tagged w/ Documentary production
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As we head into the season of indulging on favorite foods surrounded by family and friends, I’ve begun reflecting on meals I’ve shared with our team in Vanguard. As I’ve gotten to know my colleagues over the years, I’ve fondly begun to associate certain flavors and foods with certain people. I know correspondent Laura Ling digs spicy food and packs beef jerky for every shoot. Producer Lauren Cerre fantasizes about the ultimate savory granola bar. Correspondent Mariana Van Zeller makes a mean omelet and Editor Yasu Tsuji comes to every meeting well armed with Pocky.
Of course, no blog posting about food would be complete without mentioning correspondent Adam Yamaguchi, famous for his intrepid appetite. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Adam on several stories including the infamous Penis Restaurant pod. Adam’s poise under pressure is made even more remarkable if you know the backstory. He wasn’t actually supposed to be the only diner at the table sampling the house specialty. Our field producer had arranged for other men to join Adam so they could discuss the supposed Viagra-esque properties as they sampled the meal. But, at the last minute, those eating companions failed to materialize. As they say, the show must go on and, boy, did it. Adam bravely feasted alone and ended up giving a culinary critique that would have given Anthony Bourdain a run for his money.
There usually isn’t a lot of time to for proper meals when we’re out in the field. Lunch is often a handful of gorp and a sad, melted Cliff Bar. Dinner is whatever bland offerings you scrounge up back at the hotel when you roll in exhausted after a long day of shooting. But, a wonderful exception to the typical shoot fare happened this summer when I went to Italy to produce the upcoming “Cocaine Mafia” with Christof Putzel. I hate to stereotype but it’s absolutely true that Italians take their food very seriously. I remember being in the car when a heated discussion broke out between members of our Italian production crew. Christof and I looked at each other, wondering if something had gone wrong. Did an interview fall through? Were we being threatened? No, it was a matter far more urgent. There was a big controversy over where to get the best pizza in town.
It was a real treat working with Christof, not least of all because he’s a gourmand who loves to share his discoveries of all things good to eat. The afternoon before we left Italy, we tracked down some fresh burrata, a mozzarella cheese with cream inside. I never had it before but I took his recommendation and decided this was one souvenir I’d take back with me. The shopowner warned us, “It must be eaten within 24 hours or else.” Or else, what? I wasn’t quite sure but I took his words seriously. I secured the cheese in a cold-insulated bag and asked stewardesses to stow it in the fridge. Delays upon reaching Dulles made me nervous—it was like traveling with a time-sensitive organ waiting to be transplanted. A close call: a beagle at customs came towards me but then found something more interesting to investigate. I made it to San Francisco but truthfully it took a little bit more than 24 hours. My husband and I decided to risk it and devoured the round of cheese with a nice bottle of red at 2AM. It was an absolutely wonderful way to cap off a successful summer of Vanguard production.As we head into the season of indulging on favorite foods surrounded by family and... more
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Let's be honest: although it can be extremely valuable, interning can be one
of the most unpleasant, underappreciated experiences of one's professional
career. Some call it paying your dues, others call it just plain bad luck
when you get saddled with mundane tasks like fetching coffee and walking
dogs.
But there ARE internships out there that at least try to teach you
something. Since we are a small group here at Vanguard, whenever a new
person joins our team, his/her contribution is just as important as someone
who's been working here for years. We are fortunate to have two interns
with us right now--Tania Rashid and Dan Ucko--and the work they've done with
us so far has been immeasurable. From doing research for shows in our new
season--be it Porn 2.0 or Notes From a War on Terror--to helping us spread
the word about Vanguard on Facebook, our interns help keep the train
running.
Their involvement with the Vanguard team reminds me of when I was an intern
not so long ago... only it was in radio, not television. I interned at
National Public Radio for a show that had a good run for a few years but is
no longer on the air. But even so, the experience I got working with
professionals in the broadcast industry gave me the confirmation that
journalism was a field I wanted to pursue, and I have my mentors at NPR to
thank for it. I only hope our interns get something of value out of being
here with us. I know we wouldn't be able to operate the same way without
them!
So, in an ode to interns everywhere, here is a link to the NPR show entirely
produced by interns. It's called Intern Edition.
And here is an archive of Intern Editions past.
During my time at NPR, I too produced a story for Intern Edition...it's
buried somewhere in there...good luck trying to find it!
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- The economy is growing again. Where does that leave you? - Mitch Koss
- Fallen Soldier - Lauren Cerre
- Drugs and Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge - Adam Yamaguchi
- A Geologist’s Analysis of the War in Afghanistan - Kaj Larsen
- Everything is connected: ecstasy, rainforests, and beyond - Adam YamaguchiLet's be honest: although it can be extremely valuable, interning can be one
of... more
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tchang
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added this
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2 years ago
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Happy? Or scared?
