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Despite Supreme Court Ban, California's Prop 8 Trial Hits YouTube

By Bruce Carton

The U.S. Supreme Court may have spoiled the plans of many people who wanted to watch a Web broadcast of California's high-profile Proposition 8 trial on the legalization of same-sex marriage, but that is not stopping two creative producers in Los Angeles. Via this post on the South Florida Lawyers blog I learned that two producers have been "airing" the trial in a unique way: "by staging elaborate reenactments with real actors playing the judge, lawyers and witnesses, and posting it all on YouTube." SFL reports that the two Los Angeles men (John Ainsworth, an actor, and John Irelandare, a filmmaker) are using the actual courtroom testimony to create elaborate YouTube re-enactments, "complete with professional actors, realistic sets and a budget that might buy you lunch." When it is completed, the producers expect 60 hours of video will reconstruct 12 days of testimony taken verbatim from court transcripts. SFL reports that it "played a few clips and found them grindingly realistic. By that I mean, they are at times exceedingly boring, filled with asides, mistakes, halting speech, objections and admonishments from the judge on how to properly object, mundane matters like whether a document was already admitted or not, whether...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on February 05, 2010 (boomark / email).