Month: September 2007

500 Year Itch



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The 500 Year Itch is the first 48 Hour Movie I was involved with back in 2001. The 48 Hour Movie Project challenges a group of filmmaking teams to write, shoot, and edit a short film in, you guessed it, 48 hours. To attempt to preempt pre-writing of the films, each team is given a genre at random, and each team must include the same specific prop, character, and line of dialogue. The 500 Year Itch’s genre was “Comedy” — we had to use a colander, the character was Ignacio Del Fuego – cab driver, and the line was “Now we’re really cooking.”

And by the way, yes, that is really Penn Jillette. A guy on our crew knew him. While we were writing and shooting the move, our crew guy drove to Atlantic City and shot Mr. Gillette. I think we wrote Penn’s lines before we wrote the script, but we figured we’d work it in – and we did!

Also, check out the movie’s star, Sandie Black, over on the youtube!

NTH – 52



I posted the first Next To Heaven on September 19, 2006, and today I post the 52nd. A year’s-worth of weekly short movies made from archive.org’s public domain footage – pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. I had a great time making NTH, and I think I learned a thing or two as well.

Thanks to all the people who took the time to comment. One of the best rewards of doing a videoblog is the people you get to interact with online.

Also a big thanks is due to those who helped get the word out about NTH – Freevlog, Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi, Karina Longworth, NewTeeVee, Blip TV, Eric Mortensen, Jay Dedman, The Daily Reel, TV Tonic, Mefeedia, Moocat, Podcast Salad, Bill Streeter, Jennifer Proctor, Cheryl Colan, Pixelodeon, Maurice Martin, The Clip Show, Cinema Minima, Rosebud Film & Video Festival, DC Shorts Film Festival, United Vloggers, and Chris Griffin.

Of course, NTH would not have happened without the amazing film archive provided free to the whole world by archive.org and Rick Prelinger. All lovers and users of media are or will be in your debt!

This is not the end; I’m working on NTH Season Two. NTH’s second season will be in the spirit of the first, but will be something very different. Stay tuned for sneak peeks. I’m looking to roll out season two in the spring or summer of 2008.

In the meantime, a best of NTH collection will be selected and re-posted here and on all of the major video portals. I’m looking for a sponsor and perhaps a curator, anybody interested?

Finally, with NTH on hiatus, I’ll have more time to make video for my first videoblog – Hopper Video. So, if you’re not already a Hopper Video viewer please check it out. I’ve got some weird and wonderful videos in the pipeline!

Thanks for watching.

Cheers
Rob