Time Out Chicago Issue 45: Jan 5–Jan 12, 2006
Neighborhood watch
An Internet video site brings the country's coolest 'hoods to you, and cash and exposure to aspiring filmmakers
With its movie moments and art-ghetto history, Wicker Park has been a big star on the cultural map of Chicago for some time. So it's no surprise that it's featured on new website TurnHere.com, which officially launched January 3. The site offers short videos documenting neighborhoods around the country—from the Castro in San Francisco to Canal Street in New York.
But if you don't like the Chicago clip—which features a chick in an AC/DC shirt talking about gentrification and not knowing why the neighborhood is called Wicker Park (FYI: It's named after the Wicker brothers, developers who donated the park land)—then you can make your own and upload it. Or make one of your own neighborhood. And maybe you'll make some money.
Bradley Inman is an entrepreneur, a UC Berkeley guest lecturer and former working journalist who came up with the idea of creating 1,000 videos for the site by commissioning semiprofessional filmmakers and paying them $1,000 a pop. The basic idea behind the TurnHere site is three-fold: to use Internet video, linked with maps and directories, to provide a new way to access information; to allow people to tell stories about places; and to give independent filmmakers paying work.
"Traditionally, students learn more long-form documentary style, but there's a new generation of filmmakers who are interested in doing short, two- to five-minute segments, telling stories," says Inman, who was the "Living in the Bay Area" columnist for the San Francisco Examiner from 1986 to 1995. "You can give people directories, but what is it really like there? All the action is at the local level, the street level."
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The majority of the videos are informative and interesting. Some highlight neighborhood trends like the architectural boom in SOMA (South of Market) in San Francisco and warehouse loft living in Brooklyn. Others are more profile-oriented: a woman explaining how she's turning a crack house into a community center in Washington, D.C., and an Irish immigrant declaring his love of micromosaics in New York. But the only other neighborhood video listed under Illinois besides Wicker Park is of the Gold Coast—and it features a tour of a home on the market for $10.5 million. Weird, we thought—but another purpose of the site is, of course, to make money using the space to sell advertising. "The more commercial part of [the site] is the home tours," Inman says.
While experienced filmmakers can contact TurnHere about possible commission work in their area, there is also a contest for amateur videographers who can win an Apple video iPod, $1,000 cash and a $5,000 college scholarship if their work is selected.—Leah Pietrusiak