[TWP09] Envy

I'm really happy with my wonderment writing/acting debut. When I wrote this for Wall Street I was a little worried that we would get kicked out of the location by security guards but none of them moved a muscle. We did get interrupted twice by outsiders during the shoot- once by a man who wanted to know if we were actually shooting a movie on something that looks like a phone, and the second time randomly by a woman who asked Mauricio (in Spanish) what the name of a building next to us was. We couldn't get one wide shot that we planned because the sidewalk was completely stuffed with people - spring break or something - but we got all the shots we needed for the story and I think it goes together quite nicely.

Making the sandwich was delirious fun. I ended up making a bunch of them because once I had a pyrex full of cheese-glue I just couldn't stop myself. I put them all on a plate in my kitchen and was able to convince my roommate that I found them in the fridge.

Alison

[TWP08] Fat

This was by far the hardest wonderment for 226 to make. First off, we only had one camera, instead of our usual two. Then I was a bit hungover and Jeff was tired from working on his research. That made it really hard for us to remember our blocking and lines. It took us 30 minutes to get the first shot done (which is the opening shot to the piece). Then once we got to my big speeches, I kept forgetting the exact wording and stumbling all over the place. The only part that was easy was the end which we did 3 times (1 time I forgot where I was then screamed fuck me into the camera…I am thinking of a wonderment call outtakes…too macro?)

Greg Allen did a really nice job writing this one. His original script didn’t have a real opening so I came up with the whole running in matching outfits bit, with some input from jeff. Then Jeff helped tweek the end a bit and that part about Victorian times and modern times is a hybrid of ideas from all three of us. That is my favorite part though! When there are a group of us all trying to make the script better by playing around with the exact wording, making it fit our speech patterns and trying to make it work even better. I love it. I feel that if I was ever a real actor, wriers would hate me because I would change almost every line in order to make it feel more like me…

Anyways, so yeah, we went over an hour to make this one which is why there is no tail time ID. I think it was about an hour 25 minutes. But to be fair, we used none of the footage from the first 25 minutes, so it was still sort of shot in an hour. Also, because we knew we were running long, we just got one take of everything so editing became a breeze because I was like…”well that’s the only take we got. I guess it works!”

I really like the way it looks. I think we are starting to find our “Wonderment” style. It is sort of a dirty form of doc-realism that takes the time to frame stylish shots here and there. As we keep doing these, I feel that that energy and visual structure will grow stronger.

Thanks Greg for the submission. I hope you enjoyed it.

--Bryan

06 - Work - Bryan's take

I know that this isn’t my Wonderment, but I wanted to add a bit to what Eli said and just, you know, get in my two cents. I feel that to date, this is our best Wonderment, and that is not to belittle any of the other ones. However, I feel it best captures that sense of personal insight into a completely personal experience that is then shared and discussed analytically in order to get to some sort of deeper understanding and meaning. It’s also very funny.

Then stylistically I feel it is the best one yet. I really love the idea that it starts almost as an internal monologue in Eli’s head…”really mark Jacobs…really. You are paying people for this!” And then moves into a dialogue where he expresses that frustration. Great. Also, the place we shot it works perfectly. I love the top down light and the chillin’ on a box look.

Well, I could keep rambling but let’s just say that for those of you who want a good example of what a Wonderment could be…check out Work. Then check it out again!

-Bryan

[TWP05] Valentine

This was a short idea that I have been kicking around for a long time. Now that I’ve been single again for a little while, I keep wondering how it was that I convinced myself that I HAD to be with just one person. It really stuck me as odd. There seemed to be some sort of mindset that locks one into the idea that this is the right person for me right now. This is what I wanted to explore. What if you were on a date with a person who you liked to hang out with, but knew you didn’t love. How can you explain that? How does that even work?

To that end, I started to work through the idea that there are 3 kinds of people in the your life: friends, lovers and the one you love. I guess that is the end result of my wonderment, and in some ways, the end result of hours of thinking. I wish that I would have taken some more time to sketch out the backstory and perhaps flesh out our characters a bit more, but I was supervising a reality tv show at the time and we did this one night after work. I am still surprised that I had the energy to do it at all.

Big thanks to Katie for being such a good sport. I thought she was terrific and adds great charm and class to the wonderment. I am hoping to get her to write one that I would only be too happy to realize.

