The film is complete. And it has a title. The IMDB submission has been made, festival submissions are beginning, and work on the trailer has begin.
What an unbelievable three years.
The film is complete. And it has a title. The IMDB submission has been made, festival submissions are beginning, and work on the trailer has begin.
What an unbelievable three years.
… finished?
I search for the line of the film from amidst a mountain of impressions, annotations and intuitive connections. To get there, each of the best moments receives a digital “3×5 card” with a title, impressions, tags for scene type, songs and characters, and a summary transcript or translation. With just the best material, I have 422 index cards—too much to parse. So I slice further to just the scenes that send shivers down my spine.
I must be easily impressionable because after the latest cull I still have 129 “so great it has to be in the movie!” scenes…
Fifty-one weeks after my last day in Argentina the process to organize, import, transcode, sort, log, keyword, transcribe, translate and most importantly review and annotate 128 hours of footage is complete. My bullet-point notes add up to 87000 words, 350 pages of observations and insights. My plan was four months. It took almost eight. It’s a tedious process, and though I learned a lot and experienced some spine-tinglingly-great moments, I’m very glad it’s done.
Now on to the next phase of creative work: to transform a few moments from the mountain into 90 minutes of movie magic.
Exciting news! My most recent documentary is now available on Netflix in Canada & the U.S.!
The premiere of my latest documentary A New Economy screened to a sold out audience last night at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver. What a surreal experience to see a lineup around the block…
Thanks everyone for coming out and for being a great audience!
Here is a fresh wallpaper for you. This was taken on approach to KGL (Kigali International Airport) while filming aerials for Rwanda: Hope Rises in 2008. Click on the photo to download a full-size JPEG.
Waiting to Belong from Storyspark on Vimeo.
Over the past several months I’ve been working with a dedicated group of people who want to see the end of the waiting generation in Canada. More than 30,000 kids in Canada are waiting for adoption – and they aim to change that.
My journey with them began by helping uncover their core story through a process I call “story finding”. We found that, though the number of waiting kids is a daunting challenge, it’s also a great opportunity. This is the first of a series of videos talking about adoption and what it means to those who experience it.
Find out more at waitingtobelong.com.
The documentary I directed & produced, Rwanda: Hope Rises was the recipient this past week of the Best Foreign Documentary award at the International Family Film Festival in Los Angeles. Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible!