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MillimeterDream Job: Capturing Change
Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Cynthia Wisehart
Cameraman Mark Palmer from Black Bay Entertainment shoots with the Panasonic AG-DVX100 in Denver’s Fishback-Landing Park, where Meditate 08—an historic gathering of 40 spiritual teachers—contrasted with the nearby Democratic National Convention.
Luke Eberl rolled his Panasonic AG-DVX100 as Denver police shot pepper-spray bullets into a crowd of street protestors calling themselves Recreate '68. Just a mile away, his older sister Karuna was rolling her DVX100 in a shaded, grassy park where a passionately peaceful crowd meditated and chanted under the banner of Meditate 08.
This was exactly the type of contrast the two documentary filmmakers expected to find at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Meditate 08 organizer Don Morreale had invited Karuna Eberl's Ventura, Calif.-based Black Bay Entertainment to document the historic gathering — an official convention event that featured 40 spiritual teachers in six days of open-air seminars that were open to the public. A grant secured modest funding to archive the speeches — by practitioners of Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths — as well as secular teachers in disciplines including yoga and Kirtan chanting. Black Bay's videographers (including a group of seven Colorado University students) fanned out across Denver to put Meditate 08 in context against the political machinations of the DNC.
“Everybody we encountered, whether they were part of the Meditate event or the convention, were very, very serious about affecting change, though their methods were dramatically different,” Karuna Eberl says, conjuring as an example the image of abortion activists facing off with bullhorns at point-blank range.
A former journalist and independent producer, Karuna Eberl founded Black Bay Entertainment with James McLean two years ago to offer production services to a range of independent film and television producers. The company has also made several successful festival-circuit documentaries and independent features including Luke Eberl's Choose Conner, winner of the Best American Independent Jury Award at this year's Philadelphia Film Festival and due in theaters at press time via Strand Releasing. Karuna Eberl's first documentary — The Guerrero Project, which was about the search for a sunken slave ship — won Best Feature at the Key West IndieFest.
The DNC documentary is part of Black Bay's ongoing roster of nonprofit projects. Most of the crew, including DP Jim Timperman and Karuna and Luke's father, Dennis, volunteered their time. Colorado fundraiser EarthNest Institute has taken on the task of raising the finishing funds.
For more, see reel-exchange.com/members/6daa9429/profile.
