Tag Archives: 1941 Academy Awards

July 10, 2011 Preparing for an Independent Shoot & Finding a Great Camera Store in NYC

A cou­ple of months ago I pur­chased a Pana­son­ic GH2 to take on my trip to NYC and Atlanta so that I could shoot some inter­views and footage of artist Michelle Scott — the tal­ent­ed grand­daugh­ter of KUKAN cam­era­man Rey Scott. As with most new cam­eras, it’s a learn as you go and make mis­takes process.  The sec­ond day in NYC, I had my bat­tery go out in a test inter­view and got a cor­rupt­ed mts file on the SD card (techie lan­guage for a screwup that you do not want to hap­pen dur­ing the real thing). I decid­ed I need­ed an AC adap­tor for the cam­era — that should be easy enough in the big apple shop­ping capi­tol, right?

Sur­prise, sur­prise, the two biggest cam­era stores in Man­hat­tan were out of stock. For­tu­nate­ly, I dis­cov­ered Alex & Tony at H & B Dig­i­tal on 46th Street. Not only did they have the part, but they were the sweet­est sales­men that I’ve run across in a long time. They patient­ly looked up how the adap­tor worked, let me test it, and then spent almost an hour advis­ing me about fil­ters and giv­ing me a pep talk about doing a shoot on my own — some­thing I have to face when the bud­get won’t tol­er­ate hir­ing a larg­er crew.

Tony & Alex at H & B Digital

So if you find your­self in NYC with cam­era needs, check Alex and Tony out on 46th St. They are a small shop, but well-stocked and have great prices too. Most of all they have a pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy & film­ing and seem to love what they do.

H & B Digital storefront

H & B Dig­i­tal storefront

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June 5, 2011 — First Online Funders

What a won­der­ful sur­prise to open my email and find a notice from Pay­pal that the esteemed New York City artists Richard Cramer and Car­ol Markel had made an online dona­tion to FINDING KUKAN.  They are tru­ly an inspi­ra­tional cou­ple and obvi­ous trend-set­ters.  I hope their ground-break­ing gen­eros­i­ty will encour­age oth­ers to take the step.

Richard Cramer & Carol Markel from the Advanced Style Blog

Richard Cramer & Car­ol Markel from Ari Seth Cohen’s “Advanced Style” blog

For a fun peek at this great cou­ple, see Ari Seth Cohen’s blog “Advanced Style”.

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May 21, 2011 — Official FINDING KUKAN Website Goes Live

If you build it.…they will come.”

I’m adapt­ing the lines from the great base­ball book/movie Shoe­less Joe/Field of Dreams and hop­ing they’ll apply to this web­site and even­tu­al­ly to the fin­ished doc­u­men­tary FINDING KUKAN. Since this project has been fueled by online research and dis­cov­er­ies made pos­si­ble by oth­er web­sites, it’s only appro­pri­ate that I put out one of my own.  Now it’s up to the cyber­space gods to work their magic…

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May 16, 2011 — Bryan Pearson Records Narration for Fundraising Trailer

British stage actor Bryan Pear­son stepped in to record a few lines of nar­ra­tion for the Find­ing KUKAN fundrais­ing trail­er cur­rent­ly in its final edit.

 

Finding KUKAN narrator Bryan Pearson

Bryan Pear­son and Robin Lung go over lines of nar­ra­tion for the FINDING KUKAN fundrais­ing trailer.

 

Bri­an refers to him­self as the “orig­i­nal Ter­mi­na­tor” since he played Thor in the 1959 cult clas­sic Teenagers from Out­er Space under his stage name Bryan Grant.

 

Bryan Pearson aka Bryan Grant as Thor

Bryan Pear­son aka Bryan Grant as Thor in TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE

 

I found Bri­an through a fas­ci­nat­ing loop of con­nec­tions that start­ed off when I inter­viewed war-time Chungk­ing jour­nal­ist Wing Yung Emery and sis­ter of Choy Wai Chuen, the first Chi­nese man to play at Wim­ble­don in 1948. The loop of con­nec­tion was made pos­si­ble by the dili­gence of Chris Essex, web­mas­ter for Fram­ling­ham Col­lege alum­ni. Fram­ling­ham was the prep acad­e­my that Choy Wai Chuen and Bryan Pear­son both went to.

Anoth­er eye-open­ing zig in the amaz­ing zig-zag jour­ney I’ve had since find­ing KUKAN.

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January 2011 — Work on the Fundraising Trailer Begins

Ron Darby on set

Ron Dar­by sets up for an interview

Cam­era­man Ron Dar­by and Pro­duc­er Robin Lung begin film­ing inter­views and b‑roll in Hawaii for the Find­ing KUKAN fundrais­ing trailer.

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