On a rainy morning in early April, I meet Hansen at a Dunkin’ Donuts not far from Emerson, where he earned a master’s in media arts and now teaches undergraduate film students. The 35-year-old father of two resembles a young Matthew Modine, and though he just returned from a 16-hour flight from Mumbai, he is relaxed and affable.

“I was there interviewing Malina Suliman, a 23-year-old Afghan woman who is a graffiti artist,” he says, noting the woman was in India to visit her hospitalized father, a victim of a suspected Taliban attack. “She’s trying to force people to think about women’s rights in Afghanistan. I have enough for a short piece, but I’d like to expand it if I can.”

This tendency to find ever-deeper stories is becoming a hallmark of Hansen’s work. After he raised $12,000 on Kickstarter (and got a matching grant from a nonprofit) for TheElders, the Newtonville resident asked his funders and others to direct him to people with interesting stories. He found so many that he had to drive 14,000 miles across the country just to interview them all. “I spent two and a half months on the road,” Hansen says, “and ended up interviewing 24 people in almost as many locations.”

Some of his subjects, Hansen adds, had so much to tell that they could have been featured in their own film — a Native American Vietnam War vet with PTSD, for example, who, after surviving a suicide attempt, turned to carpentry in search of peace of mind. “It was one of those interviews in which you say, well, that story is definitely going in. And then there would be another and another,” he says. “Story after story for three and a half hours. He was someone who had seen and done horrible things and was racked with guilt but was recovering from it in an artistic way.”

In his next project, Hansen is creating a portrait of a whole community on the north shore of Oahu, told through its residents. “I like to tell stories about extraordinary people who are doing ordinary things,” he says. “I’m captivated by the mundane moments of our lives, which, in aggregate, are really the most meaningful.”

As part of the Independent Film Festival Boston, the Somerville Theatre hosts the world premiere of Hansen’sdocumentary featureThe Elders This Sunday at 12:45 p.m. iffboston.org

Peter Keough, former film editor of The Boston Phoenix, is a frequent Globe contributor. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Press Contact: Michelle Larson
Email: info@kupunainteractive.com
December 2012

Independent Filmmaker Returns to Kickstarter to Fund Interactive Documentary Featuring Indigenous, Elderly Hawaiians

Boston, MA – When independent filmmaker and producer Nathaniel Hansen first found the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.com in 2009, he said he “instinctively knew it would change the lives of artists around the world,” and it appears he wasn’t wrong, not by a long shot.

Since Kickstarter opened its doors in 2008, the crowdfunding site has helped over 33,000 projects raise more than $367M. Of that, Hansen can claim a fair share, having raised $12,519 for his first project along with an additional $500k he’s credited with helping raise as a consultant or strategist for projects run by friends and colleagues. Some of these projects have raised more than $100k, and many have gone on to win awards and accolades around the world. “It sounds lofty,” Hansen says, “but being involved in a crowdfunding campaign will change your life. It changed mine, and from a creative and professional perspective there are few things more rewarding than seeing a worthy project receive funding. It’s inspiring for the fans and contributors and the whole process is humbling and exhilarating for the artists.”

With his first project funded in 2010, a documentary about the elderly in America, Hansen said that his primary goal was to see if the crowdfunding model actually worked, and if it could be a method for funding his future work. “Launching that first campaign was nerve-racking, and exhausting, but the stress paid off. After 21 days we exceeded the goal and I received a follow-up call from a non-profit that was watching the campaign. They double-matched what I had raised. Four weeks later I was on the road and would produce a film that would leave a lasting impression on not only my life, but hopefully on the lives of those who have the chance to see it.”

In November 2011, Hansen was invited to screen the finished film as part of a keynote lecture at Brigham Young University – Hawaii, where he completed his undergraduate studies a decade earlier. At a post-screening lunch, he was encouraged to expand the project to include an even further-marginalized group of elders, indigenous Hawaiians. “I was very interested in expanding the project, but I wanted to create something I didn’t have the resources to produce with The Elders. I wanted my next project to be interactive.”

