done in sixty seconds

this pretty blonde girl runs out of a car. she is running from her father, from her past. she hides in a small out of sight village. the folk there treat her very bad. i mean really bad. the artistic kind of bad. she is trapped. her daddy comes. kills everyone after a speech about morality.

i just told you trier’s dogville in sixty seconds.

boom!

that’s what done in sixty seconds is all about. take a movie you like, remake it in sixty seconds and jameson sends the winner to the empire awards.

here’s the thing: when any art form becomes mainstream, accessible to the doer and not just the knower, when the technology fills the gaps and the content becomes user generated, then things get interesting. take photography, for example: a half a century ago the photographers were the owners of these big cameras, the ones that made sense of shutter speed and time exposure, the ones that knew their way in a dark room. today your smartphone takes pictures as correctly as any old school professional. today there are tumblrs out there that look like just like galleries with photos provided by anonymous — wrongly called amateur — camera wielders expressing themselves.

so what’s left?

the content. what to snap, who’s in the center of the frame, the right place at the right time. and content means creative choices so it’s fair to say that these competitions provide you with a global platform to express your — ahem — creativity.

so, jameson is taking film making to the people. and not just any people but people who like irish whiskey. i would bet my one-night-drinks that they have some unique perspectives to go on. so, once again, what’s left? the content. and this kind of content is valuable in at least 3 ways:

first of all, it makes it easy not to take yourself seriously. that’s one of the biggest lesson an artist can learn. decrease your ego. participants above all have a lot of fun. it’s about sharing and showing, it’s about the road not the destination.

and this brings us to the second value:  it’s perfect practice ground. there is no pressure. posting a video in simple fun competition gets your blood flowing, it gets your friends going. makes you thing, but not too hard.

the third value is the most important. when you finish your little video you will realize it is shit compared to any decent movie. you tell yourself it’s not supposed to be for real, but still, you can’t help but wonder how much effort and work is put into a real production. your little video experience will make you appreciate so much more the real thing.  same goes for whiskey:  after you make your own in sixty seconds malt and drink it it will probably taste like piss compared to a triple distilled irish one.

greenaway came to romania twice and both times called us visually illiterate. don’t take it personally, he believes everyone is visually challenged. but i was quite surprised when i browsed through the submissions for the jameson project and found that only five videos came from romania. come on. if you don’t play then don’t complain later. the russians submitted 200 clips from day one. i want us to produce a pool of potential film makers not home-staying-film-critics.

so get off your asses, have some fun, have some practice and make a remake, preferably of a romanian movie. it wouldn’t hurt the whisky community to learn about the train of life or filantropica.

then lay back and appreciate.

keira.