Doc in a Day

Imagine spending a weekend working in intense collaboration with three people you've never met -- including eight straight hours closeted together in a tiny white editing room.

That's what it was like this past weekend for those of us fortunate to be included in Stone Soup Film's "Doc in a Day" project. Stone Soup, a nonprofit that makes films for other nonprofits, fielded five teams of four people each to produce five quick documentaries around D.C. this weekend.

Our team, Team Five (definitely the best one, incidentally), got lucky with our assignment:  BloomBars, a wonderful performance/exhibition/anything space run by John Chambers in Columbia Heights. With what I have to admit was minimal advance coordination, we first met outside BloomBars on 11th Street around 9:15. By 10 am we were shooting. And when we left the tiny Stone Soup edit suite around 8:30 Sunday night, we'd built a complex project that told BloomBar's story with action, interviews, multiple cameras, graphics, cute babies, time-lapse, and a jammin' soundtrack that sampled live audio by Baba Ras D, an artist in residence.

It was another proof that the larger concept of "stone soup," of a community coming together to build something from nothing, works. And a reminder that collaboration with good people can be really, really, fun.  Kelsey, Faith, Zev and I can't wait to show off our work, to see the other teams' films -- and to work together again.