Vivian and Shumin: Two months later

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Picture This Productions

How does being filmed impact documentary participants?

As filmmakers, we always wonder what the impact will be for the people who agree to be part of our documentary films. The incredible variety of reality TV shows make it seem almost normal to have cameras following people around 24 hours a day, and then exposing the most minute details of daily life to a national audience.

As documentary filmmakers, we hope that our projects can explore bigger and deeper issues than the average reality TV show, and also take care of those who are part of the project in the process.

In the “The Invisible Red Thread”, we compare the experiences of Vivian Lum, a girl who was adopted internationally out of China fifteen years ago, and the experience of Shumin Zhu who was adopted by the Chinese family who found her around the same time. Two lives that start from the same situation take two very different paths… until suddenly they are part of the same documentary.

So two months after the cameras stopped rolling, we got back in touch with the parents of Vivian (in Toronto, Canada) and Shumin (in Ruichang, China) to see how the experience touched each of these teenagers. Co-director Changfu Chang spoke with Mr and Mrs. Zhu, while co-director Maureen Marovitch was in touch with Vivian’s Mother. Here is what they told us:

CHANGFU’S REPORT: “In the interviews I did this summer with Shumin, Mr. and Mrs. Zhu, they all were feeling that their lives were changing for the better – just because of the newly developed relationship with Vivian and her family as well as with members of the crew of this documentary. They could feel that the villagers looked at them differently, with more respect. The Zhus are poor people without a great deal of status in their community, but being part of this project caused their neighbors to look at them with a new perspective.
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Now two months later, Shumin is doing great in middle school. She received the top three highest scores in recent mid-term exams. With the calls she is receiving from me and the journalist who wrote a story on her (for Marie-Claire magazine-China), she is feeling a lot more confident about her life and is growing more extroverted.”

MAUREEN’S REPORT: “Vivian’s parents report that the change in Vivian is very interesting. The trip to China has had a profound and positive impact on Vivian. She is really enjoying school this year and seems to have turned over quite a new leaf, keeping up to date and being very much more organized than ever before. Overall, her parents report that the trip has given her a greater maturity, calmness, and confidence.”

So far, so good! We’re looking forward to hear what the families will say about the early edits of the film. We begin editing November 1 with a rough cut ready just before Christmas. We’ll keep you posted with more updates and news in the next few weeks!

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IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO EDIT A MOVIE

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Picture This Productions

JUST WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THE CLOSED DOORS OF THE EDITING SUITE?

Okay, maybe it doesn’t need a whole village, but it does take a team of some size to gather 40+ hours of filmed, unedited footage and shape it into a coherent, meaningful one hour documentary.  Just what happens when the excitement of filming ends, the cameras shut off and the material is shipped back to the edit suite?

STEP 1 – BACK IT UP! : Less and less is shot on tapes as more Directors of Photography make the switch to tapeless cameras. These cameras store all the digital media right onto cards or drives. So the first step is making  back-ups of all the shot material. Losing situations shot in a documentary situation is potentially disasterous for a production!

STEP 2 – SO MANY CAMERAS… : Bring in the Assistant Editor. He or she has the important job of transforming all the captured scenes into files the editing system can actually read.

In our filming, we had four different camera people on two continents shooting with six different cameras. Then there was Vivian and Hubert’s own video camera. Some of these cameras were tapeless, some not and they each record and store media in slightly different ways, meaning 7 cameras = 7 x the headaches.  So Assistant Editor Stephanie Weimar and  post production supervisor David Oxilia discuss the options. He helps Steph deal with all the formatting issues now so we won’t run into major problems in the final (and very expensive) On-Line Edit Process because of improperly coded footage.   Picture Editor Catherine Legault, who just edited our documentary “A Modern Castle” for the Canadian Museum of Nature, also joins in to contribute her technical preferences.

