Is Helix A Green(er) Film Production? Will Be Shot In One Take

Writer/Director Aram Rappaport is shooting a movie in Chicago and he’s doing it in one take. His 100 minute thriller Helix, will be filmed in one continuous shot five different times, once a day over five days. I’m guessing they will pick the best take and release it, though if they were smart they’d include all five takes on an ultra lux special edition DVD.

Film sets have pretty large environmental footprints- they suck up energy running lights, equipment, and trailers, burn through diesel running trucks and generators, and pump pollution into the air with explosions and stunts. Limiting shooting time to five days vastly reduces the environmental impact of your standard movie. Post production consists of a few guys in an editing suite running Final Cut Pro on a desktop Mac and will be particularly light on Helix considering there won’t be any cuts in the movie. They’ll do some color correction, sweeten the sound, and add the titles and credits and export it out ready to rock.

I hope the movie doesn’t suck, I’d like to see more like this.

Link [Wired]

Inventor of Virtual Water Honored by Stockholm International Water Institute, Wins 150 Large

Anthony Allan, a professor at King’s College in London, was recently honored by the Stockholm International Water Institute for his contributions to water research (the honor is no joke: they gave him $150,000). He was recognized for inventing the concept of “virtual water” back in 1993. This concept has revolutionized the way people think about water consumption and it’s worth pausing on this occasion to give it some attention.

Basically, virtual water refers to the water required to produce a commodity. A famous example is a cup of coffee; the process of making that single cup actually requires 140 liters of water (about 37 gallons) to grow and ship the beans. A single hamburger requires 2,400 liters, a beer about 75 liters, and wheat takes 1,300 liters to make 2.2 pounds.

Allan explained, “The water is said to be virtual because once the wheat is grown, the real water used to grow it is no longer actually contained in the wheat. The concept of virtual water helps us realize how much water is needed to produce different goods and services. In semi-arid and arid areas, knowing the virtual water value of a good or service can be useful towards determining how best to use the scarce water available.”

The term “virtual water”–just the term–has always sounded wrong to me, like the water in a video game (Rollercoaster Tycoon, maybe). The water that the term refers to is real enough; it’s simply not physically there with the final commodity. It is sometimes, therefore, called “hidden water” or “embedded water.” But that’s just a problem with the term. The concept itself is essential.

Link [The Raw Story]

Photo Credit: Flickr User Laszlo