Progress feels great!

This week we came together once again to do some more editing and we're pleased to report several new developments.

First, we continue to add new content to our program and keep finding little nuggets of video that we knew existed but hadn't yet pasted into the timeline. With almost 40 hours of raw video to choose from, we keep finding things that astound us. The trick is to find a way to fit it all into our alloted time of just under an hour.

Second, we seem to be closing in on an order of things for the program that makes sense. Deciding where to introduce Tsampa and Jane, for example. Beth Macy watched what we'd done to date and asked really good questions that helped us focus on what is really important and to think of information that viewers will want to know.
Third, we met with some folks who are offering some help and support to us as we work our way through the end of the editing process. We paid a visit to Cabell and Shirley Brand in Salem. The two of them have traveled all over the world, and are the owners of a beautiful Thangka that I wanted Jane to see. While we were there we showed them a preview of our work, and it appears that soon we will be able to do some fundraising under the auspices of the Cabell Brand Center for International Poverty and Resource Studies. We'll have more to report on that soon.

We also met with Mike Gangloff and Nathan Bowles of the Black Twig Pickers, a tremendous band. They are going to provide us with background music for several of the Virginia segments of the program, and we couldn't be more pleased about it.

We're meeting in Blacksburg on Monday to shoot more video of Jane's art, so stay tuned.

Every great film deserves a great theatrical trailer, right?

Though we missed Jenna horribly (she's in Sweden serving as part of the support team for an extreme cross country race), Jane and I huddled in Roanoke over the last few days and spent an equal amount of time getting organized for an upcoming edit session and working on a video segment that will serve as both the trailer and opening segment of our film. What do you think?