Fresh meat

Over the past couple of weeks, as a part of the VJ Grab Bag Project, I visited and shot in one of the live poultry markets scattered around my neighborhood, Sunset Park. I've since officially retired the clothes and sneakers I wore during my time there.

Chanel, the charismatic owner, was my main focus. He spoke the best English, and seemed almost validated at having a camera detailing his every move-- even if it was one manned by someone who didn't know what the fuck he was doing. I suppose that falsely introducing myself as a "filmmaker" bought me some legitimacy. I may not be De Sica, but, I mean, I was holding a digital camera in a place where the most complicated piece of machinery was probably the latch to the goat pen.

The other guys were cool too. One guy didn't say a word to me; he just stoically slashed the shit out of sputtering chickens while I tried in vain to get him to give me a play by play. Another guy held a skinned chicken up against my back as a "joke." And one guy wore camoflage and fucked around with the goats in an endearing/borderline abusive type way.

There are probably millions of stories there, but most of them, unfortunately for a monolingual white boy like me, are in Spanish. But maybe that's the story. Some of my shots are tentative-- I felt uncomfortable being near chickens getting massacred and in an environment where I didn't understand what anyone was saying. Hopefully, people who haven't seen this type of thing-- which is most os us I guess-- will be a bit unnerved by it too.

Or maybe it's the completely the opposite- maybe it's about the way in which we can normalize just about anything we do. Editing with Matt today, I initially wanted to throw up when the stoic guy nearly cut one chicken's head off. After a while though, I forgot what I was looking at; I was just trying to decide if the shot was any good. And my face probably looked a lot like the stoic guy's when he tore back a chicken's head and swiped a knife across its neck.

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First 48 Update

We have two tidbits of news about A&E’s The First 48…

Numero Uno: A new episode will be airing tonight at 9PM ET. The episode follows two stories, one in Detroit and one in Dallas. Graham and I shot for the Detroit episode. Our story follows the murder of two guys driving a pickup truck in a vacant lot and reveals the eccentric life of an old man who lived near by.

And el Segundo: We received the DVDs from Granada Productions of the first episode to make it to air. The show aired in early December and was called Cat and Mouse. You can see a rough version of the clip here.

Written in early July, Detroit:

Outside my window, the weather is too warm and comfortable for people to stay indoors. All throughout the city, you will find folks wandering around, drinking outside of their houses, strolling up their streets. Some of the cops, they say to expect the worst on Thursdays and Fridays because that’s when folks get paid, and getting paid means buying booze. Other cops say, nobody here has jobs so it doesn’t matter what day of the week, you’re always going to find people out there, drinking and smoking. Doing nothing except getting into fights and shooting each other.

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Joost is pronounced "Juiced"

The news out of Scandanavia is that Joost has arrived.

The folks behind Kazaa and Skype have now released a beta of their internet video / tv software platform. The application is similar to Kazaa and Skype in that it is not a browser-based program.

I got a chance to play with Joost (pronounced ‘Juiced’) last night and I am a quick fan. I couldn’t stop myself from flipping through channels, fiddling on the instant messaging platform, and enjoying a cornucopia of diverse programming. I went from watching a British racing show, a video news release for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, an old episode of Lassie, and a quirky German program in which people’s faces kept exploding. The best part? When the program isn’t up to your interest, you can just scroll through upcoming shows and watch what you like on any of the theme-organized channels.

The software is still in Beta (not sure why they went public with the name…Venice Project was a beta tester as well) and only runs on Windows XP, for now. This is disappointing. After digging up a beta test password, it took me two more days to find someone willing to let me launch Joost on their machine. Either way, we have something to look forward to with this software.

Why? Because Joost will need content. And what are we if not content producers?

The Venice Project is now Joost. Long live Joost.

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Geek Talk: Scripts

I know you will probably dismiss this as geek talk, but let me tell you, I just discovered how to use apple scripts and wow. They are something else. I've always wondered about them, but I dismissed it as too much tech wizardry. Honestly, it is pretty simple and I'm a stooge for not looking into this before.

Why I had to do this: I recently cleared my desktop of all itunes music to make space for a project. When I no longer needed the space, I copied all my songs off my ipod using Senuti. Now I had the files on my comp (actually on an external HD) but I couldn't connect them to the old itunes library because they weren't in exactly the same place.

