Personal Liability Insurance Info.

Hey there everyone, I just spoke with my aunt about personal liability insurance. Steven recommended I blog this information.

As I mentioned in class, my personal liability insurance is tagged onto my renter's insurance, for which I pay $13.50 per month. For the personal liability insurance portion of my plan there is no deductible. Meaning, if I were to be out in the field with the camera, and, due to my own personal negligence, drop the camera off a ten foot wall, 100% of the value of the camera would be covered. But, if we were to have the camera, and another group member (or total stranger for that matter) were to damage the CSULB property, my insurance would not cover it. In addition, if the camera were in my apartment, and someone were to steal it, it would not be covered by my renter's insurance because I do not own it.

My aunt recommended that if people want this sort of insurance, it is more cost effective to tag it onto a renter's insurance or auto insurance policy (to just get in individually is about $10 or $11 per month--I think). She recommended people in the class to call their local insurance agent (State Farm, etc.), or, they can call her office to write up a policy through Driscoll & Associates, which is located here in Long Beach (technically Signal Hill). My aunt's name is Carleen Armstrong.

Driscoll & Associates

3150 E. Willow Street

Signal Hill, CA 90755

Phone: 562.595.5355

Fax Number: 562.427.6069

I hope this helps! Personal liability insurance is kind of cool to have. For example, if I were to be shopping in a store, and break a large and expensive vase, it would be covered. Another example my aunt gave was that if I were have a dinner party and serving a walnut salad, in the case of someone chipping a tooth on a walnut shell, their damage would be covered by my liability insurance.

Tanakatainment Photo Supplement

Gail handing off the launch controls...

and...blam!


The corn looked suspicious...

Tanakatainment? First day of filming

Mike, Lauren and I had our first day of filming at Tanaka Farms on Sunday 10/26 and I have to say...everything went pretty well. We filmed three interviews (one of which we will probably not use, but was useful practice for filming and setting up the interview shot and sound) and also a number of cut-aways. 

We were all under a lot of pressure to capture footage that day since it would be out last opportunity to film during the "pumpkin patch/Halloween season", which may be taken down after friday to begin setting up for Christmas tree season.

One problem that we did face while filming had to do with the audio from the external mic. We had set up our interview, prepped out interviewee, and were ready to film when we discovered that the only audio we were recording was from the internal mic (and there was way to much external noise). After about 45 minutes of fussing with it, we finally were able to figure it out with the help of our interviewees father (who happened to be a filmmaker). 

Another small problem we faced was that many people we talked with did not want to do interviews with us. The environment of Tanaka Farms is very crowded and busy, and many families with small children don't have enough time to stop and give us the time needed for a proper interview. We ended up finding individuals who were stationary. For example, out best interview was a father whose daughter was having a birthday party at the farm, which allowed him free time while the kids were playing and eating cake. Another great interviewee was a volunteer who manned the "launch pad" which shoots pumpkins out of a large cannon toward a target at the other end of the farm. 

Anthropology News: March Issue

This is from an email I received from AN. I just wanted to throw it out there in case any of you might be interested in submitting commentary on the topics they're addressing.

-Ryan


I’d also like to let you know that March AN will focus on the theme “Ethnography across Media.” Series topics will include (1) Multisensory Anthropology across Media and (2) Visual Ethics. If you are interested in submitting a commentary piece for this, please go to www.aaanet.org/issues/anthronews/callforpapers.cfm for submission details and guidelines.-

Botox Anyone?

Things are coming along in the world of cosmetic surgery!! We've established some great contacts in the last week, and what was looking like a dry river of access has turned into a flood of information and willing consultants!! Hopefully this deluge remains throughout the project.