STEP 3 – TRANSCODE & SORT : With everyone understanding the technical challenges, Steph can get to work. She transcodes all the different footage and enters it into our AVID editing system. Her work flow includes sorting all the clips into ‘bins’ (a throwback term to the 16 and 35 mm film days when editors actually had physical hooks and bins where they hung and stored the shots on film strips, scene by scene).  

She organizes the digital shots into virtual bins that are then named and numbered so the editor, Catherine Legault, can easily recognize them.

STEP 4: SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR THE CHINESE FOOTAGE: When Vivian visited her orphanage, when she spent days with another adopted girl named Shumin and her family, when she interviewed a young woman who grew up in the orphanage- all these moments were recorded in Mandarin.   But the editing is happening in Montreal, Canada with an English speaking team. So a translator needs to watch the Chinese footage and simultaneously translate what is being said into English into a microphone and record this audio file. The translator then gives this narration to Steph as a Quicktime reference file. Steph will join the Quicktime with the translation audio track while putting it into the AVID.   Then the Quicktime movies of the translated voice over footage and all the original English sequences are sent to…

STEP 5 – THE TRANSCRIBERS: These patient people have the painstaking job of watching all the material and noting what happens on screen, sometimes shot by shot, and even frame by frame. Steph creates Quicktime Movie files of all the material and either burn these to DVDs or emails them. The transcribers watch and take note of it all. If Vivian and Hubert pack their bags, they write that information down along with the time code so the director and editor can easily locate the material later.

If Vivian and Hubert have an important conversation while they’re packing, the transcribers write the dialogue down,  word for word. Generally, each one hour tapes takes about 3 hours to transcribe. Once all the material is logged and in the cases of interviews, transcribed, the material is ready for…

STEP 6 – THE SCRIPT WRITING: A documentary with a script?! This process is absolutely necessary, unless you have money and time to burn experimenting for months with how to cut together the scenes literally hundreds of ways.  We, like most filmmakers don’t, so Director Maureen Marovitch will sit down with all the footage and all the transcripts and create a PAPER EDIT. Basically, this is a paper script of all the shots, scenes and best audio clips in the order she thinks works best for a FIRST ASSEMBLY.

STEP 7 – BACK TO THE EDITORS: The Assistant Editor or in some cases, the Editor, can now take the First Paper Edit directions and put  together the First Assembly. This cut is typically 2-3 times longer than the actual finished film will be. But it’s a start!  Our edit is slated to begin Monday, October 19th!

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Vivian’s Journal: One Week Home from China

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Picture This Productions

“…  I’ve wondered about what the orphanage was like for as long as I can remember and now I do know. It feels like I’ve just filled in this gap in my life. “

It’s amazing to think that I was on the other side of the world not two weeks ago. We started in Shanghai, then went to Nanchang, Jiujiang, Ruichang , the village where the Zhou family lives and finally Suzhou. We went to so many places and met some really great people.

In Shanghai we visited so many places:  Nanjing Road, the world financial center, a cruise on the Huangpu River, the World Expo and more. Shanghai is such a busy modern city, it is so much bigger then Toronto, and has so many people. And it is so hot! I don’t how the people can stand it!

I’d have to say that my favourite place was the orphanage in Jiujiang. My visit may have been brief but I had this feeling of self fulfilment.  I’ve wondered about what the orphanage was like for as long as I can remember and now I do know. It feels like I’ve filled in this gap in my life.

Meeting the Zhou family was also amazing! I got to meet Shumin, who is almost 14, and was adopted like me, but by a local family. I got to see life through her eyes. I watched her cook, visited her school, and went melon picking with her. Bringing the family to Walmart was fun – it was their first time in a store like that. But their taking me to the open air market… not so fun. It was still exciting since I’d never been to one – but the live animals, the huge hunks of hanging meat, the noise and smells – I don’t think I’d ever do that again…

I do plan to keep in contact with Shumin to see how things go for her and her family. Her birthday is September 14, and she is turning 14. I’m going to write her, sending my best wishes to her and her family, and wish her the best for school year ahead.

