Saturday, July 14, 2007

Mexico Take 2

After the last trip ;
We logged and transcribed the footage.
I found a new reason to dislike homeland security
U.S. passports don't mean US Customs or immigration will be nice to you
Documentary making is a long long road

We shot for almost 30 days for the first trips. IT took 20 days to edit and 20 hours to get the right DVD exported.

The University lecture circuit was fun and a lot of work. The Doc was presented in The Best Latino Studies in the country. Latino Community advocates reacted one way and Latinos reacted another to the content of the Doc.

Going to LA was the best for me. I love the radical Chicanos out there.

After seeing Milagros Made In Mexico on the big screen dozens of times I know there are areas to "fix."

We took another trip to Mexico to get more B-roll. This trip to GTO Mexico was not as charmed.

Five days in to ten days of shooting my batteries quit working. All 6!
I was as inconsolable as a cranky infant.
Luckily we had invited a Mexican videographer along to PA for the trip.
Laura was quite useful but eventually she was bored and stopped being useful.
I had more luggage and bags to pack and haul. Never have I ever been burdened so much by a PA.
The lucky aspect was that we brought her Panasonic pd100 DV camera.
She was able to get a few pick up exteriors. I'm not sure I'll be able to use the shots.
I'm hoping I can match the color to my camera.

I took the battery charger and batteries to an electronics shop in a smaller town. The fella was very nice and loaned me an extension cord while he tested the charger.

He tested it and determined that all 6 of my batteries died at the same time because the charger was working properly. I have yet to confirm this. I suspect that the charger did something to all my batteries during the last charge cycle. Anyway. I was stuck.
No batteries and limited shooting. And we still had three more subjects to visit!

I ended up using my very small $200 dollar minDV camera. I bought it to use as a playback deck on this trip. My JVCDV500 is very finicky about playing back tapes. The camera was a very pail replacement.
Laura was generally too slow to capture images and most of the shots I could have captured slipped away by the time she got set up. I was fit to be tied. I wanted to go home. I missed so many good shots!

The only thing I could have done to avoid loosing all my batteries was to find a battery dealer in Mexico. We where not there long enough nor close enough to Mexico City. I will rethink by battery backup issue.


I have yet to log or transcribe the new footage. I still l have to reedit the shot.

I'll let you know how the Spring 2008 shoot goes.

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