Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals. The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January someone (I think it was Tim) suggested that we started a daily online magazine!

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Saturday, January 20, 2007

The lair of the Red Worm

The Mongolia documentary, filmed by Richard Freeman in 2005, and edited by yours truly over the last few weeks, is now up on CFZtv.

PART ONE: http://www.cfztv.org/red1.htm
PART TWO: http://www.cfztv.org/red2.htm


It is our most ambitious film yet, clocking in at just under an hour. It is in two parts unfortunately. The irony is that one of our media consultants told me some weeks ago that we should do this, explaining that the "MTV Generation" have short attention spans, and would prefer to see a documentary in small, bite-sized chunks.

My answer was unprintable!

I have a damn sight more faith in the people who watch CFZtv than that! I am perfectly aware that 90% of the stuff on YouTube is under three minutes, and aimed at the so-called "MTV Generation", but 90% of the stuff on YouTube is complete nonsense. In the same way as we refuse to dumb-down the content of our books and magazines simply to appeal to the lowest common denominator, even though it will sell more books, I will not do that with our films either.

If the "MTV Generation" really only have an attention span of ten minutes, then it is about time they grewq up and joined the real world! I really have no intenbtion of pandering to such idiocy.

Nope, the real reason that the film is in two parts, is that our production values are getting so complex now, that even though I have a brand new (OK it was brand-new in September, which probably means - in the current technological climate that the bloody thing is now practically obsolete), dual processor computer, I just did not have the processing power for one, full length, movie.

So maybe the "MTV Generation" have won out after all.

(But don't bet on it)
Posted by Jon Downes at 5:51 AM

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