On Saturday June 26, 2010 CAMP UNITY won the Silver Award for Documentary at the 33rd Philadelphia International Film Festival…

CAMP UNITY will screen in competition at the 33rd Philadelphia International Film Festival (PhilaFilm) at 2:15pm on Saturday June 26, 2010.

Location: Moore College of Art & Design, 20th & Ben Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA.

If you know anyone in the Philadelphia area who might be interested in seeing the film, please let them know!!

Thanks Danae! I seriously couldn’t have done it without IndieGoGo and your help!!
Take care,
Ryan

As 2009 comes to a close, I can happily report that CAMP UNITY is officially finished! The post-production went quite smoothly – the editing was finalized and the picture was locked down in the Summer, then came the sound mixing (by the staff of the Sonic Arts Department at the City College of New York) and the color grading/online edit (by Bangkok-based Phenix Post) all of which was completed in the Fall.

Now a whole new CAMP UNITY adventure has begun! Securing a world premiere for the film has been top priority – and the documentary has been sent off to 25 of the world’s biggest film festivals for consideration in their upcoming events. Since there is no guarantee of being invited to any of those festivals, this submission process is ongoing, and the list keeps growing. Stay tuned and please keep your fingers crossed!!

Promoting and marketing of CAMP UNITY is also taking center stage. Please take a look at the two posters, which have been designed for the film (you can see them in the film’s photo gallery on the IndieGoGo profile page). Both the official one-sheet and the original artwork by L.A.-based artist Laura Zuspan will be used in various sizes and shapes to market the film.

This is a critical time for CAMP UNITY, and your support is needed more than ever! We’re seeking small donations for the promotions and marketing phase, but also, word of mouth is free – and spreading the word about CAMP UNITY is one of the most important ways that you can help get the film into a theater near you…

It has taken a while, but I have finally gotten around to uploading a trailer/teaser for CAMP UNITY. See the “Media” page of the IndieGoGo profile or check it out on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSEceTAGyR4. (But, please make sure to click on “watch in HD”, otherwise the resolution is terrible) More video content will soon be posted, but until then, I hope that this piques your interest!

I had a successful return trip to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq last Fall – I spent 4 weeks working with my Assistant Director/Production Manager filming followup interviews with the student participants and translating all the Kurdish/Arabic footage from the summer. Since my return to Bangkok, I’ve been holed up in the studio, piecing CAMP UNITY together.

The editing is coming along – a 90 minute rough cut has been completed and now I have moved onto the task of perfecting/re-editing/finalizing. Cutting a feature-length documentary can be quite challenging! In the past two weeks I think I have re-edited the first ten minutes about 30 times. Revising is one of the hardest jobs for me, because I have to allow myself to discard so much that I’m personally attached to (favorite shots, funny scenes, etc.) for the sake of the greater good of the project. Nevertheless, most every revision seems to strengthen the film, and day by day CAMP UNITY gets closer to completion.

Even after I finalize editing and lock down the picture, I will still have a long to-do list of post-production work – sound mixing, marketing, securing legal representation for the film, etc. Although those activities will undoubtedly prove to be time-consuming, I am aiming to have CAMP UNITY finished by this Summer. Stay tuned for more updates and video content on the IndieGoGo profile…

Well, the past few months have been spent carefully reviewing the CAMP UNITY footage – within the nearly 150 hours of raw footage there’s certainly a lot of great stuff to work with. If I wanted to I could probably make a tv show!

Although I am anxious to get started on the actual assemblage of the film, there’s still one major step before I can truly dig into piecing everything together: the translations. Nearly a quarter of my footage is in one of the four distinct dialects of Kurdish (almost like four different languages) or in Arabic. Unfortunately, finding a translator in Bangkok who fluently speaks those languages and has the time and dedication to work the long grueling hours required is simply not going to happen. So, on Sunday October 19th, I am heading back to Kurdistan for about four weeks to work on translating and transcribing my non-English footage. I will also take the opportunity to follow up with some of the students from the Unity Academy 2008, to see where life has taken them three months after their unusual summer experience.

I am looking forward to eating Kurdish food again – over the past few months I have actually been craving the olives, flatbreads, fresh cheeses, hummous, and amazing soups. Also it will be starting get cooler in Northern Iraq, and after spending nearly a year in the perpetual humidity and heat of Thailand, it will feel good to wear a jacket again!

In November, once everything has been translated, I will return to Bangkok, and then finally get down to my favorite part of the editing process: editing. I am projecting that a rough cut of CAMP UNITY will be ready sometime in Spring 2009. A promotional trailer will soon be on the way.

After 5 weeks in the Middle East shooting the CAMP UNITY documentary, I have returned to Bangkok.

