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 premiere Aug. 21, as part of Tucson 235th birthday bash at the Fox Theatre on West Congress Street downtown.
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., with the video premiering at 5 p.m.
The whole event is part of the "Big Kahuna" downtown and Fourth Avenue birthday party for Tucson, which is being billed as an "All Sand, No Water" tropical bash to celebrate the Old Pueblo's birthday.
Rio Nuevo Board Member Jeff DiGregorio said the film is called "Finding Tucson Origins" and is partly in English,Spanish and O'odham, language of the Tohono O'odham. The film will be played on Blu-ray and will be projected on the Fox's big screen, although it doesn't have high-end surround sound, he said.
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The video was seen as one of the final examples of Rio Nuevo's excesses before it was taken over by the state. The new Rio Nuevo Board took possession of the video because it paid for the film.
Architect Burns Wald-Hopkins Shambach picked Hillmann and Carr, a Washington, D.C.-based firm, 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 v. Board of Education museum, each of which cost more than 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.
Contact reporter Rob O'Dell at 573-4346 or rodell@azstarnet.com.
