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15 Minutes of Fame

Our first big screening of the film was with the senior showcase in May 2020. The next step for the film was to submit to a variety of film festivals. We got some great news from the 15 minutes of Fame Festival.  15 Minutes of Fame is a Film Festival based out of Florida, and is a collection of films produced anywhere in the United States or Canada that are under 15 minutes in length. Submitted films were viewed by a panel of five judges and the highest scores became official selections. We got our Official Selection notification at the end of October. It is with great anticipation that we look forward to the digital screening of the festival that runs for the month of December. We are one of two documentaries being screened.

Before being brought on to this project, I had already edited numerous short documentaries and short films both at Stevenson and my various internships. I knew how to organize and prepare footage, but I was only doing it at a semi-moderate level. Most of the time, the footage was on the same hard drive as the project and I was only dealing with-on average-maybe two hours of footage in any given project. I knew that this would be a totally different animal so I had to make sure I was ready.

I like to play with hypotheticals in my down time. It could be what would happen in a class, or writing a project, or a later conversation I’m going to have with a person. They’re easy to come up with and I can think of some crazy hypotheticals when I want to. Going to Africa was no exception. I was going to a place I was unfamiliar with having no experience in Africa with Alang having made the mission trip once before. Since he grew up in Cameroon, I felt better, but that didn’t mean that butterflies went away.

I woke up at 3:00 am the day we left for Toube. My mind was coming up with all types of ideas on what to expect to see in Toube. Would this be when culture shock hits me? Will I feel like I’m starving myself to death? Will I be able to handle some of the sights I see? I didn’t go back to sleep. Everyone else woke up around 5:00 am. The ride to the boat was one of the smoothest rides we had so far. There were actually roads (most of the trip) and they weren’t in terrible condition. Plus, not many cars were out at 6:00 am (understandable). Police/military were patrolling the roads and pulled us over a couple times wondering our reason for traveling. Geh showed his military ID and explained what we were doing as other men shined flashlights into our van. We were cleared to go but it was a little nerve wracking watching men with guns tell us whether or not we could go and wondering what would happen if they told us to exit the vehicle.

Into the Jungle

When going on a vacation, it makes sense to buy a souvenir to remember the experience. Going to Africa seems like the great time to buy something. Who knows if I will ever be back and given the amazing places we’ve been, bringing something home other than pictures would be awesome. The thing is, I told myself for the longest time I would be happy with just some pictures wanting to save money for emergencies only. I quickly realized after arriving in Cameroon that there was no way I could let the opportunity slide to buy a souvenir. I no longer wanted to go just for myself, but for my family back home too. We went to a Douala market on the back end of our trip and now, I had a quest in mind. And boy was it a journey to fulfill my quest.

Let’s Talk Money

When I first had the idea to travel with Caring Hands Africa and make a documentary about the work that they are doing, I knew it would be an expensive trip. Traveling this far and for this long was a new experience for me so I didnt even know how to begin to start thinking about budget. I brought the idea up to my roommates as we tried to put together a budget and ended up with a budget of roughly $8,000, little did I know that that would so far from what it truly costs. We continued working the budget through the preproduction process and we found that every time we worked on it, the total continued to increase. At the end of the semester we finished with a budget that rounds up to $20,000. And holy cow, that is a lot of money, especially for a college student.

Trial run on packing the pelican case.

Gear List

From the beginning it was had to figure out what gear we would take. There are so many different factors we needed to consider such as would the school let us take the gear since we were looking to use a school camera, would it hold up well in the unknown conditions of Cameroon, does it record the formatting that we want to shoot in. After carefully considering these and many other factors, we came together with a final listing of gear to take. I just wanted to take a quick moment to tell you what gear we decided to take and why we went with it.

Since I started moving forward with things, it feels like there has been meeting after meeting. Had the first meeting with my producer to get things moving. It felt great to have someone else commit to helping work things through at this stage. We started working through potential crews and direction of the film. I have to say that I really am super excited for this project. I am really terrified as to how everything might come together, but I have faith that it will all work out.

Am I Crazy?

This could be the biggest project I have ever dreamed of. And bigger than anything that I have seen done by my peers. But there are so many details, is it even possible? I have always wanted to use my passion for video production to help other people, working with the church, creating videos for nonprofits, or working on documentary work. As I have been working through the first years of college I have been able to develop my skills. I have been able to use work on projects like the documentary I made for the Baltimore Humane Society to be shown at their Black Tie Gala fundraiser, the documentary celebrating the 25th anniversary of the work Civic Works is doing in Baltimore, MD, and the doc highlighting a rising Baltimore musician.

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