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

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:

Last year, David Bolt, the director of the organization, shot an award-winning documentary about a little girl named Hannah (David was my “chance encounter” from the previous post). I helped David produce a 37-minute Chinese version of Hannah’s Story which I encourage you to watch (just press play at the bottom of this post).

The 90-minute documentary which I will be producing and co-directing will be similar in concept to Hannah’s Story except that it will be entirely in Chinese. Appreciate your questions and comments. Enjoy watching!

Bring Me Hope: Hannah’s Story – Chinese Edition

Hi everyone, welcome back or welcome to the blog. It’s been awhile since I have “blogged” and while I have missed it I really didn’t have much to blog about. There was only enough going on for a Facebook status update or 3. (And usually those would turn into all out opinion wars.)  But now something has come up that is definitely worth blogging about.

One of my dreams in the last 15 years or so was to make a feature length documentary. I had lots of ideas for documentaries (even attempted to hitchhike across America while making one) but nothing really worked.

Fast forward to China… I have now been living in China for over 5 years. I have really grown to love it here and feel extremely blessed to live here with my family and watch China transform. With the transformation comes a wealth of stories. For someone who loves documentaries it is an awesome opportunity now to make something happen.

A few months ago I had a chance encounter (my life is full of these) with someone who has recently made a documentary and would like to do another larger scale one. He has asked me to help him and so for the last month we have been in pre-production mode to make it happen. ALOT of things have come together and now we have finalized the budget and have garnered the board’s approval for the budget. It’s going to happen.

There is no way I can communicate here how excited I am about this. Like I said before, it’s a lifelong dream and… wow, I am undeserving!

STAY TUNED…   peace, roger

ps. I also hope to keep my other musings and ramblings on here as well…