Moose Productions Blog

Moose is entering the second annual International Documentary Challenge. The challenge is this: Make a 4-8 minute short documentary in 5 days. On Thursday March 1st, we’ll be assigned a topic. The final cut is to be mailed in on Monday March 5th. It is truly inspiring and intimidating to see what some of last year’s winners were able to do. The topics include: Music, First Person, Biography, Direct Cinema, Sports, Environment and a few others. All the films are given a general theme to work into their genre. Last year’s theme was freedom. The cameras will start rolling on March 1st…

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.

Sing with me! We’ve got PICTURE LOCK!

After a bit more than 2 years of work, The White House Hotel is finished.

Of course, there is still more work to be done (sound editing, color correction, and final music from our maestro, Dan Zimmerman), but as for the edit, the Feature Length Film is Finito.

Now comes the next great unknown - finding a venue for the film. For the last four months we have been sending out rough cuts of the film to various film festivals. We are still waiting for some responses. Every day we check our mail, our email, our pulse, waiting to hear if we have made it into any festivals.

Either way, we look forward to screening for an audience and we hope you will join us when the time comes.

Felicidades & Happy New Year

If you’ve got some time and want to laugh a little, go check out our side project: The VJ Grab Bag.

The idea is simple: submit a story idea to the Grab Bag’s pool of ideas, and we will assign you a story from the previously submitted ideas. You then have a month to finish the assignment. We will help with any training and equipment you might need, and in the end we will host the video on the blog and screen it along with all the other submissions.

The story assignments are irreverent and diverse and we hope the final projects will go beyond our expectations of style, tone and content.
It’s the first stage of an experiment Video Journalism, and I hope you will join us.

Hello there, apparently this blog has about 11 reads. And I’m sure that I’ve looked at it a couple of times…so this is quite unacceptable. So, now, instead of reading the synopsis of the film over and over you will get to read my rants while simultaneously learning about Moose lifestyle. i am one of three interns here, and aside from being slightly awkward, I’m a pretty decent human being. Although I can’t say I am charitable and saintly, rest assured I do not go out of my way to hurt anyone. That counts…

My name is Prerna by the way. If you say it out loud, you will probably pronounce it wrong, but it’s ok, because I’ll know you’re talking to me anyways.

A usual work day at Moose begins around 11am for me. I come in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I don’t much mind boss, because the environment is congenial. Which brings up an interesting point, congenial and genial are synonyms. Onwards…

A usual work day at Moose begins around 11am for me. Right now I’m in the process of gathering archival footage for the beginning of the film. This is surprisingly more difficult and expensive than one might think. Here is a hint why. Eldred v Ashcroft. A Supreme Court case in 2003 that extended copyright law, both prospectively and retroactively, meaning it affects films from the past and ones currently being made. This is terrible for the public domain realm because it reduces the material available for use.. Just really quickly, public domain is basically what the public has access to with no strings attached. An example would be the film “Eyes on the Prize”–an award winning documentary about the civil rights movement. The movie is a compilation of clips and footage shot by a variety of people, but to use this footage you need to obtain the rights from the person who shot the film etc.. But the copyrights the makers of Eyes bought have since expired and thus, the film cannot be reproduced anymore etc.. This is awful since the movie is culturally significant and an excellent educational tool and it is now much harder to get and screen the film.

We would want to use public domain footage because it’s free…it’s for the public. This pool is shrinking, evaporating, disappearing rapidly because of extended copyright law. So, I turned to a variety of agencies owning the rights to films, in hopes of buying clips from them. Indeed this is a pricey venture. When footage sells for 20-50 dollars per second, it’s not hard to imagine that you’ll be set back at least $1000.

Anyhoo, despite these hurdles, there is an important lesson to be had. Public domain is important, and when the Supreme Court is limiting it, it’s having a huge effect on schools, culture, and people…it may not be apparent immediately to us, unless you are a filmmaker or doing some sort of project, but imagine never meeting Kunta Kinte in fifth grade. These things are important!!! And imagine how the films you watch and books you read and have access to are affected…Consider your first amendment rights and how that space is getting more and more encroached upon.

Although internet media has a hand in combatting this as it can be a lawless rampant playground…and this is soley my opinion…getting around it in this way can’t be effective for long…and it’s nice to have your rights solidly intact. here are some articles to read if you feel inclined to do so:

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66410,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,48726-0.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57237,00.html

…yeah i’m a fan of wired. this is it for now…albeit a little incoherent, it’s no threnody of bloghood. I’ll get better at this soon!