I had so much fun during my two weeks in China. I learned quite a bit about China – the lifestyles, the people and just how diverse the country is. I discovered how similar and yet completely different China is to Canada. I also learned things about my life that have been blank holes for so long and now they aren’t. It feels great not to wonder what my birth place is like, where I was found, and where I lived the first 6-7 months of my life.

Over all it was an amazing journey! But I was sad that my mom wasn’t there with me (ed. note: she fell ill right before the trip and had to remain behind) But we talked to her through Skype every day so we could tell her about what happened that day and ask her what she thought.

Now that my trip is over I almost can’t believe I went in the first place- it feels like I never left home. But I think the changes in me will last a long time.

Vivian, August 31, 2010

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Vivian and Hubert’s Incredible Adventure: The Return from China

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Picture This Productions

After two intense weeks, the trip comes to an end. The idea of ‘China’, the place where Vivian had been adopted from 15 years earlier is now no longer an abstract idea to her. Vivian has experienced the country’s intense blasting heat, the furious rains – and incredible generosity of people there. She’s been caught in the exciting bustle of the World Expo and felt the serenity of a newly planted field in the southern countryside. She stood on the spot where she was once left as a 4 day old infant and sat in the orphanage courtyard where she played as a baby. She shared meals, chores and bleary overnights with Shumin, a 14 year old girl like herself but who was adopted by a local family near Jiujiang. She meet Deng Hua, a young woman who she spent her entire childhood and teenage years in an orphanage. Deng’s thoughtful, emotional responses to Vivian’s many questions about her experiences gave Vivian another nuanced perspective of life in China for abandoned girls.

And then somehow, it was the final day of the trip. Just a little time left for some whirlwind shopping (Vivian is after all a teenager!) and a last semi-formal dinner to celebrate the incredible adventure Vivian and Hubert took with the film’s crew. Then they boarded their flight at Shanghai’s airport to be met 16 hours later by Eve, still wistful she had not been able to make the trip, but delighted to hold her husband and daughter again in her arms.

So is the trip really over? The physical voyage may be finished, but for the participants in this documentary, the emotional journey has just begun. Vivian and Shumin have plans to keep in contact with each other, and our crew will be doing follow up filming this fall to see how their meeting has impacted both the girls and their families.

And what about the crew? The exhausted production crew’s adventure is over, but the post-production team’s odyssey is about to begin! The footage from China arrives in our Montreal office next week. We’ll start sorting through it all, logging it and working on an outline to figure out how 50+ hours of raw footage will become a compelling one hour documentary… stay tuned for the next challenges!

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Another day from Changfu Chang’s filming journal

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Picture This Productions

August 16, 2010

It was a satisfying and productive day, but not without twists and turns.

First, the weather promised to be deceptively good. The scorching 100 degree Fahrenheit sun and its heat seemed to be behind us as we were greeted with a much cooler overcast day.

We were all in good spirit heading to the village, ready to accomplish a long list of items on the agenda. So, as soon as we got to the family, we began the sequence of Shumin and her parents taking Vivian and Hubert to one piece of their lush hilltop fields. We planned to profit quite a bit and film several sequences  including Shumin picking pears in the trees she had save for Vivian.  It didn’t work out, thanks to a downpour that lasted for almost over an hour.

We did shoot a little bit, luckily without causing real damage to our equipment. Under one umbrella, Vivian and Shumin learned from each other how to say “rain” in both Chinese and English.

We continued to do more filming with Shumin and Vivian, focusing on their interactions and bonding. We filmed Shumin reading letters from Vivian and Shumin and Vivian playing on the floor in Shumin’s room. Later, Mr. Zhu explained to Hubert his life and his house, and Hubert shared his family background, telling Mr. Zhu that long time ago, while his grandparents lived in China, they had a similar house, and on the roof of the house there were chickens his grandparents raised. It was a telling moment of Hubert reconnecting with his own past and roots. I could see on numerous occasions that he was also searching for his own identity and identification.

