Rhythmix Inauguration Event

Yesterday at the Rhythmix Cultural Works center in Alameda we were invited to share our trailer and discuss our project with an excited and motivated group of people from MoveOn.Org!

I knew the event would be a good venue for our message, but I didn't realize just how many people would attend! There must have been at least 350 people there, all eating, drinking, sharing and celebrating the beginning of a new era for the country. Positive change was the theme and our film fit in perfectly.

After watching President Obama's speech, there was a moving performance by local youth group "I Go". Their piece resonated with me as it addressed many of the same messages we touch on in making The Trust. Especially the challenges of rising above violence, poverty, and criminality. Powerful messages from a very talented group.

When the time came to show our trailer, I was excited to hear all the comments made by the audience. While it played the audience spoke out in agreement with what our experts said and nodded in approval at all the right moments. After the lights came up, we had a roaring applause.



Tamara, Jesse and Camisha took questions and comments from the audience. One man suggested the need to reach out to Governor Schwarzenegger and demand more programming and reform for prisoners. Others expressed shock at the statistics included in the film, especially the 70% recidivism rate. Another mentioned the need to research best practices in German prisons, which have low recidivism rates, exploring why some methods of incarceration work better than ours.

Although we only had about 5 minutes to take questions, Jesse was able to end the moment by asking the audience to engage with the project by checking our website and making a donation.

In the end, it was a fantastic event. A big Thank You to Jennifer Holmes at Rhythmix for making it possible and to MoveOn.Org for supporting the film! We hope to have many more successful events like this in the future!


-- Simron

Finding The Right Camera:Part One of ?

Finding the right camera for a job is a big part of my job as a Documentary Cinematographer; just as picking a certain film stock and processing is important to a narrative story, a particular video camera can go along way to defining the look of a doc. Of course there are still a few people with the luxury of shooting docs on film, but on a project with the scope and time line of The Trust it just doesn't make sense to go that route.

My background is in narrative film production, which initially lead me to use something I'd use on an indie film. From the beginning Tamara and I have wanted to create a look that gave the audience enough distance from the men to view them objectively, for us that meant shallower depth of field and a generally more cinematic look then you normally see on a doc. Over the last year or so that line of thought took me from a JVC GY-HD110 with a Brevis35 lens adapter all the way to the RED Camera in search of the right balance between look and functionality.

Unfortunately none of the cameras I considered were up to the task; the JVC's HDV footage just doesn't hold up in post if you don't nail the settings in camera, and that doesn't always happen when you are run and gun through a prison with mixed sodium vapor lighting! And the RED, despite being a great studio camera for the money, is still not ready for the mission critical doc environment. Other small-camera-with-adapter solutions like the HVX-200 or EX1 paired with a Letus Ultimate are just not realistic for hand held shooting over long periods of time, which is definitely the reality of shooting inside San Quentin.

I initially stayed away from ENG cameras because the price point was out of our reach and I was married to shooting 24p to help the audience see the men of the trust with a perspective not achievable in 30i. I'd toyed with the idea of an HDX-900 but the cost of tape stock and Deck over the course of a two year production was just too much.

Then Panasonic released their new HPX line and I thought I'd found the answer, but the 3000 is just too far outside our current budget and the 2000 doesn't deliver the full raster 1080p I need to insure we are ready for theatrical distribution. On top of that the cost per gb of the P2 media is still steep for an independent film, at least in the quantity necessary to shoot all day in San Quentin without a data wrangler.

That brings us up to last month. Trying to squeeze an HPX-2000 into our budget and settling for 720p. When I stumbled upon the Thompson Grass Valley Infinity DMC 1000/20. The camera hasn't had a lot of press and had flown completely under my radar. I called Joe Pettit at Snader and Associates in San Rafael to set up a demo; I was surprised how well it handled. The infinity is competitive with the HPX-3000 for about $20k less, and the Rev Pro media is way more affordable, a 35gb disc is only $50!

After spending an hour running through the menus with a chip chart I took the camera outside into some hard sun and torched the JPEG2000 codec. Shooting a dark shadow cut through a patch of bright sun light I was able to hold clean detail across the image. I took the footage home and pushed it around in after effects; the image held up well to color correction and I was able to pull up the mids quite a bit before any grain became apparent. I'll post some screen grabs as soon as I can make them.

The real test will come later this week when I take the Infinity inside San Quentin and see how it holds up during the heat of production. I'll post an update when that happens to let you know my thoughts.

