The $820,000 video that Rio Nuevo paid for to serve as the opening movie for a now-defunct museum planned on the west side will be premiered as part of Tucson 235th birthday bash at the Fox Theatre on West Congress Street downtown on Aug. 21.
The video is now 27 minutes long, up from the 12 to 15 minute originally. This drops the per minute cost of the movie by more than half, from $68,000 a minute to $30,400 a minute.
There will be a reception for Rio Nuevo Board Members, their guests and the media, starting at 4:30 p.m. that Saturday, with the video premiering at 5 p.m.
The whole event is part of the “Big Kahuna” downtown and Fourth Avenue birthday part for Tucson, which is being billed as an “All Sand, No Water” tropical bash to celebrate the Old Pueblo’s birthday.
The $820,000 video was seen as one of the final examples of Rio Nuevo’s excesses before it was taken over by the state. The film is called “Finding Tucson Origins” and is part in English, part in Spanish and part in O'odham, language of the Tohono O’odham.
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Architect Burns Wald-Hopkins Shambach picked a Washington, D.C.-based firm named Hillmann and Carr to make the video. At the time, the firm held an $8.6 million design contract for Tucson Origins Heritage Park. The architects contracted with Hillmann and Carr to make the video for $750,000, and added a $70,000 fee for themselves for overseeing the subcontractor.
Tucson Historic Preservation Officer Jonathan Mabry said the video was comparable to videos of similar length done for the National Civil War Museum and the Brown versus the Board of Education museum which both cost over a million dollars. He said an eight-minute video for the Smithsonian Natural History Museum cost $750,000.
When it was pointed out that Tucson doesn’t have a museum to put the film in, and has no funding to ever build one, Mabry countered that when the film was made there was a museum planned to house the film.
Check out a short version of the film and add your comments.
