Initial contract: I will create a documentary video and a documentary Web site (a new genre!) about animal rescue work at St. Francis Animal Sanctuary in Tylertown Mississippi. Both will focus primarily on St. Francis' response to hurricanes Katrina & Rita. ______________________________________________

Journal Reflection #1 - Sunday, October 2, 2005 Designer Donald Schön is known for his emphasis on design as "reflection in action." Every step we take gives rise to another thought, every thought directs a new step. Two weeks ago, my project was going to be an historical documentary, with lots of "Ken Burns style" pan and scan. My only unknown was my interviewees and I had some leading questions ready, so I was planning out the entire program before shooting a single second of video. That was two weeks ago. I am heading for Louisiana in a few days. I will both participate in and document animal rescue efforts there. I don't know what I'll find, what I'll do, what I'll shoot video of... and I won't know until I'm doing it. According to Schön (in Winograd, 1995, p. 175), "there is no direct path between the designer's intention and the outcome." So no matter what I might plan, what happens will be different. Although the focus of this course is on what happens in the editing studio, my work in the field will play at least as great a role in determining the quality of my final product. Will I get lots of great shots? Will things be so dire that I have little time to film? Will my camera be eaten by an alligator? David Kelley has commented that "The typical design situation requires something you don't yet know how to do" (Kelly, 1995, p. 163). Well, that kind of sums up my next 2 1/2 weeks. So I must be ready to go!

Kelley, David and Bradley Hartfield. The Designer's Stance (an interview with David Kelly by Bradley Hartfield). In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software. New York, NY: ACM Press, 1995.

Schön, Donald. Reflective Conversation with Materials [an interview with John Bennett]. In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software. New York, NY: ACM Press, 1995.

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Current contract: Same as above.
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Journal Reflection #2 - Sunday, October 9, 2005. Well, I had a pretty close scare. It turns out that there are sort of two rescue operations in one here. Best Friends Animal Society is using the St. Francis facility as a base for their rescue efforts. The camp director was not thrilled to see a video camera and I was afraid I would be asked not to film, but after we talked about my plans he was very supportive. Whew! Filmmaker Jon Else recommends storyboarding a nonfiction film even if you have to depart from the storyboards to follow the action as it unfolds. I am not sure I know enough about what's happening here to plan a treatment ahead of time. The work here is highly specialized, something I did not expect, so it may be hard to follow a particular animal from rescue to reunion. So what is my story arc? Else also recommends casting, or looking for good storytellers and finding them to drive the story. I have already met some amazing people and maybe I can let them drive me forward.

Else, Jon and Sheila Curran Bernard. Jon Else (an interview with Jon Else by Sheila Curran Bernard). In Bernard, Sheila Curran, Documentary Storytelling for Film and Videomakers. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2004.

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Journal Reflection #3- Sunday, October 16, 2005. I have now been to New Orleans - a city I always wanted to visit, but not like this. I went in with a crew of animal control officers from New Jersey who were refilling feeding stations and catching stray and uncared-for pets. So I do have footage of a rescue to include, even tho it is not the optimal rescue to show - the officers used catchpoles, which is more violent than the technique Best Friends likes to use. I have become quite loyal to Best Friends and don't want to show them in a bad light, especially since the rescuers are not Best Friends-affiliated. Nevertheless, I need to remain somewhat impartial. This is something that did happen, so shouldn't I show it? Sheila Curran Bernard recommends giving material that is somehow in opposition to your main theme its due as a way of making the work more objective. So this is something to consider as I decide whether to use the rescue footage and also as I try to shoot more film in the days ahead.

Bernard, Sheila Curran, Documentary Storytelling for Film and Videomakers. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2004.

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Journal Reflection #4- Sunday, October 23, 2005. I have shot a lot of good footage this week. I spent over an hour standing on two chairs outside the "Neuter Communter" to film a surgery through the window. Before I left, Ron Braxley told me that my polarizing filter should be removed if I had to film through glass. At the time of the conversation I thought the knowledge would be useless but it sure came in handy. I am doing more and more rescue work, leaving myself less and less time to film what's going on. I need to re-strike a balance and just get out and walk around with the camera each day.

Camp supervision changes every couple of weeks. The people who were running the place when I arrived are gone and a new crew is in charge. And I am also working for the "home office," Best Friends' HQ in Kanab, Utah. I have extended my stay twice, to equal a month on the ground here. And the only way to drag myself away is to plan on coming back at the holidays. As well as being good for me emotionally, it will help me get some "closure footage" for the project.

