A Bit of a Stretch
I am writing in response to Deanna Isaacs’s article “Is a Soundstage a Sound Investment?”, published November 19—a skeptical (at best) examination of the state of Illinois’ plans to offset the expenses of converting the empty Ryerson Steel plant into a series of stages for use in motion picture production. In her article, Ms. Isaacs misconstrues the work of another writer, and then, with seemingly no familiarity with her subject—delivers a lackluster assessment of Chicago’s film community. I have already responded to Ms. Isaacs directly, on your Web edition.
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Christopherson’s quote is an adequate description of what the state of Illinois, and particularly Chicago—currently offer, but all of this is apparently lost on Deanna Isaacs, whose lack of knowledge regarding the Chicago motion picture industry seems profound. Regarding the employment of local crew, Isaacs contends that such work: “typically ranges from a couple days of hairdressing to a couple weeks of carpentry.” I must take exception with her finding. A typical (modest budget) feature film with a 30-day shoot schedule is going to require as much as a month’s prep time, give or take a couple of weeks—depending on the particular job. Carpenters might begin work well over a month before a single frame of film has been shot. Then, the 30 shoot days (six weeks of shooting) followed by wrap weeks—at least one week, and frequently more. So—the six-week shoot schedule might create any number of jobs that run as long as 12 weeks or more, and—again, I’m talking about a low-to-medium budget project. Large projects, like The Dark Knight, effectively double all of those numbers. But, what kind of jobs, and how many people, am I talking about?
Simply put—Isaacs did not do her homework. Yet, she had the “soapbox” for a week, while the Reader moved from coffee shop, to CTA train, to office, to home—potentially influencing public opinion along the way.
Deanna Isaacs replies:
Good story. I’m happy to see a farmer carve out a niche and more importantly have a market to sell his hogs. The whole food issue the Reader did was enjoyable to read, but as I read more about this push in the food world to a certain type of agricultural production nowhere is it mentioned the actual expense to the consumer. We might complain that food is too cheap (and I’ll heartily agree there’s a lot of crap out there masquerading as food) but there’s the flip side—affordability. Granted not everyone is going to be able to buy this pork and that’s not his market—fine. But it seems all stories about agricultural production are focused on small farmers in small markets selling to people who can afford to pay a lot of money for that product. Yet what happens when that market dries up because the person who didn’t think twice of paying $6 a pound for grass-fed hamburger or $5 for a dozen free-range eggs loses his job? Given national unemployment is at 10 percent and rising, the number of “food insecure” (aka hungry) people in the U.S. is growing, making good food affordable has to be considered.
Back when Vocalo was still the “Secret Radio Project,” it was presented as a highly cost-effective radio/Web hybrid, with an alleged firewall between their resources and WBEZ. The online aspect was to include new ways to solicit listener donations—which hasn’t happened. The radio aspect was key to the low cost as it would use a pre-existing tower with a radio boost. The problem is, this plan relied on a zoning change which didn’t get approved. Instead of scaling back and trying again, Malatia spent more than the project’s entire budget building a new tower.
