Make a film in 24-hours two months ago

Just ask Dharma. According to the Formula, you can have only one creatively named character per sitcom. Fortunately, Wired Magazine articles have no such limit. And so, in this month’s wacky episode edition, Choire and Xeni team up to report on NYC Midnight, a DV Dojo -sponsored contest to write, shoot, and edit a film in New York, all in 24 hours.
What’s that, the contest was in October? And it started in May with a rewritten press release on Daily Candy? So Choire and Xeni had to sit on this great story for months, at least until the damn check cleared? That’s magazine publishing for you. I’d call it tired, but it’s the end of the year; everything’s tired.

Separated at Birth?

It used to be spelled with a Q, image: guardian.co.uk Rosa Parks, image: Life mag, via somewhere on AOL
Reunited at the millinery, now seated side by side
on the War-For-Peace bus (in the front, of course)

Funny, now I’m more at risk of getting sued than of getting killed in a German bar.

On Cycling

Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has solicited Art Top Ten lists from some folks, partly as a rebuttal to the too-hip-for-him lists in Artforum. [He reserves his best Ike Turner for Thelma Golden, who I like very much.] Anyway, my list is up now. Most of it is culled from the site, so fanatic greg.org readers [Mom, I’m talking to you] will probably not be shocked by any of it.
But I did surprise myself with one choice: I felt obliged to put the Guggenheim’s Friday marathon screenings of The Cremaster Cycle on my list. [I mean, I survived it, didn’t I?] But then I actually got choked up reading David Edelstein’s account of Trilogy Tuesday, the marathon screening of Lord of The Rings.
Granted, not everyone is going to thrill to the point of life-defining religious fervor when they see Return of The King (I’m not really much of a fan myself), but by any standard, LOTR must be considered a far more important, influential, and authentic achievement than Cremaster. And that’s before and after adjusting for budgets.

More On Dependent Filmmaking, or Barney Cam II: White House Boogaloo

[via Gothamist] Jimmy Orr, the Choire Sicha to George Bush’s Nick Denton, has posted his new short film, Barney Cam II: Barney Reloaded, on his weblog, whitehouse.gov. Elizabeth Bumiller, the Times‘ specialist on the dependent film industry, gives it a glowing review and talks with Orr, who co-produced Barney II with Bob deServi. DeServi is best known for his work as the key grip on many of Scott Sforza’s productions, which are being shown on TV everywhere, all the time, on every channel.

Scott Orr films Barney II with what looks like a Sony VX-2000, image:whitehouse.gov
Magic Hour? Scott Orr demonstrates his handheld video technique in
the making of Barney Cam II. Image: Paul Morse, whitehouse.gov

Like Elephant director Gus Van Sant, Orr prefers working with non-professional actors (although it doesn’t seem like he budgeted much time for rehearsals). He’s got a scrappy, run-and-gun style which constrasts sharply with Sforza’s theatrically staged fictions.
As these behind-the-scenes shots reveal, Orr also scorns the debilitatingly large budgets favored by his White Housemates. His equipment package and crew are strictly barebones: a Sony VX-2000 (good, but not Combat Camera good), with a camera-mounted mic feeding into the XLR adapter (no sound guy) and using only available lighting. Of course, none of this is unexpected; compensating for a small package is a recurring theme on Orr’s site.
Also screening at whitehouse.gov:
Secretary Evans Reads “Cowboy Night Before Christmas” [Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, FYI]
Mrs. Bush Reads “Angelina’s Christmas”
Related:
Ungrateful criticism of diServi and Sforza by their star actor
Bumiller’s first review of Scott Sforza and Bob diServi productions.

Combat Camera

Finally, someone’s asking the right questions in Iraq, like, “how’d they get that shot?” Virginia Heffernan reports in the Times on the ultimate embeds: the soldiers who go into battle armed with digital video cameras (“the camera is our first weapon”) to record US military activity. Like Saddam Hussein’s medical checkup, which includes shots–like the glowing underside of Hussein’s tongue–that Heffernan rates as high art.

Cameraman unknown, Video still from Saddam Hussein's medical examination by a US Army physician, image: nytimes.com, getty images
what’s the opposite of independent? Film, that is. image: nytimes.com/getty images

These combat camera crews use Sony PD 150’s, just like civilian photojournalists (and the rest of us). In fact, I bought my first camera, a Sony VX-1000, from a war-documenting friend (whose production company, no coincidence, is named Combat Camera), who was supposed to star in Souvenir November 2001 until he got pulled into Tora Bora (ahh, the memories).
Like most documentarians, these filmmakers have a hard time getting distribution; Pentagon suits are even tighter-fisted than Miramax. But if they make a real heartstrings-pulling story –like the Jessica Lynch rescue or the Hussein body cavity search–when it does hit screens, it opens verrry wide.