I’ve just been looking through some old photographs and found some enchanting memories of trips to Cardwell, just down the road. It is under going lots of restoration and change.
I miss how it was before Yasi.
Before the cyclone it had some beautiful trees, covered in flowers, and there for the climbing.
Flower Tree- June PerkinsTree to Climb – June Perkins
I remember early trips where we would see people’s boats sitting on the shore. Although I was never sure if this one was ever used.
A boat waiting? – June Perkins
Although walking around after the cyclone I found this headstone, which I’d never noticed before.
Headstone – June Perkins
The trees were different but many were still there.
Our first trip back to the Licuala Rainforest after Cyclone Yasi was full of greenery!
We just did the short children’s walk, partly due to the heat and because youngest had left his shoes behind (so easy to do in Queensland) and we’d bought him thongs for the walk.
It was encouraging to see so many healthy licuala palm leaves.
I enjoyed abstracting the leaves.
And looking for sunbursts.
The children loved their outing, and want to walk further next time, maybe beginning much earlier in the day, and with suitable footwear.
Youngest took his thongs off back near the car as they were a bit big.
We all enjoyed our walk back in the glorious green.
The Documentary Dance for Recovery Behind the Scenes is almost complete. Final edits today and then it is sent to the project organisers. It’s been the biggest project in my short film making journey so far.
Many documentaries are done by a full crew and have the luxury of people specialising in editing of sound, image, camera work and they have access to some time saving programs like Pluralise etc – films even short films benefit from having a lot of crew on board. But ABC Open has taught me it is possible to work on a shoe string, but this means it can take more time. I have an even tighter shoe string budget than ABC too (: just explaining the limitiations of my current small film set up. Sounds like time for me to set up some serious collaborations and search out funding.
I have had to make this documentary fairly independently, with some support and mentoring being provided by Leandro from ABC Open and my hubby David who truly is a genius in coming up with creative ways to solve our lack of expensive equipment, we used our tablet with an application to collect the sound – which was a step up in quality from our mobile phone, but it probably has some better apps, I’ll have to ask Leandro and google for some more advice. I loved having access to Dez Green’s beautiful sound track, which was used for Danielle’s show. He’s a talented man and himself a budding film maker and music maker for stage shows.
It’s been brilliant interviewing and going over some raw footage with Danielle Wilson since the workshop and mixing it in. Danielle is so eloquent in explaining the processes behind her project. It’s a thoughtful interview. Also mixed into the documentary are some shots collected from one of the preplanning meetings and some of the footage collected at the workshop.
The documentary film makes extensive use of photograph stills as well as video and gives a sneak peek of the performance as I filmed it from the behind the scenes. An additional challenge to this film was collecting footage which gave participants a sense of privacy and space as they were involved in ‘healing the past from the cyclone.’
It is not uncommon for documentary makers to work with sensitive subjects and to have to come up with filmic solutions and compromises in reaching their goals of an interesting story shot in an interesting way. Trust is important in making many documentary films and many are in search of emotional truth. I will do some more research and future blogs on documentary films I have seen that have moved or inspired me and find out about some famous ones for my readers.
Mark Edwards has filmed and edited a very polished version of the silhouette performance and after viewing the documentary I am sure you will be keen and very curious to see his film; I have seen some of the early edits and it’s looking like it will be fantastic.
The making of this mini documentary has given me enormous insight not only into Danielle’s vision of Dance for Recovery, and the work and team needed to help her realise that vision, but also into taking my own film making to the next level and assisting me to develop more confidence and skills in this very interesting genre. It would certaintly be brilliant to have access to a few more programs, some better lenses, sound equipment and more helpers, but I’ve definitely learnt that anything is possible, even if you have limited resources. Now just imagine with more resources, finances, and a bigger team, yes maybe its time to hit trop fest sometime soon.
Dance for Recovery was funded by FNQ Volunteers, Queensland and Australian Governments, Isay project, Connecting Community Voices, and involved many volunteers and a small budget for production for some contributing Artists.
Today we had a meeting of the artistic, technical and documentation crew as well as the community cultural development officer and other council staff, to help Danielle Wilson with the Dance Recovery workshop happening this Thursday at the Innisfail Shire Hall. It was exciting and enlightening to have everyone familiarising themselves with Danielle’s overall plan for the workshop, and to be looking at the space, lighting, sound, as well as clarifying our roles.
The workings behind the stage – June Perkins
I have been preparing by studying up as much as possible on the white balance, exposure, shutter speed, and video features of my Nikon 5100. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to practice and learn more about video and film as I will be observing everyone else working on video and lighting that day (we have a dolly contraption coming – more on that next post). There’s a few of us helping with the varying video and filming requirements for the day, I’ll devote a post to the team next time.
My focus will be the ‘process of the production’, a mini behind the scenes documentary, observing how the elements come together under the direction of Danielle, Avril and Melissa. I’m going to do some video of Danielle in action, maybe some short interviews at the very end of the day, some still photography – and collect video of the process of putting together the performance as well.
I took some video of the planning meeting today as well and a few stills. Everyone was enjoying playing around with their silhouettes up on the screen. As I headed off with my notes for Thursday sound and other aspects were still being discussed. It’s all looking great for Thursday. There’s still space for participants if you are keen, but you need to call Avril or Melissa and be over sixteen. See Dance Recovery for more details.
Danielle and Avril trying out effects on the screen – By June Perkins
Nature – so much peace and calm to be found in her rainforests, by her oceans with sunrises and sunsets full of glory, at the top of her mountains or in planes where we can perch and see the topographies of landscape, and at other times she is a tempest and brings storms, earthquakes, floods, cyclones and we know we must wait until she calms down.
Just as she gives us our food, and our air, she takes and destroys when her fury comes. Yet, she is no she or he, just an entity created by something. She does not have a will (I don’t think so anyway), and yet we do. We have a will to decide how to deal with what nature gives and what nature takes.
Today I went searching blogs that have covered some of the perilous things that have happened with nature in the last two years. You might find it interesting and moving to read some of them. I will be visiting a few of these blogs over the next few days and have bookmarked them in this post to remember those people still healing long after most news crews have gone. Why not visit their blogs and drop them a line to let them that you too are thinking of them.
I asked myself today when will I feel totally free of that pesky Cyclone Yasi, and I think it will be closer when I have completely sorted the junk from two house moves (yes its still not sorted), not see any ruins at all in our main Tully St (it is looking much better than it was!), and when most people are smiling regularly and realise all the good in their daily lives and when I write more about other things. Our community is well on the way to recovery and yet the feelings of joy will be predominant when the physical reminders are repaired more fully and when people take a deep breath when the next big storm comes and calmly prepare without memory running after them and giving them bad dreams. If this is what a natural disaster is like, how much worse human made disasters, wars, hunger, poverty, lack of education, prejudice, fleeing homelands and so on.
Today I was saddened by a boatload of refugees meeting with disaster and by the level of bullying in our schools. It will be awesome to have a world where people don’t have to flee or leave their homelands, and are also welcome everywhere. A place where kids will always feel safe and included at school. I think many of these things will be whole blog topics in themselves one day when I have done some research and found some stories to inspire. I don’t feel down rather I feel determined to find the points of inspiration in our world, people, organisations who are striving to make a difference.
Bloggers, writers, observers, artists can play a role in looking at the ways in which we can fix our world and encouraging each positive moment until it grows. Sometimes it takes a bit of heart to do this, but knowledge and the power of a story can never be underestimated.
June Paisa Perkins 