Intern ..3,
Prerna

Moose had a busy, gory summer of opposites.

Summer started off with spring– innocently enough, as we shot a documentary about a very talented and young Julliard quartet, Attacca . Directed by Yaron Zilberman(Watermarks), we followed Attacca with cameras as they tackled Beethoven’s Opus 131. (The slow haunting rhythm of the 6th movement has fast become a favorite) The shooting culminated in Attacca’s concert of the famed piece on Florida International’s campus in Miami. Each member of the quartet had a different style of play; Gillian Gallagher’s slow reserved viola an interesting contrast to the vibrant cello of Andrew Yee, his thick black hair splashing across his face as he played. Another fascination, was the degree of collaboration the quartet achieved, all of them able to swallow egos and inevitable frustrations to pursue the best possible performance of the 131.

From the palms of Miami, we headed North to the ghettoes of Detroit. Armed with bullet resistant vests and little sleep, we shot a documentary series for A&E entitled “The First 48″. The premise is simple: In the first 48 hours following a murder, detectives must find a lead or the chances of solving the case drop by half. Our job was to follow homicide detectives during their initial investigations in the rough spots of Detroit. Given local cell phones, we waited unnervingly for the phone to ring. When the phone rang it meant someone had been killed, signifying that our work day had begun. We then drove at high speed through the most dangerous hoods of Detroit to the murder scene. Bodies riddled with bullets and blood stained concrete became the norm, as did filming detectives try to piece together the clues. Once a suspect was named, we would put on our bullet resistant vests and follow the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team (FAST) as they broke into properties where the suspect might be. Adrenaline pupming through the veins, the melodies of Beethoven’s 131 a distant memory, we would routinely see doors pummeled by battering rams, shotguns drawn and weeping mothers and sisters. And of course, the camera was always rolling. When suspects were brought into custody, they were usually quiet and unremorseful.

In the late summer, we returned to New York City. Relieved to be home.

Go to Germany & be the first to see part of the White House Hotel…

Not long ago, we submitted an excerpt of our first feature length film to the 3rd International Video Journalism Awards.

The scene, which is a kind of deleted selection from the film, follows an odd relationship that develops between Paulie, the plumber, and James, a young Scotsman. James arrives at the WHH hoping to find himself in New York. He ends up working at the hotel as an assistant maintenance man. At first all is smooth, but James quickly discovers that working with Paulie is difficult. The collision of old and young, combined with Paulie’s erratic temperament, force James to quit his position and eventually leave the White House. In short, this selection illustrates the bizarre juxtaposition that the WHH fosters in its old corridors.

The 3rd International Video Journalism Awards will be held from October 27-29 at the Kino Babylon Cinema, in Berlin. If you’d like to learn more about the festival, listen to an interview from last year’s festival with Videomission’s Sabine Streich and Moose’s Matt Rivera. (The interview is mostly in German.)

Just got the news from Josh Suskin, Current TV producer…

Seems Doublenuptial won a Bronze Remi at the 2006 Worldfest Houston.

I just found out about this today and don’t really know much about Worldfest, but good news is good news.

Welcome to the new Moose Website! New menus, new video, new blog…new new new…

So next time you are at work, looking for a way to kill time, go take a look. Leave us a note. Go play on our MySpace page. Say hello to our interns. Find the hidden Moose, win a prize. (make sure you refresh the site to see the new one http://www.moose3.com )

Ben Watkins, brilliant designer, filmmaker & all round media king is responsible for the new layout. If you like his work, go dig deeper.

In other news, we are working on the final pass for our first feature length documentary, The White House Hotel: Life at the End of the Bowery. With the help of our queen editor, Carrie Goldman (shooter & Editor for Baghdad ER), the film is getting ready for a public appearance.

Big things are in store, so keep a look out. Tell us what you want to see on the blog. Enjoy enjoy.

Moose Productions is growing… Today we welcome Prerna, Anne & Joe to the team. They are all NYU journalism students and are now our first interns. They will be working with us as we go on our final push to get the White House out to the public. In addition, the New Moose 3 will also be helping us gear up for our next project, the Green Movement Film, and might be appearing on this log soon.