Check out the AFSC Blog

Tim and the folks at SCAP have a great write up about the recent Art Show that we are featuring in the documentary (they even gave this blog and our project some love!). We were happy to be a part of the event in a small way. You can check out the write up by clicking here.

A busy week of production!

So quite a bit has gone down in the past week as far as work on the documentary goes. On Wednesday morning, Victoria and I headed over to Horizons School on the east side of Atlanta to see and shoot the SCAP program in action. Tim was working with the students along with a new intern, Jana, who was on her first "campus visit." The program was broken into two main parts. In the first, Tim talked w/ the kids about what had happened with the HOPE scholarship and encouraged and assisted them in organizing to actively question and protest the changes. Secondly, he had the students work to complete statements describing advocacy videos they had produced several months ago in conjunction with SCAP. The students then presented for the entire group. Horizons is a really unique school in a lot of ways, and they were totally cool with us shooting everything that was going on. We used two cameras to shoot just about everything, interviewed several students and a teacher, and at one point let a student use the small handycam we had with us to talk to and interview his peers about their experiences with the SCAP program. The morning wrapped up with some impromptu recorded outdoor interviews with Jana and Tim before they headed out.

Wednesday evening Victoria and I attended the SCAP weekly meeting at the AFSC office downtown, and spoke about he documentary project, actively "recruiting" some additional participants and asking for ideas and suggestions. We were able to line up several folks to do interviews, and scheduled a time to work with AFSC intern Josie to help out with the Migrant Youth Voices video project she is working on (we hope to use our skills in editing to help with the project, and perhaps use some of the footage or ideas from Josie to include in our documentary).

Saturday was another extremely busy day for production. Early in the afternoon we did an interview with a current active-duty soldier and friend of Victoria's. Kristy was able to hook us up with the GSU-TV studio, and we worked together to set up lighting, camera positioning, and sound. From what I could tell in asking the questions, the interview went extremely well and I think we will get some powerful moments out of it that will serve the final film really nicely. We also spoke quite a bit about our strategy in featuring "talking head" formal interviews in the film and while we are still making decisions I think we have come up with some good ideas about how to do this in a way that is not boring or overpowering.


Following the interview Kristy, Kristan, and I headed directly over to the AFSC offices so that we could shoot the SCAP Art Show that was a result of a contest held for local high schoolers. To try and cover everything was a lot of work, and I was pretty exhausted at the end of the night. We were able to shoot the art on the walls, lots of good "b-roll" of folks enjoying the experience, as well as several spoken work and musical performances that took place leading up to the awards ceremony. We also did interviews with several of the winners and the volunteers who had organized the show. Another great thing that came out of our presence at the show is that we were able to help out in capturing images of all of the art that SCAP can now use for their blog/website (a big thanks to my wife Ashley who spent a lot of time talking pics. Kristy jumped right in as well and made sure all of the art was documented via still photos). What may be the coolest thing to come out of the show (other than the great footage), were some of the connections we made with young people involved with SCAP and interested in our documentary project. We connected with some really talented young musicians who we are hoping to feature on the soundtrack, as well as a video producer from a local high school. I'm definitely hoping that we can bring some of these kids in to work with us as we start in on post-production in the coming weeks.

Later today we'll head out to do our final interview with Tim Franzen, and will likely begin work with Josie here at GSU on the Migrant Youth Voices video project.

Thanks for reading! Let us know if you have suggestions, questions, or comments.

Production Schedule - Remainder of Semester

Marching Orders

AFSC has been busy lately in preparation for their part in the upcoming protest this Saturday. Here's a copy of the route they plan to take in Midtown on the 19th to raise awareness in the community for their cause:


Here's a video from tonight's SCAP meeting featuring Tim Franzen discussing this weekend's plans (this is just secondary video shot on an iPhone, we were also shooting the meeting with a high quality camera for possible use in our final piece):

Atlantans UNITE!

Saturday, March 19 @ Noon

10th Street Plaza to Piedmont Park

Join SCAP and roughly eleven other pro-peace organizations in a march against the ongoing and costly wars. Bring posters, signs, and a prominent voice!

Kris and Victoria will be in attendance and are eager to capture the message of those attending.

See you then! 

Representational Possibilities

So the one thing that I think has stuck with me the most, and it seems has stuck with the others in the group, is this very clearly defined concept of the limited number of "boxes" high school students often find themselves forced into. These are:

-College
-McJob (i.e. low paying non-skilled labor)
-Military
-Crime, drug sales, etc.

The goal of SCAP seems to be expand and multiply these limited sources of opportunity. Victoria has already been working on some illustrations that we might be able to use to represent this idea. Last night it occurred to me that another way to represent these "boxes" would be be through the idea of doors students have the option of going through after high school. While I don't know exactly how this would be accomplished yet within our piece (and it has the danger of coming off as cliche i.e. "open the door to opportunity"), I think a lot of interesting possibilities come up. We could do a very simple animation using a variety of techniques. We could actually shoot doors in a hallway, or opening and closing (i.e. with the new HOPE regulations the college path suddenly became slammed shut for many). We could do stop motion. Anyway, all just ideas I wanted to get down before they left my brain.

Upcoming Art Show

AFSC Weekly Meeting

Tonight our group attended AFSC's weekly potluck meeting. We were a bit overwhelmed by all the information that was discussed, yet very inspired by this insight. You could see everyone was extremely well informed and passionate about the issues being discussed. Some of the agenda items included:

-Education and the Hope Scholarship

-Student/Parent Privacy Act

-Student Art Contest

-Campus Outreach

-MYV (Migrant Youth Voice)

-Grants

-SAT tutoring

-March 19th Rally

First Day of Shooting

On Saturday, February 26th, I (T.J. posting here) made the trip down to Macon, GA so that I could attend (and film parts of) the statewide meeting of the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition (GPJC). We had inquired about the event at our first meeting with Tim, and he was kind enough to extend an invitation if we thought we could use some of the information and footage for our project. While I was the only one that could make it, this turned out to be fine as the meeting had a small group of people (about 10), and since this is a new camera for me I needed to practice anyway.

The AFSC of Atlanta is just one group that makes up the statewide network of the GPJC, a group that had a lot of success in building towards a large cooperative, but that has seen participation wane in recent years, especially during and after the campaign and election of Barack Obama (which many in the network were involved in heavily). Tim seems to be a driving force behind keeping the group alive, and his leadership, speaking, and teaching skills were on display at the small meeting. Discussion focused mostly on rebuilding and re-energizing the GPJC. Here's a link to AFSC Atlanta's official blog with a post about the meeting.

All this being said, its doubtful much of the footage obtained will be useful in our final project. While a focus on the GPJC and Tim Franzen as an individual activist could be interesting, for this short term work my thought is that we will be better served zeroing in as soon as possible on a detailed and personal story coming directly out of the Atlanta AFSC, in particular the SCAP (Student Non-violent Career Alternatives) program if this remains an option the group is open too.

In the coming days we need to lay out a production schedule, communicate with Tim, and begin to develop a treatment or outline for the project. Time is unfortunately not something we have a lot of in this particular case, so we'll want to narrow in on exactly what we hope to do as soon as possible.