Rough Cut

SO! Although last week was crazy and hectic in terms of editing it all paid off because last Saturday I got to go to NYC for the day and attend the last post-trek meeting with most of the Trek team participants. The movie seemed to go over well with them, and I am excited about finishing it! Anyway, I am using the next week as a time to get feedback on the documentary. If you would like to watch it and provide feedback please let me know and I will give you the password.


http://vimeo.com/7263840



-helyx

Post Trek 2

So as many of you know I fell a bit behind in editing and so this week has been kicking my ass trying to get ready to show the team a rough cut of the piece tomorrow (today) in New York City at the final Post-trek Meeting. I am super excited to show the rough cut and get feedback not only from the team but also from anyone who is interested in providing constructive feed back!

if you want to preview and review the movie let me know!



PS- the tentative Philly premiere date is January 2nd 2010.

Colonialism/Capitalism Journal Writings

We are forever spinning in a world of our own creation
Capitalist Marketing Schemes pulling us farther into spiraling chaos
What choice is there but to keep spinning, or we fall.


Breaking the cycle
Deconstructing our own interactions
how do we see each other
human to human relationships
country to country destruction
is it our place to cross borders
created by our ancestors
destroyed by our governments
why do we do it?


The title of the documentary is El Trompo, which refers to a spinning top, a toy for children all over the world. Personally I suck at throwing them, but Olman would patiently let me try time after time. The spinning, the spinning reminds me of the world, of our lives, of me, and him and Gualacatu and Los Estados.


ALSO
As far as a production update goes:
I am almost done with the trailer (i swear), and am currently working on getting a rough cut of the documentary together by Saturday for Post-Trek 2 in NYC.

I still need help if anyone out there wants to help with:
animation
setting up the US-Latin American Timeline
color correction
music/audio
using the programs motion or after effects

Journal Reflections

Excerpt from a conversation I had shortly after returning from Nicaragua:

me- "My host mom had never heard of the Jews, and when she told us this we asked her if she had ever heard of Hitler and she said no, she hadn't"

someone else- "You'd think that would have come up in a history class..."

...

I didn't really know how to respond to that, my host mom only had a basic first grade education. When she was elementary school age the revolution was happening in Nicaragua and she had to flee to Honduras with her family; and Nicaraguan refugees were not allowed to attend the schools in Honduras. She eventually returned to Nicaragua and at age 18 she took first grade. I am pretty sure that she had her first son when she was 19. She never had a history class.

One of these things is not like the others:

I came back from Nicaragua with 13 and a half hours of footage to deconstruct, capture, and ultimately turn into the documentary component of The Trek Project. While looking through one of my tapes I isolated a few of these stills that brought one phrase to mind, as the song on sesame street goes, “one of these things is not like the others”. This concept comes to mind when I look at footage or pictures of me with the community, despite my feeling quite at home within the community; it is evident that I am still an outsider. I think that is something important for me, and others, to remember when doing work in, or, when creating work about, communities other than their own. Despite my comfort within Gualacatu, I must remember that it is still a marginalized community in Northern Nicaragua and I cannot hope to fully understand life, or the mindsets of the people in this community, my perspective on this entire project still comes from my position as a white, blonde, Jewish, United States Citizen.

HELP!

As you may or may not know on Monday I returned from Nicaragua at the end of a two-week trip where I completed the bulk of the production for The Trek Project (thetrekproject.blogspot.com). The Trek Project is a 3 part multi-media exploration of the way that we (people living in the United States) create and work within communities both at home and abroad. The first part of the project is a timeline of US-Latin American relations that will be incorporated into the final DvD. The second part is a series of Mapping Workshops and Discussions about the concept of global community, responsibility, and accountability.
Due to the fact that it was only possible for me to travel to Nicaragua with the Trek team as a single person the creation of this project, has, up until this point been primarily a solo process. I have had a number of meetings with people to discuss the project and build the concept into what it is now; however, in terms of production I have flown solo. Now I am looking for people who are interested in helping me more directly with the post-production process. I am looking for:

• Help (or continued help) with concept development
• Periodic feedback on cuts of the movie
• Help working on a soundtrack
• Help with Audio post-production in general
• Someone who can show me how to use After Effects
• Help with animation
• Help with checking Spanish-English translations
• Help creating subtitles in both Spanish and English
• Fiscal Sponsorship, or people with a head for fundraising
• Art, by independent artists (visual, digital, written, performed, or musical), that deals with issues of globalization, Latin America, the creation of communities, or any other related issues, to potentially be interviewed, speak about their art who have a piece featured in the documentary.
• Places and/or groups to hold Mapping Workshops with

If you have skills in any of these areas or know someone who does and is interested let me know! Everyone who participates in the creation of this project receives credit and a copy, for certain jobs monetary compensation might also be possible depending on the budget of the project.

***Also, I would absolutely love to have any buildOn students who are interested in the project and want to get involved in anyway.

Thank you for your continued support-

Helyx Chase
HHProductions
HHconnects@gmail.com
thetrekproject.blogspot.com

Back from Nicaragua

Monday evening at about 7 pm EST I arrived in NYC back from 2 weeks in Nicaragua. The Trip consisted of about 4 travel days and 10 days in the community of Gualacatu, North of the city of Jalapa, about a kilometer from Honduras. I come back to the United States with a collection of written, photographic, drawn, and video taped representations of Gualacatu, a community that opened their hearts and homes to a group of 10 high school students from New York and Philadelphia, 2 program coordinators from buildOn, 2 New York City High School teachers, 3 Nicaraguan translators, and 1 videographer. I begin now to put together the writting, drawings, interviews and 13 and a half hours of video footage into the final project, and I begin now to insert pieces of that process into this blog, starting with this excerpt from the journal I kept during the trip:

"What becomes apparent to me as I return to buildOn is that the organization serves 2 purposes. To empower youth and to empower communities" (7-10-09)

What I mean to say here is that there is a dual purpose to the work that buildOn does, which is to balance between the work of spreading education in a global sense community by community, but also to allow very specific youth who are involved with the program in the US to empower themselves through the Trek for Knowledge experience. I know that what I saw in the students who came on the trek at the end of the two weeks was students who were strong, and had been permanently changed by their experience, an experience that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

To the balance between the selfishness and imperialism of aid tourism and the benefit of the work of buildOn is something that I will continue to explore both in this blog and as I move into post-production on the documentary.