In Communicating Ideas with Film, Video and Multimedia, S. Martin Shelton emphasizes how imortant it is to "define [one's] audience as a group and have insight into individuals within the group. My target audience for the intake project is Best Friends staff in Tylertown and also in Kanab, plus future rescuers who have to open and run an emergency shelter. I need to be sure to get the right footage to tell that story and also figure out how best to deliver all the content intended for the intake project to people who do not have Web access. Nothing like a good challenge.

Shelton, S. Martin. Communicating Ideas with Film, Video and Multimedia. Carbondale, Ill. Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.

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Current contract: Same as for week 4 (above).
______________________________________________ Journal Reflection #5- Sunday, October 30, 2005

There is a new, official Best Friends videographer on the site. This is kind of cool but also kind of frustrating. We had a reunion today: a little chihuahua mix we'd been calling Alfie and his cat sibling were returned to their family. Alfie (real name Mystery) and his cat friend had been separated by Best Friends at intake (which is divided by species, as makes sense) and were really pining for each other until one of the volunteers I'd met on my first night, Maryam, reunited them in one crate. They'd been living together in the clinic ever since. Perhaps because theirs was one of the first stories I heard upon arrival, or maybe because the dog-cat friendship was so charming, I was really attached to them and emotionally involved in their story. Well, their owner came to camp today to pick them up. I was thrilled and ran to get my camera but the communications person told me to "stay out of the way" so I would not appear in the more official film being shot. Well, this really chafed my hide! I do have footage of other reunions and there's only so many that belong in the story (sadly non-reunions are way more common than are happier outcomes) but even so I was very frustrated. As W. Hugh Baddeley points out in The Techniques of Documentary Film Production, "Filming persons over whom the director has no actual authority becomes a particularly difficult problem in the case of films dealing with industry or involving the recording of scenes in a professional organization" (Baddeley, 1969, p. 101). This was pretty much my first taste of the experience here, but I realized later that an official videographer has the right to make requests I never dreamed of. For example, he asked people to re-state what they had said before in order to get a better shot of the event. My own approach has been catch it or lose it. So I'll need to re-think that.

What a difference my boom mike is making. It's light but really powerful. Using it, I can stand farther back and get wider shots AND distract the people I'm filming much less but still capture good audio. The importance of the right equipment comes home again and again. I find that my engagement with the action is really helpful in that I know what to film and am often on the scene when something interesting happens. Sometimes, though, I have left my camera behind. At other times I am needed more to be part of what is going on than I am to film it. And sometimes I do both. When I filmed the rescue in New Orleans I also helped close gates to complete the enclosure around the area where the dog was hiding.

And, there have been times when I just let the camera stay out of it. Baddeley also points out that the director and cameraman (I am both) must have "a love of people and an intense wish to understand and make contact with them" (p. 100). One afternoon I wandered into the kitchen to get something to drink. Brian, our wonderful visiting cook from New York and his wife, Suzanne, were preparing lunch. Miss Alma, one of the St. Francis caretakers, was also there. She is an amazing woman. She is getting on in years now but still works and somehow managed to put all of her children through college. Anyway, the three of them were singing "Amazing Grace." With the high ceilings in the kitchen the sound was wonderful. I really wanted to catch it on film but instead I just added a fourth voice to the chorus.

I filmed a surgery through the window of the neuter commuter this week. A female dog had a mass in her abdomen that turned out to be unborn puppies. I was able to stand on two chairs outside the window of this mobile animal surgery unit and catch the whole thing on film. I probably would have fainted and/or thrown up if I'd been in the room but by standing outside I was able to give myself enough literal and psychological distance that it was interesting rather than queasy-making for me. Before I left Athens I asked Ron Braxley in OIT about using the polarizing filter. He told me it would be great in most instances but could pose a problem if I had to film through glass. At the time of the conversation I did not anticipate needing this bit of technical knowledge but it sure came in handy.

So as I'm both living this and documenting it I need to be careful to balance my priorities. The camera gives me an excuse to observe and gives me some distance from what's happening. But this is such a stressful and emotional experience that too much distance, just like too much involvement, could prove problematic. I need to tell the story but also let myself be part of it... the part that happens off camera.

Baddeley, W. Hugh. The Techniques of Documentary Film Production. London: Focal Press, 1969.

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Current contract: Same as for week 4 (above).
______________________________________________ Journal Reflection #6- Sunday, November 6, 2005

My goodness - I have been here a whole month now. I'll be leaving for Athens first thing tomorrow morning. I have realized that I still don't really have my story arc- something is still missing. I am going to come back Thanksgiving week and again at Christmas and the final version of the video will probably end with the breaking down of the Best Friends rescue camp. This past week I have been doing more volunteer work and less filming overall. I think I have good footage of all of the regular recurring things: dog and cat intake, daily dog and cat care in particular. I have pressure washing and construction but I could use some shots of trash pickup, laundry, cooking & organizing of the supply tents.