The major effort of the day, however, was on the interviews, namely, with Shumin’s school principal, who talked about Shumin, her family, and her reactions when he inquired whether she was adopted or not, and with Shumin’s birth parents. They gave some vivid accounts of the circumstances under which they made their tough decision of relinquishing their daughter.

Well, yesterday, outside of Mr. Zhu’s house, sitting in a semicircle, Hubert and Vivian arranged a “gift ceremony,” which drew a decent crowd of villagers. As they pulled out and explained each gift they had brought, there was this woman in the crowd who stared at Vivian intensely. Her face was full of emotions, a mix of anguish and longing. I learned that while we were in the school filming yesterday this woman had come from a nearby town  to see if Vivan was her own child. The woman was a mother of a child who was adopted from the Jiujiang orphanage 17 years earlier. She did look a lot like Vivian but given the dates, it was impossible… But we interviewed her today and she offered yet another birth mother’s perspective on the international adoption story.

We brought Shumin and her parents to the city and hotel tonight. We had dinner together. From this point on, our camera will focus on the experience of Shumin being in the city for the first time. Tomorrow afternoon, I will conduct an interview with Shumin and her parents.  This is our last day with the family – tomorrow we say goodbye and head to Suzhou as Vivian and Hubert make their way back towards Shanghai and the flight home to Canada…

Changfu

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From Changfu Chang’s filming journal

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Picture This Productions

August 13, 2010

Today was a big day: morning at the Adoption Center to pick up the invitation in Nanchang; late afternoon at the orphanage in Jiujiang 2 hours away…

The statement that we are lucky is probably an understatement. Not only were we able to film at the Adoption Center, we also were able to re-enact a couple of sequences, with the participation of the staff there. In the orphanage, after some PR work, we were able to even bring our full crew and gear, including the big boom microphone! We had the assistant director show Vivian and Hubert where she once played, lived, slept, ate. Then we drove to the location where Vivian was found, with the director answering Hubert’s questions. Of course, we did several emotional onsite interviews….

At night, the orphanage director invited all of us to dinner. After each of us had three beers, the Director and I both felt that we should have been friends for a long time…

Changfu

August 15, 2010

After staying two nights at what I call a crappy hotel in Jiujaing, we moved to a better one this morning. Now, with a breathtaking waterfront view of the Xunyang lake sprinkled with lights in the distance, it makes a perfect match for the mood with which I am writing.

We continue to be blessed with excellent filming opportunities. We captured the great moment of Hubert and Vivian being received by the Zhu family. The initial reactions of the both girls were expectedly timid and sometimes a little awkward. However, it didn’t take long for them to relate to and communicate with each other (with the skilled translation and assistance from Yuan). We captured the moments of Shumin showing Vivian how to prepare food. At one moment, we saw Shumin and Viviean worked in unison to prepare food for the now extended family: both girls set the table for the their parents. They became “sisters” in a matter of hours.

We then went to the village school Shumin had attended. We were hoping that this experience would be transformative for Shumin–to lift her from the unwarranted self-consciousness of inferiority (due in large part to knowing she is adopted) that leads to her lack of confidence and insecurity. We saw that first sign of transformation at the school. She smiled more, and had a more confident look on her face. She showed Vivian how to flip on the single bar and Vivien demonstrated and taught Shumin how to dance…They just bonded so naturally. We saw two happy fathers in Mr. Zhu and Mr. Lum.

A production day can’t be complete without a scene that stands out and becomes etched in one’s mind. Here it is: on the way from the school to Mr. Zhu’s house, we were caught in a shower. Our crew followed the two families (Shumin and Vivian in the front, Mr. Zhu, his wife, and Hubert behind). As the parents walked and made small talk in the rain, we saw Vivian and Shumin holding hands together.