--Bryan

[TWP07] First Impression

So, this is a very special one despite its small length. It is our first non Bryan/Jeff/Eli written wonderment. The very talented Margot Arakelian wrote this little diddy about a first encounter. I thought it came out really well. Jessica De Kler, as usual, did an outstanding job of acting, and Bryan and Jeff helmed the cameras.

I personally like this one because it is our first female perspective and that is something we need more of in our wonderments.

Eli

[TWP 06] Work

"The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one."
Oscar Wilde

Well once again I broke the rules. The b-roll stuff I shot during the beginning wasn't filmed during the hour of shooting, but it was under 15 mins of footage and it still fits into our hour worth of filming.

[TWP06] Work

Work is essentially me just spewing my frustrations I have with my job. As an event electrician many of my jobs have me working on ridiculous things. Many of the examples I say are true in terms of high end event production; some of it is a fabrication.

I would like to thank Edith Blackman for doing a superb job of acting and Bryan and Jeff for shooting, what I believe, the best looking Wonderment yet. The montage opening comes from three separate shows, Marc Jacobs, Y3, and Marc by Marc Jacobs.

Enjoy,
Eli Sands

First Wondie Award

Jeff here. I am proud to announce the first Wondie Award! Since I am now the first person to have written two produced Wonderments, I am giving myself a Wondie Award, for being the most prolific Wondermenter.

Thank you, thank you.

You know, it's really not about the quantity. It's not even about the quality. It's about the weighted mean of quantity and quality which produces the largest number of entertaining moments - or entertoments - through the least amount of effort.

Jeff

[TWP04] Related

Hey all. TWP04 is now up! It was written by myself, Jeff, stars Ivy Hong and myself, and was filmed by Bryan Dembinski. Bryan also did sound, I suppose. It was shot in Central Park on a day when it was just way too cold to be doing something like that. But nonetheless, the shoot was a lot of fun, and everyone did a great job! This is probably the longest any Wonderment could be, unless it's shot live or something, as we just made it under the one hour mark.

Related is based on a true story. Ivy and I actually are related to every guy in each statue we describe. Of course, certain liberties were taken in the telling of how we are connected. The idea behind Related is two characters who are playing a lighthearted game. Trying to out BS one another with fantastic, over the top stories of how they were connected to each person in the statues. After my brother read the script, he immediately said I was trying to go for an Italo Calvino vibe (Invisible Cities, go read it, now), which is perhaps true, especially given the Marco Polo reference, but wasn't at the forefront of my mind when I wrote it. Italo Calvino has a more dreamlike feel, while Related is more fun. Ivy did a great job setting the tone, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

It was really inspired by a conversation I had, at a dinner party at my advisors house of all places, about Mitochondrial Eve, who is......

**BEGIN SCIENCE ALERT**

the last common female ancestor. Meaning, the woman who was alive most recently, who is a progenitor to every currently living human. It turns out mitochondria are one of the best ways to track maternal genealogy, since mitochondria are passed from mother to children. Since mitochondria are asexual, any change in the mitochondrial DNA in a given family line is strictly due to mutation. All you have to do is track all the different strains of mitochondria that exist in humans today, measure how long it takes, on average, for one line to mutate, and then you can simply calculate how long ago it was that every human had the same mitochondrial strain. It turns out that number is between 180,000 and 240,000 years. So, we all have the same great great ... (How ever many greats it takes to get back 200,000 years) grandmother.

Evolution of course mandates that we're all related to each other, but having a date, and a conceptual woman, we can point to makes it feel a more tangible to me.

**END SCIENCE ALERT**

Mitochondrial Eve got me thinking about the stories that exist which connect all of us. And how they're all probably really really boring. Hopefully the ones in Related are a bit more interesting than the truth.

Jeff

[TWP03] Bad Day

"Life is like an onion; you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep. "
Carl Sandburg

TWP-03 Bad Day

Bad Day is actually, like Bryan's, based on a conversation I had with one of my friends a couple of months ago. We were working in a theater and he got a phone call in which his parents informed him that his dog had just passed. He was pretty morose for the rest of the work call. The day itself was a normal day but the death of his beloved animal colored the rest of his day. It is these simple events in a day, whether it is for the positive or the negative, that always linger in my long-term memory.

I also acknowledge that I broke one of the rules. I wrote about death but this death isn't life altering (although I know way too many people that would consider the death of their dogs to be such an event).

