Last week, Alec and I went to California to visit with Jason and talk post-production shop. It was a Friday evening and the three of us were sitting in Jason’s editing studio talking about things like multi-angle editing and color grading. Jason generally has a rant about how much better AVID is than FCP because that’s what he uses at work. At home, he uses FCP like the rest of us financially-challenged filmmakers. He was showing us what he’d learned at an Apple presentation about multi-angle editing. They’ve been touting multi-angle editing for a while but I’d never seen it used. He stepped through it and I was excited. He said (and I agreed) that there wasn’t all that much need for it in his type of work.

However, while we were in Zambia, the National Arts Council brought five (5) Native Storytellers in from other regions in the country. All five spoke a different language. There were about 25 children making up the audience. This was definitely NOT a highly-controlled nor highly-choreographed recording session. On top of that, this was the second weekend in Zambia so the student crew were all continuing to build their skills in all of the different pieces of equipment. To maximize our odds, we ran four (4) cameras during the shoot. Two cinematographers were on the storyteller, one was on the audience and one was handheld. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a different continent. So, next week, I’ll be cutting the Zambian Storytellers using this method. I can hardly wait. If you want to check it out, you will want to read Steve Martin’s well-illustrated and very clear tutorial on Final Cut Pro Multi-Angle editing.

Everything about the war in Iraq seems related to the topic. You’ve got the entrenched intolerance that the Shiite and Sunni have for one another driving the centuries-old civil conflict. That is layered with the right-wing, righteous Christian drive to bring “freedom” to the region and obliterate a dictator. Everyone in the region is claiming the will of God as their inspiration and motivation. Just as the Puritans did when they beat, imprisoned and hanged the Quakers. Just as Joseph Smith and his followers did in their justification for marrying multiple women.

I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. Whenever I’m talking about these other faiths and their controversial practices, someone invariably mentions the sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests and demands that I justify what they have done. Like my LDS friends, I hastily distance myself from “those” Catholics. There is, however, a big difference between the events. To the best of my knowledge, none of the priests ever claimed to have been commanded by God to commit those acts. None of them ever claimed to be doing God’s will.

The historically-astute may then point to The Crusades, the nearly 200-year conflict between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East. Christians claimed that were trying to “liberate” Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Muslims said it was Christian greed that brought them to their lands. The roots of the Iran/Iraq problem with the U.S. were planted about nearly a millennium ago. Maybe that is the problem with doing “God’s work” — the conflict is eternal.

An Associated Press review by reporter Michelle Roberts of the records kept by the Bishop of the sect (seized by authorities in the raid last month) shows that by the time a girl reached 16 she was more likely to be married than allowed to live with her family as a child. The same was not true for boys. The records reveal the relationship details of 37 families totaling 507 individuals. Tthe lists were written from March through August 2007, most of the people were living at the YFZ Ranch, though others were in homes along the Utah-Arizona line.

Two-thirds of listed households were polygamous. Once senior elder was listed as having 21 wives. Men still in their 20s made up most of the dozen monogamous marriages. Of the 19 youths listed as being 16 or 17, none of the boys are husbands, while nine of the girls are listed as wives. Only one 17-year-old girl remained unmarried. Under Texas law, children younger than 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult.

So, what are we left to make of this data? I had a professor who once said that one could use data to prove virtually any point of view or reveal a deeper truth. What does this data say to you?

When I was in grade school, I had always been told that America was settled because of a desire for religious freedom. In the process of researching our current script, we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the settlement of the “New World.” As I’ve written before, it turns out that the ONLY religious freedom the Puritans were interested in was the freedom to practice the Puritan —and only the Puritan— religion. If you wanted to worship according to any other faith, say the Baptist or Quaker or Catholic faith, you would be denied the ability to vote, own business or be a meaningful member of the community. You would be ostracized, whipped, jailed or beaten. It was this religious intolerance that led to the formation of Rhode Island which inspired Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

My Mormon friends are quick draw a distinction between themselves and their fundamentalist counterparts. It was Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who said that he’d had a personal revelation from Jesus Christ in 1843 that the followers of the Mormon faith were obligated to practice the “divine principle” of plural marriage. Joseph Smith had 33 wives. That is not a typo. He had 33 wives. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy act into law making plural marriage illegal in the U.S. and all its territories. Extermination orders against the Mormons, forced expulsion from a number of states, more legislation and a failed Supreme Court case plagued the nascent religion for the next forty years. They fled to the new zion in the Utah Territory near the Great Salt Lake. Their efforts to gain statehood were thwarted until the 1890 Prohibition against polygamy was announced. Poor enforcement led to the Second Manifesto of 1904 which stated that any Mormon practicing polygamy would be excommunicated.

