GO!

9am:

On this cold January morning finds our intrepid filmmakers making the brisk walk from The Chateau Apres to their production studio high in the hills of Park City. Here they pitch their documentary ideas to the RIS mentors and receive their first tutorials on the cutting edge CS4 software suite from program sponsors Adobe. Cameras in hand, our teams will then take to the streets and hills of Park City in search of their story.

Deciding daily what to do is often the biggest problem and day one is no different....

1pm:

After gaining full access to Slamdance now, some of the students used the inspiration from the mentor meetings to finally put vision to their thoughts; while others made their way to the Slamdance headquarters at the Treasure Mountain Inn for a fireside chat about filmmaking presented by Kodak and hosted by cinematographer John Bailey. Even with technical malfunctions which reduced his clips to being shown on a 13” television, he managed to eloquently convey his points with his examples of documentaries that he was a part of or made by respected colleagues.

After the lecture, members of RIS approached the moderator and filmmaker Lorette Bayle who took a genuine interest in our RIS program and expressed how impressed she was of the steps the students were taking to fulfill our dreams. She even followed up her feelings by inviting us to the Kodak party on Tuesday to join them in their celebration of sponsoring both the Slamdance and Sundance festivals.

3pm: TEAM DIRTY REPORTS IN

Malak received five emails from her Craigslist post to find Dirty Dan. We got leads that took us to the Treasure Mountain Inn. After eating lunch we asked a local cop to give us an interview. Turns out we forgot to get tapes from the house where the equipment resides. We made the uphill trek back to the mountain house and retrieved the tapes. After some camera trouble we headed out again, not expecting to find too much in the first day. We interviewed Steve, a man who owns a candy shop and who gave us the original lead about a no named man who for years has walked down Main Street every day with his skis. We went to the Volunteer Center and found Joan who made a few phone calls and successfully nailing down the pseudo name of Dirty Dan. Some people who have seen him around town but only know him by the nickname of Dirty or Desert Dan.

After the first two days, it seems the town of Park City shuns the man, or the legend, of Dirty Dan who mysteriously walks the streets with a long gray beard and a pair of skis.

5pm:

More notes from the field as another team reports in...

Alright, so started off our second day at Park City continuing work on our short documentary. Our group had decided to study an interesting guy by the name of Big Chicago Mike and get some more information on his organization and what he was all about. On the surface that may sound a bit too much on the informative side, but after meeting Mike the four of us have reached a unanimous decision that there’s definitely going to be something more to this. Our thoughts were confirmed while we got to hang out at the Spur Bar & Grill where Mike was MCing while various bands and solo artists from around the country played in order to not only get noticed but to also provide and share quality; unique music for all those in attendance. The most interesting person we got to see was on stage was Victoria Vox a young girl whose instrument of choice was none other than a ukulele. I was as skeptical at first as those of you who are probably reading this right now, however, Victoria, as you’ll most likely see, made it work in a phenomenal way. Quite talented to say the least. Anyway, beyond ukulele’s, Mike hooked us up with an interesting event today. I won’t spoil the surprise for all of you.

9pm:

Another day done, the RIS crew spread the love with some people taking in an evening filmwhile the thirsty found their friends at the Slamdance happy hour.