Jesse
Cinematographer | Producer

Come to the Rhythmix Cultural Center Inauguration Celebration

The Trust will be highlighted at the Rhythmix Cultural Center Inauguration Celebration on Jan 20th! Come support the film!!

UPDATE:

There couldn't have been a better venue to debut the Intro Trailer to a large audience.

We've held private "in-progress" screenings before, but this was by far the largest audience we've had; it was exciting, and a little nerve racking, to see our work through their eyes.

Obama's inaugural address opened the event followed by spoken word and music performances, and of course us! It was a packed house and we received many thanks for the work we're doing. More importantly though, we had the opportunity to echo Obama's words and ask our community to pitch in and help us complete this important film by volunteering time or money to support the project.

All in all, a very successful day of outreach :-)

Jesse
Cinematographer | Producer

New Introductory Trailer! trt 7:27

An Introduction to the Film

The Trust is a character-driven feature length film set inside San Quentin State Prison and surrounding Bay Area communities. It tells the story of Ernest Morgan, Darnell Hill and Sean Williams, all inmates and participants in The National Trust, a peer-driven prison program that helps men transform from social liabilities into assets for themselves, their families and their communities.

The film’s goal is to create a national dialogue on the issues of incarceration through these three stories. Each man’s narrative represents a unique aspect of the path to prison and journey back into society. Can the men find redemption for their past? Will they be able to overcome the stigmas attached to incarceration on the outside? The film will address these questions and more while engaging a wide audience on the broader consequences of incarceration.

Characters

Ernest Morgan was imprisoned for life at age 17; he is now 39 and a leader in The Trust Program. Twenty-two years ago Ernest killed a family member in a fit of fear and rage. Since that time, he has struggled for internal forgiveness and has found purpose as a mentor for other men attempting to surmount their own demons.

Darnell Hill, aged 39, was sentenced to 10 years to Life in prison at 22 and is now The Trust’s head instructor. Darnell was convicted along side his father on two counts of kidnap robbery. During his time behind bars he has endeavored to redefine himself outside of his father’s shadow. He offers his students a model for a path out of the generational cycle of crime.

Sean Williams is 28 and was imprisoned for robbery. After being released from San Quentin he finds himself in a state of constant anxiety. Every meal with his wife, every hug from his 2-year old daughter and every glimmer of success is shaded with the fear that one false move could send him back to prison. Looming in the background are bills he has not dealt with in years, the frustration of finding a job and the pace of life outside, which leaves him a feeling a step behind.

Current Status

The Trust began with nearly two years of pre-production and research. In that time, Director and Producer Tamara Perkins has established extraordinary access through her trusted relationships with the men of The National Trust program and the San Quentin Warden and prison staff. She has also assembled a remarkable team of filmmakers and support crew to achieve the project goals.

Currently, the film is in full-scale production. Production began in January 2009 and will continue through November 2010.

Thus far, the project has raised $20,000 in individual contributions, $30,000 from the San Francisco Foundation and $15,000 from smaller foundation grants. We also have $57,500 of pending grant applications, which we hope to receive in the coming months. We have approached a crucial period for fundraising and are seeking funds to support interviews with family members of the incarcerated, development of an interactive website, educational materials for outreach, and funds to help with community screening events.

Trust Team

As the leader on the project, Tamara Perkins brings experience in directing and producing policy-based initiative and instructional DVDs as well as, narrative and documentary films. Prior to starting The Trust, Tamara worked for over a year with The San Quentin Trust program before being asked by the participants to help tell their story.

The Trust’s Director of Photography and Co-Producer Jesse Dana began working with Tamara to establish the look and story of the project two years ago; he brings a broad range of cinematography experience to the project from commercial pieces to feature length narrative work. Jesse is also mentoring five inmates trained in filmmaking as part of The San Quentin Media Project. These five inmates will be collecting internal footage for the documentary, including interviewing fellow inmates, to provide a unique insider perspective of life behind bars.

The Trust team also includes Executive Producer Laurel Ladevich, an independent filmmaker who has worked on dozens of documentaries, feature films and television movies and Editor, Diana J. Brodie who has over two decades of experience as an editor including 10 years freelancing on reality shows, corporate videos, and feature documentaries.

Welcome to The Trust Documentary Production Blog!

Hi everyone!

You've found the official blog for the documentary film: The Trust: Learning Trust Finding Hope.

Check back regularly to find out what's happening throughout the film's production.

Thanks!
-Jesse Dana,
Producer/Cinematographer for The Trust Documentary