Today’s big economic news is a report showing the US Gross Domestic Product grew 3.5 percent from July through September, the first GDP growth in over a year. Wall Street was happy. Stocks on the Dow Jones average rose nearly 200 points. The Obama Administration’s $787 billion stimulus program, combining tax cuts and government spending got some of the credit. At the same time, another report this week showed that American consumer confidence is down, partly due to unemployment continuing to climb. It’s almost at 10 percent now, while wages are mostly flat and home prices remain low, 401Ks are not recovered, blah, blah, blah…
If you’ve looked at a newspaper, or TV screen, or the Internet in the past 18 months, you’ve seen all the dismal stats.
So now that the GDP is growing again, which way are things going for you? Not in the next six months, but in the next six years. What kind of economy is going to emerge from the greatest economic decline since the 1930s? That’s the big question, and it points out one of the big dilemmas of journalism. You would think that the really important stuff would be stuff that you would want to pay closest attention to but the important stuff — the average American’s position in the economy — often builds over a lot of time, sometimes over many years, in the way that you’re supposed to boil a lobster, starting with the water at room temperature, so that by the time he or she is cooked, he or she doesn’t notice (so they say). So although this present recession seemed to start abruptly, the factors behind it kind of crept up on us. And that’s what’s tough to cover, and tough to follow.
As I've said before, at Vanguard we try to look forward. In May, we did a documentary mini-series in which we tried to look at the economy that we’ve had in the US since the 1980s, against the backdrop of its collapse. Laura Ling went to Las Vegas, formerly the fastest growing place in the US, for "Lost Vegas."
Adam Yamaguchi went to China’s manufacturing center for "Outsourcing Unemployment."
And Lauren Cerre and Tracey Chang went to Argentina for "Thank You, Recession."
Basically, we were looking at what kind of economy will emerge from this present downturn. Will we manage to go back to the system we’ve had since the 1980s? There we had tremendously high levels of consumer spending on cheap stuff — cheap because we’ve outsourced many of our manufacturing jobs to places where wages are lower. And our wealth creation came from real estate, stock, and equity inflation — essentially a series of bubbles. Or we could go back to the system we had in the ‘50s through the ‘70s, where there wasn’t so much economic separation in the US — we were essentially middle class — and wage growth was the key to economic improvement.
As we travel around the world, there is also another model that we see in globalized economies: Those economic engines of the developing world, like China and India, where the “developed” portion of the economy, the economy that we see and which looks like ours, doesn’t include all the population, or even most of it. Many, or most citizens, in these countries are invisible in economic terms. In fact, when Tracey Chang interviewed the COO of Infosys, the poster child of India’s high-tech development, in Bangalore India, he pointed out to her that India’s growth was not including most people.
So where are you going to emerge? Right now there seem to be three directions.Happy? Or scared?
Today’s big economic news is a report showing the US Gross... more
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Tonight, Vanguard premieres The Forest of Ecstasy at 10pm ET/ 10pm PT on Current. Not too long before our trip, I’d bought myself a new digital SLR camera to satisfy my then-newfound passion for still photography. (Some photos below) As I go through the hundreds of photos I took during our trip, I’m reminded of all the moments and experiences my colleague Joanne and I experienced during our trip to Cambodia.
While the ecstasy trade, and its impact on Cambodia’s rainforest was one of the main focuses of our trip, this was just one of many many stories that caught our attention. In her blog entry, Joanne touches upon how the drug trade has overrun the heretofore vulnerable nation – today, mostly in the form of meth.
In the mid-late 70s, Cambodia was run by a genocidal regime, known as the Khmer Rouge. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took over the country, and declared the beginning of Year Zero – and all cultural institutions and traditions were to be wiped. Essentially, the nation would hit the restart button, and only new revolutionary ideas would hold.
These guys were responsible for killing nearly 1/5 of the nation’s population, wiping out entire classes of intellectuals and professionals, and instituting an entirely socialized, agrarian society.
During the campaign of terror, the country was essentially hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world. This isolation would outlast the regime itself, which was driven from power in 1979. Ongoing violence and instability kept much of the rest of the world from wanting to engage, or do any business in this dangerous country.
Drugs, like many other legal products, are part of international business. Cambodia’s instability proved to be too risky for the drug traffickers, who steered clear. So even though the country sat in a region known for massive flows of drugs, Cambodia was entirely drug free.
In the years since the Khmer Rouge have lost power and melted away, Cambodia has begun to rejoin and re-engage with the world. This has meant increased trade with its neighbors. And now, the drugs are flowing in, in massive amounts.
