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Let's all do the conga...
30th May 2008, Maria
I guessed that my farming story was not going to be as rural as I had once imagined when the Assistant to Chongqing's Foreign Affairs Marketing Manager (or some such title) turned up wearing a white party frock and stilettos. She was one of about ten government officials who were travelling and helping us with today's recces.
They introduced us to a farmer who doesn't grow and export rice or wheat or even apples as suggested in our original outlines. He grows trees and plants that are used in hotels, luxury apartments and designer malls in near by Chongqing.
This had not been part of my plan A, plan B, plan C or my plan D for that matter, however we put our initial disappointment to one side because he's one of a growing number of farmers who are turning away from traditional methods and making ten times more money by growing new cash crops and that's an important story.
I had to smile as I followed the farmer around his land - my heavy duty boots were coping more than adequately with the terrain, but behind me a long conga line of government officials were peeling off one by one as the mud deepened and frequency of large black ants increased.
Dave gives the crew his vote of approval!
30th May 2008, Dave
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Tough day.
30th May 2008, Gerald
That was some day. Talk about tough. I am sure I'll feel better tomorrow but at the moment I just can't see it, I'm afraid.
Pretty much everyone we met today (who we were supposed to be filming with next week) didn't match up to the stories we have prepared. That means we are frantically rewriting scripts and changing shooting ideas to suit these new characters or asking for our contacts here to find us new people who do fit the bill in a very short space of time. We have been given a number of reasons about why this has happened but to tell you the truth I don't quite know what to believe.
Has there been crossed wires? A lack of preparation by people here? Too many people involving themselves in our shoot? A lack of cooperation by the government? I just don't know. But I do know that it has been a really frustrating day today and it has resulted in us having to do a lot of extra work.
Perhaps we have not been clear enough or realistic about what we have asked for or have underestimated how sensitive certain subjects are here. I would say we have been very clear about what we want and did offer enough time to find those things or alternatives should they not work out. But then I would, wouldn't I?
I'm afraid we might never know.
It's all Greek to me!
30th May 2008, Tanya
Hi you might have seen me getting some training on video editing earlier in this diary. It has been a steep learning curve!
We are using Avid Newscutter to do all our video editing and I was finding it quite difficult to get the hang of, it wasn't the editing itself that was the problem it was making sure the video was going in to the system in the correct format and once edited getting it back out through what we call the transcoding farm so we can upload it onto this site. It all seemed so complicated!
I had completed the formal training of 3 days with an instructor and at the end of that I thought fine, OK all I need now is some practice, but when I sat down in front of the computer to have my first solo go I got an error message and I was stuck. I tried a few times to get to grips with it but just got more and more confused.
The time came to ask for help and my colleagues David Meikle and Eilidh McLaughlin came to my rescue. They have been using the system for a while now and were able to show me all the settings (and shortcuts) I needed to know. Within 10 mins I had my 'eureka' moment and now I can't wait to get my hands on all that lovely footage the team will be bringing back from China.
Keep visiting the site to see how my editing skills progress!
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More looking back... even later.
30th May 2008
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dàng àn
(eng. archive)
Key Dates:
háng huà
(eng. jargon)
Recce
Exploring a place to get information about it and people there, before going back later - in this case to film.
Avid Newscutter
This is a computer based editing system which is used to cut and piece together different forms of media, such as audio, video and images, to make video clips and programmes.
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