Further Explanation

The way the game works is, we are getting together a bunch of video journalists, video storytellers, animators, graphic designers, radio producers, photographers, etc etc, and putting together an assemblage of work. The goal will be for each person to shoot a short video (a few minutes long) and screen it together at the end of a month. The task will take you a few hours of shooting and maybe a day or a weekend of editing (no excuses for being too busy).

The trick is, everyone participating has to submit a story suggestion. In return for submitting an idea, they get one assigned to them. The stories are irreverent and silly, or serious and deep, or insane. One story focuses on a puppet museum which is built inside of a mock-up of the arc-de-triomphe. Another explores a gay AIDS crisis center. Another features 1500 drunk santas wandering around manhattan just before christmas. Another follows a bunch of jugglers who get together to practice in groups of 30. Another follows a championship hand cyclist. The range is broad. The hope is that the stories will be outside of the realm of normal storytelling. We want to do more than just push the production technique towards one-person authorship. We want to see some really insane stuff. So consider this an excuse to go in a radical direction, to invent a hypothesis and test it out.

So start looking for an assignment. I've already got some and I will be handing out the list out all week. To submit an assignment, here's the idea: find something or someone challenging who would make a good story. Look around for the freak you see on your commute, or the weird market or store you have always wanted to learn about. Anything that piques your curiosity would be a good assignment. We want the videos to be funny, goddamn it, so bring your top game.

The stories are coming in from several cities (just got a guy in Beijing to commit) and I wanted to include you all as much as possible. It's my hope that I can assign you new stories and you can play the game with us. But if you have an old story sitting around that you'd like us to screen, let me know. I'd be happy to show it in our collection. ANd if you have any friends who might be interested, spread the word. The more the merrier.

The work will be screened in late January in Brooklyn. I hope to hear from you soon. Enjoy the holidays.