Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Launching The Midnight Media Coup and the Re-Mapping Our (his)Stories Project
http://midnightmediacoup.webstarts.com
Friday, April 30, 2010
Artist Statement?
here it is! ( i think )
The Trek Project is the culmination of a journey. For me this project has been an experiment, an investigation, an interrogation. Creating this project has sent me into some of the most uncomfortable places in my soul; time spent interrogating systems of oppression that I have both opposed but also supported. Examining all of this I repeatedly asked myself what is my stake in all of this? Who am I to create this story?
It is a question that this movie does not answer, rather it pushes it further, complicates the lines of borders, travel and story. I created this project to give back to an organization that has given me endless opportunity and perspective. What I give to you, the viewer, is a piece of this, a piece of the journey and a chance for perspective. What will you do with it?
The Trek Project is the culmination of a journey. For me this project has been an experiment, an investigation, an interrogation. Creating this project has sent me into some of the most uncomfortable places in my soul; time spent interrogating systems of oppression that I have both opposed but also supported. Examining all of this I repeatedly asked myself what is my stake in all of this? Who am I to create this story?
It is a question that this movie does not answer, rather it pushes it further, complicates the lines of borders, travel and story. I created this project to give back to an organization that has given me endless opportunity and perspective. What I give to you, the viewer, is a piece of this, a piece of the journey and a chance for perspective. What will you do with it?
Sunday, March 21, 2010
DONE
ok, so, its about 2 months late, buuuuut, the editing of El Trompo is done!
the video will be ready to screen soon, all that has to happen is final sound editing and subtitles.
ALSO The Trek Project itself is also almost done!
one of the big barriers to completing the project is that I need to work on the timeline of US Latin American History and make it more graphically appealing, you can see the timeline in the previous post, if anyone has any ideas/drawings they think would work well with the timeline send them along!
Hopefully the next few weeks will go smoothly and the piece will be screening and released soon!
the video will be ready to screen soon, all that has to happen is final sound editing and subtitles.
ALSO The Trek Project itself is also almost done!
one of the big barriers to completing the project is that I need to work on the timeline of US Latin American History and make it more graphically appealing, you can see the timeline in the previous post, if anyone has any ideas/drawings they think would work well with the timeline send them along!
Hopefully the next few weeks will go smoothly and the piece will be screening and released soon!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
3rd and (almost) Final Cut
Last sunday I finished the last major rough cut of El Trompo, it is posted on vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/9503078
or below:
the password is the same as the last two times and if you don't know it just email me (hhconnects@gmail.com) or Facebook me and I will let you know.
Also as far as the rest of the project is concerned I am posting the rough version of the timeline below:
As you can probably guess production has been pushed back a little farther than I originally intended. However, I promise it will be worth it!
http://vimeo.com/9503078
or below:
3rd Cut El Trompo Best Quality from Helyx Chase on Vimeo.
the password is the same as the last two times and if you don't know it just email me (hhconnects@gmail.com) or Facebook me and I will let you know.
Also as far as the rest of the project is concerned I am posting the rough version of the timeline below:
As you can probably guess production has been pushed back a little farther than I originally intended. However, I promise it will be worth it!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Translations
Since the beginning TTP has presented me with a language barrier. My Spanish is conversational at best but I tend to understand a lot more than I can speak. In some sense I started preparing to travel to Nicaragua in January of 2009 when I traveled to Guatemala to take a 2-week Spanish intensive. Before I went buildOn requested that while I was in Nicaragua I hire a translator to accompany me so that I would not monopolize the program translators. My plan had been to only use buildOn’s translators for straight on interviews but I agreed to hire the translator despite the strain it put on my budget. On my first day in Nicaragua I met Javiera, we lived together for 2 weeks with our host family, slept in the same bed and were together for almost 24 hours a day. We grew quite close and I found her to be valuable in many more ways than I anticipated entering this project.
While in Nicaragua Javiera would joke that I didn’t even need her. I could generally understand what people told me during interviews and in my own conversations. However, having a translator I discovered became of great benefit to me when it came to speaking and translating my ideas into something that the people in the community could understand. While I can speak some Spanish, my grammar is rather awful and there are dialectic nuances within Nicaraguan Spanish that I do not know. Javiera was able to help me navigate that space.
When I returned to the States to edit the documentary I used only the recordings of translations on the tape and relied mostly on my own Spanish to edit down interviews, etc. I made an agreement with a friend who agreed to write up subtitles for me which has given me concrete translations from a Spanish speaker.
However, as I edit the piece I often find that the in-country translators tended to simplify the words of the community members. I listen to the community members speak and find power in the words and phrases they choose to repeat and the way that they repeat them, however, when our translators repeated the sentiments in English for the team they tended to leave out those repetitions and miss the intonations of the speakers. Additionally, while conducting interviews with my translator I found that she would often not translate sentences when she thought that they were not responding to the question in the way that I wanted them to.
As I move into final cuts I am left with one problem. How do I translate? My intention from the beginning is that the entire piece should be bi-lingual. There is no need in my mind to have a Spanish version and an English version. Additionally, the community in which I shot the documentary has many residents who are illiterate. My preference is that the entire piece should have spoken translations for all of the English and preferably the Spanish as well, because it is certainly unfair to assume literacy in the US as well. The piece I feel should be accessible to as many people as possible, when education and literacy present such a huge barrier to understanding “academic” concepts I do not want to continue this problem of academic/educational elitism.
And yet as I struggle to complete the piece I run into the technicalities of using that many double translations. To have everything spoken in both languages could potentially almost double the length of the piece, and I fear that it will not be able to sustain the increased length. Writing this reminds me why I want to, and need to continue to translate and make the piece accessible, and yet how do I make this all work?
While in Nicaragua Javiera would joke that I didn’t even need her. I could generally understand what people told me during interviews and in my own conversations. However, having a translator I discovered became of great benefit to me when it came to speaking and translating my ideas into something that the people in the community could understand. While I can speak some Spanish, my grammar is rather awful and there are dialectic nuances within Nicaraguan Spanish that I do not know. Javiera was able to help me navigate that space.
When I returned to the States to edit the documentary I used only the recordings of translations on the tape and relied mostly on my own Spanish to edit down interviews, etc. I made an agreement with a friend who agreed to write up subtitles for me which has given me concrete translations from a Spanish speaker.
However, as I edit the piece I often find that the in-country translators tended to simplify the words of the community members. I listen to the community members speak and find power in the words and phrases they choose to repeat and the way that they repeat them, however, when our translators repeated the sentiments in English for the team they tended to leave out those repetitions and miss the intonations of the speakers. Additionally, while conducting interviews with my translator I found that she would often not translate sentences when she thought that they were not responding to the question in the way that I wanted them to.
As I move into final cuts I am left with one problem. How do I translate? My intention from the beginning is that the entire piece should be bi-lingual. There is no need in my mind to have a Spanish version and an English version. Additionally, the community in which I shot the documentary has many residents who are illiterate. My preference is that the entire piece should have spoken translations for all of the English and preferably the Spanish as well, because it is certainly unfair to assume literacy in the US as well. The piece I feel should be accessible to as many people as possible, when education and literacy present such a huge barrier to understanding “academic” concepts I do not want to continue this problem of academic/educational elitism.
And yet as I struggle to complete the piece I run into the technicalities of using that many double translations. To have everything spoken in both languages could potentially almost double the length of the piece, and I fear that it will not be able to sustain the increased length. Writing this reminds me why I want to, and need to continue to translate and make the piece accessible, and yet how do I make this all work?
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