Simon Butcher

The 1 Second Film

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For a few years now, I've been hearing about The 1 Second Film, but I've never really paid attention to it. The idea is simple: For charity, put together a one second animated film (made up of 12 frames, each frame repeated twice to make one second of total footage) using donated funds.

Simple? Not really. When people donate money, they are essentially buying a producer credit for the film. Each credit costs $1.00 or higher, which means there's likely to be a huge number of credits — So huge, in fact, that it's predicted the credits for this film alone will last 90 minutes. To make things more impressive, they're shooting this extravaganza on 70mm film stock.

Ninety minutes of credits on 70mm stock — Unbelievable.

The charity concerned is the Global Fund for Women — something that really shouldn't exist, but the fact that it does reflects poorly on society. I should mention this is not normally a charity I would think of for donations, but it's still a worthy cause.

The 12 frames are actually 12 very large pieces of art created specifically for the job during an enormous collaboration event involving more than 100 people. There are some interesting stories from the event; For example, as legend has it, some drunk guy painted the word “porno” over a handful of the frames early in the morning.

After talking with colleagues briefly over lunch about the rising popularity of funding independent film-making using micro-payments collected over the Internet, The 1 Second Film serendipitously appeared by way of an accidental Google search. I tried to resist.

I failed.

I'd like to introduce you to Simon Butcher Esquire, producer № 7213. This stately gentleman has contributed more than Pauly Shore or Kevin Bacon, and all those other puny celebrities did. Pfft.

So, I'm now a “producer” of this endeavour, like anyone else can be. Go on, it's a bit of fun: sign yourself up!


Categories Rambling

Comments

  1. Not entirely sure what this movie is... Are you saying it's one minute of movie, with 89 minutes of credits?? Wouldn't they all rather be Alan Smithee ?

  2. (Author)

    Dear Oh-Secret-One, It's actually ONE SECOND of footage followed by approximately 90 minutes of credits. Of course, they have considered the boredom effect here, as not everyone hangs around in the cinema until they see the MPAA logo float up the screen. The idea is that they're putting together a feature-length documentary of the process behind the project, which may also include interviews and even videos from participants themselves. This is supposed to be played while the credits are rolling, from what I've read. To me, that bit sounds a little dull. Of course, IMHO, it will distract anyone's mind away from the one second of actual film, but whatever - it's still a fun idea! :) P.S. - Your email address has been out of service since 1996 — it's time to find another remailer… ;)

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