Ben and I met yesterday to look at the video editing that he has done so far–maybe 20 seconds. Turns out, it takes a long time to make a movie. I wrote an email to Dan Perlman at Brandeis, after meeting Ben: “I just came home from a meeting with the video editor and he had put together maybe 20 seconds of intro and it looked so great I wanted to weep! Daniel’s score matched the thrust of the footage perfectly, and I could feel Jeff’s carefulness in it, and I could feel my hopefulness in it, and it was a grand culmination of the last three years of my academic life–20 seconds! I can’t begin to tell you how rewarding this is. Ben is doing a fantastic job of matching my hopeful excitement about what is happening in China with the footage that Jeff shot. We’re talking about how to integrate the cartoony Olympic characters and photos into the film to make something really fun to watch.”

Ben is leaving for a few weeks to go to Europe with his project, Border Stories, but we have a meeting scheduled when he comes back and before he leaves for Paris. very fancy! Ben’s uploaded my footage though, so that he can do work on the airplane, and we he will keep me updated about his progress. I just want to work on this project all the time!

I emailed the Aspen Environmental Forum to see if I could drum up any interest in hearing more from us. Ben told me he could have a cut by the forum on March 25 through 28.

Also, Kyle Westgard of My Green Campus got in touch with me the other day with some advice pertaining to distribution and possibly working together when we get to this stage.

My advisor in China, libo, has also talked a little more to me about using his networks to distribute in China, and so the next step for me is to set up meetings at Brandeis with my potential translaters. It seems a bit premature to do this when we have no movie yet though.