As of now, we have a woman who regularly undergoes botox treatments, and has participated in botox "parties". She is willing, and practically pushing for us to film one of her treatments in the coming month! She may also connect us with others who undergo similar treatments. Thanks to Patricia, we have a consultant at a local salon who is willing to give us an interview and perhaps give Tin a facial. Speaking of Tin, his hard work has put us in a great position to capture the innards of the cosmetic surgery industry! Through a physician friend of his, we hope to gain access to, and film a surgical procedure!! We'll be pitching our film at his facility this week in hopes of acquiring permission to document a tummy tuck/face lift/liposuction/breast enlargement/etc. procedure! There is also the possibility of a contact within a penis-enlargement office!!

Now we just need to narrow down our angle and pin-point how we're going to drive this train to make an interesting and personal documentary. I will admit, this class is turning out to be formidable. There are times when it seems overwhelming, and I'm sure its going to get even more so. But, I'm really excited to see what's going to happen in the coming months.

Nature and Constructed Space: First Contact

Since our film is focused on the nature around us, we do not have one location we have been visiting to help us direct our film. Instead, we have been exploring different opportunities, organizations and people in search of a good story. From there, we plan on letting our story develop.

A few weeks ago while searching the website for information about parks I stumbled across another organization that formed for the sole purpose of preserving parks. Partners of Parks is a non-profit organization in Long Beach who raises funds to preserve and protect green spaces and provide recreational opportunities for people in Long Beach. I thought they might just be a good interview for our project, but I found out that they are more than just an interview, they are the entrance key we've been looking for to develop our story.

I met with the Executive Director and Senior Program Manager today. They were very friendly and very excited about our film on parks. Instead of doing the pre-interview questions I thought I would do, they gave me contact after contact who they thought would be informative and interesting people to include in our film. They told me about all sorts of people: the maintenance men who are passionate about keeping their small area of the park clean and beautiful, about a neighborhood called Rose Park who has an association to preserve the historic area and the small park in their neighborhood, and El Dorado Nature Center which was formed to replicate what the land use to look like and has fanatic volunteers and staff who tend it. I am especially interested in including El Dorado Nature Center in our film. When this park was formed not only were plants brought in, but rivers and lakes were carved into the land to follow the patterns of the California rivers. The Nature Center has many community projects, activities and volunteers that may be fascinating to include in our film.

Darren the program manager of Partner of Parks has volunteered to be our main contact and connection with the Long Beach Parks. He is going to begin by contacting the people they know at the Nature Center and arrange a tour for us to see the land and meet the people. He is also going to talk to the Parks and Recreation Department to find out what permits and permissions we need for filming.

I am so thankful for this connection with Partners of Parks and their support of our film. I am excited to see how our film develops with our new contacts and I look forward to the interesting people and stories we will encounter as we begin meeting people and exploring our sites.

- Rachel

Team Green: E-Skate at ECHS

On October 28 and 29 the Green Ambassadors program at ECHS will be hosting E-Skate. One of the students was able to get skateboards donated to the program. Then, students painted environmental messages on them. On the days mentioned above they will be selling the e-skateboards to raise money for the Green Ambassadors program.

