Film Adventures in Colombia and elsewhere: Through a feature film and a tsunami!

Finally I get to write again, after a month in a feature film set and after a tsunami!

I am still in Hawaii, in the town of Kona, on Big Island, alive.

It has been an intense month of filmmaking, working on the feature, low-budget indie-film The Land of Eb, directed by Andrew Williamson. We were a team of about twenty people who spent a lot of time out in the country, filming in coffe farms, poor areas, on roads, in a supermarket and in a hospital.

The film was shot on a Canon 7D, a digital still camera with excellent high-definition film-looking video capabilities and the possibility to use different lenses.

I'll give you a quick go-through of which positions the team had: producer, director, director of photography, assistant camera, 1st assistant director, 2nd assistant director, production manager, line producer, production coordinator, craft services, gaffer, key grip, wardrobe and make-up, props department, sound mixer, boom operator and production assistant. Pew!

My position was sound mixer which means recording and mixing sound on location. Quite important! As my help I had the Brazilian boom operator Rodrigo, an excellent coworker who soon also became a good friend.

For a want-to-be director as myself, being a sound mixer has the benefit of placing me where the action is. Thus, to give me experience from a full-length film, it was awesome. I learned both technical and organizational things.

Then what was our film about? It is called The Land of Eb, referring to a historical myth which the main character tells his children.

The film takes place in present time and is the story of Jacob, a man from the Marshall Islands. The name of these islands might sound American, but this is a Polynesian nation with its own language and its own culture.

Sadly, the Americans took advantage of its vulnerability after the second world war and exploited the islands for nuclear bomb tests. Today, still many of the Marshallese people suffer from the consequences and are victims of diseases due to the nuclear waste (watch this video in YouTube for an update about this). Many of them fled to Hawaii.

The main character in the film, Jacob, gets to know that he is deadly sick in cancer and we follow him as he spends his last months leaving his family in the best position possible. Most of the dialogue is in Marhallese.

The film is almost a documentary and it was very touching to see that our actor actually lives his life almost exactly as portrayed in the film. Often the script was adapted or created on site to reflect reality. (In the picture: director Andrew Williamson with Tarke and Jonithen Jackson, who played the main couple in the film).

The atmosphere on set was very professional (although all of us worked non-paid) and our schedules were tight. Most of us have previously done YWAM’s School of Digital Filmmaking and this film provided an awesome opportunity to learn and progress for us all. I really look forward to see it cut together and I will certainly update you as soon as there is an official trailer.

Writing this, it’s almost March and the rest of this quarter I will work in the offices of the director I am supposed to work with.

We have several interesting films coming up, all in development and all with presumably quite high budgets. I will tell you more as soon as I’m allowed to! I can tell though, that they all will contribute with totally new, fresh stuff on the cinema screens if they make it all the way!

These weeks I have also enjoyed some days of recreation, including snorkling, cliff-jumping and hiking. I swam with manta rays (big flat fish) and I spent a night on a beach, hiking with a group, mostly from the film team. We also went to the top of the island, the inactive vulcano Mauna Kea at 13.000 feet (4.205 m). Sometimes there is even snow there, but not this time.

Maybe the most adventurous for real though was today, when we had a tsunami, created by the earthquake in Chile. People were evacuated from the lowest areas. Luckily our island here is very montainous and it is very easy to walk upwards, quickly gaining height and safety from the sea.

Coordinated by the University of the Nations, we safely watched webcameras on tv and could see the water changing height from there. The sea level rose, then the water was sucked towards the ocean as if the whole sea sunk, quite amazing. It turned and the sea level slowly rised again, these movements going on for a couple of hours. The tsunami showed out to be harmless to both people and buildings this time though, and after a couple of hours we were told that the risk was over.

To conclude I again want to thank you all who are supporting me with your prayers and finances. Without you this wouldn’t be possible. I definitely believe I’m on the right track and I view this time as an amazing gift.

In spite of risks, may you take the bold and right steps needed in your life, and be encouraged by these words said to Joshua in the Old Testament: