Winner for “Best Cinematography”

Ben Palmer and James Blackburn 2013
Article from the “Santa Fe New Mexican”

June 7th, 2013
Hireling, made by James Blackburn and Ben Palmer, celebrates Quentin Tarantino’s crime melodramas in abbreviated form.

Palmer, an Albuquerque resident, said that three minutes was almost too much time for Hireling. “People do have a short attention span these days. I even thought Hireling was slow, with so few camera movements and so little dialogue. You don’t have to tell everything, because the audience does not have to be told outright everything that is going on. Give them the gist of it; they will pick up the rest.”

He and Blackburn shot their picture just off the intersection of Coors Boulevard and Montoya Street in Albuquerque in less than six hours over two days in March. They play the two leads, and actress Destiny Dickinson portrays the third character; all are hired assassins. Their initial goal was just to try out their new video equipment. “James wrote the basic script in about five minutes,” Palmer said. Passing joggers expressed some concern that the trio was running around with prop guns, but other than that, it was an uneventful shoot, he said. Palmer and Blackburn have written and filmed a three-minute sequel to Hireling and are working on the third short film in what has turned out to be a series.