Choosing a Topic

                Acupuncture has always been a peripheral presence in my life. My dad fell in love with the practice when I was about five. Still, I didn’t really understand how it worked, so I decided to bring it into focus and make a MiND program.

Pre-Production and Shooting

                This was not my first time picking up a camera, but this was my first time doing something documentary-like. Most of my experience has been doing things like this (http://vimeo.com/10729943), more traditional narrative shorts, and goofier stuff.

                Starting with pre-production and continuing through editing, the amount of overlap between this 5-minute piece and the narratives I’ve done was surprising. Both require planning (about twice as much as I end up doing)—technical, creative, and logistic.

                The unpredictability, however, is really where these two storytelling methods intersected for me. In the planning stages, the project drifts and swirls like cumulus ideal, pretty and exciting but not solid.  It’s not until the camera comes out and the people start talking and moving in front of it that the project becomes concrete. Mistakes and obstacles (some stupid, some inevitable) surface and yank that shiny blueprint back to reality. I “filmed” an entire acupuncture treatment for B-roll but didn’t realize that I had neglected to press “record.” One patient didn’t show up for an interview. These events necessitate heightened levels of creativity and flexibility. Since I don’t have that treatment footage, what else can I use for B-roll? How can I keep it interesting and varied? It’s not that I enjoy mistakes or obstacles or have any sort of perspective while they’re occurring, but in retrospect, they end up shaping the project in sometimes not-all-that-bad ways.

                Other than the unforeseeable potholes that sneak into every project, the production stage leads to a more enjoyable form of unpredictability: the little organic moments that only real people can produce. With a script on narrative projects, I never know what line or conversation will really jive with the actors and create something much better than what I imagined or actually wrote. During this project, those gems occurred when the interviews felt more like conversations. 

                After shooting, it is clear that the project will not be its imagined origin, but it’s concrete.

Editing

                This part starts with a digression, but bear with me.

My mom started her orthodontic journey when she was eight years old. Her 1960s braces were probably more like Lil Wayne Grills than current day braces—only less diamond-studded and nerdier. Eight years later, when she was sixteen, the braces came off. It’s not as if her mouth started as a chipped village of fallen dominos. Really, her problems were within normal limits—nothing a slightly skilled orthodontist couldn’t handle. Unfortunately for her, her orthodontist was not slightly skilled, but he was a family friend. His dental recipe: push teeth too far in and close together. Pull teeth out and apart. Repeat. A lot. The emotional and physical pain of eight years of braces was a small price to pay for not offending a peripheral acquaintance.

                At times, during the making of this five-minute program, I have felt like that unskilled orthodontist, yanking back and forth in pursuit of that five-minute smile. Luckily, my program did not have to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with a mouth full of metal. During the editing process, each minute change I made created the need for three more changes. I went over the five-minute mark then with my figurative red pen, I crossed everything out. If I were not a child of the digital era and I had to use the ol’ Steenbeck to physically cut film, editing would just be a very expensive and artsy way to make confetti.  The figurative eight years of editing orthodontia transformed the project to watch-ability.

                What kept the cutting interesting was that it was a sort of dynamic puzzle that I had created for myself. I had gone out and sought the pieces, and now I had to put them together. Every decision I made—from adjusting the volume to selecting a clip—affected the program in some way. At the last minute, I cut a 30-second anecdote about a nun on dialysis that had been one of my favorite parts and replaced it with a clip about acupuncture in animals. I hadn’t planned to use the second clip at all, but realized it worked much better in the context.  

                If you can swing it, I recommend making your own five-minute program. It’s a great way to learn by doing.

Hannah Levy

MiND TV Intern

Check out Hannah’s Program on Acupuncture

Will Monsanto Vow to Do No Harm?

Guest Blogger: Reverend Nathan Walker, First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Directors from Monsanto came to the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia for dinner to discuss the ethics of biotechnology. When asked, “will you vow to do no harm,” Monsanto replied, “We already do no harm.” In the spirit of “Food Revolution” listen to Reverend Nate Walker’s summary of Monsanto’s response to the proposal to develop a modern Hippocratic Oath that could lead the entire field of biotechnology to “do no harm, to do good, and to be just.”

Click here for the full text: http://bit.ly/MinistryWithMonsanto 

Or click here to listen to the audio recording: http://natewalker.podbean.com/2010/07/18/ministry-with-monsanto/

When I was a kid, my parents never used the word “organic” unless I would complain about having to shovel manure out of the horse stalls and off into the garden or woods from our bright green John Deer tractor trailer bed.

“It’s all organic kid; it won’t hurt ya, it’s nature’s fertilizer” my dad would say. And, being me, I would roll my eyes and as I shoveled, I would dream of living in a high rise apartment where the term “organic fertilizer,” or the daily need to weed the vegetable garden would never enter into my daily life. I preferred ballet class, trips to the public library and shopping at the mall to stalls, weeding and picking string beans. We didn’t label it anything at the time, but “organic” and “back to nature” was just how we lived. Like most kids, I kind of took the benefits of my upbringing for granted.

I grew up on an organic family farm after all, with horses as pets and wild raspberries growing up around our swing set. Picturesque, pastoral and home grown. It wasn’t until I had to start fending for myself in “the real world” of post-collegiate life that I realized I had a pretty nice set-up at home.

I now realize how amazing it is to walk out your back door and have all the ingredients for a healthy dinner ripening at your finger tips. Literally, we would have wild organic asparagus for dinner sometimes when it would sprout up – all on its own – just next to the raspberry bush.

Today, I am a city dweller, and I have a whole new appreciation for the life my parents provided to me and my siblings. We were spared from pesticides, preservatives, from hormones and tasteless vegetables. Tomatoes are supposed to be juicy red on the inside you know.

Like many, I find myself trying to grow my own container gardens in the city, while always searching for locally grown organic produce, from local produce stands in my neighborhood.

Just last week, we enjoyed a family dinner where my youngest sister Rebecca and my dad had a flavor, taste-off as to who grew the best sweet, yellow corn. Dad won. He’s been at it for 40 years and has quite perfected the science and the art of growing his own food, with love, at home.

I hope someday to do the same. But for now, I cherish my visits to the family homestead, and shop locally and organically whenever I can.

-Kim Kunda

kkunda@mindtv.org

MiND Marketing Manager (and vegetable enthusiast!)