  MINNESOTA STORIES: The bespectacled Chuck Olsen is probably the best-known of Minnesota’s v-loggers, or “video bloggers,” and his Minnesota Stories offers short films about our fair state at the astonishing rate of one per weekday. If there’s an interesting event in the Twin Cities, such as a Rollergirls tournament or the opening of the new Central Library, chances are good that you’ll see Olsen there with his digital camera, and, within a few days, see a deftly edited, dryly humorous short film on the event. Mnstories.com also features short films by other local digital filmmakers, and the web page includes links to a number of local v-logs. Olsen actually has another, more autobiographical collection of short movies on blogumentary.typepad.com, which range from intimate to hilarious to profoundly weird, and are sometimes all three simultaneously.
CHASING WINDMILLS: Daily episodes from the life of a Puerto Rican couple in Minneapolis, played by J.A. del Rosario and Cristina Cordova, who actually are a Puerto Rican couple living in Minneapolis. Although they film each two-to-three minute episode in their apartment, and additional castmembers, when they appear, are played by the couples actual friends, don’t mistake Chasing Windmills for autobiography—the short films are fictional and scripted, and usually quite funny, functioning as a sort of daily comic strip, which is how the filmmakers often describe it.
DRINKING
WITH IAN: Longtime
public access host and professional boozehound Ian Rans has taken his show onto
the internet — it’s available on multiple sites, but probably easiest
to find on YouTube. In fact, if you don’t want to type in the elongated
URL listed above, just go to YouTube and type ”Drinking With Ian”
into the search engines —you’ll immediately be connected to past
episodes of his intoxicated talk show.
 THE
REAL PAUL BUNYAN: Minnesota
filmmaker Dan Taradash has created a deadpan, Errol Morris-like ode to the giant
lumberjack and his blue ox. Taradash’s web page includes an extended preview
of the hour-long documentary, including recurring images of one of Minnesota’s
most unreal Paul Bunyan statues: The 45-foot moving and talking animatronic
lumberjack in Brainerd.
IDIOT
BOX:
Local comedy troupe Idiot Box has a longstanding fascination with television—as
demonstrated by their name. As a result, even their live performances have frequently
been interrupted by short digital films. Their spoofs of television genres are
frequently uproarious, and they’ve been taking them online for half a
decade now. Their web pages contain dozens of links to their spoofs, usually
offered as iTunes “Vidcasts,” meaning they are downloaded much like
mp3s and play on Apple’s free iTunes program. ||
THE COMING DIGITAL VIDEO REVOLUTION
"Filming
the Digital Revolution" by Max Sparber
"How
digital video and online distribution is going to change the world"
by Max Sparber
"A
quick and dirty guide to making and distributing digital movies" by
Max Sparber
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