What Hansen is referring to is a somewhat new method of digital storytelling that allows users to interact with the narrative and its subjects on the web via their computer, a tablet, or mobile device. “There is always a place for linear storytelling, but some stories are best-suited for retelling in a way that’s more inherently immersive and also demands some level of user-interaction,” Hansen said.

This time on Kickstarter, Hansen and his team are looking to raise a minimum of $30,000. “The goal represents about a quarter of our total budget for this project, but it would allow us to film all the interviews and get development started. We have some matching funds that are contingent on our ability to raise this first amount, and we’ve applied to a number of cultural and technology grants I’m confident we’ll have a shot at winning.”

According to the project website, Hansen’s latest project Kūpuna, “is a portrait of a rural community as told through the lives, memories, and stories of elderly Hawaiians born and raised in the small town of La’ie, Hawaii, on the north shore of O’ahu.” If funded by December 21st, Hansen points out that the finished project will rely on a variety of media to help tell “the whole La’ie story.” Through interviews with elders and residents, hula and other cultural performances, scenic footage of the local land, interactive genealogies, archival footage and photos, as well as three animated cultural myths the project will provide users and the community with a rich and contextualized look at a town diverse as any on the planet.

The backdrop for this project is the town of La’ie, a town with human roots stretching back at least 2000 years. The town became a Mormon outpost in the Pacific during the 19th century, and its own coming of age over the last 150 years makes it, according to Hansen, ground zero for an interactive documentary, “In today’s world we witness the increasing intersection of global forces in the day-to-day life of local communities, and interactive documentaries are very well-positioned to explore these complicated but important stories. La’ie’s history and its diverse population make for compelling and rich storytelling.”

La’ie, with a population of around 6,000, has a number of diverse groups struggling to have their stories and interests represented: a worldwide church, a top-rated university, an underrepresented indigenous Hawaiian minority, diasporic Polynesians, and transient/displaced mainlanders, among others, all make up the local population. Hansen points out that the Hawaiian narrative is key to the project, noting “most histories have focused on the colonization/Christianization of the town, neglecting innumerable local narratives, and when they are mentioned it’s very simplified or strictly in the context of a cultural event or missionary stories. We’re looking to examine the whole story of this town both ancient and modern, and you just can’t do that in a 60 minute film, or even in one book, which is why we’ve made this project interactive, web-based, and free to the public once we launch.”

Dr. Kali Fermantez, a professor of Hawaiian studies and one of the film’s producers, spoke of the backseat Hawaiian culture has taken recently, noting specifically that “Kūpuna (Hawaiian elders) can metaphorically make time stand still … This project will put the kūpuna and Hawaiian culture front and center in a way that needs to happen.” Similarly, addressing the vital role these local elders play in modern Hawaiian life, Dr. Matt Kester, the film’s producing historian and archivist, said that “these elders play such an important advisory role in the way that our communities are defined and the way they’re shaped, and through public opinion.” After a series of meetings and preliminary interviews with kupuna in September 2012, Hansen and the rest of his producing team have been given unprecedented access to a group often overlooked by the mainstream media.

Kickstarter is an all or nothing proposition for its project originators. Once a project is launched, the timeline cannot be altered, and the funding goal is locked. If the project reaches or exceeds its goal, the project is successful. If not, then no money changes hands, and most teams regroup and try to understand where the campaign went wrong.
“I’d be the first to tell you that this is a bad time of year to be fundraising, especially in our current economic situation. I’d be the first to tell you that – but this project is so time-sensitive I didn’t want to wait. One of the elders I wanted to feature in the project passed away not too long ago, and another is not in good health. If you get involved to help capture these stories – I promise the experience will change your life. I know it’s changed mine.”

