Tech Stuff: Creating Droplets in Apple Compressor

On my most recent project for the California Immigrant Policy Center on the California Budget www.caimmigrant.org I am mixing footage from the Canon 7D camera and a Panasonic HVX200. It is really easy to combine these two formats into one sequence in Final Cut Pro. I was skeptical, but my DP Topher Osborn www.topherosborn.com assured me that it wouldn't be a problem.

With a little research online using the keywords (transcode, canon 7D, FCP) I was able to find a good work flow using the program Compressor to turn the 7D files into ProRes files. I even picked up a little trick for making droplets with Compressor from this video tutorial.

Research Findings on the Justice System’s Impact on Native Hawaiians

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) has just released a study of how the justice system impacts Native Hawaiians. The findings of the report show need for improvement in how the system works with Native Hawaiians.

Here are a few of the most compelling pieces of information from the fact sheet:

Native Hawaiians make up the highest percentage of people incarcerated in out-of-state facilities.

In 2005, of the 6,092 people who were under the custody of the Public Safety Department, which includes people in jails, 29 percent (1,780) were in facilities operated by other states or private companies on behalf of states. Of the people in out-of-state facilities, 41 percent are Native Hawaiians.

Native Hawaiians receive longer prison sentences than most other racial or ethnic groups.

Controlling for severity of charge, age at arrest and gender of the person charged, Native Hawaiians are sentenced to 119 days more in prison than Tongans, 73 more days than Native Americans, 68 days more than Hispanics, and 11 days more than Whites.

Hawai`i has the largest proportion of its population of women in prison, with Native Hawaiian women comprising a disproportionate number of women in the prison.

While Native Hawaiian men and women are both disproportionately represented in Hawai`i’s criminal justice system, the disparity is greater for women. Forty-four percent of the women incarcerated under the jurisdiction of the state of Hawai‘i are Native Hawaiian. Comparatively, 19.8 percent of the general population of women in Hawai`i identify as Native Hawaiian or part Native Hawaiian.

To read the entire report, download fact sheets, and learn more about the study you can vising OHA's web page on the Criminal Justice System here: www.oha.org/disparatetreatment/

Webcasting for Rapanui Fundraising Event

I have been going crazy this week trying to figure out how to use Ustream with my MacBook Pro for next week's Being Rapanui fund raising event. I would definitely recommend against attempting this. The details are a little tech-y and not very interesting unless you are trying to figure out webcasting for yourself. If you are interested you can send me a message and I will tell you all about it. Ultimately I scrapped using a Mac and went to a PC.

The good thing is that since everything seems to be in working order the panel discussion from the event will be broadcast live over the Internet at this channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/being-rapanui

The "Save Rapa Nui" event will be an evening of film, music, art, food, and discussion of the indigenous people of Rapanui also know as Easter Island and their current struggle for sovereignty.

The event will be next Thursday October 28th, 2010 at the Barnsdall Art Theater in Los Angeles. The program will being at 6pm. Tickets and more information can be found at www.saverapanui.org

We will be showing the film Being Rapanui - but this will not be screening over the webcast, so if you are local to the Los Angeles area you have to buy a ticket and come out. But if you are outside the Los Angeles area please do tune in to the panel discussion.

Tanya Joshua of the White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders

Last month I was part of a town hall style meeting of Pacific Islanders in Southern California who met with Tanya Harris Joshua. Tanya provides support for Pacific Islander outreach and Environment / Veteran's Affairs issues. She is a staff member of the new White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. She joined the Initiative from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Insular Affairs (OIA).

The meeting began with an awesome meal where dishes from each of the island groups represented was served. Ono!

Afterward community members were given a chance to speak about their most pressing community concerns. The video about is just a small slice of what happened that evening.

I have forwarded this video on to Tanya who is passing it on to others. I hope that it can be helpful in raising the profile of Pacific Islander people and the challenges faced by the community.

Here is snippet of a reaction from congressional staffer Jed Bullock "I hope progress and results in the area of health data for AAPI populations and the territories will be yielded from the leadership and focus of IGIA (Interagency Group on Insular Areas). I know there once existed – if it does not still exist – an IGIA subgroup or task force on health data collection. The Delegates and Governors have repeatedly called for it over the years at the IGIA plenary sessions as you know, and the Chamorro gentleman as well as the Marshallese community leader captured on the video meeting with you touched on the need for a comprehensive cancer study/registry and diabetes survey among data. I hope these needs can be priorities within the Administration and through IGIA and the WHIAAPI."

ID Film Fest

Next weekend is the ID Film Fest ( www.idfilmfest.com ) which is a festival by filmmakers and for filmmakers who create Asian American content and/or of Asian descent. The festival runs for three days next weekend October 8th - 10th. The film I am most interested in seeing is Air Doll by Hirokazu Koreeda, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 and is having its LA premiere screening at 10pm on October 9th.

"The movie is about a middle-aged man whose closest friend is a life-sized doll. This isn’t just any sex doll though; it was made with a heart. So when the man goes to work during the day, the doll goes out and explores the world. This film portrays the loneliness and lack of human connection in not only Japan but all industrialized big cities around the world." — Koji Steven Sakai

For all filmmakers interested in getting some free insight into the business there is going to be a Filmmaker Crash Course on Sunday from 10am - 2pm. Which will be a rapid fire pandemonium of short seven to ten minute presentations on everything you need to know about filmmaking from development to marketing.

I will be participating in the Asian American (and secretly Pacific) Independent Feature Conference. I will be there meeting people and developing more interest in the feature film I am working on with Greg Cahill called Two Shadows. I will let you all know how things went after next weekend.

All events will be taking place at the Los Angeles' National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, 111 N. Central Ave.

Girls to the Front - History of the Riot Grrl Movement

I was just sent a link to a project called "Girls to the Front" by a woman that I used to work with as a Camera Assistant in New York City Mary Billyou. The project is a online collection of videos, like the one above, of women speaking about their experiences with the Riot Grrl movement. The videos are an online accompaniment to a book written by Sara Marcus, who is also the woman in the video above. Her book is a history of the movement.

Check out what Vainity Fair has to say about the book -

"Sara Marcus’s Girls to the Front is not only a historical rockument of the revolutionary 90s counterculture Riot Grrrl movement, which birthed the DIY feminist punk scene, but also a rousing inspiration for a new generation of empowered rebel girls to strap on guitars and stick it to The Man." — Vanity Fair