Becoming One Family: An Interview You Don’t Want to Miss

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I’m very excited to announce the first interview for the yet to be titled documentary I’m working on. The interview is going to be about becoming one family. It will take place Saturday July 31st and we will be broadcasting the interview live so you can be part of the filming.

One question I get a lot is: What was it like for your families when you were reunited? It’s difficult to say because it was an emotional time for everyone. We were people from two completely different backgrounds thrown together by chance. Our own real connection was through me and I was only 16.

While I never felt hostility between my two families, it was obviously hard for all of us. My adoptive family now had to share me with a whole group of people. My birth family had just found a long lost relative and wanted to get to know me. Thanks to a lot of hard work and understanding by both families, we slowly became one family.

At the end of July my older sister Eva will be visiting us and I thought it would be a great time to address this subject. Eva, my mother Margaret, and I will be sitting down to share our thoughts and experiences about this interesting time.

We would love it if you would join us for this exciting discussion. We will also be taking your questions. Since this is being filmed for the documentary, there is a chance your question could make it into the film! You can RSVP for the event on Facebook or Eventbrite in case you’re not on Facebook.

On the Cutting Edge: Digital Still Cameras for Film, Part 4

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My new Canon T2i

In part 3 I talked about the drawbacks to using digital still cameras for film. In this part I’ll be talking about the equipment we are looking at.

Picking the Right Camera

We are looking at a number of the Canon’s high end still cameras, specifically the Canon T2i, 7D and 5D. Each of these cameras are capable of taking full 1080p HD video. Thats a technical way of saying they take video at the highest video quality commonly used. While there are other brands that are able to take high definition video, Canon cameras are more widely used for film projects.

Earlier this week I bought the Canon T2i. We probably will not be using this as our primary camera. There are some issues with focusing when using external equipment that would make it hard to use during the interviews. We would not want to do an entire interview only to find out later the focus was off.

The body is smaller than other cameras. This means it’s not as durable and it may not work with bigger lenses. I am getting this for more of a personal camera. It may also be used to film some “B role” material for the doc.

For our main camera we are looking at the 7D or 5D. These are the cameras most widely used for filming. They do not have the focusing issues of the T2i and have other additional features.

There are also rumors that Canon will be announcing a new camera geared more towards video in the coming weeks. It could have a rotating display among other advanced video features. Since we are not in a rush to make this movie there is a chance a newer camera will be exactly what we are looking for.

Learning the Equipment

In order to better understand how to shoot with these cameras I am attending an all day workshop with Philip Booom taking place this Saturday. I mentioned Philp Bloom in part 2 when I posted a video he did using these cameras. I’m very excited to be learning from the best. I think it will be a good experience and it will cover everything from what lenses we should use to editing.

Why I Want to Speak at #140conf and How You Can Help

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About #140conf

The other week I went out to the #140conf Boston TweetUp. For those of you not in the know, a TweetUp is a networking event for people on Twitter. This event was all about the #140 Character Conference taking place September 14th in Boston. Being a pretty heavy twitter user, I had heard about #140conf before but I wasn’t exactly sure what it was about. Thankfully, the founder of #140conf Jeff Pulver was there to enlighten us.

He described it as a conference about the real time web, but also a platform for people doing interesting things to shine. Jeff tries to get celebrities and other big names to speak at the conferences to build an audience, then opens it up to lesser known people to speak. There are individual talks which last no more than 10 minutes and group talks that are no more than 20 minutes. The idea is to have lots of different people present a wide range of ideas.

My Pitch

Of course this sounded like a great opportunity for me to talk about the documentary project I am working on. I promptly wrote up a proposal to speak. Below is the proposal I submitted. Let me know what you think.

I would like talk about my family’s incredible story and how the real time web is helping us share our story.

This past December I sat down with my family in Central America to interview them about the past 12 years since we were reunited. We used ustream to broadcast the event to our friends and family. It was an interesting experience for some family members who had never heard or seen my father speak about what happened during the war.

From that first interview I started doing more interviews with other family members about different aspects of the story. My goal is not only to share our story with the world, but to make a documentary from it.

The internet has always played a big role in my life and in reconnecting with my birth family. In 1997 our home number was found by doing an internet search. Over the past 12 years we’ve used AIM, Skype, Facebook and many other programs to keep in touch.

I’m fascinated with the power of the web to connect people and share information. The #140conf seems like it is a celebration of this idea. It would be an honor to be able to share our story with a group of like minded people.

How You Can Help

Jeff was big on saying he wants people to tell him who should be speaking at the confrence. If you think I would make a good speaker at #140conf and you are on Twitter you can drop Jeff(@jeffpulver) a line. Please don’t spam him but you could say something as simple as:

I would like to hear @dewittn speak about #anasmiracle at #140conf

Every little bit helps!

Nervously Going Back to El Salvador

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I recently booked tickets to El Salvador for a week in December. I’m going down for a cousin’s wedding. This will be my first time back since 1998 and I’m a little nervous.

