cyclone Yasi – our story – Page 4

Dance for Recovery – Films soon to be Released

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.

Filming with Sensitivity: The Sacred Space of Healing through Dance

facebookcoverdancingrecovery3 — Dance for Recovery – photographs by June Perkins

It was just so rewarding and exciting to assist my friend Danielle Wilson by filming behind the scenes of her project Dance for Recovery. She was supported in her vision by two community arts workers, Avril Duck and Melissa Robertson working for Connecting Community Voices, ISAY project, funded by Far North Queensland Volunteers inc, and several other creatives in music, sound and film: Dez Green, John and Mark Edwards. A couple of members her dance class and some of the wider dance community came to participate, although not all participants were dancers and this was not a requirement.

There was a fantastic response well beyond the circle of Danielle’s friends (most people attending did not know Danielle or each other) to attend this workshop and some people had heard about it on the radio, through the newspaper or the web or through friends; the workshop gave the chance for many people to connect beyond their immediate home. Danielle is all about accessibility and so the class was open to everyone over the age of sixteen. Danielle said she loved that the workshop brought people together from Cairns, Cardwell, Mission Beach, Tully and Innisfail, to express and find their emotions about the cyclone and release them through movement.

dancingrecovery36 — Dance for Recovery – Photographs by June Perkins

I have known Danielle since taking my children to her free movement classes in Mission Beach when they were little. She still works with children but has branched out to work with adults and so Dance for Recovery was an important extension of that process. I vividly remember the way in which she created a sacred and creative space for children of the Cassowary Coast to express themselves and my children have never forgotten the classes. I knew the participants were in for something special even before we had begun. Danielle and I had been talking about a collaboration at some point as I wanted to experience photographing and filming dance, and Danielle wanted to document and be creative with making a dance film. It was amazing to have this opportunity to support a friend and work on my own creative practice. Danielle and I have often crossed paths at workshops for writing, and other projects in the Cassowary Coast and we respect each others arts practice.

dancingrecovery24 — Dance for Recovery – photographs by June Perkins

Even as we speak Danielle is looking at a draft mix of some of the footage as well as still photographs I took of the workshop Dance for Recovery. I so hope that she is happy with how I am beginning to piece together the story of the project. I am looking forward to working with Leandro Palacio from ABC Open who makes some amazing films that have quite an artistic flair to them. As we filmed on Thursday Leandro especially encouraged me to experiment with my perspective, work the height of the tripod and develop a steady hand-held technique, he directed me to move, just like the participants guided by Danielle in their dance.

To prepare for working on the edits with Leandro I thought it would be helpful to sift through 23 minutes of footage and find the parts which:

1- Help convey the story of the project and performance.

2- Look varied, creative and arty and have some continuity with each other.

3- I am pretty sure he has sound to as my camera has some limitations with how well it collects sound.

4- Are free from camera shake or wonky hand-held technique.

5- Do a draft premix longer than we need to try out some editing techniques and mixes for the final documentary.

6- Look at doing a longer interview with Danielle, either me or Leandro can do this, I could maybe pop over to Danielle’s to do this, she was pretty tired after the workshop.

In the process of filming and photographing I was sensitive to the participants, especially due to the topic of the workshop, cyclone, recovery and finding calm, and Danielle let participants know who I was and that they could opt out of being filmed and that I was approachable and wouldn’t mind whatever their decision. I look forward to their responses to the final documentary as well.

It was great that everyone, participants and artistic support, seemed keen to help Danielle by being in the documentary and a few were happy to talk on camera afterwards even though they were on the way home after long day. The rest of the time they forgot I was there and just went about their workshop. It’s always good for a documentary film maker to be invisible and exist primarily in the movement of her camera! A special challenge with filming this documentary was working with the concept of faceless portraits, and avoiding the human face as much as possible.

June Perkins

Dance for Recovery was funded by FNQ Volunteers, Queensland and Australian Government, Isay project, Connecting Community Voices, and involved many volunteers and a small budget for production for contributing Artists.

Dancing Recovery

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

Wonders and Perils of the Natural World

loveheartleaf3 — Nature Takes, Nature Gives – 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.

Blogs on Disasters and Aftermath

http://belshaw.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/sunday-snippets-nz-earthquakes-tomorrow.html

http://belshaw.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/christchurch-earthquake.html

http://blogs.newzealand.usembassy.gov/ambassador/2012/02/michele-petersen-remembers-february-22nd/

http://blogs.redcross.org.uk/emergencies/2011/08/new-zealand-earthquake-worldwide-support-helps-families-recover/

http://blog.fema.gov/2012/02/year-of-reflection-one-year-anniversary.html

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2011/02/24/on-media-trauma-and-the-christchurch-earthquake/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-earthquake/4693057/The-day-the-earth-roared

http://phukettsunami.blogspot.com.au/

http://marinedebrisblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/one-year-later-japan-tsunami-aftermath-and-debris/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/08/japan-tsunami-nurse-blog-comfort-survivors

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/day-by-day-a-personal-story-from-japan/

http://rotowhenua2.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/earthquake-personal-view.html

http://fourpawsandwhiskers.blogspot.com.au/search/label/earthquake

http://nathanaelnz.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/christchurch-earthquake-22-february/

http://alancox.me/2011/02/27/christchurch-earthquake-my-story/

http://markmcguire.net/2011/03/05/social-media-and-the-christchurch-quake/

http://heatherellis-photography.com/stories/personal-quake-of-christchurch/

http://mareeturner.co.nz/christchurch_blog2/

http://jkts-english.blogspot.com.au/

studiescountry — Studies of Sky – by June Perkins

Now and Then; Series 2 comes to Tully

abcopen_workshop_film 036 — Participants and producers preparing for a now and then photo

So yesterday it was time to walk around Tully to take our Now and Then photos. We prepared for the task in the morning at a workshop with ABC Open producers, Michael Bromage and Leandro Palacio. They showed examples, and took everyone through the steps of what we needed to do. It was during this process we were delighted by a walking history storybook of knowledge of the area, Jean. She knew so many things having lived in Tully since she was a young girl. I think she would give the most brilliant guided tour to visitors.

Local librarians were on hand to find and give us more background to old pictures as well, to assist us to make those dates of the then photographs accurate. But what a wonder to see all Jean’s kodak box pictures, many of which are in the local library collection, but we got to see the originals not just the scans.

We were asked to participate in a mini video documentary of the day, and to tell our stories of the photographs to camera. The story doesn’t end there as some participants, much to their surprise, were also asked to have a go at sound recording and were given many tips on many types of storytelling, photographs, to video and blogs. Jean was such a wealth of knowledge that she became a star storyteller, and there is no other way to describe her contribution other than generous and brilliant.

The group for the day were warm, funny and open to learning. They shared laughs, and took to the task with enthusiasm and zest. They are definitely going to tell all their friends about how much they enjoyed the experience.

All the participants contributed well and got right into the spirit of the day. They were energised and keen to learn more about everything the producers had to share. Some participants didn’t have email before the workshop and made little use of the internet but now they think they will. They were happy to hear our local library gives two free hours a week to locals with library cards to make use of the internet each week.

Participants look forward to seeing the documentary about their history walk of Tully, some of it recent and some going back half a century. They collaborated not only with producers, but with each other, to produce some contributions – already uploaded to ABC Open.

You can see my documentation of the workshop HERE.

Thankyou ABC Open for a great day!

Tully Church Lady Sees Change — My now and then photograph completed..

She sees change, after cyclone Yasi the broken buildings just hinted at in the photo.

Now a year on the church is gone, containers hold some of her memories and she will soon witness a rebuild.