Hansen and his post-production team are currently wrapping up a similar documentary project, Hollow, based in rural West Virginia and directed by Elaine McMillion. Hollow was funded through Kickstarter.com, in addition to a prestigious grant from the Tribeca Film Institute, and the West Viriginia Humanities Council.
Funding for Kūpuna ends on December 21st, at midnight EST. If you would like more information on the project, the team behind it, or the town, please visit http://www.kupunainteractive.com or http://kck.st/Tqcuhe

Contact: Michelle Larson or Nathaniel Hansen
Email: info@kupunainteractive.com or nh@nathanielhansen.com
December 2012
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Media:

You’d get Kūpuna, that’s what, but first things first: I’m a dreamin’ man, yes that’s my problem.

Not only does that phrase start one of my favorite Neil Young songs, but it also sums up how I feel as an independent filmmaker and producer trying to move mountains in order to make and produce work. So often, the goal is ever-so-slightly out of reach, just too far to grasp on our own.

When I first discovered Kickstarter I knew instinctively that it would change my life and the lives of millions of similar artists and fans from around the world. I haven’t been disappointed.

In early 2010, I set out to make my first feature-length documentary film. Like most independent filmmakers, I had a million ideas with no reliable way to see them consistently funded. In 2009 I discovered Kickstarter.com and began helping friends strategize their fundraising efforts, but it would be almost a year later before experiencing the process for myself.

Armed with a few ideas on how I could raise money from my personal network of family and friends, in May 2010 I launched a 21-day project hoping to net $11,000. Hitting the project “launch” button was frightening, and what followed would rank among the most challenging 3 weeks of my life.  In the end, completely exhausted and genuinely humbled, I raised over $12,000. One week later, I was contacted by a non-profit that had been following the project and to my surprise and delight, they double-matched what I had raised on Kickstarter.  In July I hit the road.

My goal was to create a feature-length documentary, using stylized interview portraits of elderly individuals that as a collection would tell a universal story about life’s most important lessons. People referred me to their grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and parents, and I began the arduous task of vetting potential interviewees. One person in particular was recommended to me early on, but scheduling proved to be an issue as my wife and I had other plans to get away before I set out on a 2 month filming adventure. Begrudgingly, I decided to figure out a way to make it work and on a hot Saturday morning, I sat down for three hours with one of the most articulate and intriguing people I have ever met.

Louise was, at the time, a 94-year-old writer from Waco, Texas who had relocated to Vermont in the 1990s. After three hours of visiting and interview filming, she read passionately from the introduction to her latest novel, her sweet accent somehow making me listen more carefully as she opined, “We all have a history of some kind. Everybody not only has a story, everybody is a story. You are creating your own story everyday of your life, just by living.” Nothing could wipe the smile off my face after hearing this universal truth. Louise had just gifted me the beginning, middle, and end of my film. I was beside myself that I had made such a stink about rearranging things to make the interview work. Those three hours and the months that followed would make a lasting impression on my life.

One of the honors of my life was hosting a private screening of the finished film, The Elders, for Louise and a group of close friends and community members. It may have well as been Sundance, as the moment was monumental for both her and me.

On November 15th, 2012, Louise passed away, surrounded by her family. Others I had the opportunity to film that summer of 2010 have also passed away, but their stories live on, and for that I am grateful. Louise and others I filmed changed my life and hopefully in some small way their stories will help change the lives of those who have a chance to hear them.

Since I first discovered Kickstarter.com I’ve been in a position to help a number of people navigate the stressful waters of crowdfunding, raising more than $500,000 in the process. I’ve never sought compensation for my help, as the satisfaction of seeing someone’s project succeed was almost always pay enough. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever dip my toe back into the crowdfunding waters for my own project, but as the opening line of Neil’s song suggests – I am a dreamin’ man, and yes, it can be a problem.

In just 18 days (from this writing), I’ll either have egg on my face and feel like a fool, or you won’t be able to wipe the smile off it for having just succeeded (aka dodged a bullet). I’m braced for both scenarios, but my subconscious is hard a work: last night I dreamt that when I awoke this morning, the project was 115% funded.