So I created a folder and chose "Attach a folder Action." I then get to pick from a list of scripts. Each script is a series of automated actions which automatically do things to whatever file you put into that folder (like rotate images, organize, move or change files). I downloaded a script to 'add items to itunes library' and I enabled this script for the folder. Then, all I had to do was drop the homeless files into the new, script-enabled folder and the script automatically opened itunes and started copying all the files into the library. The script can then delete all the files that are duplicated (though I'm going to do this by hand). So much easier than opening each folder and selecting all files and choosing 'open.'

So there you have it.

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Update from Mark

From Mark on his story:

The path that I'm trying to take with this story is to focus on a puppeteer who makes puppets and also performs them. I know that the Puppet Lending Library is closed for the winter, but, hopefully, they'll open their doors for me. I'm not sure if the museum contact will be the central character of my story. If she isn't, she can hopefully lead me to the character. I'll keep you posted.

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Stories & Assignments

Here's a short selection of 'already-assigned' stories matched with their producer. Some Stories don't have links because I don't have enough info at present to post them.

Mark Bernal = Puppet Museum inside the Grand Army Plaza Arch. That's right...Inside the arch.

Kristina Klebe & Linda Blake = Rudy Delamore

Kieran O'Hare = Warm Tofu Custard. Sold from a Shopping Cart. By an Elderly Chinese Woman. Who doesn't speak English.

Mayen Ma = Taco Truck

Daniel Zier = James Spencer (James Brown Photog)

Ix = Wheel Chair BallRoom Dancing


Graham Meriwether = Road Trip Surprise (GM is on a road trip to California and promises something bizarre and unscripted upon his return.)

We are looking to screen around the first or second of February. More stories & news to come.

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Comrades

One of the missions of the VJ Grab Bag is to find and develop a community of content producers. I identify most strongly with the Video Journalists. But I believe that the core philosophies of Video Journalism (one-person production, intimate and experimental storytelling) allow in projects which are wildly different in style and tone. For this reason, I hope to see submissions which askews the cinema-verite heritage of Video Journalism. This can take the form of animation, mockumentary, music videos, etc.

We are on the verge of something new. The form is rough, and remains to be determined. But there are many encouraging examples out there. Take a look at these two sites:

Alive in Baghdad

Alive in Baghdad was formed to counter the sound-bite driven, “Live From” news model. Through the work of a team of Americans and Iraqi correspondents on the ground, Alive in Baghdad shows the occupation through the voices of Iraqis. Alive in Baghdad brings testimonies from individual Iraqis, footage of daily life in Iraq, and short news segments from Iraq to you.

Alive in Baghdad gives cameras to Iraqis (recalls Voices of Iraq), lets them shoot the footage, and then has an elaborate but (apparently) effective way to cut the footage together into very compelling video pieces. Spend the time, watch some.

Another online video site is the Venice Project. The details of the site are being kept quiet. (feels like mumbo jumbo hype-building advertising - which is something of a turn off). Depending on what you read/hear/believe, the Venice Project is an online web portal for tv programming. Sound familiar? It should. That is the direction we hope to he be headed towards with our Grab Bag game.

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Chapter 1

Today is a July Thursday in Detroit, Michigan. The time is 8.19 PM, and the sun is high enough above the horizon that the light hasn’t yet turned golden yellow. Detroit is at the very western edge of the Eastern Time zone and evenings come on slow, the way you would expect them in a remote Alaskan city.

I’m writing because I’m waiting. The phone is next to me, plugged into the wall. I may not get a chance to charge it again in the next twenty-four hours. I’m surprised the call hasn’t come yet. I expected it by now. Maybe I’m not getting reception. Maybe the dispatch desk has forgotten to dial me, again.

I’m here to shoot a television show about the Detroit Homicide Unit. The show is called “The First 48.” It’s a reality television show but the producers like to think of it as a documentary drama. Reality TV has a bad reputation so it makes sense someone would want to obscure what we are creating. The show follows detectives around in several cities as they try to solve murders and catch killers. What this means is we are waiting for people to die a violent, mysterious death so we can start filming the crime-solving story.

