Aspiring writers, artists and storytellers have a reason to head to Balboa Park this Saturday, as the Comic-Con Museum opens its doors for SAM: Storytelling Across Media, a one-day symposium built around the craft of telling stories across different formats. The event returns to the museum at 2131 Pan American Plaza, with programming that ranges from comics and books to gaming and movies.
San Diego Comic Convention presents the symposium as a gathering for “aspiring writers, artists, and professionals interested in the art of storytelling,” according to comic-con.org. Admission is included with the purchase of a Comic-Con Museum ticket, and the organization notes that seating in all symposium events is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. As reported by KPBS, SAM panels this year explore storytelling across comics, books, costumes, sound, gaming and movies, with KPBS arts and culture reporter Beth Accomando hosting a panel at 11 a.m. Saturday called Storytelling in Film: Making a Green Movie From Recycled Film.
A Filmmaker Who Builds Movies Out of Old Footage
One of the panel's featured guests is filmmaker Mike Davis, who will discuss his process of making Dead, White and Blue and preview his latest project, Hot Heat Hawaii, per the same KPBS report. Davis has described his method on the Cinema Junkie podcast as taking previously produced footage and re-editing it with a new storyline and new dialogue to build an entirely different movie.
Davis told the station that Dead, White and Blue is made of “100% recycled footage from over 300 stock and public domain films,” and that most of what he used was originally produced by the U.S. government. He called turning that government material toward subversive new purposes “your patriotic duty,” and said the film marks his third project built entirely from recycled footage, according to the same account.
Making the Case for No-Budget Filmmaking
Davis aims to show that filmmakers do not need a big budget to make a movie, pointing to free, repurposable material like old government footage as a path forward for creators without deep pockets. That pitch fits neatly into a symposium built for people trying to break into storytelling without major industry resources, and it gives Saturday's panel a practical angle beyond simple appreciation of the craft.
Beyond the film panel, SAM's broader slate is meant to appeal to creators working in comics, books, costuming, sound design and gaming, not just movies. The event is organized by San Diego Comic Convention and timed to fit inside the museum's regular Saturday hours in Balboa Park, with the one-day format designed to pack multiple disciplines into a single visit.
