12/28/2007, Part 1 – 99 Problems but a Shoot Ain’t…
(this is a 3 part posting. This first was written Thursday night and Friday Morning
If you’re having production problems, I feel bad for you son. I got 99 problems but a shoot ain’t…
What’m I saying? Yeah it is. I got a shoot coming up this weekend. We’ll be out at the Hmong New Years in Fresno this weekend, for the first ever? Among B-Boys New Years jam. Yeah we got a jam/competition named after us, wuuut!!! more on this in a few.
So I’m pretty nervous about this shoot coming up. We had wrapped up production at the end of the summer, but after creating our paper edit and assembly cut, we realized there were some huge holes that could be remedied by shooting at the Hmong New year. So we’ve put a lot into this… all our eggs in the same basket if you’re a chicken farmer, all your records into one crate if you’re a DJ, all your rhymes into one notebook if you’re and Emcee, all your tapes into on box for us documentary makers, all your capture files in one hard drive (noooooo don’t do it! back it up!). okay, I think you get the idea. We’re I’ve been anticipating it for awhile, preparing on paper, preparing equipment, preparing itineraries, preparing questions, making so many lists… checking them twice. maybe more. There’s so many uncertainties and it SuckS with a double capital S. In times of stress I like to eliminate as many variables as I can, and so much is still up in the air. Now there’s possibilities of rain? Gotta plan for that.
And this rain… it’s not the first time I was supposed to go to Hmong New Years and have it rained out. I think a year or two ago I was supposed to go, and it was raining hard and flooding in the Central Valley. Could they just reschedule the New Years and put it during the spring or something. that would be awesome. I suppose it’s tougher to get off work around then. Since from what I’ve learned the Hmong New year celebrations usually don’t revolve around a specific day/date/calendar. It’s very adaptive apparently. My Uncle who lives in Minnesota, tells me that the St. Paul New Years festival happens during something like Thanksgiving weekend because that is the one weekend they can lockdown the indoor convention center to keep out of the freezing cold. And the Merced Hmong New Year festivities were last weekend. And Sacramento’s was a week or two before that. This book I read says the New Year revolves around the growing seasons rather than the lunar calendar? Someone please school me.
So anyways there’s a B-Boy jam being thrown this Saturday at the Hmong New Year in Fresno, by my friend Vang. This is third jam/competition he’s thrown that he’s named “Among B-Boys” after the film. After the first short film showed, he was inspired to create something for his own Hmong community. His events are open to all, but target local Hmong Youth in the Fresno and Central Valley. Even if I never finished the film, this could be a consolation prize which can reflect the lives that I’ve already touched. But even better, this has provided me an opportunity to film an intersection of both the Hmong culture and American popular/youth culture that Hmong youth balance in their lives each day.
peace
-Chris
look for part 2 soon…
(like the Among B-Boys blog entries? got some beefs to air out? let me know! contact me)
