A lot has happened again. So much that we neglect this blog very much. By the summer of 2018, the participants in our workshops and we have shot many interviews and moods. The amount of material is enormous. We have also edited smaller film projects, some of which can (will) be found on this blog. In addition to the workshops on Majuro, Christina took over workshops on Ebeye. We were able to actively involve 75 people on the Marshall Islands in the film work, that is not counting the many advisors and helpers. That’s about 0.14 percent of the total population, but above all, there are 75 great people who contribute their experiences, perspectives and ideas to the project. (*1)
(Written by Mark Uriona) “Our people” took us to places we would not have thought of and introduced us to people we would not have known without them. And the participants conducted the interviews with their acquaintances and friends in a very different way than “us strangers” could have done. And yet, the strangeness quickly fades away here. We now have friendships with many people in the RMI. It will be difficult to leave in the winter.
Now we’re sitting with a smaller group on the editing of the future movie. We have set up a room in our house in Lojkar as a editing room. On Mondays we drive to Laura and cut there with the people from High School with one of our powerful laptops. Given the abundance of material, we rejected the original intention to develop a finished rough cut already on Majuro.
We subclip according to the aircraft principle. A projector throws the image of the editing program on the screen for everyone. The participant who actively cuts has the pilot role and receives assistance from a participant with a copilot role. The “passengers” (all other participants) follow the process on the canvas. Then someone from their ranks moves into the cockpit. The pilot goes back to the passengers and the former copilot actively edits on the computer until another change around is made. Sounds complicated? But it’s easy. The idea is to actively involve everyone in a room in the editing process and to enable everyone (because of the projector) to have the same knowledge at the same time.
We view and subclip the material very selectively and try to create a dramaturgy together. And it quickly develops in the form of countless sticky notes and scribbled on wrapping paper on the walls of the room. We have already made some decisions pretty firmly. The film is to start with the history of nuclear testing, although this introduction leads away from the topic of climate change. And there is already an idea for the end that we will probably not reject again. The thematic order is also there, but still shaky. We are unsure how to integrate the large number of interviewees into a single film.
(* 1) The names of all participants can be found today in the credits of “One Word” and on the website of the film.