Labor Day! BBQ and Show of Footage

Chris and I had a BBQ for the Bros, we made chicken and shrimp kabobs. We wanted to show them some footage to get them excited about the film again. Its always good to keep them and us encouraged. I wanted to have a familiar food for them so I looked online for recipes on how to make sticky rice and I tried it out but I used Jasmine rice so it didn't quite work out. Jocelyn is going to email me the recipe. Pon ate it anyway, so I bet it was not so bad for being my first time.

Saturday and Sunday! What a weekend

Saturday we scheduled an interview with lucky but it didn't happen because of time-crunch, he needed to work a that evening so we set a time for sunday. I asked Lucky if he remembered where he met the brothers. He said "Yeah" it was on 12th street by the Kemper Arena. Since we were not going to interview lucky and we do not have the wide angle lense to go shoot b-roll of kansas city we decided to go check out the location where chan and lucky met. While driving around looking for the place we came across a wall with cool graffiti on it. We loved it, so we decided to do the interview with Lucky at this location instead of doing it where they met. It was a great place that really brought out Lucky's personality. After that we went home and looked at footage with Gabi. We got her familiar with some of the footage and she got a final cut pro lesson. This day was great!

Sunday, we interviewed Lucky; The wind was kinda in the way so we might have to re-do but we all learned so much from this. Thanks Lucky for your time and effort!

Interviewing Lucky in the West Bottoms using a Wheelchair!

On Saturday we went scouting down in the West Bottoms. That's where Lucky met The Brothers.

We found this great location in an alley between two very old industrial buildings. It was a long wall with a graffiti mural that extended the length of the wall. A smoothly paved receiving dock was right in front of the mural. I immediately got the idea to have Lucky walk along the wall for his interview while we pull the camera mounted on a wheelchair in front of him. We immediately went on Craigslist and purchased an old wheelchair for $25.

The next morning before the shoot I braced the wheelchair up with some 2x4's. That made it sturdy enough to mount a tripod and get a smooth shot of Lucky's walking interview.

The cinematography of the interview was great! That wheelchair did the trick and it looks great!

Here is a screen shot of Lucky from the camera mounted on the wheelchair!

Chris and Gabriella record

The Crew: Gabi, Chris, and Stephanie working hard to make it happen.

Gabi and Chris pose for a quick photo

Shoot with our Intern!

Last Thursday we met our intern, Gabi. So of course we wanted to get her to a shoot as soon as possible so we planned a shoot for the following friday. Needless to say, it was a great shoot. Gabi is very sharp,fast and super cool. we know that she is going to be a good person on our team. We were shooting the brothers because they are building their own trailer. yea! building their own! Pon is smart and has the ability to build things with just looking at the object first. The brothers started building on thursday after work and were done building that night! they are fast workers. On Friday, we met up and shot some footage of them working on the trailer.

Good Production Meeting and a Little About Editing

We had a great production meeting last night with Mark. We are nailing down the story structure on paper. This gives us a guide from which to proceed and divert. We also figured out the shooting schedule for this years races. We will plan on shooting interviews between the races.

Once interviews are shot I will complete a rough cut. Basically what I'm going to do is cut out everything that is entirely unusable. I'll probably end up with a 10 hour timeline! Oh man my system is fast but I hope it can take it the kind of abuse I'm going to give it with this doc. I made need to break the film up into different projects! We'll see.

For those of you who are interested I'm cutting on a quad-core Mac Pro and I'm cutting in native HDV as I plan on doing only little color correction. Editing HDV on this workstation is pretty nice because the quad-core processing really crunches through anything you throw at it. HDV works well here because it's low bandwidth and I've got only a two drive RAID. HDV is compressed so its low bandwidth makes accessing it from the hard drive faster. The other side of it is that the computer has to crunch the compressed data, which my workstation handles quite well due to it's four processing cores. It's a balanced system.

The fact that FCPS2 handle HDV natively very well is just icing on the cake. Everything works GREAT! I am REALLY excited to edit this project!

-Chris

I am behind the camera every moment. I wonder, am I telling the Brothers' story, or am I telling my own. The audience will be there every step of the way I as get to know these guys and their cultures.

From Film as Art:

Sometimes the filmmaker does not want smooth camera movement, preferring a bumpy, jiggling image. Commonly this sort of image is achieved through use of the hand-held camera.

Often the hand-held camera functions as a special form of subjective point of view.

And for me, that's what it is. It's my point of view. I think I want to go in a new direction now because I feel that I am a part of the story now. I've become another member of the racing team so I think I'm sacrificing objectivity unless I appear int he film or my voice is heard. I didn't mean for it to happen this way but here's the thing: I've been watching this movie for the last year, in full 3D. And reality is an interactive medium.

I just couldn't pass up the chance to be a part of it. Like those 3D video games that are first person point of view I have become part of the action and because of me the story moves along. I started seeing the film differently when the Brothers told me that if I had waited a week longer to call them and tell them I was going to continue filming, they would have pieced the car out. From that moment on, the film is from my POV. The philosophy involved is staggering and is really something that needs to be explored.

Just as the lady in Born into Brothels, was the prime motivator of the action I am here in Racing Heart. Born into Brothelswas a VERY good doc by the way so go watch it. We saw Jesus Camp recently and found it to be entertaining and informative as well. If Racing Heart can hold up well to those, I will be very pleased!

Street Racing Buddhists. I LOVE this story!

Even when we are doing something else, Racing Heart is involved:
Stephanie and I were in Olathe today to visit my parents in their suburban neighborhood. Garage sales everywhere. There must've been 50 garage sales within a square mile. It is a yearly Persimmon neighborhood thing. I bought a bag to carry lights and gear. I bought a mountain bike for $20. You can visit a lot of garage sales in no time with a bike. Just ride up close enough to the goods so you can quickly scan the scene and check out if nothing catches your eye. Stephanie bought some clothes that caught mine!

I was also looking for a billiard cue. Not really a cue, but the box that holds the cue. I want one to protect the microphone boom pole that costs over $100 when its not being used. I didn't see one at a thrift store we went to but I found a pair of khaki pants. Stephanie bought some Oil paint at Walmart and a canvas at big lots. I'm curious to see her paintings.

She is a really good photographer! She just started but is already taking photos that amaze me. All with a point-and-shoot. One day we'll get her a digital SLR and she'll really do some neat stuff. I love to encourage my wife. She is a really great person and I want her to explore her artistic side because she has this really great point of view I don't know how to describe it.

I'd like to thank Dad & Diane for today. And a happy Mothers Day to all!

Photos from Lao New Year Celebration!

Here are some photos from out shoot in Saginaw, TX where we followed the Brothers to capture them celebrating the Lao New Year. We'd like to thank Mark for all of his help!

Lao New Year

We had a great time down in Dallas. The Lao New Year celebration was really fun and I learned a lot about their culture. We got TONS of great footage. I really liked the inside of the temple. Well, of course I'm super busy so I gotta go talk at ya later.