This new project, Kūpuna, is an interactive documentary that documents the small Hawaiian town of La’ie through the experiences and collective memories of its elderly, indigenous residents. What we’re trying to accomplish with this project is unique, both for indigenous communities and for documentary filmmaking, in that our end goal isn’t a single “linear” film. We’re developing a storytelling platform that will allow viewers to engage in the story at their own pace, on their laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone. They may explore the community for 5 minutes or for an hour. With this type of project, there are too many stories, too many connections, that a 60 minute film on its own wouldn’t do the community justice. It’s an ambitious project, but we have help. Our team is comprised of creatives, scholars and technologists committed to interactive storytelling and non-fiction filmmaking. Many of us on the team are already working in this new field with the Kickstarter and Tribeca Film Institute funded project Hollow (an interactive documentary about population loss in rural West Virginia). We’ll be taking our experiences, our successes, and our failures and porting them over to the Kūpuna project.

Perhaps foolish of me, as I know many have hinted, but I’ve never asked for anything other than thanks from crowdfunding campaigns I’ve helped along. I have no plans to change that. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about this campaign. As I stare up at what feels like an impossibly tall mountain, just 6% funded and only 18 days left, I’m scrambling to pull out every tip and trick from my own crowdfunding experience to make this work. That said, I’m struggling to shake the feeling that I might have bit off more than I can chew.

I knew going in that my network alone couldn’t raise $30k, most people know this would be impossible. But I’m relying not only on my network, but also on your networks, the networks of close friends and associates who care about the project, and on the network of a few hand selected “evangalists” who can get the project in front of people I could never hope to.

Crowdfunding works. Kickstarter HAS changed the lives of artists and their fans the world over. If you care about storytelling, the elderly, cats, whatever, I’m asking you to help spread the word about what this project is doing and what it has the potential to contribute to humanity and our experience. Lofty? Sure – but that’s my problem and I’m alright with that.

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If you’ve read this far – then you deserve a high-five and a couple crowdfunding tips are for you!

1) Keep your emotions in check and check your ego at the door. Once things get rolling, you will feel the pressure you’ve just voluntarily submitted to and it can get ugly fast. Open communication and cool professionalism win the day every time. This goes for everyone on the team from top to bottom.   

2) Use your blog/website to post pictures and little tidbits of information.  People can voluntarily go and see what’s going on for themselves. Save the big updates, cool happenings, and news roundups for the emails. ALSO: be sure to have a blatantly obvious way to get to the Kickstarter page from your website (on every page of your website).

We shot this at the fantastic Shooting Kitchen in Tribeca, NYC and it’s been on loop at Bed Bath & Beyond since the holidays. We shot the opening sequence with a 5 foot cineslider by Kessler Crane and their time-lapse motor setup, the Oracle Controller and the ElektraDRIVE motor. Shot on Canon 5DMKII and Zeiss CP2 lenses: 85mm, 25mm, 50mm. Of course, it was a one day shoot with kids and animals…what was that old saying? Both were wonderful to work with.

The Kessler set up was easy to work with. We had envisioned this type of tracking timelapse shot, for the opening and I had seen it done, but I’d never done it. I jumped over to Tom Guilmette’s site and he has a couple of really great kessler demos for getting going on the Oracle/Elektra set up. We did a test run in the office the night before, and pulled it in to FCP and it worked like a champ. I was confident we’d get what we needed for the shoot the next day.

My suggestion to anyone doing this in the future would be to mark action points along the cineslider. We ended up with a lot of compressed action in certain spots, and this could have easily been avoided if we had marked out “where” in the camera slide we needed specific action to occur. Next time!

I had my friend Leilani come along to take some BTS stills, as I knew it was going to be a fun shoot.

Life is a series of moments strung together over time. A scientist might call these moments a “cognitive event.” I call them stories. We compress thousands of stories/moments/events into a meta narrative that defines who we are. The most meaningful, memorable moments are packaged into self-contained stories that give shape to our personal story arc and mark plot points along life’s journey. We use these moments, these stories, as a way to understand and make sense of world around us. These moments are powerful because they deliver all at once “information, knowledge, context and emotion.” (Norman, Don Things that Make us Smart)

Cognitive scientist Roger Schank observed that “Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.”