I did film one very interesting event: the completion of our first yurt. Best Friends bought 2 yurt kits from a company called Pacific Yurts. A group of volunteers got the foundation and latticework up on Monday - Wednesday and then the Best Friends folks finished it on Thursday. It was pretty cool to see how quickly it came together. I overcame my fear of heights to climb up on the scaffolding inside the yurt and film down through the skylight. They guys putting it together are some of the best people in the world. They have been doing the street rescue in New Orleans and are all heroes in my book. But some of them sure do talk ... well, like guys, I guess. So here I have my wonderful boom mic and I am going to have to bleep out a bunch of the audio. Or maybe I'll just do away with most of the sound and make it a music video. There are a few good audio parts I want to capture, like the sound of zip ties hooking the insulation to the guidewire, but lots of the dialogue must go. It's like Errol Morris said, if you leave people alone and let them talk without interrupting them, in two minutes they will show you how crazy they really are" (Goldsmith, 2003, p. 102). Everyone has gotten used to seeing me & my camera around, but that means sometimes the dialogue is a little TOO uncensored.

It's been an Errol Morris kind of week, actually. I have been giving a lot of thought to what the story is and how I am going to tell it. A video crew from Smush Productions has been on site and they have better equipment and a staff of more than one, so their production will be more professional than mine. But this is not a competition, after all, and I've been trying to set up a reunion for them so they can take a cat back into N.O. and return her to her family and then film the reunion. And the Best Friends videographer has a different view as well. But I'll just tell the story I saw and do the best version I can. As Morris also said,

... the truth is not guaranteed by a style. It's not by virtue of doing something in a certain way that the truth emerges. Any kind of style doesn't guarantee the truth. This is even aside from issues about the truth of images as opposed to truth as I understand it, which is something intimately connected with the use of language, and not necessarily the use of pictures (p. 102).

I am not going to be able to finish the entire video, which will probably stretch to 90 minutes, by the end of the semester, so I have begun to think about what I can create on the Web that will incorporate video but also help me achieve some of the documentation goals for Best Friends that I now have.

Morris, Errol. [interview with David A. Goldsmith] The Documentary Makers: Interviews with 15 of the Best in the Business . Mies , Switzerland : RotoVision, 2003.

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Current contract: I will create a Web site using DreamWeaver (and PhotoShop for the graphics) that will both document and describe Best Friends' hurricane Katrina animal relief work. The site will be organized according do various dimensions of the rescue efforts, including intake, daily care, data management, administration, medical care, fostering, reunions, etc. I will illustrate each topic with selected video segments of anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes in length.
______________________________________________ Journal Reflection #7 - Sunday, November 13

My first Sunday at home in a long time. It is very strange to be back. It's kind of hard to wrap my head around this project. As I said at the end of my last reflection, I want to create something that will both fulfill the requirements of the course and serve some useful purpose for Best Friends. I initially started out to do a very preliminary Web skeleton but as I sometimes do I found a graphic to drive my site design and moved forward from there. When I took 6190 for the first time, I was really taken with Scott Kim's essay on "Interdisciplinary Cooperation" in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Kim talks about designers and programmers as coming from distinct cultures with different priorities.

In computer science, the life or death struggle is getting the program to run. The entire programming environment supports this single task. ... In graphic design, the life or death struggle is getting the picture to look right. The entire studio environment supports this single task. (Kim, 1990, p. 33).

I would imagine most programmers start with function and then build a design to facilitate user access to the functionality.

Do most successful designers also start with function? My approach of starting with design and attaching the function to it may not be optimal, although it's what I am going to go with for now. The upside of this approach for me is that it seems to lead me readily to a flow state. Once I figured out what I wanted to do, it was pretty easy to lay out the infrastructure of the site, and I already have some content to plug in.

I was surprised to see how few still photos I had taken at camp. Lots of video, but very few stills. Lucky for me, my Tylertown friend Nicole took lots of great documentary photographs and she has given me permission to use them in my Web site until I can get back to TTown and take my own.

My main goal for this week is to get video edited and uploaded for the two sections I have near-complete text content for: dog intake and cat intake. That way I can show one or two complete sections and give people a sense of what the entire site will be like once finished. I am having lots & lots of ideas but I need to stay on track so I have something good to show on Thursday at the Showcase dress rehearsal.

