DIY Documentary

In the past few months, Minnesota has hosted PEZCon X, an international PEZ convention; the Free Range Film Festival, screened inside a big barn in the heart of the state’s organic farm country; and the Hungry Cyclist, an Englishman biking across the world for Macmillan Cancer Relief.

Chuck Olsen, a highly caffeinated thirty-four-year-old filmmaker who wears little black glasses, has captured these stories and many others. Olsen is the owner and operator of Minnesota Stories (www.mnstories.com), a new daily blog that consists of artful video clips. His “vlog” is rather like a regionalized, abbreviated, video version of This American Life. Due to the limits of bandwidth and attention span, Minnesota Stories are usually short, mini-documentary films running up to about five minutes.

Olsen first got the idea about four years ago while working at Twin Cities Public Television. He initially envisioned a television series. As he became more immersed in the vlogging community, he realized the medium’s potential and adapted his idea for the Internet.

Anyone with a video camera and a Minnesota story to tell (or show) is welcome to contribute. Olsen said vlogging is a way to democratize production in a time of mass media conglomerates, and to create a sort of “citizen channel” that is considerably more accessible than community access television.

“It’s kind of a continuation of what you see with blogs,” Olsen said. “A lot of people who didn’t have a voice in broadcast or print media or mass media now do.” Besides Olsen’s footage, Minnesota Stories showcases work from many others. Some are amateurs and others are professionals. Chuck Tomlinson, the former co-host of Radio K’s Cosmic Slop show, posted his wife and daughter’s journey to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, to support Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan. Other recent entries have starred residents of St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood and Duluth cartoonist Chris Monroe, creator of the comic strip Violet Days.

Olsen is a busy new-media mogul. In addition to Minnesota Stories, he contributes to MNSpeak.com, a spiffy and smart Twin Cities daily blog. He got his start as a correspondent for the pioneering daily vlog Rocketboom. He also began posting clips of a longer documentary about blogging called—naturally—Blogumentary. He found it a useful filmmaker’s tool. “It’s great,” he said. “You get that immediate feedback from people, and people can follow the progress of what you’re doing immediately,” he said.

While Minnesota is rich in stories for his vlog, Olsen looks beyond the land of lakes. He and friends are trying to organize an international “vlogathon” aimed at raising funds to put the relatively simple technology into the hands of people worldwide, and to raise cultural awareness.

“It’s hard to hate somebody if you can see how they live, and see that they’re real people and you have things in common with them,” he said. In November, Olsen will teach a vlogging workshop at Minnesota’s Center for Media Arts in St. Paul. “We want to teach people how to videoblog—give them the equipment and the knowledge—-to create that cross-cultural dialogue. Even if there’s a language barrier, you can show people things and still communicate.”—Jenny Woods


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