Indie Filmmaker Turns Snow Day Into Homage to Classic Cinema [VIDEO]

At least one person was being productive during the Great Blizzard of 2010. Filmmaker Jamie Stuart spent hours in the driving snow with his Canon 7D to create Idiot With A Tripod, an homage to Dziga Vertov's 1929 Man With a Movie Camera.

Stuart's short piece appeared in "Roger Ebert's Journal," after the Queens, New York, resident e-mailed the video to the famed critic. Ebert's take on the piece? "This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject," he writes.

If you've ever taken a college film class, it's likely that you've seen Vertov's cinematic depiction of urban life. Well, Idiot With A Tripod is a very similar (albeit less complicated) exploration of a modern New York -- a city symphony depicting a community encased in snow and its efforts to free itself.

Ebert conducted an e-mail interview with Stuart, who explained how the film was made:

"Technically, for Idiot with a Tripod, I shot with my Canon 7D and edited it with Final Cut Pro. Early on, I was able to vary things a little more -- I used macro diopters for the close-ups during the day shots, my portable slider for the dolly shots and also, a 75-300 zoom for the rooftop shots. I was more limited at night because of the weather conditions, so I stuck with my 24mm, 50mm and 85mm -- all of which are manual Nikon lenses. Which meant that in the middle of that maelstrom I was changing lenses, wiping off the lenses and manually focusing/adjusting each shot."

The piece also features music from The Social Network, composed by Trent Reznor, which somehow manages to perfectly recall The Cinematic Orchestra's score for the '20s classic.