Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Mission Accomplished!!!

Well, everything seemed to go off without a hitch. 5 months of planning, thousands of emails and even more tweets and we arrived at the crucible. 
I was standing on a river bank, miles from anywhere, along a worn trail on the edge of a forrest, a place my Dad likes to take his dog for a walk, and place that has meaning and significance in both our lives. There with him, my wife and our dogs. It was quiet, peaceful and thrilling!

Knowing the 139 eager and anxious filmmakers were waiting for my call, I held my mobile phone in my hand and typed the word 'ACTION', then clicked send and off it went - into the world, to 5 different continents, 28 different countries, 100 cities, 139 filmmakers. With it followed a flurry of action. Camera's started rolling, adrenaline started rushing, and for 2 minutes 20 seconds, or should I say - 140 seconds, we all joined connected in a film experiment unlike any other before attempted. 

Before I knew it the time was up, that was it, it was done, mission accomplished, well - almost, I still have to get all the clips in and edit it. But I think we achieved what it was we set out to do in those 140 seconds. 

All across the world we visualized and planned and synchronized for something we believed in and felt inspired by. Using this tool, the internet, and a social media phenomenon that has been much criticized, a new concept was created and the citizen of that global digital village created something very real, tangible and worthy. 

I was thrilled by the whole thing, and felt a great sense of connection, pride, achievement and honour on Sunday night. Walking back toward the car, along the path by the river, I thought to myself about the all the other filmmakers around the world opening the minds, hearts, homes and ideas to this project and I was simply blown away by it. Knowing that people had committed so much time, effort and energy to this idea.

Now comes the tricky part, organising, email, twittering, filming, all that was easy (not really) but now I have to edit everything. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it or what the end product will be. I guess I wont have any real ideas until I get all the footage in. So far though it's been great, I'm really happy with it and if this standard keeps up then I know it's going to be good.

The filmmakers to have sent footage so far are: Iulia Regina, Ryan Little, Damien Donnelly, Steve Gatlin, Chris Ford, John Lawlor, Paddy O'Shea, Robert Zappia, Mairtin DeBarra, Caterina Monzani, Noel Farrell and - Oh yeah, me!

So thanks to them. And I look forward to seeing everyone elses! 

Then we'll see what we have?!?!

1 comment:

Jo Custer said...

I remembered wondering how much water would show up in the cut. Looking forward to it, Frank.

Never before has my mobile vibrated with such meaningful intensity :)