Hello Louisiana

Nottaway Plantation, the largest in the South, is just one of many diverse plantation houses we'll get into.

Jackson Square , New Orleans, with its fairy tale St. Louis Cathedral. In front of the square, get a horse-and-buggy ride.

Our film about Louisiana starts in North Louisiana, and after taking us through the musical history of Shreveport, the French history of Natchitoches and the political history of Baton Rouge, it finally wends its way into New Orleans, the Big Easy, to wrap up a colorful, comical and entertaining package. What a travel film that gets you off the beaten path and onto the trail of the real and refreshing. This is it, cher! The multifaceted tale of the most unusual state of the union. 

30 Minute Meditation: Asking for Nothing .... And Receiving Everything

Just began this meditation system today. 
If we're going to take pills for high blood pressure, let's find ways of reducing it in other ways. Exercise: I'm already walking half an hour a day; We're doing chair exercises on MWF which works on upper body strength & we're eating a pretty healthy diet. So, if our genes don't kill us, doing the meditation too should cause us to live into healthy old age.

Uploaded videos (playlist)

Biblical Marriage

Biblical Marriage:

Notes from Scotland

I am sitting on a "Weak Bridge", a little old stone bridge just below Gartmore next to my campground in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, north of Glasgow. The weak bridge doesn't seem to be in danger of imminent collapse, nor is it likely that there'll be a construction team coming along to shore it up any time soon. It's just to let you know that if the bridge were to collapse with you on it, you'd been warned. I've run across several of them in my trip from south west England through the Lake District to this relatively wild area of this heavily populated island. It's amazing how much open space there is here.

The campground charged me almost 12 pounds ($24) which is double the rate I'd been expecting, but they are busy with lots of families and young people and it is Saturday night. And there doesn't seem to be any choice so I've set up my little tent and pumped up my air mattress and spent the night. Before I climbed into my cosy nest last night I drove over to the shores of Loch Lomond to shoot some material which will be accompanied by my rendition of the old favorite, "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond."

Narration: Live or Recorded?

In the Travel Film business, we have agonized for years over the question of how to present the narration to a film we've shot and edited. To narrate live or to prerecord? That is the question. 

I’m pretty sure we’ve each decided which way to go by now, so why are we still discussing it?

1. Some of us seem to feel that the future of our little industry depends on resolving the question one way or another. 

   

1. If you’re pro-recorded you feel that the product will be slicker and closer to    technical perfection; therefore the audience will perceive its superiority, free from embarrassing glitches and goof-ups. You also probably feel that you are a much better film maker than the bumbling fools who read, improvise, or otherwise speak out loud while standing unobserved in a darkened auditorium.
2. If you are pro-live you feel that you are being true to the basic tenets of the industry, which calls for personal appearances by world travelers recounting their adventures first hand. You probably feel that you provide a much better evening’s entertainment than the lazy shites who travel around the country playing DVDs while hiding backstage in a darkened auditorium.
3. If you are pro-choice you do your thing and you don’t really care what anyone else does as long as they don’t affect what you do.

There has been much talk about the “live” aspect: the pro-recorded people have decided that as long as the film maker is actually there, at the showing, it’s ”live.” He/she is there to introduce the film and to answer questions and therefore the experience becomes more than just going to the movies and can be called “live.” 

Let’s face it: we’re dealing with films here so the concept of “live” will always be a bit dodgy. You can’t make an exact analogy to a rock concert, for instance, where the Rolling Stones turn up but then proceed to play some of their CDs for the audience. But it’s a thought.

I suggest that if you make an 80-minute travel film organized into two parts, with an intro at the beginning, an appearance on stage in the middle, and a meet-and-greet at the end, you are doing pretty much what the audience has come to expect. Does it matter, after the lights go down, whether you hide somewhere and wait for the lights to come up again; whether you give a dramatic reading of your script from the podium; or whether you speak your narration off the cuff or from total recall?

 I mention the “dramatic reading” because that’s what I do and I’ve heard occasional negative remarks, over the years, about readers. I read because I have written a complex and literate script to go with my chosen images and I have no intention of trying to remember all the clever stuff I’ve put in there. Besides, reading is a perfectly honorable activity: think poetry readings or authors giving readings of their works. 

While I’m on the subject of presentation I would also like to add that I enjoy reading the narration; I can’t see myself traveling all over the country just to give brief introductions and stand at the sale table night after night. The narration is a nightly challenge where I strive to improve time after time. 

That said, if we’re going to continue advertising our work as “live,” I think we need to think of ways to show the audience that we are there.  

  

Modern Tech

When I started out on the Travel Film road less than a decade ago, we used a big 
Rand-McNally Atlas to find our way, and when we needed to phone somebody, we 
looked for a pay phone booth. Sometimes I make diary-like notations in various 
notebooks that we have lying around, and this morning, I ran across the 
following entry from last Fall. You probably have to be of a certain age to 
appreciate this.

"We're driving north on I-75 in Ohio, a sunny day, when our cell phone indicates 
there's a Text message. It's from my brother in Australia asking me about my 
bank's routing number. He says I can e-mail him back. Our GPS indicates there's 
a Panera Bread (Cafe) at the next exit, so we leave the interstate and pull up 
beside Panera. I get my lap top out and go online using Panera's free Wi-Fi. I 
e-mail my brother the information he wants and simultaneously download an e-mail 
from our daughter in Louisiana. (She's dog-sitting for us.) The e-mail is a 
photograph of our dog, Jake, taken with, and sent from, her i-Phone. Jake is 
blissfully asleep on her couch. He's obviously stressed that we abandoned him. 
"We get back on the interstate and follow the instructions of our GPS which 
leads us to an address in Bowling Green we'd never been to before. Marsha says, 
'Beam me up, Scotty.'" 

Of course it would have been simpler if we'd had our own i-Phone.