Living on the Drive

These days I'm living on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. I've taken a job with Full Circle, which is an Aboriginal Performance Group, supporting First Nations theater, including training for young First Nations actors, development of original works of theater, as well as putting on the Talking Stick Festival, which will run from Feb. 9-15 2009... I was up in Haida Gwaii this summer, making some new Haidawood movies. I am pretty happy with the results, and I'll be showing some of the movies at the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival.

I haven't made much progress on the Lawrence Project since February, and, I would like to find some time to sit down and edit a 20 minute short together. Perhaps over the Christmas holidays...

Back to business

Well, my romantic relationship with Sharmeen came to an abrupt end around Valentine's day this year, and this resulted in a big change of plans. Instead of going up to Haida Gwaii, I've instead been living like a gypsy here in Vancouver. So, I've been staying with my friend Daryl, and then a brief house-sitting gig at Yemaya's place, and finally a stint with my friend Chris. I am very grateful to both Daryl and Chris for supporting me through this challenging transition. The good news is that I've been making lots of friends here in Vancouver, and I've actually had a good summer, exploring Vancouver, as well as the Burning Man and Tribal Harmonix communities here in town. The bad news is that I haven't made a single edit on the 40 hours of footage I watched while I was back in K-dub. Hopefully the delay will give me some much needed perspective on the whole project.

I'm moving to Commercial Drive in Vancouver today. The Drive is a hotbed of art, activism, and community, and so it's a natural place for me to call home. The Drive has been calling me for a while, and I'm looking forward to living with my roommates Jen and Janine, and hopefully getting some much needed traction on the Lawrence Project as well.

I'm also flying back to Ontario on Monday, and then making a trip with Mamma to Germany for the IACCP meeting. That might also give me some added impetus to bring closure to the Lawrence Project. Really, I just want to make a 20 minute movie that captures the essence of what the project is all about...

Meanwhile, in other updates, it looks like Gale Street will not be renamed Lawrence Avenue after all. Instead, it sounds like the street will have an African name, which is not too surprising given the political realities on the ground in Durban...

Mum's talk on Google Video

I took the liberty to post mum's talk on Google video, for all of you who didn't get a chance to see it.

Successful 19th Birthday Party!

Mum had a very successful 19th Birthday Party yesterday. There were over 100 guests, and people brought all sorts of cards and flowers. Mum gave an illustrated talk about her life, which we followed with a toast and champagne. There was all sorts of delicious food prepared by the University Club, and there was a string quartet that played as well. You can see a huge selection of pictures here.

Happy 19th Birthday

I've been helping Mamma prepare her slides for a talk she's going to give at her big birthday party this Saturday. Mum was born on a leap day, so she'll be officially 19 (that's 76) on Friday. The party is on Satuday, from 3-6 pm. Currently, we've got 114 confirmed guests. Mum will give a short speech about her life, and there will be plenty of food, as well as cake, and a champagne toast. Feel free to leave her a birthday wish in the comments below!

Auntie Therese Memorial Post

Auntie Therese, who was Vincent Lawrence's youngest daughter, died on January 1st, 2008 in the UK. She is survived by her daughter Heather. Here is a picture of the two of them back when Auntie Therese was young, and Heather was just a child.

Heather was good enough to put up some pictures from the funeral, which you can see here. Mum made sure to send a bouquet of South African flowers on behalf of the entire family.


I've taken this opportunity to post an Auntie Therese Memorial Gallery on my Flickr account, consisting of pictures taken from the Lawrence Project archive. If you would like to share a memory of Auntie Therese, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Also, feel free to add any details you know about the pictures in the gallery as comments at the bottom of each picture (e.g., I've left a comment on this picture of Auntie Therese's university graduation). Also, please do email me any photographs that you'd like me to add to the gallery.

Full Steam Ahead

I seem to have found a temporary resolution to my 24p woes: I'm going to just go ahead an capture the footage in a 60i timeline, and edit that together. This means that I don't need to send the footage to Compressor, which I've found to be horribly slow. I did an edit of some of the 60i captured footage, and burned it to DVD, and played it on my player, and that seemed to work okay. So, my plan is to just push ahead that way. I could always send the clips that I am definitely going to use to Compressor, and edit together the final project in 24p mode later. The good news is I feel that I've got enough of a solution to move ahead with the project.

Dad and I have been watching the raw footage together. I find watching the raw footage to be quite painful times - sometimes it's boring, and sometimes it's frustrating for me because of minor details I got wrong. Basically, I need to watch it all, and separate the wheat from the chaff. So far, we've watched about 13 hours of footage together, including the interviews with Ela Gandhi, Joy Brain, Father Rattering, and now Devi Rajab. It's a big help watching the footage with Dad, and I appreciate him spending the time with me on this.

Mum has asked me to burn her DVDs of the different interviews. I'd like to finish watching and capturing all the raw footage, burn the interview DVDs, and get a rough cut of the project in the next two weeks, before I travel out to BC for my conjugal visit with Sharmeen from Feb. 6-15.

In other news, Mum and I met with the faculty club to begin to plan her birthday party for March 1st. Mum's actual birthday is February 29th - a leap day. So, although Mum will be 76, it will actually be her "19th" real birthday. We've got plans for a big party, and a short speech. I'd like to have a draft of the movie done by then, although it sounds like the movie premiere will happen at a later date.

More 24p woes...

Well, at the moment, I am really regretting shooting my footage in the 24p HDV mode on my HV20. I had originally chosen to shoot in the 24p mode, because I wanted to get the most "film like" look I could for the project. However, I've since discovered that this makes for a really nasty work flow, such that I have to capture the footage in Final Cut Pro 6, and then send it to Compressor to have it de-interlaced, etc., as per this apple workflow. Unfortunately, Compressor seems to crash when I give it too many files to process, and the processing is very slow, and the processed files take up a lot of hard disk space. I wish now that I had just shot the footage in either regular HD, or even just SD. Life would be a lot easier...

Anyway, there's nothing to do now but figure a work-around. I've been on the Canon HV20 Users Forum looking for solutions. But so far, the news isn't very good. I think my best option may be to log the tape, and then only capture the footage I need, and then send those short clips to compressor. This puts a bunch of the work of deciding what footage to use at the front of the work flow, which isn't my first choice, and, I don't seem to have any other option...

The good news: Dad has been sitting with me while I watch the footage. I find it a lot easier to watch the raw footage with him.

Happy New Year from K-Dub

I'm back in Kitchener-Waterloo, and here to finish up the Lawrence Project movie over the next two months. Sharmeen is working out on Vancouver Island, so it's just Mum, Dad, and I working on the project here.

At the moment, I'm just finishing up a short xmas video for the family back in South Africa. I've been a bit remiss in keeping in touch, and I am hoping this will help set things right. Most of the footage is of my little niece Jayanti, who is the latest addition to the family. Michele is also 7 months pregnant, so we'll have a new addition soon.

There is a lot of video to go through, and I've gotten Dad to agree to sit and watch the raw footage with me, which I think will be a big help.

Happy New Year everybody!