The address is 16315 Grevillea Ave., Lawndale, CA 90260

Call 310-940-1626 for more information

Team Green: Visiting Environmental Charter High School

Environmental Charter High School (ECHS) is a small campus nestled in a cozy Lawndale neighborhood of single-family homes. The blue and white bungalows and buildings are decorated with inspiring slogans like “I am my own super hero.” In several locations trash, recycling and compost bins are brightly painted with signs that distinguish one from another. The few friendly security guards roam around campus and seemed relaxed in the alternative high school atmosphere.
Our group met with Sara who works with the Green Ambassadors program and has previously taught at ECHS for six years. The program team members share a small narrow office where they work and run the program. The Green Ambassadors program is housed at ECHS and teaches the required environmental course for 10th graders. Two of the team members, Gabriel and Sandra are paid by L.A. Trade Tech College, so when taking the course students receive college credit. Although Green Ambassadors is at ECHS they receive a lot of press for their program and seek outside sources for funding.
In our discussion of how to best approach participants for our film Sara suggested that we present our project at a Monday morning teacher’s meeting. Additionally, she added that it’s best to prepare questionnaires for the teachers to fill out so we can assess whether they will be interested in us talking to them or their students. This strategy can help with building relationships with several teachers, so they can feel more comfortable with us visiting their classrooms and working with them. Sara did share that some of the faculty felt neglected because their program receives so much attention. So, she suggested it would be a good idea to possibly focus on a department or particular discipline to assure that we get a well-rounded look at the campus and what is offered at the school.
As we continued to discuss the program and school some issues came up that we had not considered or even discussed as a group before the meeting. During our meeting Sara mentioned that they (the program and the school) wanted access to sound bytes from the completed film to use in other media outlets. They can be used to promote the high school as well as the Green Ambassadors program, yet we hadn’t worked out our contract with the school or program participants. They seemed excited about our interest in wanting to cover the school and program, yet I felt like if we as a group didn’t tighten up our focus soon we could possibly be persuaded to cover the stories and events that they viewed as important.
That was a challenge for me. Are we supposed to be crystal clear about what we cover before venturing out into the field? Will other stories and directions emerge while we’re doing fieldwork? I think so.
One notable moment that stuck out during our meeting is when Sara said that she had just gotten a phone call from an angry parent. She went on to tell us a story about how a parent complained to her about her daughter who she described as “self righteous.” According to the mother her daughter acted as if she was better than everyone else, especially other students that didn’t attend ECHS. The mother, possibly feeling like her power over her daughter was threatened asked Sara for assistance. But Sara didn’t know how to help her.
This kind of situation, students armed with new information and challenging old ideals, seemed to come up a few times in our discussion. Sara told us how many of the teachers at the school aren’t environmentally conscious and only chose to teach at the school because they offer a college prep curriculum. So, when the teachers make mistakes like not using both sides of a paper the students call them on it.
It would be interesting to examine that issue, how students are building a bridge between the environmental knowledge they get at school with their lives outside of school and with authority figures, namely their parents. While the students are being prepared to enter college and help to improve the environment their parents may be used to being the knowledgeable ones and may have issues with that relationship changing so rapidly. That maybe something our group can explore.

Storytelling

I think we are all more or less in a place where we want to learn how to tell good stories. Current.com is a website oft-recommended by Dr. Wilson. They have a "storytelling section", including great video based inspiration from Storytellers like Robert Redford, Dave Eggers, Ira Glass...the Ira Glass video is especially worth watching. Actually at the risk of sounding too serious, watching this video in full will probably be the best thing you do today.

Jessica

Mead Film Festival

With all that extra money in our program, we should think of sponsoring the Traveling Margaret Mead Film Festival at CSULB. The rental fees are $1800 for the full program and $900 for half, such a deal... 

I don't actually know what would constitute a deal, but if I don't have to pay for it...well, I guess my taxes are paying for it, and my tuition. Hmm...maybe we should buy more equipment instead. 

Free Screening of Four LA-Themed Documentaries

So, this is incredibly late notice, but I just found out today about this screening on Saturday. These are four films sponsored by the same organization (California Council for the Humanities) that is sponsoring the Master's project that Donia and I are working on . 

The four films are: "The New Los Angeles", documenting the city's recent political and social history; "The Eastsiders", about the historic Central Avenue area before 1965; "Chicano Rock", Jon Wilkman's film tracing the history of rock n' roll and Latino identities in East L.A.; and "Chinatown Remembered: Los Angeles During the 1930s and 1940s", about the creation of the first planned Chinese American community in the U.S.

These films will be screened for the L.A. Archives Bazaar at the USC Davidson Conference Center (3415 South Figueroa Street at Jefferson Boulevard) on Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm. I know this conflicts with the proposed Grad Student Mixer, but maybe we could go in the morning for part of it. 

Admission is free, but parking is $8 (of course).

Schedule:

"The New Los Angeles"

10:30-11:45 am

www.californiadreamseries.org/nla.htm

"The Eastenders"

12:30-1:30 pm

www.eighthandwall.org

"Chicano Rock! The Sounds of East Los Angeles"

2-3 pm

www.wilkman.com

"Chinatown Remembered: Los Angeles During the 1930s and 1940s"

3:30-4:30 pm

www.chssa.org

Please let me know if you are interested in going. 

