Our latest video project is online and ready for download:

Alpha Promo Video – (39MB)

This is a promo video for Alpha Family Development Center, a charity in St. Louis that is raising money to build centers in poor neighborhoods in St. Louis. It’s a terrific cause, and the people involved are extremely dedicated. Some have given up paying jobs to be a part of this.

I spent a day in St. Louis shooting footage and interviews for this short video, which they will be presenting at a fundraiser tonight.

The Dumping Jenny and Rock Paper Scissors commentary recordings went extremely well last month. A friend of mine in St. Louis had a room set up with an easy chair and a mic for everyone involved. He recorded multi-track into ProTools, and we had a great time reminiscing about our first movie — most of us hadn’t seen it in a long while.

Dakota couldn’t make it to the recording, however, so we will be recording a separate writer/director commentary next month. Before that is done, I am putting together some :30 second and :60 second broadcast-ready spots for Alpha in case they get some TV time. I’m also editing a wedding I shot two weekends ago.

Stay tuned for some pics of the commentary recording, as well as a secret construction project I’ve been putting together in my studio for the last month and a half… 

Just a quick note to let you know what’s happening on the red40 homfront. We are currently getting the cast and crew from Dumping Jenny together to record a commentary track later this month. Almost everyone involved is going to be able to make it out for the recording, so I’m pretty excited. Because I’ll be making DVDs this summer of Dumping Jenny and Rock Paper Scissors, we’ll be able to make them available to the public in a proper format, with all the goodies everyone expects.

There’s a lot of talk right now about United 93, the new movie account of that plane during the September 11th hijacking. Then there’s the new Oliver Stone film, World Trade Center, also coming out around the same time. I read an interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that asks the same thing many other columnists have been asking — is it too soon for a film about that landmark event?

Is the American public still so deeply scarred and shattered by the events of 9/11? Yes, bone fragments are still being found at Ground Zero. Yet it has been almost 5 years. Are we still so afraid? Is the threat of terrorism still on the forefront of our minds that we are still living in constant fear in the shadow of the twin towers? Are we too sensitive as a nation?

I think (hope!) the answer to those questions is no. I think the real problem with United 93 lies in two things. First, this movie, although fictionalized, is based on real, specific people, and their families are still mourning. There’s a general sensitivity toward the families involved, because it’s their newly-deceased relatives that are up there on the screen. We wonder how they will be portrayed in the Hollywood glamour. 

The second problem is that it has to do with us. Countless films dealing with crisis in Somalia, etc, came fast on the heels of those events without even a thought. I suspect that, if this were an action movie about the invasion of
Afghanistan and the ousting of the Taliban, voices would not raise in
protest. It’s easier to swallow a crisis/war film when we are not the victims. Come to think of it, maybe we are a little too sensitive after all.