As our flight bounced and skidded onto the runway, popping open a baggage compartment and freaking out a few nervous flyers, I grinned with anticipation. Beirut seemed positively delighted to see me, with its Mediterranean blue skies and perfect spring light.
This is our second shoot. We've got twice as much equipment, twice as much time and twice as many crew members (producer Sarah Spring and I). The days of juggling a slimmed-down sound package and an improvised camera rig are over. Over the past month, I've built up a rig that satisfies most of my demands, feels almost like an Aaton XTR and is modular enough to go from a discrete handheld camera to a shoulder-mounted setup, making subject tracking a lot easier. I parted out 3 different modular setups from the good people at
SHAPE and rebuilt something that looks like a cross between the front end of an Italian cafe racer and a ground-to-air rocket launcher. We're using a 5 inch external HDMI monitor powered by a
battery pack from an old portable DVD player, mounted on a Manfrotto Cine Arm. Manual focus is now a breeze. Our audio is now all external, recorded on 4 channels to the Zoom H4N using the onboard stereo microphones for ambient sound as well as a wireless Sennheiser shotgun and a wireless lavalier. Our synch problems have almost totally been solved using a brilliant piece of software named
PluralEyes which analyses the waveforms of the camera's bare audio files and matches it with the field recordings. No more slates, no more awkward clapping in front of the subject... it's plug and play.
Firmware 2.0.4. came out just days before we left, and we're now happily shooting at 24P. Canon also released a
plugin for FCP that makes importing and pro-resing the footage a much simpler process. Essentially, we are now importing footage that looks like 35mm film and synching 4 channels of audio right after we shoot, something that seemed impossible just 5 months ago. It's a brave new world for documentary filmmakers.
As a photojournalist, I've found the transition from shooting stills to shooting video remarkably fluid. I'm interested in developing a shooting style that speaks the language of cinema but also is dressed up by the sartorial formality of photojournalism (how's that for an oxymoron?). Like many photographers, I'm twitchy, zooming with my feet and constantly looking around for new ways to compose an image. This doesn't work when you're shooting video. Now, when I enter a location for the first time, a size it up as best I can and take stock of my shooting positions, angles, lighting and opportunities to make interesting pictures. It's a delicate dance, especially in the tight confines of the refugee camps we're working in.
We've spent the past few days with
Yassin in Burj el-Barajneh camp, hanging out with him and watching the pigeons fly overhead, forced up into the sky by long poles with Palestinian flags on them. Yassin grew up flying pigeons with his best friend Hassan, and his stories are priceless. This has been an incredibly productive week. I'll pass the phone to Sarah, whose first impressions of Beirut this past week are strikingly similar to mine way back in 2006:
"Sunny and hot, cloudless and almost muggy, there is a cool breeze swishing past my face smelling vaguely of the Mediterranean. Beirut's zillion cars that unceasingly swarm through the city, unhindered by traffic lights, speed limits, pedestrians or direction, their horns constantly honking sharp demands that full-on collisions be avoided, please.
i'm lying on my friend Firas' couch with the glass balcony door slid open and a view of beirut's maze of rooftops stretching out in a horizon of grey concrete. Firas worked with Liam on his last trip, and has completely welcomed us into his life, introduced us to his friends, fed us and hugged us and housed us.
Friendship is the overwhelming theme of the trip so far: so many people who are easily, effortlessly and definitely friends. I am giddy from so many new perspectives on the film, the city and the region. And many people are giving us contacts in the camps they think we should talk to. Our ideas about the film are becoming more focused on departure from the victim narrative that is overwhelmingly prevalent in representations of life in the refugee camps. We're going to speak with young people who are making music, creating comic books, getting politically involved, studying medicine, weaving patterns and creating a living for themselves. What is the burden of their identity? How are they reshaping it? Throughout, the birds will swirl overhead and every person will connect in some way with the pigeons that are also trying to make their way home.
Every day we meet with more people who give us information and contacts. Over drinks, over coffee, the list of people who we are going to be setting up interviews with in the camps surrounding Beirut grows all the time, and so until we get our papers for the south we are going to be busy.
One person I'm excited to meet is a young photographer, Hoda, who took part in an NGO's photography workshop in her camp. The eleven-year old's photos are extremely good and are part of an exhibition that we saw yesterday. Through a dinner party here that Firas threw on Friday, I met Lina, a Palestinian woman who works with the NGO and who invited me to see the exhibit, where I met Ramsay, one of the old guard AFP photographers who instigated this program. Plans are already underway for the next project: fully equipped, permanent photography studios in the camps. The kids have had some extensive training already and will now have photographers from Beirut on hand on a regular basis to hone their skills.
The list goes on, so many people in Beirut are spending their time in the camps, working with people, sharing their skills, trying to help in some way. It's surprising to me how many have committed so much time but so much about Beirut surprises me. That I feel so at home here, for one. There is a rollicking art scene with films, concerts and events happening every night. Dinners, drinks on one of the main strips, loud conversations with locals and ex-pats, jaded photojournalists and foreign correspondents, people from all over the middle east and around the world who have gotten the 'bug' - fallen head over heels in love with Beirut."
Shoot the Messenger's animator Paul Morstad has just completed some new works that will be shown next week at Vancouver's Jacana Gallery. Paul's paintings are extraordinary and they use many of the themes present in Shoot the Messenger: birds, geography, history, and land.