I must admit that I am very proud of this crew.

Stay tuned…

Changfu

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Co-Directing Across Two Continents – Now It’s the Chinese Crew’s Turn

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Picture This Productions

On the morning of Sunday August 9th, Toronto cameraman, James Klopko, filmed Vivian and her father Hubert’s last hours with Vivian’s mother, Eve. They stuffed some final items into suitcases and drove to Pearson airport. It was an emotional goodbye –  they were leaving Eve behind alone in recovery from her diverticulitis attack, as they readied to board the plane that was supposed to take all three of them to China.

Until a week earlier, Eve had planned to be alongside Vivian, helping her daughter experience the visit back to her orphanage. Now Hubert will be the one to stand alongside Vivian. Sure, they’ll email, they’ll Skype everyday. But the looks on their faces say it all – this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The camera captures the final waves before of Vivian and Hubert they disappear into the security area. Eve puts on a brave face.  She’s going home to check on available tickets for the next flight, diverticulitis be damned- at least until common sense wins out.

Sixteen hours later on August 10th, co-director Changfu Chang and his crew wait together in the Shanghai airport for the arrival of the Montreal flight. They catch sight of Vivian and Hubert on the airport’s huge projection screen 60 seconds before they arrive, giving the crew time to train their lens on the tired, jet-lagged duo. They capture Vivian and Hubert’s first moments in China, the beginning of the winding trip that will bring Vivian to her orphanage, to her heritage and to comparing lives with other girls who were adopted within China.

And what is happening behind the camera lens? Twelve hours apart, the Montreal team and the China crew send a flurry of emails back and forth at increasingly odd hours, trying to solve last minute production problems “Do we have a contact person at the Canadian Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo?” “When should we set up a Toronto crew to film Eve’s side of their daily Skype calls?”

The Canadian team has it relatively easy now.  It’s 10 AM in Montreal, Canada and at the Picture This office, we’re fresh into our day.  It’s 10 PM in Shanghai and the Chinese team is just wrapping their gear after a 12 hour day of filming with Vivian and Hubert. Everyone is tired and HOT- it’s 37° C (close to 100° F!) in Shanghai. Vivian and Hubert are having fun but are jet-lagged. Plus, having a four-person crew trying to capture your experience is exhausting! Hubert is having a late night video call with Eve but Vivian is already crashed out, asleep.

But the crew is still far from shut-eye. Co-director Changfu Chang and cameraman Jiandong will review the footage they’ve shot that day, and maybe digitize a little to send to upload to co-director Maureen Marovitch back in Canada. Then he’ll write up an email about how the day’s filming went and any schedule changes they foresee for the next days. Production assistant & translator Yuan Li uploads some snapshots she took during the shooting day for the blog.

Tomorrow, they leave for a 6-hour express train ride from Shanghai to Nanchang to pick up the adoption permission letter that will let them visit Vivian’s orphanage. Soonafter, they’ll be meeting Shumin and her family nearby. Vivian will be spending several days with them, getting a glimpse of what her life might have been had she been adopted in China. The mood is shifting from tourist fun to a more serious emotional journey. The camera continues rolling…

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When a Hospital Emergency Unexpectedly Becomes Part of The Documentary…

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Picture This Productions

Flash back to Saturday July 28th: It’s one day before Eve, Hubert and Vivian -the Canadian family we’re following on their odyssey to China – is set to board the plane to Beijing. The Canadian crew is ready to film their frantic last packing and airport departure. Co-director Changfu Chang and his Chinese crew is awaiting their arrival on the other side of the planet. The orphanage is ready to welcome back the baby they released to Eve and Hubert fifteen years earlier. And then –  a call from Hubert at 8:15 am from a Toronto hospital. This can’t be good.