Ursula Le Guin, one of my favorite science fiction authors, once noted that “The Story – from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace – is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”

In the ICS program, I spent most of my time trying to figure out the academic world around me. It was overwhelming, to the point where I would cry myself to sleep feeling it was utterly impossible to succeed in the program. I wasn’t the smartest student in the program. I wasn’t the best writer, I’m terrible at debate and new concepts take me 3 times as long to wrap my head around than my colleagues. It was frustrating.

Let me share with you a moment from my time in that program, 10 years ago:

While wrestling with some difficult cultural concepts and new vocabulary, I admitted defeat and swallowed my pride as I asked some of my colleagues meant. To my surprise, and delight, they had never heard the word either. “say it again…” my sister in law called out. I repeated the word: paradigm. “Huh?” Spell it, another said. P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M, Paradigm, I said. The room erupted in laughter, and then sympathy for my plight. “It’s pronounced paradigm,” my sister in law said with a smirk, “and it represents a way to look at something – A paradigm shift is a change in the way you see that same thing.”

It was a powerful learning moment for me, as I had just experienced the cultural concept I was struggling to understand. This was a minor plot point in my life’s evolving narrative.

Eventually, I got a handle on cultural theory, and began to see the world with new eyes. The theory I gravitated to early on was Arnold van Gennep and later Victor Turner’s theory of Liminality. Liminal, means threshold, literally: you’re not in the building, but you’re also not outside. You’re in between. I became obsessed with life’s in-between moments.

Turner and others noted that especially profound moments occurred during rites of passage, where young people shed the innocence of youth as they transition to adult-hood and during that time are instructed by their elders. That time represents a time out of time, an axis mundi or center of the universe where the initiate is endowed with knowledge about their place in the univers is unfolded befre them.

A second moment:
I was in South Africa recently, filming a global oral history project, and one of the people we interviewed lived in a township on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth. As we approached the community, which stretches for miles up the sloping hillside, I noticed in the dense vegetation opposite the freeway, a number of fires burning with smoke coming up through the trees. “Do people live there?” I asked? “Yes, in fact those fires are camps where the Xhosa elders officiate circumcision ceremonies for young men from the township. They live in special huts for several weeks, shave their heads, are covered in white clay, and wear nothing but a loin cloth.” Is there something similar for the girls? I asked? “There is. During a girl’s first menstrual cycle they are taken into seclusion, and undergo a metaphorical “circumcision” as prepare for womanhood among their community.”

This was the first time I had come face to face with an indigenous rite of passage in an urban setting. I wasn’t reading about it, I was driving by it! My years of filmmaking were useless to me in this moment. They didn’t help me process what I was being told. On the other hand, my ICS training allowed me to synthisize this information and relay the knowledge to the rest of my production team, who sat there slack jawed and baffled as to why any 18 year old would trot out into the woods to voluntarily submit himself to circumcision. I was helping my team with their own paradigm shift, and enjoyed watching their collective “ah-ha” moment as I explained the significance rites of passage play in our own lives.

At this point you’re probably wondering what on earth circumcision and menstrual cycles have to do with my life as a filmmaker and producer. I’ll get to that in a second. Honest.

But what about college? Is this not a time out of time? A threshold between worlds? Could it qualify as a rite of passage? Is it the time when we come of age? I believe it does, and is, and for a western audience, I can’t find a closer parallel to a traditional rite of passage. We leave home, enter the wilderness of the world, and subject ourselves to be circumcised of heart and mind. But there is a disconnect.

Despite the parallels and the potent ritual nature of the college experience, we are greatly distanced from our elders throughout the process. Yes, we have mentors, our teachers and ecclesiastical leaders, but we are out of touch with elderly wisdom. Elders are not a part of the community experience for youth today. Without elders to help contextualize the human experience, I believe we have no hope of confidently progressing through life with an enriched world view.