The Blog & The Contracts

I really am enjoying watching how this blog is evolving. Special thanks to JSteaffans for thinking outside the box on how to use this tool & for posting interesting images. Also, thanks to filmgirl, Mike and Suba for their recent interesting posts.

So far, we've seen posts related to the thematic development of our teams' films, thoughts on weekly assignments, information about artistic events around town, intergroup dynamics, struggling with difficult decisions the groups need to make & others topics as well. I really encourage each group to expand how this blog is used by finding new things to write about. I'm especially looking forward to seeing posts about your production experiences.


The thing we really need to push forward now is story-development. How are we going to push these ethnographic films from simple informational pieces to important and compelling stories that resonate with your future audience/s and the people with whom you are working? Remember the driving motivation to make a film - we are all Homo narratus!

Please feel free to post any random thoughts about the stories you are developing here.

One last thought. This contract issue is really fascinating. From our class discussion yesterday, it was obvious that the 'final-cut rights' are the greatest struggle. While all the groups want to be fair with each other and proposed an egalitarian approach (kudos to DL for employing anthropological parlance), in the end we were not so sure whether that was the wisest choice. Ultimately, each group will need to decide for themselves what works best. My own thought is that final-cut rights should not be shared as a collective. One person should have the ultimate responsibility. Hopefully, though, there can be some flexibility built into the contract as well. Maybe there's a way for the groups to include language that would allow someone to rework the film under agreed-upon circumstances. Good luck with this one - it's a tough one.

Great Questions List

http://www.storycorps.net/record-your-story/question-generator/list

Agri-tainment?

(by Mike)
Our visit to Tanaka Farms this weekend left us with results that we were not expecting. The original theme we were shooting for for this project was the push for "green"-ness and how people might be making a shift to locally grown foods. This was not the case at Tanaka Farms. What we found there was young families with small children having fun in the sun running around and picking pumpkins for halloween. We were the only people on the premises who weren't escorting a small child.
We were able to question a few people while they were pumpkin hunting and our "in" was typically freeing their hands and taking a picture of the whole family. We asked questions like "how often do you come to Tanaka Farms?", "Would you have come here without your child?", or "Do you shop at farmer's markets?". It seemed that most people answered that they were there simply for photo opportunities of their children in the act of pumpkin picking, and they didn't necessarily shop at farmer's markets and typically only come once a season if not just once a year.

Environmental Charter Schools, is there room for them on Gods green earth? By SZB

Good day mates, I am officially a blogger. This Friday, Oct. 24, our team will hold its initial meeting with Environmental Charter high school, ECHS, administrators. No need to break the ice, our teams Producer, Caroline Pinal, has done that already. Rumor has it that the school is very excited about our upcoming project, hopefully they will agree with the direction we want our film to go. As for that, our proposed film will focus on the need for an environmental charter school.
With that in mind we will be looking at the internal and external functions of ECHS, located at 16315 Grevillea Avenue in the city of Lawndale. Among other things, the film will focus on the advantages ECHS students gain over high school students who attend non-charter public high schools. In addition we plan on taking an in depth look at the environmental practices that exist on this campus, our inquiring minds want to find out just how environmentally sound the campus itself is. For info about ECHS you can check out there website at http://www.echsonline.org/?page=home. Check out the "Green Ambassadors" video on the homepage, I am particularly interested in this program.
For the sake of tension we hope to compare our findings at ECHS with local public high schools and watch the controversy explode. One question that may be central to this film is what percentage of students are likely to enroll into two and four-year colleges? Also, are the students at ECHS more environmentally conscious then students who attend local public high schools? Does ECHS offer extra-curricular activities that are comparable to the extra-curricular activities offered at public high schools, i.e., social events, sports programs, academic and social clubs, etc?
If you haven't guess yet, the subjects that we are most interested in are the students themselves. Although ECHS if the focus of this study it is our intent to also include Rosie the Riveter charter high school right here in Long Beach. We are still working on setting up a meeting with school officials.
As for our next entry, look for Bahati to discuss our struggles with getting our contracts finalized.

