19th State had a radical Labor Day weekend. David and Jennie Orr, Nathan Vollmar and I went up to Monticello, Indiana to stay at Jennie O's parents' place for a couple days. A fabulous time was had by all. We went to a driving range, played Putt-Putt, shot a bow & arrow, and ate more food than any human being should ever consume in one weekend. I can't remember if I had seven or eight eggs for breakfast Sunday, but you get the idea.
It wasn't all fun and games and gastronomic adventurism though. We were really there to get down to business. We've been discussing the prospects of making a documentary on some aspect of rural Indiana culture for awhile, and we've decided to try something related to small-town auction houses. If you haven't been to a big ol' auction out in the country, you're missing the people-watching experience of a lifetime for one, not to mention all the amazing stuff to be found. Personally, I would suggest a place called Dinky's in Montgomery, Indiana as a starting point.
Anyway... these places are absolutely fascinating, and we're hoping that we'll be able to find enough stories with auctions as the hub to make a proper documentary on the subject. We don't know at this point what the focus will ultimately be; whether it will rely on the quirky junk-collectors who frequent these sales, the auctioneers who run them, people trying to get into the auctioneer's business, or (most likely) some combination of them all.
Monticello seemed like a good place to start because Don Wiley, Jennie O's dad, has an impressive collection of random stuff that he's acquired at these types of sales over the years. We spent a few hours with him on camera, showing off his collection and telling stories about how he gathered all the stuff. It was our first test for this documentary project, and the footage turned out pretty well.
The plan right now is to go up again sometime in the next few weeks and actually attend some auctions with Mr Wiley, see if we can make some more contacts in that scene, and then see how the footage progresses. Then after a month or so of shooting, edit down a trailer or a short and try to figure out if we have enough of a storyline developing to keep going with it and try to make this thing work in feature length. All in all, I'm pretty excited about the project so I hope it pans out.
It wasn't all fun and games and gastronomic adventurism though. We were really there to get down to business. We've been discussing the prospects of making a documentary on some aspect of rural Indiana culture for awhile, and we've decided to try something related to small-town auction houses. If you haven't been to a big ol' auction out in the country, you're missing the people-watching experience of a lifetime for one, not to mention all the amazing stuff to be found. Personally, I would suggest a place called Dinky's in Montgomery, Indiana as a starting point.
Anyway... these places are absolutely fascinating, and we're hoping that we'll be able to find enough stories with auctions as the hub to make a proper documentary on the subject. We don't know at this point what the focus will ultimately be; whether it will rely on the quirky junk-collectors who frequent these sales, the auctioneers who run them, people trying to get into the auctioneer's business, or (most likely) some combination of them all.
Monticello seemed like a good place to start because Don Wiley, Jennie O's dad, has an impressive collection of random stuff that he's acquired at these types of sales over the years. We spent a few hours with him on camera, showing off his collection and telling stories about how he gathered all the stuff. It was our first test for this documentary project, and the footage turned out pretty well.
The plan right now is to go up again sometime in the next few weeks and actually attend some auctions with Mr Wiley, see if we can make some more contacts in that scene, and then see how the footage progresses. Then after a month or so of shooting, edit down a trailer or a short and try to figure out if we have enough of a storyline developing to keep going with it and try to make this thing work in feature length. All in all, I'm pretty excited about the project so I hope it pans out.
posted by William Winchester Claytor at
2:20 PM
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