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.