Now, as an artist, I feel an obligation to make original contributions to the body of human knowledge with my work. In 2010, I asked myself a creative question: Could I take a series of short films, or moments, and string them together to create a meaningful meta narrative about life’s purpose? Could I do it in a way that provided the viewer the opportunity to step out of time, in that liminal viewing space, to experience their own cinematic rite of passage as we watched the film? The only way I felt I could do this was if the driving voice in the film was that of elders in communities all around the United States. And that’s what I set out to do.

A third, series of moments:
In April 2010, I decided I needed to raise $30k to make this project a reality. I turned to kickstarter.com which is a crowdfunding website, and created a pitch for the project which I was calling The Elders. I spoke plainly and directly to the camera, making a plea for the idea and encouraging any who watched to make a contribution to the film.

My goal at this point was $11k and I had faith that I would somehow raise the difference. In 21 days, I raised $12,500 and at the end of the fundraise, I received a phone call from a celebrity who had been following the project online. She and her business partner asked if they could be involved in the project, and what I needed. I told them I was $24k short of actually being able to make the project I envisioned, and 15 days and a contract later, I had a total of $36,500 in my account to produce The Elders.

I hit the road on July 4th, and over 60 days traveled all over the United states, racking up 13,000 miles on the rental car, and interviewing 23 incredible people from all walks of life. A 4 star general in California, a miner/gravedigger in West Virginia, A cowboy poet and rancher in Elko, Nevada, an Ohio woman who spent years in Japanese internment camps in California and Arkansas, a Native American veteran, from Oregon, a broadway actor and singer from Brooklyn, and the list goes on and on.

I began to edit the film in my mind while driving between locations. For 45 of those 60 days on the road, I was alone and was playing the role of producer, director, cinematographer, counselor, grandson, friend, to each person I spent the day with. The pace was grueling, and the days were long, but this project, I recognize now, was my rite of passage to understanding what it means to really come of age, to grow old and reflect on life as we near the threshold that awaits us in the hereafter.

When I returned home I began to sort through the 128 hours of footage I had collected, overwhelmed by the challenge that lie ahead to construct an hour long film out of this oral history mess. I spent months editing the film and felt, on many occasions stuck, unable to move forward, and extremely frustrated with where the project was headed. Maybe I’m overly emotional, but this project had me on my knees in tears more than once, pleading for some help and direction.

Direction came in the form of creative ideas not entirely my own, seeds planted by some spiritual source, as the dews of heaven distilling upon my mind, one might say. I walked away from the edit for 6 weeks, to clear my head and gain perspective. When I felt impressed to pick it back up again, in January of this year, I finished the edit in 10 days.

Exactly 1 year from the time I conceived of the idea, I sat in a packed theater in Boston, nervously watching the screen in front of me, my intangible idea for a film about a series of life moments now a tangible reality flickering away at 24 frames per second in front of a live audience. There’s nothing more grounding than inviting a bunch of friends and strangers into a room for the night to critique a year’s worth of creative output. To say that it’s humbling is an understatement.

The lively Q&A lasted well over an hour and reception to the film was extremely positive. People laughed, they cried, they reflected and they pondered. They were responding to my idea exactly as I had hoped, and in ways I had never imagined.

The viewing of your own creative idea fully realized is cathartic, and emotional. Later that same evening, after the viewing, I felt I had finally crossed the threshold of my own creative liminal space. I was satisfied with what I had created in that threshold, but quickly realized there will be many more to follow as I get this film out to market and move on to my next creative endeavour.

What is your story?
I’ve shared with you moments from my narrative, stories that drive me, and help me communicate my world experience with others. But what of your own stories? Are you working to understand your role as the hero in your own mythology? Are you connecting with the characters that have been placed on your life’s path?

And this would be my challenge to you, friends. What are you doing to craft your own story? What moments in life will define you? As you enter the world that awaits you after graduation, one where “job security” is an oxymoron, you will be one of many with a piece of paper in hand hoping to land that interview, hoping to get that job, that promotion, that raise. But what are you doing right now, during this liminal phase of your life – this right of passage – that will set you apart from the crowd?

