Wednesday, May 7, 2014

In the Can - The Making of "Everything is Peachy" Documentary on Living with Friedreich's Ataxia

In the fall semester of 2001, I took an editing class. Danish and "Shameck" we're taking the class as well. Midway through the semester, they asked me if I wanted to be in their documentary. 

Over winter break, we started making plans for the production. Danish gave me ten basic interview questions. I added things I thought were important. We filmed the interview first. 
I spoke on camera for a little bit under 2 hours. 


Allan Howell
Papa Frank Howell
A few weeks later, they stayed the night at my house. We surprised my father and grandfather with an interview. I stayed in my bedroom, not wanting to make them nervous. 


Graveside Michelle Howell
Danish shot the video on a tripod and Shameck handled the boom microphone. 



Dad on Horseback

Cool Beans
The following 2 days, they followed me driving to the graveyard, an Indian restaurant, and Walmart. We then drove to my dad's horse stables and got about an hour of footage on him. 


The  last day of production, they filmed me in class and followed me to lunch at one of my favorite dive bars, Cool Beans. 



The actual production took about 3 weeks after that, we immediately began post-production with editing. I was primarily in there as an observer,  but did voice my opinion quite a bit. 

The documentary class was screening the 30-minute documentary projects at the end of the semester during the Spring of 2002. 

We had about 4 hours of footage that we needed to cut down to 30 minutes. That took a long time, about 2 weeks . We were in the editing room for about 4 hours each day. Overall, the documentary was completely finished from start to end in about 2 months. 

We screened ours with about 5 other documentaries. Ours was the final one. In my opinion, we blew the others out of the water. The majority of the audience consisted of family and friends. I had no one present, which was weird to a lot of people. I was and am used to that. 

The guys got an "A" for their work, I ended up getting a special problems 3 hour credit I needed to graduate. It was a huge success.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Getting Started

Posting a link for a fundraiser for myself on my own blog feels a bit weird, but this is where it starts, getting my stuff together, so I can enter the 21st Century. Been living in obscurity for too long. Here goes: Jordan Howell Wheelchair + Tech Fund. Check it out.
And while you're there Find Other Great Fundraisers at GiveForward