Whitney Ransick’s SHOCK TV uses a radical new style to spin its tale of two petty criminals from crime spree through arrest, trial and incarceration. Shot on both 16mm and Betacam, the film unfolds through police interrogation footage and store security camera tapes chronicling the boys’ crimes, their own home videos, and their eventual star turns on fictional true-crime TV shows. SHOCK starts when Bobby and Eddie break into an electronics store and grab the surveillance camera, which keeps recording as they stage their getaway. Soon Bobby’s using it to tape his lowlife friends. As detectives track down first Eddie and then Bobby on a "COPS"-like TV show, Ransick also blasts the notion of honor among thieves. "I’m bored with catering to a certain kind of narrative structure," he says. "I want to push the audience in a direction which it isn’t used to going. Video is all around us; now we can use it to tell a story as another way of seeing." Ransick also says he deliberately cast SHOCK with unknowns "so some unsuspecting viewers can wonder if it’s real."

Ransick graduated from the film program at SUNY Purchase and helped found New York’s Shooting Gallery (TSG) with Larry Meistrich and Bob Gosse, who collaborated on an early draft of SHOCK and gets a writing credit. Ransick’s first feature, Handgun, was TSG’s second film – their followup to Laws of Gravity. He moved out to L.A. in ’95 and was soon landing regular directing gigs on shows like "Homicide," "E.R." and "America’s Most Wanted," ultimately enabling him to front a portion of SHOCK’s budget (the rest comes from private investors). SHOCK shot in Santa Monica and the San Fernando Valley for 16 days last November. For one section of the film featuring store surveillance scenes you’ll see from four different angles in each quarter of the screen, Ransick ran four cameras simultaneously. "It posed a lot of challenging cinematography issues, not to mention a substantial amount of testing to refine our camera approach beforehand," he says. Ransick plans to finish SHOCK by May and blow it up to 35mm before he screens it. All rights are available.

Cast: Freddy R. Capra, Branden Williams, Arthur Nascarella, Karina Arroyave, Frank Medrano, Danny Cistone, Toby Huss. Crew: Producer, Whitney Ransick; Screenwriters, Ransick, John Weiner, Bob Gosse; Director, Ransick; Cinematographer, Jeff Weaver; Sound, Fernando Mugo; Production Designer, George Moes; Casting, Felicia Fasano; Editor, Tom Sanders. Contact: Whitney Ransick, Shock Productions, Inc., 1640 Fifth Street, Suite 212, Santa Monica, CA 90401. Tel: (310) 656-6271, Fax: (310) 656-6277.

All Of It - Jody Podolsky
Another Brother - Tami Gold
The Bumblebee Flies Anyway - Martin Duffy
La Cucaracha - Jack Perez
Desert Blue - Morgan J. Freeman
The Money Shot - Matt Mailer
SHOCK TV - Whitney Ransick
The Sky Is Falling - Florrie Lawrence
Snapped - Jesse Fiegelman
was once a girl... - Hellin Kay