I would implore you to begin to craft your own narrative, and your ability to be able to tell it. Write it down. Perform it. Live it. Learn to recognize the power of storytelling in the world around you. You’ll soon find that it’s ubiquitous, and requires critical, analytical, and creative thinking skills to tease out context and determine true meaning. Use your time here to ground yourself in the vocabulary of story and develop that skill set, for in a world where information is free, cheap, and easy to come by, the human family is in desperate need of individuals who can make meaning out of endless facts. Who can solve problems from a unique vantage point, who can create narrative and tell stories that shape lives and provide perspective to life’s challenges. Individuals who can contribute meaningfully to society, beyond pithy 140 character tweets and endless streams of status updates, is what the world needs now.

These skills have provided me with a steady flow of work over the years. Clients and creative partners are drawn to my way of seeing the world, and it didn’t come in graduate school. I began adding these tools to my belt while reading Clifford Gertz’ seminal essay on the Balinese Cock Fight in McArthur’s Anthro. theory class. I learned about the power of personal narratives not as an MFA graduate student, but in a performance studies class and from years of direction on this very stage as an actor by Dr. Craig Ferre. I learned the impact world cinema has as a tool for transporting western audiences to another way of seeing thanks to a post-colonial cinema course taught by Dr. Yifen Beus. I learned the way art and performance can change public opinion and shape government policy not in a book, but while conducting ethnography in New Caledonia for my ICS senior seminar paper.

I don’t mean to say that my professional experiences and my time as a graduate student weren’t meaningful – they absolutely were. But my time on this campus, despite pushing me to the point of nearly breaking, provided me with a sure foundation that the rest of my life would be built upon.

These moments in life define us, but we can shape the way we are defined by others. As you discover the power of your own life’s narrative, as you learn to tell your own story with passion, you will find opportunity comes knocking, you will stand out from the crowd, and work will seek you out.

One last moment:
One of my now good friends, Louise, is a 94 year old twice widowed house wife turned published novelist. She’s featured prominently in the film, as I use her narrative to provide context to the other isolated portraits that make up the film’s 79 minutes.

Near the end of my interview with her, she asked if she could read some of her latest book to me. “Of course,” I said, “I would love that.” I sat mesmerized as she read a few pages from the introduction to her latest book. “Everybody and everything has a source. We all have a history of some kind. Everybody not only has a story, everybody is a story. You are creating your own story every day of your life, just by living.” In that moment, as she read, I smiled inside, knowing as a filmmaker the gift she had just bestowed upon me, as an ICS grad the magnitude of her statement, and as a human being, the true role narrative and story play in shaping the way we think and live our lives.

We filmed and edited this piece over the last two weeks for Leman Manhattan Preparatory school in NYC. Very cool school, and we were thrilled to take on the challenge of “telling their story” to a broader audience of prospective parents and students.

We filmed on location, in the school’s art room, on the 22nd floor, overlooking Ellis Island.

This was shot on 3 Canon 5D cameras with Carl Zeiss CP.2 lenses, and the Kessler Cineslider. On sticks we had the 85 prime and the 35 prime, at f4, and on the kessler cineslider we opted for the Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS. The IS makes a HUGE difference when trying to get smooth shots. It’s tough work for the operator running on the slider though, as they’re working the entire time!

Color correction was a snap, as we used the cinestyle technicolor setting on all three cameras, and simply had to boost saturation and lower the blacks in post.

The CP.2 lenses were a JOY to work with, and I’d rent them again in a heartbeat.

Special thanks to lensrentals.com for an affordable service, and to my crew: Shaun Clarke (DP), Matthew Hashiguchi, Ian Wexler, Lee Strauss and Kristal Williams.

They showed a short segment from the film along with 11 other projects that were successfully funded during 2010. What’s so amazing about this for me is that the quality of the other projects that were up there AND the shear volume of succesfully funded projects that were passed over. Something like 3000 film/video projects were funded last year – which makes it even more of an honor for my project to have stood out. Thanks Kickstarter – I only wish I could have been there.