Fifteen Hours

I got a text message this afternoon from Dain - he and Nick are on their way back from the Mankind Project (MKP) Leader's Conference in Wisconsin. I would've gone myself, but there were too many important things going on in my life here in Minneapolis for me to get away - and I was fortunate to be able to recruit Dain and Nick to haul cameras to Kenosha and document the unfolding events.

The text said that they had shot 15 tapes - fifteen hours worth of footage - and just like that, the project is underway. There's a big difference between a film as potential energy - as ideas and plans and intentions - and a film as actual video frames recorded on tape, which have the potential to be part of the finished product.

For Journeyman, we shot something like 150 hours of footage over the course of two years - sometimes months would go by without me picking up the camera, but there were a few fateful weekends where dozens of tapes were shot, representing significant fractions of the final film.

It's too early to say whether Dain and Nick's experience will figure substantially into the film, but fifteen hours is a hell of a decisive start to the process, I think.

What happens at an MKP Leader's Conference? I don't know - but I'm eager to take a look at the tapes and find out.