- Indie Filmmaker Turns Snow Day Into Homage to Classic Cinema [VIDEO]
At least one person was being productive during the Great Blizzard of 2010 — filmmaker Jamie Stuart spent hours in the driving snow with his Canon 7D to create Idiot With A Tripod, an homage to Dziga Vertov’s 1929 Man With a Movie Camera.
Stuart’s short piece appeared in “Roger Ebert’s Journal,” after the Queens, New York, resident e-mailed the video to the famed critic. Ebert’s take on the piece? “This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject,” he writes.
If you’ve ever taken a college film class, it’s likely that you’ve seen Vertov’s cinematic depiction of urban life. Well, Idiot With A Tripod is a very similar (albeit less complicated) exploration of a modern New York — a city symphony depicting a community encased in snow and its efforts to free itself.
Ebert conducted an e-mail interview with Stuart, who explained how the film was made:
“Technically, for Idiot with a Tripod, I shot with my Canon 7D and edited it with Final Cut Pro. Early on, I was able to vary things a little more — I used macro diopters for the close-ups during the day shots, my portable slider for the dolly shots and also, a 75-300 zoom for the rooftop shots. I was more limited at night because of the weather conditions, so I stuck with my 24mm, 50mm and 85mm — all of which are manual Nikon lenses. Which meant that in the middle of that maelstrom I was changing lenses, wiping off the lenses and manually focusing/adjusting each shot.”
The piece also features music from The Social Network, composed by Trent Reznor, which somehow manages to perfectly recall The Cinematic Orchestra’s score for the ’20s classic.
What do you think of this short film? Oscar-worthy? Two thumbs up? Let us know.
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