24 Hours in a Diner, Giving away our movie

[MattK]

Over christmas break, myself and 2 friends spent 24 straight hours in a historic diner. We kept a blog going and made a documentary about our experince. I just thought I would share this with you guys. You can watch the first cut of our movie for free at - www.digigenonline.com

Hear a radio interview- here
We got a lot of media attention. Front Page of the local paper, a few radio interviews and 2 articles coming out in 2 different weekly publications this month.

[Mike]

Think you can scan the newspaper articles and post them?

Also, the question on everyones mind:
Why?

[MattK]

here is one of them

Union Leader Archive- Young Filmmakers

Young filmmakers capture a day in the life of a Queen City diner that they say is 'so Manchester'

By BENJAMIN KEPPLE
Union Leader Staff
Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005

Manchester — The Red Arrow Diner on Lowell Street is a famed Manchester landmark — and so much a part of the Queen City that Matt Karolian and his friends want to capture it in a movie. Over 24 hours. And, in all likelihood, after dozens of cups of coffee.

Barring any unforeseen events, that crew — all seniors at Central High School in Manchester — will at 8 a.m. today wrap up shooting a documentary at the Red Arrow. In the process, they’ll have spent 24 hours straight at the diner for their film, which will focus on the Red Arrow and the folks they encounter there.

“The Red Arrow is so Manchester,” said Karolian, a Hooksett resident, as he explained why he focused on the Lowell Street landmark for his film. “I love making movies about Manchester. Manchester seems to be underappreciated.”

That’s a sentiment Karolian hopes to counter with the film, the second Manchester-focused movie he’s worked on. The first was “Primary Day,” which looked at the city the day of the 2004 Presidential primary, and won an award at this year’s Hometown Video Festival.

According to Karolian, many high school students say they can’t wait to leave Manchester and head to bigger cities. But Karolian thinks Manchester isn’t as appreciated as it should be for the culture and diversity that does exist here. The Red Arrow, he and his friends figured, would be a good place to showcase that.

“Everyone knows the Red Arrow,” said Sandy Paras, 17, of Manchester, who is producing the film along with Karolian. “Every time you come here, you meet someone you know. And if you don’t, by the time you leave, you’ll know someone.”

“It’s iconic,” Karolian added. “I remember my father bringing me here with my little brother when I was 7 or 8.”

Joining Karolian and Paras at the Red Arrow yesterday was Manchester resident Arielle Kaplan, 18, the film’s production assistant and Karolian’s girlfriend. Among other things, Kaplan was live-blogging yesterday’s filming — that is to say, providing updates to the Internet as events happened via their web site.

“I’m more of an in-front-of-the-camera person as opposed to behind it, so this is kind of new to me,” said Kaplan, who has been involved in live theater for several years. But she shares Karolian’s and Paras’ enthusiasm for the project. As Kaplan put it, “It’s better than reality TV. It’s actual reality.”

The Red Arrow has been enthusiastic about the project as well. It even gave the student filmmakers one of the restaurant’s few booths to use as a workstation during the 24-hour filming. Of course, having filming go on at the Red Arrow isn’t anything new, as employees of the restaurant will tell you.

“We had probably nine different news crews in during the primary,” said waitress Shannon Arbon, who was working yesterday morning. “They’re all over the place.”

But what’s new are the advances in technology that have let the three friends film their movie. Their main videocamera is a Canon GL2 model that retails for about $2,000; they have a Sony Handycam model as a secondary camera. Video-editing software makes it easy to shape the final product.

Then, when all is said and done, they’ll make the movie available for downloading at their Web site. It won’t be as sharp as the finished product, but according to Karolian, they plan to have that available on DVDs as well.

“The digital revolution has made all of this possible,” Karolian said. “If you tried to do this 10 years ago, it would not be possible.”

[MattK]

A new version is online in quicktime format.

www.digigenonline.com

[CarpeDiem]

me and a friend on the thursday before kickoff went to Ihop at 8:00 PM and left on friday at 10:00 PM. we got two items each never ending pancakes for $4.99 and coffe for $1.79 i lost count of how many pancakes i ate but i had 11 pichers of coffe in 26 hours. i will post the pictures at a later date.