Nature & Constructed Space: Making it Legal

Our group has been having the ongoing email discussion, which we find to be the most effective form of communication for our varied schedules, regarding the contract. We agree on most aspects of the document: costs, division of labor, proceeds/royalties, credits, and the separate contract that we are making with our participants. 

Where things have gotten more sticky is in our discussion of ultimate ownership and future rights to future projects. My teammates, who shall go unnamed ;) believe in an egalitarian approach. 

"Each member on the team has equal rights to the film and footage. The film may be edited and re-released by any member of the team with permission from the other members. If team members would like to be involved in creating future versions of the film, then they are allowed to give input to future edits and screenings, but they do not have to be a part of the process. Before a new version of the film is shown, the team should be allowed, if they desire, to view the new version and give input or suggest changes. In every releasing and screening of the film, credit should be given to each of the original team members as laid out in this contract."

I, on the other hand, am not as excited or sympathetic to this. I believe that ultimately the original footage as well as the original final cut should belong to someone (or even split with one person keeping all the original footage, while the other person has ownership of the original final cut). Someone should have ownership and the ultimate authority to move ahead with future projects or veto others. It doesn't make sense to me otherwise, but perhaps I can be convinced with some discussion. 

I am envisioning us in a worst case scenario splitting apart with the directions that we want the footage to go. Shouldn't someone have the ultimate authority/ownership in case of a three way split? Should that be the Director, Cinematographer or the Editor? I think a case could be made for any of them. But I've also heard that editors should never give away their original copy of the finished product because it is their production. Though it is a group effort, so it can be a hard argument to follow. 

My conclusion: I think their needs to be an ultimate "shareholder" for split decision making.

BAD first try

I am not happy with my original footage. This is for a variety of reasons.
1. I don't think I framed the interview well
2. I changed locations for variety and although the surroundings were fabulous..the wind was ridiculous....and was much louder on film than in person.
3. ran out of good lighting outside

I have a re-shoot of Laurencio for November 23.
I have been unable to set a definite date for my other subjects.

Frosh Interview

This week we all met up on Friday to interview a freshman at CSULB. Her name was Erika and I found her in one of my classes, but I had never talked to her before. It turns out she lived in the dorms so it was very convenient to find a time for all of us to meet up. We chose to shoot the interview on the lawn in front of the Los Alamitos dorm because we figured there would be less people and noise interference compared to most other locations on campus. Another reason why we chose this location was to have the Pyramid as a backdrop in the frame. The interview itself was a little under five minutes long, but we felt that it went extremely well and that the sound was superb. We are planning to spend the rest of the weekend establishing more contacts for our film and setting up an interview.
-Eddie

Getty Photography

Two weeks ago in class we had mentioned the possibility of visiting some photography exhibits for inspiration. I am planning to visit the Getty on Sunday, October 26th. It closes at 5:30pm, so I would leave the Long Beach area at 1:30pm to allow enough time to get up there. 

There are two photo exhibits that specifically feature landscapes and the development of photography. Should be interesting. If you've never been, the museum is free, beautiful and worth the drive. If we go together, we can split the cost of gas and parking. Let me know if you are interested.

-Jessica

CONTRACTS

10.16.08 I prepared a Contributor contract. And am designing a release form. I do not like the examples (1 and 2) in the book. I would be interested in seeing if anyone else has something better.

2 more interviewees

On 10.15.08 I interviewed to more subjects for the Empty Chair film.
Liz; whose husband died from heart disease
Susan; a women in her early 40's who due to unusual symptoms is in the process of being undergoing cardiovascular testing. I will cover her symptoms and the outcome of the tests.

