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"Investing in The Hunger Project --
A New Spirit of Partnership"
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VHS
copies of the video above plus a 22-minute overview of our trip to
Africa are available from The Hunger Project. A US tax-deductible
donation of $20. is suggested.
To order, please call 800-ACT-NOW-1, or mail a check to The Hunger
Project, 15 East 26th Street #1401, New York, NY 10010 USA
Introduction
Sometimes
life gets even better than you expect.
 That's
the way I felt when Lynne Twist, the director of strategic funding
for The Hunger Project told me
that she had raised the money to have me video the remarkable work
of this non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) in Senegal
and Ghana, West Africa. I had done the most satisfying work of my
career for The Hunger Project in the late eighties, and there's
just no way to compare working to help end hunger with working to
help sell more "widgets" - even if they are cool, high-tech "widgets."
However, there was a hitch.
The
travel budget only included expenses for one person, me. No camera
person (DP). No sound recordist. No gaffer. No production assistant.
Just me. An experienced writer/producer/director, but not the kind
of shooter I would normally hire. Under any other circumstances,
I would have passed.
But
what really made this project possible was the remarkable new
DV-cam technology . . .
But
these circumstances were different. It was an exceptional opportunity
for me to become more of a global citizen (I hadn't been to the
Third World since my trips to India in the seventies) and I really
was excited about helping the work of The Hunger Project to be more
widely seen and appreciated. (For more information, visit The
Hunger Project on the web, e-mail
or call 212-532-4255.)
But
what really made this project possible was the remarkable new DV-cam
technology that I had seen at NAB that I knew would enable me to
shoot footage comparable in quality to BetacamSP with equipment
not much bigger than high-end consumer camcorders.
I'm
a firm believer that when you're doing the "right" thing, the circumstances
cooperate, and in this case, the "circumstances" that cooperated
included three of the leading manufacturers of DV cameras (JVC,
Panasonic and Sharp), Bogen Photo Corp. and Adolf Gasser, Inc. of
San Francisco.  Together, in exchange for exposure of
their products in this article and credit on the final productions,
these five companies supplied me with a new state-of-the-art in
field production configurations. In addition to being able to acquire
some extremely valuable footage for The Hunger Project, I learned,
firsthand, that DV is delivering a paradigm shift in field production
technology; and that, yes, it is possible for a one-man crew (with
a client cooperative enough to help with the microphone pole) to
travel to another continent and successfully shoot professional
material.
As
you probably know, this is not the ideal scenario for maximum results
-- however where budget is an issue and as long as you are willing
to work within the constraints of available light -- a new paradigm
for cost-effective professional production is emerging. In fact,
since returning to California, I have already successfully done
an additional video interview with an equipment configuration like
the one described below. Except when I'm shooting in California,
instead of in Africa, I feel comfortable shooting with only one
DV-cam, instead of three.
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