The documentary wrap-up…

My last post was on October 22, 2010… wow, talk about dropping the ball! The documentary is finally in what I would consider a wrap-up stage. I am currently working with a group of Bring Me Hope volunteers to translate from Mandarin into English for the subtitles…

THE DELAY

As some of you might remember the original ‘deadline’ for the documentary was the end of 2010. Now here we are in May, 2011 with nothing ‘finished’ and it turns out that making a movie in a language that you don’t understand is stinkin’ hard. Due to budget constrictions and the time it was taking us to edit I had to let my assistant, Julia, go in January. She was extremely gracious and continued to stay on for another month with no pay and then did some more ‘paper editing’ via email. I would take her paper edits and select the timecodes she had given me and do my best (in Chinese) to edit it all together.

THE VIEWING

One thing I am really excited about is a group of students that have volunteered to do some ‘watchings’ of the movie as it progresses. At one screening during the first part one of the students (who was from a village) said that she didn’t realize there were poor kids like some of the ones she was seeing in the movie. This was really encouraging to me because the main purpose of the movie is to open up these students’ eyes to the reality around them and encourage them to be apart of the change.

THE EXECUTION

Originally we were thinking about production and a premiere in or around March. Now that March has come and gone we have a rework of the plan. I will most likely get a hard copy to the people that donated via Kickstarter in the summer and then near the end of the summer there will be a Premiere in Kunming where hopefully we can show it to a large group of students.

THANKS!

Thanks again for all the encouragement and thoughts we have recieved during this experience. I really believe that at least a few Chinese University students that view this will be inspired to get involved with helping some kids. This is all because of you guys so a continuing heartfelt thanks!

Theme Song Demo

Hello all! Another update on the documentary. The editing is in full swing and we have almost finished the first animation about the story of the boy whose mom abandoned him. It looks amazing!

I wanted to share with you guys a little bit about how the music is progressing. The music director/composer  is named Gou. He has worked on a few movies before and did some music for the Olympics in 2008 in Beijing. He has put together a team of musicians to compose some songs for the movie. We went to his house last night and got a preview of the theme song for the documentary. It is called “Prayer”. Here is a short video of him testing out the words to the song and playing us the latest version. And a discussion about getting old

ps. that’s my beautiful (and smart) wife in the video doing the translation and laughing.

Moving right along…

Hey all, sorry for the long delay in posts (I think, unfortunately, you’ll be hearing that line often) First off I just want to say a thank you to all the friends (new and old) and family who have supported the documentary project over the last few months. The Kickstarter fundraising was a great success and I have had other individuals donate time and money to the film as well outside of the Kickstarter. THANK YOU ALL!!

Now, for a bit of a progress report. I have moved my editing system into an office down the road from my house and setup  a room for work. I have hired a new editing assistant who is going slowly through the 60+ hours of footage everyday and finding the highlights and I (as of this Monday) have started editing. The goal is to be done with a “mid-final” edit by Dec 15. This would include everything from the music and art, to the video. Then hopes of a final product by the end of the year.

One of the most exciting things so far has been the artist that Juliann (our Art Director) discovered. The artists’ name is Xiao Mi and she is amazing. I’ll close this post by showing you a page from her storyboarding for one of the animations that will be in the documentary (click to make it bigger). Peace to all!  roger

The difference of culture…

Making a documentary like this is interesting. Being married to someone from China for 8 years I thought I had the culture thing figured out but seems I have a lot to learn. For example, we were confronted today by someone claiming that our documentary was “fake”. While it is true that we have directed alot of what’s going on, the kids smiles are definitely not fake.

The question is this: How do you make a documentary with a mission and still make a documentary. Well, we have decided to include some of the process making in the documentary itself. Call it transparency or what have you but we feel it important to show our Chinese audience that some goofy foreigners have attempted to make this happen and attempted to challenge their thinking. Culture is a wall sometimes but definitely not insurmountable.

EDIT: In reading this back to myself I realize another problem, it’s easy as Americans to forget that we have alot to learn. I think I sounded like I was trying to be a teacher to Chinese people. That’s not it, honestly it’s this: There are so many poor kids in this country that would be better helped by their own people than by foreigners coming in with their agendas and so that’s the challenge of the film.

This is what one month into documentary filming looks like…

http://kck.st/9aS1y8