Sound Project

Yo. So, for our sound project, we decided to record two young females having a conversation over lunch in the USU. It was time consuming to transcript their conversation due to a lot of overlapping, giggling, and mumbling. The project was completed succesfully and we look forward to the next! Our group works smoothly, efficiently and responsibly together!

Lauren, Nikki, and Mike's Blog

(by Lauren B.)
For our first assignment, to make a three-minute film without sound, we chose to film a “day in the life” style short about Mike’s beloved tortoise, King Koopa. This project provided us with many valuable lessons: the importance of using a story board, how to do in-camera editing, the challenge of working with live animals (which Mike and I have some experience with), how much you really can convey with out sound, and…. that we really should have been using a tripod. In addition this project also provided us the opportunity to work together on a project as a team before we start the big project.
Speaking of our big project—"Agri-tourism in Orange County," we are very excited to do some filming this weekend at Tanaka farms! This weekend we plan to visit the Tanaka Farms Pumpkin Patch! There we hope to see some fine Orange County agri-tourism, get some practice on the new cameras, AND… maybe buy some pumpkins! More on what we find next week!

The conception of “Botox Parties”

(by Tin)

Visual Anthropology and - wow - my first blog ever. Tighten your seatbelts. Your crew: Ryan, Eddie, and myself - Tin. What are we up to? What have we done?

We defined a filming project, and we finished two Missions (assignments).

Got a green light to work on “Botox Party”, a film on methods of beautification now in fashion, covering the invasiveness of some procedures and the boldness of the participants. In two meetings Ryan, Eddie and I defined our vision of the project. In the class presentation, after we listed (so many) ways to approach this topic Professor Schindler asked us to tighten the scope of our interest. Zoom in, focus.

The first Mission, a short film edited “in the camera”, about two guys clashing their interests in the street, acted and filmed by Ryan and me, turned to be a challenge of storytelling continuity. It was surprisingly hard without preemptive storyboarding. “Editing in the camera” turned to be “editing in the head”, that’s our heads in the street running, filming and spinning the story. End result: our audiences get it - we did good. Ryan is an excellent cameraman and a great guy to work with.

Then unsynchronicity and sickness stroke our group and we crashed with a late delivery of our second Mission - a sound recording; then couldn’t get our heads right to do it the following week; so eventually I dared to take a camera and record a moment of some interest at an unconventional location. The transcript of the conversations reads funny to me, will the class be amused? Nothing is perfect with that sound yet I like it, it feels real.

The lack of synchronicity in our group was called upon by Professor Schindler who had a briefing with three of us to establish communication protocols and scheduling.

Nature and Constructed Space: Guerrilla Gardening

When you see an unfamiliar practice featured in a TV commercial, you immediately understand that you have caught onto this idea/practice/occurrence a little late in the game. Tonight I saw a Columbia commercial (you know, the company that makes outdoor/sporting gear) and they featured a group of "Guerrilla Gardeners" who are scoping out a parking lot with a small overgrown patch of land. This group of about 5 people hop a fence, tear out the existing weeds and plant new "native looking" plants. The commercial then goes on with some tagline about the "Greater Outdoors". It made me immediately think about our film project as we look to ideas of nature and constructed space.

I began to look into this practice and found that it seems to have started in the 1970s and is somewhat "popular" in England. I was able to watch this video of Londoners practicing guerrilla gardening. In this video, the main guy (Richard Reynolds) refers to the origins of the word "guerrilla" coming from Spanish villagers fighting for their land in the war. They see their task as the same: fighting for the land that is in their communities.

A small amount of research led me to an L.A. based group that has been getting some press this year for their work in organizing guerrilla gardening. They basically look for overgrown public spaces, plant native plants, then tend the garden and recruit others to help. They have also been doing some work with schools. I hope that we can feature this group in our film. You can check them out at www.laguerrillagardening.org

-Jessica

1st Entry

At the beginning of the fall 08 semester, 5 groups of California State University, Long Beach undergraduate and graduate students started to make ethnographic films. This blog chronicles the experiences of each of these groups.