Second project, first finished film

I finished a short (3-minute) video, which is really more of a pitch than anything, called “Conflict in DR Congo: A Crash Course.” Once I have the revised edit ready for public consumption, I’ll post a link.

At the moment, it is being evaluated by a panel of judges for a competition to win tuition for film school. I should know by May 20 if it has made the list of finalists.

From April 9-28th, I was in Kinshasa, and arrived without a suitcase, so my camera made it but several smaller bits did not, and the tripod went missing with the suitcase. I felt a bit deflated about my project, a feeling that did not improve when I asked my friends if they would let me interview them about expat life in Kinshasa and they said no. So I waited until the very last minute, the day before I was leaving, to get some footage for the 3-minute project.

I interviewed a friend and former colleague of mine, who summarized some of the issues surrounding civil conflict in DR Congo, which was acute between 1997 and 2002, but has continued to the present, particularly in the east. This interview is interspersed with some footage from around Kinshasa and some Creative Commons photographs from Flickr.

This project was a huge learning experience, but I think that’s a different post.

——————————————————-

The elin o’Hara slavick project is on hold temporarily. I spent about 10-12 hours editing thusfar, and it will take at least that many again to finish. I found out that I can edit at The People’s Channel for free, as long as I produce something that they can air locally. (Of course – who doesn’t want free publicity?) So I am planning to work in some editing time over the next month or so and get that off my plate.

Current video project and new toys

Update 

It’s been just over a month since we recorded our footage, which was a total of around 35 minutes.  I’ve worked on editing about 3-4 hours a week at most due to computering limitations, namely that I am restricted to iMovie and the footage itself has been captured on one computer in the Arts Center Mac lab.  I’ve pared off over 15 minutes of footage, which is great, but I have a long way to go before I have a finished product.

In the end, I think the movie about elin o’Hara slavick will be around 15 minutes, a bit longer than our intended 5-10 minutes, but worth the effort.

Aside 

[As an aside, elin has an art opening in Raleigh tomorrow night that she is co-curating called HEROES at the LUMP Gallery.  Here is an excerpt from her statement about the exhibit and an image of Jenny Laden's Wonder Mama:

Artists Laura Sharp Wilson and elin o’Hara slavick began a collaborative series of Heroes out of a need to name, recognize, honor and remember people who influence, inspire, change, educate and amaze us in our wreck of a world. We have grown accustomed to a comfortable disappointment in, lethargic shock of and a seemingly eternal dissatisfaction with this late-capitalist, “free trade,” global economy world that rewards corporate and military criminals and punishes the poor, the imprisoned, the victims of this system and anyone who tries to make it better, fairer, or a tiny bit more beautiful.

 

Go check out the exhibit - it runs through April 26.  End of aside.]

New toy

I’ve had lots of great ideas lately for documentary projects, and even though I can check out equipment from The People’s Channel, there is a limit of about 72 hours at most, which means local filming.  The People’s Channel is local, so this makes perfect sense.  But I am a traveler and I work overseas and my interests are global.  So I decided to take the plunge and get a camera.  I don’t have it in my hot little fists yet, but very soon I will be the proud owner of a Canon HV20  and some accessories.

I’ll be in Kinshasa next week so I’m going to work on coming up with a project idea that will be filmed in my free time.  Ha ha.  Free time.  Right.

Lessons learned from first shoot

Shooting our footage was a grand learning experience. We did this in one window of 3.5 hours, from picking up equipment to dropping it off again.

Lesson 1: Plan lots of time. Even checking out equipment took an hour, because we had to ensure that all packs included all items on the list. We also got an impromptu review of how to use some of the equipment, important since I missed both the sound class and the lighting class.

Lesson 2: Take time to set up. Fortunately our interviewee was amenable and relaxed, as we used the first 20 minutes of our session to set up tripods, attach batteries, turn on cameras and lights, plug things in, attach lavaliers to people. Unfortunately, due to our inexperience, we did not notice till after shooting that the beachtek was not plugged into the camera and the lavaliers that the interviewee and I wore recorded no sound.

Lesson 3: Take time to shoot. I was concerned with finishing within our appointed time block, and I was trusting my collaborator with much of the camera work, but I was equally responsible for some problems. In reviewing the footage, of which there is only one take, shaky camera work is apparent, as is accidental zooming out, jerky panning, and variable exposure (most too dark).

Lesson 4: Take time to ensure that the team is on the same page. My collaborator and I disagreed a couple of times, first over exposure and second over framing. Our interviewee specifically requested that we include a certain painting in the frame as she talked about it, but in looking back at the footage, only the bottom corner appears.

A lot of these problems will be worked out in the editing process, but in the future, I’ll be paying much more attention to these elements for starters.

The subject of my first movie

For my video production class, it was suggested that we do an interview of some sort and end up with a project of around 5 minutes. The example that we were shown was featuring the Carolina Roller Girls.

I proposed something with a bit less action but with a lot of political and visual interest. The project Bombsites by elin o’hara slavick is a series of paintings completed since 1999 that describe abstract maps of cities and countries around the world that the United States has bombed since 1854. There are 60 paintings in the series, 30 of which are online, and this total does not include all of the places that the US has bombed.

Last summer, a book was released by Italian publishing company CHARTA called BOMB AFTER BOMB: A Violent Cartography. This book features an interview of elin o’hara slavick, an introduction by radical historian Howard Zinn, and color plates of all the paintings with an index of descriptions in the back.

This is one of my favorite paintings in the series, Amchitka:

The Down, Dirty, & DIY Guide to Film and Video

I was looking at the Cats Cradle schedule and found the Flicker film festival website, which is a tad sparse, but nonetheless the phenomenon has spurred on chapters around the US and internationally, which is pretty neat.  Looks like I’ll have to reserve March 16 to go check it out.

But what I really want to tell you about is The Down, Dirty, & DIY Guide to Film and Video that I found linked on the site.

I am taking a video production class at the Arts Center and we received some materials, the main points of which are incorporated in this document.  I am also reading bits of Film Art for my online class, some of which are incorporated in here.  The cool thing is that it looks like a very approachable and usable resource, and it’s right there for you to download, too!  Looks like it finishes up with a list of some good web resources.

Shift

A few months ago, I was in Johannesburg, mostly by accident. My visit coincided with a film festival and my only contact there wanted to see a film about Burma. I met several directors of pieces that were shown at the fest, many of which had a human rights bent. And I thought – yes. This is what I want to do.

It seems kind of crazy, considering the fact that my background is in public health and I have no media knowledge other than what I consume. But hey, I thought I would give it a go. You are welcome to watch.