So, since 1904, members of the LDS church have chosen not to observe the divine principle of plural marriage. This is not true in the fundamentalist sects. The Salt Lake City Tribune estimates there are about 37,000 fundamentalist Mormons living in remote towns in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, Canada and Mexico.

Of course, I believe in the Bill of Rights. I believe in freedom of speech and the freedom to practice my faith according to my conscience. But, I have to ask myself, what would I do if one of my friends or neighbors told me they had a personal revelation from God and they had been instructed to begin ritually sacrificing a virgin at every full moon. Suppose they said that only adult virgin females would be sacrificed and ONLY with their permission and of their own free will. Would I be okay with that? If not ritual sacrifice (everyone always thinks I’ve gone too far when I suggest that one), what about ritual mating on a golden altar? Where is the “religious freedom” line to be drawn? If I open an internet church and solicit willing sacrificial victims online, would that be okay?

In November of 1978, the Reverend Jim Jones convinced 909 of his faithful followers in Jonestown, Guyana to drink a reported concoction of valium, cyanide and chloral hydrate which resulted in the world’s largest mass murder-suicide. The medical examiner who examined the victims said well over 50 corpses showed evidence of having been injected with the poison, perhaps against their will. Jones’ benevolent communist church and society was established in Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 1950s with the beguiling name of the People’s Temple. In 1965, Jones and his followers were forced to flee, settling in Redwood City, then San Francisco and later Los Angeles. Ultimately, charges of tax evasion and an imminent arrest led to the group relocating to Guyana.

Thirty-eight members of the Heaven’s Gate religious order committed mass suicide as directed by their spiritual leaders in March of 1997. They were told their souls would be liberated so they could join divine beings who were piloting a spaceship that was hiding in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp. My entire family was in southern California a few miles from the Rancho Santa Fe location on a reunion-style vacation. We read a lot about the religious order of Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite. The Ontario consultants on religious tolerance support their decision to follow their faith in the way they saw fit. Don’t think I’d have been too happy if one of my family members had decided to go out that way.

It’s a Gordian Knot to be certain.

For convenience, I moved to the East Valley a couple of years ago. Now, I live on the border of Mesa and Gilbert. The property is actually in Gilbert. When I first moved here, I never wanted to tell anyone I lived in Gilbert because I hated the NAME. It just sounded like an old, hick farmer town. The choice seemed to be having people typecast me as a Mormon or a farmer. So, I decided on the farmer. Last week, someone told me the only town MORE Mormon than Mesa is Gilbert.

So, as you can imagine, I have a lot of Mormon friends and neighbors. My writing partner is a Mormon. I have learned more about the Mormon faith than I ever thought I would. This whole Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints sure creates a lot of uncomfortable moments for me and my pals.

When I read things like this data table from the Salt Lake Tribune and am not surprised. FLDS family size almost double the general population, median age about half, one fourth the average income, and three times the poverty level. As a group, they are less educated, less wealthy, more encumbered and much more isolated.

Every other year or so, I drive across country. I love seeing the U.S. this way. I’ve tried inviting people to come along with me on this, the “world’s slowest PBS nature show.” Most everyone gets bored and sleeps. While flying is certainly more expedient, I have found no way to duplicate the awareness that I gain from this experience.

Sometimes, while I drive, I think, “How beautiful! This part of the country is just gorgeous.” Other times, the thought is more grim. In poverty-stricken, visually-challenged regions, I find myself thinking, “Oh, heavens. What if I had been born here? What if this were the only life I knew?” Wisconsin was beautiful and the educational system was extraordinary, so I felt lucky about my own “accident of birth.” What if I had been born to a fundamentalist, polygamist family in a remote area of Utah, Arizona, Texas or Calgary? What if almost all the girls I knew were married to an older member of the church by the time they were 15? What if I had always been told that I would be banished and shunned if I disobeyed the “Prophet”, never to see my family again. Would I simply conform to the male-dominated theocracy?

