ON LOCATION WITH CHASING WINDMILLS

Chasing Windmills is one of the most exciting adventures in dramatic filmmaking to come out of the Twin Cities. Whether you are drawn to the genre of urbane Quixotic drama with a Latin flare or not, you have to admire the shear tenacity of storytelling and the bravado of posting a dramatic story everyday to the internet.

In the couple's first season, during the fall of 2005, Juan Antonio del Rosario and Cristina Cordova centered the short episodic stories primary around themselves and a fictious floundering relationship between a Minneapolis couple with family ties to Puetro Rico. Almost all their scenes were shot in their downtown Minneapolis apartment or nearby skyways and coffeeshops. Dunn Bros. at the Freighthouse is featured prominently in a couple of episodes as well as Runyons Bar. At season end, the couple take a trip to Puetro Rico to visit family and announce their expectations for family expansion.

Then, how quickly the story turns...

In the second season that began appearing on September 25th, the couple have expanded their pallet of locations, story options and characters. They have drawn their characters out of their fan base and through their web presence called together unusual, almost comic book, personae from the world of the web. You don't see these characters on TV because they are post-television digital age citizens. The second season episodes take us in many different directions, following the new characters and into new prominent Minnesota locales.

While the style of their productions appears, at times, to be hap-hazard and loose - a part of its charm - the stories are actually highly crafted and storyboarded. Juan and Cristina take turns handling the camera while the other performs in the scene.

My wife Patricia and I went on location after Juan and Cristina asked Patricia via email if she'd appear in this seasons episodes. The first episode Patricia appears in is titled LURKING. The main character Q and his new roomate Sam Carr enter a Lake street video store, cruising for single women to pick up. Once inside Sam gives his psycho-sexual analysis of women's film taste based on their availability status and suitability for mating. Sam finally concludes the foreign film section presents the best opportunities for a healthy coupling with a partner. And, as is often the case, that's where Q and Sam find Patricia browsing the shelves.

http://www.chasingmills.com

You can view individual episodes of Chasing Windmills on their main page but also see back episodes and read viewer comments on each on their videoblog:

http://chasingmills.blogspot.com

You can also subscribe to Chasing Windmills in iTunes and set them up to be loaded onto your Video iPod. These new distribution mechanisms and the world-wide audience Chasing Windmills has attracted put Juan Antonio and Cristina on the cutting edge of dramatic storeytelling for a new medium. Television had its golden era with the serialized sitcom; printing mastered its storytelling format with the novel; radio found its perfect form with the radio hour variety show; and now the internet with its fast, immediate and very portable content will find its idiom and golden mean.