Week 7 Prgress

I spent my time this week doing research and contacting people to interview. I spent two hours re-watching Julia Dengel's film "Cowboys, Indians, and Lawyers". I contacted as many people from Dengel's film as possible. One guy still lives in town so i sent him a message and am awaiting a response. Another was part of the Southern Ute Grassroots Organization which im not sure is still active or if their contact information is current, but i sent messages where i could. I pretty much spent the rest of time watching the film "Cadilac Desert" and reading the book of the same name.

Week 5 Progress report

This week I spent time contacting a few more sources and trying to arrange interviews and continuing research on the Project itself, I also did a practice interview with a friend to help prepare for my interviews. I used the majority of my ten hours preparing for my work shop.

I contacted Tom Yoder and Sarah Wilcox of the SWCA Environmental Consultants. This is the orginization that handled the excavation of artifacts in the Ridges Basin site. I am awaiting a response on whether an interview is possible. I was contacted by and given a lot of good information from Dave Gates, the Public Outreach Team Leader from the A-LP. I spent about three hours going over this info and cammunicating with Dave. Unfortunatley the Project Manager of the A-LP informed me via Dave that there will be electrical testing this weekend so my tour will have to be rescheduled.

I spent threehours conducting several practice interviews practice interview with a friend. I practiced setting up all my equipment and seeing how long it would take. I used a couple lamps i had around the house in place of real lights and C-stands and experimented with different lighting setups. I used an old tri-pod to tape the microphone to and practiced aiming it properly.

I worked for about four hours on creating a power point for my lighting workshop, researching lighting techniques, and experimenting with diferent improvised gels, diffusers, and techniques.
I used a digital SLR and the Panasonic video camera to test the results of different set-ups. I found a couple good videos on you tube on lighting and watched several movies for inspiration. American Beauty has great lighting so i spent time trying to mimic the quality of light in certain scenes of the film.

These area few of the better lighting tutorials i found on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwsi9NQWen0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82w7zixCDJo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6yRQnFD-_8

Week 4 Progress Report

I spent this week continuing my research and getting b-roll footage at and around the Dam. I'm still awaiting interviews from the A-LP Project Manager, Brad Clark, and spent time revising my proposal, in order to make it presentable to different sources.I also spent time watching a documentaries and taking notes.

I spent three hours filming and taking stills at the site of Ridges Basin Dam. I was able to get up close to the dam and i think i got some good shots. While there, I discovered several signs indicating that the site is used as a Uranium tailings repository. Two of these signs stated that the amount of radioactivity is 1,400 curies. I thought this was very interesting, and somewhat worrisome, so upon returning home I spent two hours researching The sites use as a Uranium repository. I found that the site had been used for this purpose before the construction of the dam and the dam was placed over this site for the purpose of further containing the hazardous materials beneath.

I took an hour to revise and shorten my proposal and make it more presentable to a variety of sources. Once finished I sent it to the Project Manager at the A-LP and am awaiting a response. I also spent about an hour and a half researching the Animas. I was particullarly interested in its origin and end.

I spent about two and a half hours watching two documentaries. The first was Dark days, directed by Marc Singer. I really liked how the filmmaker got close to his subjects and was able to get some extremely personal moments caught on tape while maintaining a level of objectivity which i think was necessary to effectivley tell the story. the second doc i watched was Out of Balance, directed by Tom Jackson. This is a doc about Exxon Mobil and the effects of fossil fuels on climate change. This was a pretty basic documentary in terms of style and subject but it was helpful to see how another filmmaker presented an issue somewhat similar to mine.