I’m here with my colleague, Graham. We work as Video Journalists. Usually this means we run around untethered. But here, our job is to follow orders. This show is a kind of evolved version of “Cops.” There is more of a narrative, but it’s basically the same idea: turn the worst reality into pulp and sell it. All flash and glimmer; no context, no message except: “wait until you see what happens next.” When we were being interviewed for the job the producer told us how the show often employs staged moments. We cringed. She said, “Everyone does it. Public television does it. The best documentary filmmakers do it.” We never do it, but we don’t say anything. We could use the work. Now we are here for six weeks.

Outside my window, the weather is too warm and comfortable for people to stay indoors. All throughout the city, you will find folks wandering around, drinking outside of their houses, strolling up their streets. Some of the cops, they say to expect the worst on Thursdays and Fridays because that’s when folks get paid, and getting paid means buying booze. Other cops say, nobody here has jobs so it doesn’t matter what day of the week, you’re always going to find people out there, drinking and smoking. Doing nothing except getting into fights and shooting each other.

Before I arrived, I thought I was informed. I never imagined it could be this bad in my own country and I wouldn’t know it. But now, everything I understood about violence, about the police, about the news, about my neighbors and nation, all these old abstract ideas are becoming memories. This is no place for theories about wealth and poverty. Detroit is a hidden, rotting city. Imagine New Orleans before the flood.

It used to be, if you were entering a neighborhood where an officer might be fired upon, the police said you were going into a ‘Delta Zone.’ Before entering a Delta Zone, you always did a little check, made sure you had your bulletproof vest and a couple of extra guys with you, just in case of trouble. The reason they don’t use the phrase Delta Zone anymore is because there are no places where an officer won’t be shot at. Pretty much, all of Detroit is a Delta Zone.

Sitting downtown, knowing I will have to drive out into the gang territories tonight, I’m still waiting for my bulletproof vest to arrive. Just two metal sheets inside a loose canvas shell, every cop tells me bullet-resistant vest is the better phrase for it. I’ve been asking for the vest every week since we’ve been here, but the production’s distribution office in New York hasn’t gotten around to sending it. They say it takes two to three weeks to be made and sent. That was four weeks ago. At some point, it’s clear that it isn’t coming. You can hear the tone in people’s voices when you ask for the vest. They express shock, as in, ‘How did that not get there yet?’ and then they lean away from the phone and ask someone for an update, and an anonymous voice promises it will arrive next week, which is relayed with the same blasé disinterest that you might expect if we were talking about new shoe laces. The supervising producer calls back and says, “just try not to get into any dangerous situations.”

I try to tell her about the Delta Zones but she isn’t listening.

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Santacon

Click here to view Santacon

The night before santacon, I went home early.

I had spent the day dropping off Santa costumes, giving classes, working in confusing ways, all over the city, conducting an orchestra. I ended the night early, my friends drinking holiday cheer. It was warm, but I had to go. I had an appointment at 10 AM at the Delancey Lounge. Just me and a hundred other people dressed as Santa, ready to wander the city, I imagined.

I showed up, my costume in my bag, and found myself surrounded by Santas. I knew what was happening, but even still, the sight of half a dozen santas walking around was shocking. Eager to join the crowd, I ducked into a church, put on my costume, and ran over to the bar. Everyone was buzzing, giddy and thristy. The crowd was far beyond what I expected, and I later heard we had grown to near two thousand.

At some point, I looked to Kieran. As the only one who made the early trek with me to our first location, we kept turning to each other in shock, sharing our disbelief. The first bar had its rollgate down, enhancing the delusion that we were at a late night dance party. The hallucination was encouraged by bloody marys, jello shots and whiskey… all of which only serve to confuse and disorient you when you finally go outside and find the sun so fresh and cold you know it isn’t yet noon.

Believe in Santa. Believe in Jesus. Believe in fantasy. Whatever you chose, there have always been holidays in the winter. Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, Yule…these festivals were celebrated at the end of December in pre-Christian times. It seems fair, therefore, to claim that Santacon is a restoration of pagan era festivities. Of course, you wouldn’t reflect on this history when a crowd of Santas are marching through midtown shouting ‘Ho Ho Ho Ho.’

Click here to view Santacon

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