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!

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.

Macgyver Battery… my battery creation is causing buzz in the audio which has forced me to keep looking for a battery solution (just found one this morning on TaoBao (China’s Ebay). It just came out which means Chinese guys have reverse engineered the Panasonic batteries!)

Camera Crew – Here is the video I took of our crew the other evening (shot with the little Kodak Playsport waterproof cam) Irene is the Assistant Producer, couldn’t be doing this without her.

Random Chinese Greatness – This picture was taken on Saturday by Irene as we were moving Long Qing into her new house. I’m guessing these 3 elderly ladies didn’t have enough money for a cab. The lady on the end must be using some kind of Chinese Kung Fu to hang on.

We don't need no stinking taxi...

They are two university students from the Art Institute here in Kunming and They will be swapping off between camera and audio duties. I’m really excited about working with them!

Thanks for all you Facebook birthday “wall wishers”, it was fun to read those all day!

Last Saturday we had our “talent search” for the documentary. To recap what the documentary is, the story in the documentary will follow two Chinese college students as they find a kid in need and help them. Pretty simple and basic but with huge drama waiting around every corner.

So, how do you find two college students in China willing to give up their summer for some good ol’ drama? Well, we did a “talent search”. I believe this idea stemmed from one of David and I’s pre-production brainstorming sessions a month or so ago. We would hire other college students to find these potential participants and then bring them all together to choose which ones were going to work.

So, that brings us to last Saturday:

We had 16 incredible guys and gals show up that were interested in participating in the documentary. After some short introductions we all watched Hannah’s Story together and afterwards got their reaction to the movie and their own stories.

I have rarely been so impressed with a group of college students anywhere. These guys were full of the realization that there were people in their own country suffering and they could and should be doing something about it.

So, along with the college students we had 3 great judges who helped narrow it down from 16 people to 4 (2 girls and 2 guys). Last night we took them all to dinner for some more Q&A time before we make our final decision this Friday.

picture taken by Irene on the incredible Canon 550D: