An Old Experiment

I read with great interest Amy Wallace’s “The Daredevils of Digital Filmmaking” (Nov. 8), which reported on director Mike Figgis’ current project, “Time Code 2000,” a feature film shot on digital video consisting of one uninterrupted take. I take exception to Wallace’s statement that “for sheer audacity, however, ‘Time Code 2000’ has no rival.”

In September 1998, I, a writer-director living and working in Manhattan, and a crew totaling some 35 people shot our one-take feature, “Big Monday,” twice a day for four days, giving us eight takes from which to choose the perfect one. By December, the film had gotten into its first festival and has since played on both coasts, gathering critical praise along the way.

Being a no-name filmmaker, without visibility and without the relative “pittance” of a few million dollars of studio money behind me, it’s very frustrating to read of an established director getting attention for this idea and its ramifications, which I’ve been preaching to the unconvinced for the last year and a half. So it goes in Hollywood, I tell myself. But hopefully the onset of digital video, in the right hands, will erase the lines between those at the top and we here at the bottom, when it’s proven that we can show the big boys how it’s done.

So if there are any distributors out there interested in a truly groundbreaking film, the rights are still available. Have your agent call my agent.

MICHAEL REHFIELD

New York

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I agree that Figgis’ experiment is an interesting challenge and I look forward to seeing it, but please save the guerrilla angle for filmmakers without corporations behind them.

ALAN FRASER

Alhondiga Pictures

Long Beach