you can publish and edit your account settings.

4. First you need to click on "People" under the "Publish" tab.

 

  1. Title: Put the first and last name of the person you are documenting.

  2. URL Title: Leave this field blank.

  3. Button Mode: Leave these settings as they are.

  4. Person's Name (First and Last): Put in the first and last name of the person you are documenting.

  5. Location: Enter in the city, state and country (If outside of the U.S.) of the person you are documenting.

  6. Tags: If you would like to assign tags for this person enter them and use commas to separate.

  7. Biography: Write a short introduction to your person.  You are only limited to 400 characters. This is so that images can be further up on the page instead of below alot of text. If you need to add more text you will need to upload images/video/sounds. You can write an unlimited amount of text for each "asset" but make sure your text relates to the file it's associated with.

5. Add "assets" for your person. These can be images, YouTube videos or sound files. Do this by clicking on "People Assets" under the "Publish" tab. *********** You can only upload either one Image, YouTube Video, or sound file at a time.************* Please keep in mind that your images/videos/sounds will be sequenced in the order that you enter them (one on top of the other), so make sure that you decide how you want everything ordered before starting. Also, the first file that you upload will be bigger than the rest, so upload the file you want most prominent in your documentary.

  1. Title: Write a title for your image, video or sound.

  2. URL Title: Leave this field blank.

  3. Button Mode: Leave these settings as they are.

  4. Description: Write a description that relates to this file. There is no character limit but keep in mind that the longer your description the further down the page everything underneath of it is going to be.

  5. Relate: Select the name from the dropdown menu of the person who you are documenting.

  6. Image: Upload an image file from your computer's hard drive. Click on "Choose File" to select the file you want to upload.

  7. YouTube Video: Enter in the url of the video you have published on YouTube. Make sure you include the full url, which starts with "http://" We can only support YouTube videos at this time.

  8. Sound Clip (mp3): Upload an .mp3 file from your computer's hard drive. Click on "Choose File" to select the file you want to upload. We can only support .mp3 files at this time.

If you have problems publishing please email Yuri Ono at: yuri-at-myono-dot-com.

Recent documented people:


+ More

Recent documentarian people: