Internets Celebrities

We’ve done two lunch-break shoots at Occupy Wall Street and we figure to do more as the story keeps developing. Our first visit as a team was on October 5 which happened to be the day that many labor unions and busloads of college students joined the protesters for an evening march of nearly 20,000 people. Shooting hours earlier, the scene was still very exciting and we chose to focus on the props that served as visual repeaters in the crowd: handmade signs and cameras. Among the onlookers, we ran into Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme and Ill Doctrine vlogger Jay Smooth and both were game to chat with us for a bit.

We were back on October 14, another big win day for Occupiers (IC’s = good luck) as it was the day the NYPD was supposed to have kicked them all out to “clean up” the park. We interviewed a number of triumphant but exhausted protesters and made two short videos out of that day’s footage.

The lunch break shoot has been an interesting challenge. Our time is short there so we have to stay focused and remind ourselves to keep it moving from one interview to the next. The great and terrible thing about filming at Occupy Wall Street is everybody wants to talk to you, a lot. Also, trying to be too jokey can be counterproductive — even gently mocking a group of people who are earnestly and collectively putting their bodies on the line to change the world leads to mostly a whole lot of clunkers. But we’re learning and we’ll get this documentarian thing down as we keep going. Occupy still isn’t getting the right kind of coverage from mainstream media so we’re happy to make these visits and join in with an army of amateurs broadcasting history.

Thanks to Corinne Marro for editing the video from the first day’s shoot and to Terrence Elenteny the videos from day two. All music by Bless 1.