Dr. Khensu Carter, practicing psychiatrist and UCLA Psychiatry professor walks us through the emergence of the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and the NADA Protocol as response to extreme racism, classism, inequity, inequality, and oppression via poverty and opioids and other drugs. We started the filming January 17th, 2024 and approved the final cut May 11, 2024.
Film #1 of a two-film remote production project, turned out to be the perfect remote road-test. The first challenge came when I realized Ken (Dr. Khensu Carter) made a lengthy and textually robust slide presentation which I was to turn into a film. Power Point presentations aren’t typically meant to be films, so we had to do a ton of research for images we could use for editorial and instruction purposes, then we had to make all those images feel like a film experience or at least as close as we could get.
Our biggest issues were lighting, backgrounds, ambient sound, and low-grade cameras and mics. Project posse feedback said the film at times appeared grainy or low res, but that this seemed and felt like it fit the topic and film construction. Of all four, editing audio ate the most energy and hours. We ended up having to reshoot and then reshoot sections of the reshoot. Ken’s computer mic kept cutting out and muffling the capture but contrarily picked up every other sound! We finally settled on a recording app he downloaded onto his phone from the app store, but then he held the phone in his hand too near his mouth and just out of camera shot so I had no idea. The capture was riddled with bangs, clinks, clangs, thumps, and dead spots when his fingers must have covered the mic and the ever-infamous audio gremlins: those popping Ps and Bs that flattened red peaks. We recorded it again and this time addressed every sound issue I knew of and believed we managed a near perfect re-do. It wasn’t. We sat the phone on the desk at a safe distance from his mouth and kept his hands away from it, but all the way through without us knowing until I started the editing, his jacket cuffs were clinking against the desk top which meant more reshoots and tons more editing. The reshoots were a challenge because we had to have him in the same clothes, in the same spot at the same angle (continuity), and get his timbre, tone and pitch, and speed of speaking all as close to the original take as possible so as to maintain the semblance of continuity. On the third retake, he’d gone to the barber and had his head shaved. To our surprise, it isn’t terribly noticeable, unless the viewer pays close attention and knows what they are looking for.
All the audio issues made it easier to meet the time constraint of 30 minutes, though we did exceed this by 8 minutes. There just wasn’t anything left to shave off. We cut all the stammers, the “Ums” and “Uhs,” and trimmed or eliminated some thoughtful pauses, and sped up slow spots. There are a few minor glitchy jump cuts where it was not possible to get a perfect frame synch due to cutting the worst of the ambient sounds too severe to overlook, and transition effects made it worse, so I didn’t use them. The result is a discernible off-beat cut. For the most part, in general, though, I think given the challenges we faced, the film turned out to be a raw, powerful, gritty, and fairly engaging instructional.
As always, feedback is welcomed and appreciated!
Trace Taylor 