Making of a documentary II

Once the format was settled, I got flying. I decided that it could not be a grim portrayal of the situation. It had to be upbeat. It had to highlight the potential without undermining the seriousness of the ground reality. When I asked Celia her take on the focus of the video, she confirmed my own angle. That was good news. I felt I could not just go and distort what she had shot in almost 10 hours of tape. If it served some higher purpose, praise be to God! Alhamdulilah! (That's something I have learned from my Arab and Muslim friends).

How do I even start? Where do I start? It was a difficult decision. In the beginning, I was only concerned to make a fund-raising video. So I started chopping up pieces that were good, and had some meaningful insights from all the individuals that were interviewed, interspersed with sights and sounds of Kathmandu and Hetauda. It was good that there were some artistic sections--no I am exaggerating! Well, I am referring to a little snippet of music that went along with this sign that said: Let there be peace! And there was a section with a Nepali folk song. I grabbed those real fast. I would definitely use them. I grabbed all the snippets with children doing their things. Then I separated out the more serious interviews with the adults.

I tried to put some humor--crosscut the serious interviews with children's upbeat natur--before the message got too depressing, or turn away viewers. I felt it was important to show the reality of the school--how it looked, how student studied. As they say a picture speaks louder than the words--ok okay, those are not the exact words, but why use a cliche when you can be creative?

I had Purna, Rob Buckley, Juliana and Elizabeth Wickwire. When I reached my first review phase, it was about 20 minutes long. I knew I had to put Kirk later, but at that point, the video was meant to be only for fund raising. So I got a little creative. I wanted to get a feedback before I went and made it unbearable to watch. I asked Bruno Pareyra, who runs Ram TV programs twice a week to view it and tell me honestly what he thought. I am glad I asked. He told me that it was hard for him to understanding English coming out of Nepali tongues. At that instance I had placed all the Ms. Wickwire's interview intact toward the latter half. That was too lengthy and had to be chopped up to prevent it from being dull--despite all the interesting facial expressions, her ability to express concisely, and create new words in the process if she had to.

I agreed with Bruno's take. That set me into a new phase....