First off, for anyone who was checking in on the Soulbird blog, I must apologize for my complete inadequacy at blogging while I was in Northern Iraq! After a few days of being there, we discovered that the internet connection was too slow to upload the video blogs that we were editing together. Then, as the shoot and the Unity Academies progressed, and my days seemed to get longer and longer and longer, I generally opted to catch at least 5 or 6 hours of sleep before my next 16 hour day began instead of sitting down at the computer to write an eloquent blog-report about filming in Kurdistan. So, only one measly blog was posted during my entire time over there…

But the good news is that on all those long days when I was too tired to blog, I was successfully getting great footage of the American Voices Unity Academies in Suleimaniya and Erbil. The academies, which were conducted by 8 American artist-teachers and attended by over 600 students, were a huge success and there was a diverse array of folks who were filmed and interviewed for CAMP UNITY. Along the way, heartwarming, dramatic, touching, and tense moments were captured to be incorporated into the documentary. Times got tough, resources were very limited, students and teachers struggled and succeeded, tears were shed, and gala performances were held. Because there were two academies to cover, and thus to tie together in the final film, I decided to stick close to many of the people that would be at both events – primarily the teachers, the translators, and a handful of students. Personally, my favorite days of work were when we visited the homes of some of the students, which yielded amazing footage of them with their families and also meant that Kurdish mom’s had the opportunity to force their incredible cuisine, fruits, and deserts on this food-loving filmmaker.

Now the big challenge will be the editing! After 4.5 weeks of shooting in Iraq, I have somewhere near 150 hours of footage which needs to be transferred/converted, then reviewed, then translated, then comprehensively edited together into a 90 minute film. Although its a bit daunting to think about, I am actually quite excited to dig in and start putting all the pieces together. I think I have a really strong documentary somewhere in all those hours and hours of raw footage and I can’t wait to see it all start coming together…

On June 21, CAMP UNITY completed its second fundraising goal on IndieGoGo with only about 62 hours before the fundraising period closed. This is excellent news, because we will be departing for Kurdistan in about 3 days! There is still a ton to do to prepare for the trip and these last minute funds arrived just in time to make sure that we will have everything we need for the 5 week shoot in Iraq. This money is being channelled into the equipment costs for filming the documentary (microphones, lighting gear, camera lenses, filters, etc.)

This was only possible due to the support from friends, family, colleagues, and fans! I cannot thank everyone enough for the generous contributions and help spreading the word about this incredible documentary opportunity! This IndieGoGo fundraising adventure has been an awesome experience, one that has greatly benefitted the CAMP UNITY project from its beginning stages.

I am both excited and nervous about the upcoming shoot in Iraq, but at the moment all emotions are being over-ridden by the last minute stress of pre-production. I can’t wait to just get there and start filming!

It will certainly be an interesting production! Aside form the general challenges posed by filming a feature-length documentary, I have recently been informed of some of the environmental factors that we will be faced with: the average temperature in Kurdistan is about 50 degrees Celsius (about 125 Fahrenheit) this time of year, sand and dust storms are not uncommon, the region is in the midst of a huge water shortage and aquatic resources continue to dwindle, and there is only electricity for about 5-6 hours of each day in the cities of Erbil and Suleimanya where the team will be based.

We arrive in Erbil, Northern Iraq on June 30th. To see how the CAMP UNITY production is progressing and to watch the behind-the-scenes footage/video blogs we will be uploading from the field please check in at: http://blog.soulbird.org/category/projects/camp…

Many thanks to those who contributed to the second round of fundraising:

Mike Barthel and Jan White
Scott Schumacher
Kent White
Pat and Rick Barrett
Jacob Walker
Heather Proulx
Lauren Proulx
Amy Jones
Audra Aki
Sam and Jake Hiller
Robert O Klein
cschell
Hoang Thi Minh Hong
Laura Brannon
Erik Lazayres and Julia Deitz
Anonymous
Mark Randall
Alexis Glassman
sb3329
Rachel Rosen
Victoria Casaray
Adam Scott Neal

On May 8, after only 12 days of fundraising on IndieGoGo, the CAMP UNITY project reached its first fundraising goal of $1000! This only happened because of support from my friends, family, and colleagues who received an email about the project a few weeks ago – and I cannot thank them enough. I also can’t believe how quickly everyone mobilized to help out the documentary project and make this happen. That initial $1000 will be channeled into funds for a 2nd unit camera to be used during the final musical/dance/theater performances at the Unity Academy 2008, as well as other miscellaneous camera gear.

This was only the first fundraising goal for the CAMP UNITY project. Even when its for a good cause filmmaking is expensive, so we decided to supplement the film’s budget by raising relatively small amounts of money to help cover critical production costs on IndieGoGo. July is fast approaching and another fundraising goal has been posted. Its slightly higher this time around at $1500 which will be put primarily towards sound equipment/microphones, lighting gear, camera lenses, and tapes.

Besides contributing funds to the film, you can help out by donating equipment or frequent flyer miles on the Soulbird Music Project website, spreading the word about the project to your own network of friends and family, using the CAMP UNITY widget in emails and blogs, and/or endorsing the film on IndieGoGo. Everything helps!

Many thanks to those who contributed to the first round of fundraising for the CAMP Unity project:

Michelle Pallister and Chris Dennis
Kent White
Louise and Brian White
Peter and Celeste Hiller
V. Zeitlin
Cathie Spindler
Paul Bruno
Gabrielle Zeitlin
Amy Gryziec
Erin Hart
Matt Naderi
Anonymous

Ryan,

Heather just called and gave me the wonderful news about your film. This is just the beginning! Now you can sit back, take it all in and enjoy the goods this that I’m sure will come your way. Congratulations!

I am so happy you and Heather had a nice visit together!

All the very best to you.
Love,
Cathie

Congratulations Ryan! Way to finish. Good luck in the festival circuit. We’ll be rooting you on.

Cheers!
Danae