It’s a bit of a misty and grey summer day here in Portland, but the floating houseboat that is the Camino Documentary home base is bright and buzzing with activity.
A new volunteer named Leonardo came in today for the second time. He’s bilingual AND a Mac expert, which are quite possibly the two best qualities to have around here. To top those off, he’s an all-around interesting and friendly fellow. Leonardo was born in Uruguay, grew up in Miami, and studied at Harvard. He has spent many years as a PC and Mac Support Specialist, most recently for Columbia Sportswear here in Portland.
He’s going to be helping out here with logging, transcribing, and technical support, and we couldn’t be more excited to have him! In fact, if you’re in need of a PC or Mac Support Specialist yourself, feel free to get in touch with him: macleanhr@gmail.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/
Lots of work has been accomplished lately in terms of getting ready for the big edit. When Lydia and the crew went on the Camino to shoot, they had two main camera crews capturing most of the footage: “Camera A” and “Camera B.” Each of these was generally assigned to 6 or 7 pilgrims and followed them along the trail. “Camera C” was there to catch behind the scenes footage, and “Camera D” consisted of one sole person capturing both video and audio making it easier to fit in with the pilgrims along the way.
They also had “Camera P” which was a group of small, handheld cameras that pilgrims carried around on their own. (I haven’t seen any Camera P footage yet, and am excited to see some of it soon. All of the main footage is gorgeous and you can tell it was shot by talented professionals, so it will be interesting to see the footage that was shot by pilgrims along the way!)
A huge project here to prepare for the edit is to sort through the 300+ hours of footage and log all of it. This means that we watch each and every clip and then describe it for the editor. We break down the various camera
angles and movements as well as the subject matter, location, and any and everything else! Here’s a screen shot of how detailed and organized this all is. It will make the editor’s life much more organized and so far has worked wonders for us with the short videos and trailers we’ve made.
We’re finished logging footage from Camera A and are almost finished logging Camera B’s footage, which is a feat in itself! Camera A alone had 4115 clips to log!
Another jumbo-sized project going on is transcribing all of the footage. This is extra tricky because the documentary features pilgrims and people from all over the world! There are mainly English and Spanish speakers, but there are also people speaking German, Portugese, Italian, Korean, Danish, and French. So far about 150 interviews have been transcribed, 25 have been translated, and there are about, well, a lot, left to go!
I’ve found that I truly need to brush up on my Spanish skills. I took Spanish classes for THIRTEEN years and can read Spanish rather well, but am mildly hopeless when speaking or listening (especially to fast talkers!). When listening, I can only really pick out vocab words. (Red! Apple! They’re talking about a red apple!) It’s as if I was a Spanish speaking first grader. Maybe a second grader, but definitely not at the head of the class. Cabeza de al Escuela? Yep, see what I mean… hopeless!
Also, if you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure you watch the new Director’s Message video!