The web video clips do not need to be as carefully crafted as will the documentary, but there is still editing to do. As W. Hugh Baddeley points out in The Technique of Documentary Film Production, a technical process "will almost invariably be too long to show in its entirety" (Baddeley, 1969, p. 98). Editing such scenes down means that "We have to present the significant pieces of action and omit the insignificant pieces in between" (ibid.). The problem for me is how to avoid jump cuts. Since there was only one camera, I was not able to film multiple perspectives of a given event and don't really have cut-away shots. I can try to build on one cat's intake and add scenes from the intake of a different cat, but if I'm not careful I'll have continuity problems. For the intake scenes, I may just show the whole darn thing, since the fact that it goes so quickly is one thing I do want to convey and if I edit then the sense of the rapid passage of real time might be lost.

Well, at any rate, this is really exciting to me to work on and I think I can make something really good here. I am going to run it by a couple of the Best Friends people and see what they think.

Baddeley, W. Hugh. The Techniques of Documentary Film
Production. London: Focal Press, 1969.

Kim, Scott. Interdisciplinary Cooperation . In Laurel, B.
(Ed.), The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

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Journal Reflection #8 - Sunday, December 4th

This weekend has been all about the editing. imovie always sends me into a flow state. Which is good, in terms of being able to get a lot done without tiring of it. But there are downsides, as well. I forget to move and my shoulders and neck get stiff. My left hand has been numb since yesterday evening. Perhaps I should break out of flow just a little bit.

It's interesting how some things come together quickly and others take forever. As I edit I am reminded of how strange people are around cameras. People who will crawl on their bellies to stay out of your shot will then hop to your feet and say "are you getting this on camera?" thereby screwing up your audio for the shot.

I edited the yurt footage today. See journal reflection 6 for the notes I made after filming it. As I had feared, much of the audio was NOT usable. There are a few gems, as when Judah asks rhetorically "How do the Mongolians do it?" I muted everything else and put in some music. The CD I had originally planned to use was somehow defective and although I could play the tracks I could not import them into imovie. Luckily for me Ron Braxley came in and helped me with it. We concluded together that there was a problem with the disc but it made me feel better to know that it was the disc and not me!

I ended up with another piece of music that works GREAT with it. I shot about 2 hours of footage and edited it down in to a pretty good six-minute visual story. But it took a LONG time to do that.

"The path to a solution seldom lies in the question as posed: the path appears only when we are able to pose the right question." (Norman, 1996, p. 247)

As I have worked through this project, I have found myself often trying to make square pegs fit into round holes and vice versa. Figuring out what works where and what doesn't belong at all has been really useful and interesting.

I've gone from 4 to 24 videos for the site. Busy, busy. I can't wait to hear what people think.

Norman, Donald. Design as Practiced . In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software. New York , NY : ACM Press, 1995.

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Journal Reflection #9 - Sunday, December 11th

I write this closing journal entry after a very long day. Since I arrived in Tylertown on October 8 not a single day has gone by without my putting at least 2 hours into Hurricane Katrina relief. Most days it's more like 4 or 5. And some days it's been about 20 hours. To be living it and doing such an intense project about it has been a remarkable experience. Rheinfrank and Everson have suggested that

... doing design requires more than making meaningful objects; it requires crafting whatever it is about objects that lets them participate in the creation of meaningful experiences (p. 69).

Well, I'm happy to be able to say that this seems to be working with my Tylertown site. Folks who have been there are really moved by the scenes I've shown and the memories they evoke, but people who know very little about the Katrina rescue effort also seem to find meaning and insight in my Tylertown pages.

There are so many events I have not been able to document. This weekend Best Friends will be leading a "Find Your Pet" event in New Orleans . Owners looking for lost pets will be able to take advantage of computers linked to the internet and Lost and Found workers who can help them search the various databases for their pets. I'd love to be able to film that. But then, I'm just as glad not to. If our current patterns hold true, only 1 in 100 will find their pets. And how do you deal with the other 99?

If government and disaster response teams had had different rules and regulations, most of the people looking for lost animals would be with them still. The importance of educating people about what went wrong and how to fix it is something I grow increasingly convicted about. My work for the course is over but my work on the site continues.

And I'm also going to start editing my documentary soon. I don't know how it's going to end yet but I have a much greater sense of my story arc.

While sitting on a committee to judge Web sites, I heard someone remark "anyone can copy and paste video into a Web page." I don't think he was referring to my site but I'm afraid he easily could have been. There still seems to be a bias in the IT department against sites that aren't Flash based. Which is too bad. I'd like to learn Flash but I do see great value in simpler presentations too. I'm interested in improving my graphic design skills in the future. This being said, I'm very happy with my main logo for the site - a stylized hurricane with a cat's paw in the eye. In fact, when I go back to Tylertown for Christmas I'm going to get a tattoo of it. And how many former studio participants can say that?

Rheinfrank, John and Shelley Evenson. Design Languages . In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software. New York , NY : ACM Press, 1995.

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