Since the end of El Salvador’s civil war the situation in the country has steadily declined. The war was supposed to improve life for its people. Instead the country has become less economically stable and more violent. Now a country the size and population of Massachusetts has an average murder rate of 16 people per week. Over 2,000 people have already been killed this year alone.

My family is no stranger to this violence. A cousin of mine almost died when her husband went on a shooting spree, attacking her, killing their baby and himself. She recovered both mentally and physically but other family members were not so lucky. An uncle on the other side of the family witnessed his son’s murder when they were carjacked.

I hear a lot about how violent the country is. It always makes me ask if everything my parents did was in vain. They gave up so much to try and change things. Here we are 30 years later and it’s about the same if not worse. My family made it and are better off now, but what about everyone else?

Maybe it’s the violence or the state of the country, but the thought of going back “home” makes me uneasy. I don’t think anything bad is going to happen but I know this will not be like visiting Panama, which is much safer. My family has been asking me to come back and I never go. I feel bad sometimes but it’s tough when my immediate family is not living there anymore. Even though I’m nervous I think the trip will be good. It has been a long time coming and I can’t wait to see my family.

On the Cutting Edge: Digital Still Cameras for Film, Part 3

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Photo by v8media
In part 2 I talked about some of the advantages to using digital still camera for film. In this post I’ll be talking about the disadvantages to using this kind of camera.

Drawbacks

Since this technology is so new there are going to be a lot of challenges. Most of the challenges that come from using a digital still camera involve its very sensitive focus.

Focus

Most of the cameras we are looking at do not have an autofocus that is usable for filming. A still camera’s autofocus is very different from a camcorders auto focus. A still camera is made to focus on a specific point, while a camcorder  is made to focus on a specific subject. Digital still cameras also have a very short focal length. This is the distance from the lens in which the subject is in focus. If a person is in focus two feet away from the camera and they move a foot in either direction they will be blurry. A camera operator must be very good at adjusting the focus as the subject moves around.

Moving Subjects

We have also heard that these cameras have a hard time dealing with a lot of movement. Part of the problem is the focus issue I just mentioned. The other problem is image stabilization. Holding a camera steady is very hard. Many camcorders have software that make this easier. Most digital still cameras do not.

Extra Equipment

Due to the problems mentioned here it is nearly impossible to create high quality video without extra equipment. This equipment is attached to the camera like the image above. It helps the operator maintain focus, improve audio and reduce movement. There is also a need to have a different lens. The main drawback here is that the extra equipment adds more to the price tag.

More to Come

I just want to point out that these issues are based on research and not hands on experience. We do not know how big these problems will be for our project. When we get more time with the cameras we will have a better idea.

On the Cutting Edge: Digital Still Cameras for Film, Part 2

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In part 1 I talked about why we are looking at using digital still cameras for this documentary. In this post I’ll be talking about the advantages of using these cameras.

In order to make a proper assessment of this equipment we researched what the capabilities of these cameras were and why someone would want to use them.

Image Sensor

One of the big advantages of a still camera is the image sensors. They are designed to mimic film, and the imagery they produce is exceptional. They work very well in daylight and low light. There are some limitations in low lighting. If you need to film in very low light, then you may lose some image quality. However, for our project which consists of a lot of well lit interviews, we felt this was not a problem.

It’s a lot easier to show you what these cameras can do. Here are a couple of short videos that really highlight image quality of these digital still cameras.

This first video is from CrunchGear’s review of the T2i.

Canon T2i demo reel from CrunchGear on Vimeo.

The second video is by Philip Bloom who is a director of Photography and knows how to make these cameras shine. Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 5D.

Skywalker Ranch from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Price

Another big advantage to the digital still camera is their price. For example, a Canon T2i is about $900. On the higher end, a Canon 5D is about $2,500. These prices are for the camera body and a basic lens. In order to film this project we will need to buy lenses and rigging that will help get the best shot. The extras will bring the cost of equipment up but these cameras are still a lot less expensive than high definition camcorders that can be as much as $30,000.

One of the goals of this project is to produce something that could be shown on TV. Part of the challenge of this goal is making something of this quality can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This can include equipment as well as salaries. So using this camera to do most of the filming is one strategy we are using to keep costs down.

Do They Stack Up?

It’s great that digital still cameras have high quality sensors and are reasonably priced, but how do they stack up against real film cameras? Well we are no experts in this field but we found some people who are.

If you are interested in a very geeky breakdown of how digital still camera stack up to film cameras I highly recommend Zacuto’s Great camera Showdown of 2010. It’s about an hour and half long and they put these cameras through a number of very scientific tests. Then they get feedback from various professional filmmakers. It’s interesting to see what these camera’s can do and the promise they hold.

Stay tuned for part 3 where I’ll talk about the disadvantages we found to using digital still cameras in a film.