On 19 April 2008, Sara Hisle and Christopher Bowe were married in an evening ceremony at Stonebridge. Family members from Wisconsin, Wichita, Minneapolis and Phoenix were in attendance. For the rehearsal dinner, Chris’s mother, Sandy Bowe, made a video about their early lives, their courtship and engagement. These Small Hours is presented below in two parts (to conform to YouTube length limitations). Photos from the Wedding Ceremony and the Reception/Dance are also listed below for those friends and family members who were unable to attend the celebration in person.

• “These Small Hours”, Part One
• “These Small Hours”, Part Two
• Photographs from Wedding Ceremony
• Photographs from Reception and Dance

One of the things I love about YouTube is that it makes it so easy to share these sorts of things with family members around the world. And, with their commitment to make the videos as accessible as possible for virtually every computer system (regardless of age), it makes it pretty easy for anyone who is interested to enjoy them. So, if you don’t know Chris and Sara, you may want to skip this blog entry and bypass this media.

While we were on location in Mtendere, Lusaka, Zambia, a tweaked out guy came up to the crew and asked them to deliver a message to Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. The entire clip is only 54 seconds long. It’s funny as heck. Here we were in one of the poorest sections of Lusaka where hardly anyone had a television, virtually no one had a computer and many folks didn’t even seem to have electricity and this guy seemed to know all about the U.S. Rapper, 50 Cent. He wanted us to let him know that 50 Cent had messed everyone up and that he was going to come to America and get him for what he had done. We posted this video. In less than three days, it had over a thousand hits. A thousand hits. Just goes to show, people just love to laugh.

The Puritans frowned on May Day, so the day has never been celebrated with as much enthusiasm in the United States as in Great Britain. But the tradition of celebrating May Day by dancing and singing around a maypole, tied with colorful streamers or ribbons, survived as a part of the English tradition. The kids celebrating the day by moving back and forth around the pole with the the streamers, choosing of May queen, and hanging of May baskets on the doorknobs of folks — are all the leftovers of the old European traditions.

THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The people of Merry Mount celebrate the marriage of a youth and maiden. They dance around a maypole and are described as resembling forest creatures. Their festivities are interrupted by the arrival of John Endicott and his Puritan followers. Endicott orders for the people of Merrymount to be whipped. Stricken by the newlyweds, he spares them but orders they be put in more conservative clothing. He also orders the youth cut his hair in the “pumpkin shell” style in order to show the puritan’s strictness.

The story is an allegory for the social tension caused by the Puritans in early America. Endicott and his Puritan followers suppress freedom and individuality, a common theme for Hawthorne. Real joy, Hawthorne seems to be saying, arises spontaneously out of contrasts

My nephew, Christopher, got married this weekend so Alec came in for the wedding. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the airport and found this burly man waiting for a lift. Fortunately, he cleaned up pretty well. PamelaJo popped in with her camera and surprised us while we were getting ready to go (NO, I will NOT post those photos) and took a few snapshots of us in our Sunday best.

• Learning Maya.Com
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If you’re wanting to learn more about the more advanced AfterEffects tricks. I strongly recommend that you visit Andrew Kramer’s VideoCoPilot.Net Site. He’s got 64 tutorials on everything from greenscreening, replacing sky and stabilizing footage to putting bugs under your skin and freaky eyeballs in your skull. Terrific techniques for the modern filmmaker. For those who love to learn by reading, the books by Trish and Chris Meyers are still the best. For the media generation, try Kramer first. Then, take a look at Pixel2Life and CreativeCow.

So, earlier this month, I’m at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, meeting with students and going over their interactive media projects. One group is working on a Nintendo-based tool that teaches high school students the slope-intercept formula in a game format in preparation for the exit examination. While talking with them, we got onto the idea of full-immersion gaming. One of the students was really excited about this fellow from Carnegie Mellon University who was developing immersion techniques using the Wii Remote. I started digging around and discover that this immersion innovator is the $14 Steadicam guy, Johnny Chung Lee. The YouTube video sure got my imagination going.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa had called the emergency summit with 48 hours’ notice. Afterward, his foreign affairs minister told reporters there was no crisis in Zimbabwe, echoing statements made by South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki said Saturday there was “no crisis” after he had to fly to Zimbabwe before Saturday’s summit to engage Mugabe, who reportedly was not taking calls from African leaders last week.

Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe has been likened to appeasement that allows Mugabe to continue his autocratic rule unimpeded. The Southern African Development Community that held the summit has been accused of pandering to Mugabe with disregard for its own constitution to promote democracy.