blogger interrupted

These videos aren’t from this disk, but I found them while rummaging around the other day.  

The first is the original trailer from the documentary I filmed with Jake Shaw during Tim Ryan’s fall 2002 general election campaign.  The film’s original vision was to be a documentary about how an election works in America, explained by an American, to an audience outside of America.  Jake and I spent over a year pitching this idea to British TV.  People who followed my blogging as Democracy Guy will recognize the style.

That film turned into a Tim Ryan fluff piece thanks to Tim Ryan.  

The first 5 minutes went by.  Then the next.  About half way through, I realized I wasn’t in the film, and wasn’t going to be in the film.  

My stomach began to feel sick.  I spent over 2 years filming and pitching this thing, editing it, working it, in anticipation of this final edit, and the result was as if I hadn’t existed.  It bore no resemblance to the film I had last worked on with Jake at his flat in Nottingham months previous…

“Why does he want you out of the film?” Jake asked.

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No….I guess you need to take this up with him,” Jake finished.

“Oh, I will,” I replied. 

The second video is the first pilot I shot with Jake at the Labour Party conference in September, 2001, right after September 11.  We shot this literally 2 months before I was arrested, and 4 months before I started working for Tim Ryan.  Here’s the pitch document (pdf) to British TV which Jake and I used for over a year, to countless British broadcasters, production companies, and editors, including the original Tim Ryan film idea.  

Original Tim Ryan 2002 trailer.

Based on this idea from Labour Conference, 2001.

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