Shooting at the Turkey Nest was difficult. It certainly pushed the cameras ability to film in a low light. I would like to thank Glenn for his outstanding performance and script contributions. Specifically the Marcia Gay Harden line. Jeff and Bryan did the camera work and it was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy.

Eli Sands

[TWP02] Attractive

For those of you who watched TWP – 01 – Luck, and thought to yourself, “That was funny. I can’t wait to see some more funny videos from these people.” Well, 02 – Attractive is much less funny. I think that’s a good thing though. We all have very different styles and therefore, many different types of wonderments will be made.

Check out TWP – 02 - Attractive

I started thinking this script though Christmas day, sitting by the fire talking to my mom, but I didn’t write it until early January. Once I started writing it down, it just all poured out. I wanted to make an introspective piece with a guy really trying to figure out what it is that makes this girl like him. I really didn’t know how it was going to go as I started writing it, but as I went along, I knew that I wanted it to end with my character delivering my favorite quote about true love. It is from Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”. I love that quote and say it all the time.

Almost every line in the conversation comes from actual conversations I had with an ex-girlfriend. I am positive that I tried to cheer her up once by saying that she looked good, not great, but good (I don’t remember it working…). And I can’t give a compliment to save my life. Before anyone reads too deeply into this video, I don’t have low self-esteem, but I really am this self-critical. It’s just my way.

When I was discussing with Jeff how we were going to shoot this one, I fell in love with the idea of just having 1 long walk and talk shot. This sounds like it would make things simple, but it was far from that. It is extremely difficult to hold a Flip Camera steady while walking backwards. We made some special shock-mounted holders for the cameras, and we practiced around the house and the street outside, just getting used to the movement. All in all, Jeff did a great job keeping the frame and not being too hurky-jerky.

Eli shot with the other camera and picked up the opening shot. I think that it’s really a nice way to get into the scene. Alison did a great job making sure that Jeff didn’t get run over as he crossed the street (we had one close call). Maya, who is the girl in the piece, was really amazing to work with. She brought a lot of specific characterizations that really fleshed out the script to bring it all alive. Thanks Maya.

-Bryan

[TWP01] Luck

So I guess this will be the official post talking about the first Wonderment. Luck was written by myself with some help from Bryan and Eli. It starred myself and Ivy Hong, who did a fantastic job! Eli and Alison Howe were working the cameras, and Bryan was taking care of everything else. Bryan was also the editor.

Check it out.

Anyhoooo, it's about luck. And how it's real. It's basically what I really think about the subject. I actually wrote it years ago when Bryan first suggested this project. It just popped into my head, wrote it that night, and sent it over to him. Two years (Something like that?) later, we dusted it off and actually shot it. Pretty weird. I originally wrote it a bit like old sci-fi stories (And poorly written recent ones), where one character goes off on long explanations and the other person just sits there egging them on or saying "But that's impossible!" Like the opening scene in The Time Machine. Bryan helped fill out the ambiance of the story and Ivy did a great job adding character where it was lacking.

For all the math buffs! Before you get up in arms at me let me explain!

33.2 coin flips isn't a very nice round number (Necessary to get to 1 in 10 billion for any given person to get all heads), but I still wanted to be able to say 50/50 a lot. So that got fudged. And I guess that "50/50 chance that there is one person" should be "50/50 chance that there is at least one person." 50/50.

Jeff

Manifesto

1. All Wonderments must be shot on the Flip Video HD cameras.

2. All Wonderments must take no more than 1 hour to shoot. And to prove that the video was shot in under an hour, each video must start and end with a shot of a cell phone giving the start and end times for the shoot

3. All Wonderments must take place in public. Nothing shot in your bedroom, back yard, corporate office. It about public experiences.

4. All Wonderments must have no more than 4 people with speaking roles.

5. All Wonderments must cost less than $100 to produce, but anything you can get for free...totally cool.

6. All Wonderments are about an interesting moment in your day. Not the most interesting moment of your life. No murders, rapes, loves, deaths, etc.

7. All Wonderments must be between 2 and 10 minutes long.

8. All Wonderments must have a script and be rehearsed at least once.

9. All Wonderments must be shot by non-professional camera people.

10. All Wonderments are self-contained. These are just themselves and happy in whom they are.

First post

Hi Everybody,

Welcome to the blog for the Wonderment Project. Check us out at thewondermentproject.com and YouTube.

Check back here for news and such.

Jeff