It turns out the stomach distress Eve started feeling a day earlier got drastically worse fast. An emergency room visit reveals diverticulitis, a situation that gets her immediately admitted to the hospital.  The shoot we had planned to do the next day at the airport is transformed to a hospital shoot, with an update on Eve’s health and the trip’s potential cancellation.

Flash forward to Wednesday August 4th: The good news? Eve is healing well and no surgery will be needed.  The bad news? Any travel in the next three weeks is totally out of the question. The news brings tears to Eve and Vivian: that’s the entire time frame for the family’s trip to China…

A hard decision: So where do we go from here?  Friends offer to stay with Eve so Hubert and Vivian can make the trip alone. But Vivian, Hubert and Eve would much prefer to go with Eve and make this important trip as a family. And as documentary filmmakers, we think that Hubert and Vivian can tell the story, although ideally, we’d love all three to go. The film is in large part Vivian’s story, but it’s a family’s story.

But waiting until Hubert can take time off work again means postponing the trip to October. Vivian would then have to miss two weeks of school- and while that sounds like cause for cheers for some students, it makes her very worried about being able to catch up to her classmates. Then, the film crew would have to be rescheduled,  and our delivery to our broadcaster would be two months late. The entire schedule we spent weeks building and organizing would need to be remade. And at a personal level, the family near Jiujiang who also adopted an abandoned girl and who plan to share their lives with Vivian’s family will need to rearrange their lives for the fall filming.

After both Vivian’s family and directors Changfu and Maureen give it a great deal of thought, the decision is to have Vivian and Hubert go on the trip without Eve. They’ll leave this Sunday, August 9th, making the trip shorter than originally planned.  It’s a tough choiceall around but one small addition will make it a little easier for Eve: Vivian will do a video letter to her Mom each evening- and when possible on the trip, try to upload them to her mother.

That’s a peek into what happens behind the scenes when an emergency happens in front of the lens. And now, one week later than intended, the adventure in China should begin.

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First taste of being part of a documentary…

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Picture This Productions

The weekend of July 23-25 gave Vivian and her parents, Eve and Hubert, their first extended taste of what it is like being part of a documentary. And this time we even managed to take a few shots to document the process! (Visit the Photo Gallery to see more pictures from the Toronto shoot!)

Co-director Maureen Marovitch packed up the car with co-producer David Finch, who was also doubling as cameraman, and they set off down the 401 to meet up with sound recordist Craig Rintoul. The goal: to get to know the family better while establishing Vivian’s life in Toronto, Canada.

From riding the subway to shopping downtown in bustling Dundas Square, diving into the University of Toronto pool to grocery shopping at 5 different speciality stores with her dad, to poring over the photo album that marked Vivian’s adoption in China – we covered it all and more. We also discovered that Vivian doesn’t like vegetables or much in the way of Chinese foods – this may be a long 3 weeks in China, food-wise!. And Vivian is working between keeping a level head about all she may discover in China while her excitement level grows.

Filming up next: the family’s departure to China on August 1st and Changfu Chang takes over as co-director for the unfolding adventures in China…

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Chinese family found!

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Picture This Productions

After a long search for a family in Jiujiang, we’ve found a great match for Vivian! Shumin is 14 years old and her family is keen to be part of the documentary too.

Shumin was taken in, and later adopted by her parents after being found on the doorstep of their house 14 years ago in a village just outside of Jiujiang. With no children of their own they decided to keep her. Shumin’s school principal describes the teenager as strong, mature and caring. She studies hard and is at the top of her class- although she was forced to miss two years of school due to her family’s financial difficulties. She also loves drawing and listening to music.

With school over, Shumin still studies on her own but also helps her parents at home with chores and work in the fields. Her father does not stay at home with the family very often due to his job as a migrant construction worker. Shumin hopes to go to college one day.

Shumin is very excited to meet Vivian. The two have already started communicating by letter and are really looking forward in meeting each other in August to share their lives and very different adoption experiences.

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