Drug pushers are finding Cambodia to be rich, fertile ground for the proliferation and sale of drugs. Meth has proven to be particularly viral for this broken population. At the same time, those who are resource-hungry are also finding Cambodia ripe for exploitation. Like the forests full of the ecstasy precursors and the exotic animals deep inside.
Unfortunately for Cambodia, this is what democracy, the ideals of freedom, and trade have brought. Development has been extremely positive for Cambodia, and the nation is far better off than it was under the Khmer Rouge. But did liberty and freedom have to be so costly?
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- A Geologist’s Analysis of the War in Afghanistan - Kaj Larsen
- Everything is connected: ecstasy, rainforests, and beyond - Adam Yamaguchi
- Street Hustlers, Militants, and Vanguard’s Mission - Mitch Koss
- Cambodia’s Coming Drug Crisis - Joanne Shen
- Preparing for armageddon in the year 2012 - Adrian BaschukTonight, Vanguard premieres The Forest of Ecstasy at 10pm ET/ 10pm PT on Current. Not... more
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Those of us who have grown up in the U.S. have an ingrained understanding of what a drug is. We know that sometimes drugs can make you feel really good and sometimes they can make you feel really bad. We know that drugs alter your body chemistry, and affect your body and brain functions - for a short time or perhaps forever. Assailed from an early age with public service announcements, school drug education programs, and the diatribes of political candidates, we know about the dangers of addiction to the point at which "This is your brain on drugs" campaigns and "Just Say No" slogans have become the easy butt of jokes.
But Cambodia is starting from scratch. After decades of civil war, genocide and mass starvation, there is still too little understanding of what a drug is, in comparison to the amount of drugs that are quickly becoming available. This summer Adam Yamaguchi and I traveled to Cambodia to produce "Forest of Ecstasy" which will be airing this Wednesday at 10P/9C. In the program, we examine how the global demand for the club drug ecstasy is fueling the destruction of Cambodian rainforest as criminals try to get their hands on locally produced safrole oil, a key ingredient in the drug.
Ecstasy belongs to a category of drugs called Amphetamine Type Stimulants (ATS), and according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, global demand for ATS drugs is on the rise and Asia is becoming a hotspot for global production. Cambodia's porous borders and inadequate law enforcement and border controls have made it an easy destination for drug traffickers and producers who manufacture ATS drugs, like ecstasy and meth, to feed the lucrative international trade. Consequently, there's a spillover effect when these illicit drugs pass through the country and locals get their first contact with them.
It's easy to see how local demand for these synthetic drugs could grow furiously. As a country like Cambodia, which was closed off from the rest of the world for decades, enters the fast paced 21st century, its population is increasingly curious about these meds that supposedly make you happier, stronger and more productive. While ecstasy is still too expensive for the average Cambodian, abuse of meth, is quickly becoming prevalent among working-class Cambodians. People like fishermen, truck drivers and agricultural workers, who have to work long, strenuous hours take meth-laced pills known in local slang either as yaba or yama. (It depends who is talking about it. We were told that "yaba" literally means "the pill that makes you crazy" but drug dealers call it "yama" which means "strong like a horse"). These little pills look like colorful, harmless candy and they're pushed onto unsuspecting, uneducated Cambodians as vitamins. In this clip of raw footage, Adam Yamaguchi looks at a handful of this popular form of meth:
Yaba (Video)
Meth in the form of yaba/yama is the gateway drug for many Cambodians. From yaba or yama, they move onto highly addictive crystal meth, which is already the drug of choice amongst Cambodian street kids. Natural curiosity about drugs, the growing available supply of drugs and a population in which more than a third of the population is under the age of 15, are all factors that collectively could lead to a national drug crisis. Time to bust out some catchy anti-drug slogans in Khmer, 'cause we've got a perfect storm brewing.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Preparing for armageddon in the year 2012 - by Adrian Baschuk
- There's no app for that - San Francisco's tough new trash law - by Tracey Chang
- Sustainable Sushi: Cooking with Vanguard's Christof Putzel - by Christof Putzel
- Mexico's narco war isn't ours - by Mitch Koss
- Celeb Oxy Watch: Sam Jones III of Smallville - by Mariana van ZellerThose of us who have grown up in the U.S. have an ingrained understanding of what a... more
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Next week, Forest of Ecstasy airs (here's the sneak peek). It goes down in my memory as one of the most physically taxing shoots I’ve ever been on and one that I proudly emerged intact from (except for a couple of toenails) with a tale of an exciting real life adventure to share.
As a producer, we do everything we can to prepare for our time out in the field. From dozens of midnight phone calls made to the opposite end of the world to set up interviews and sort out logistics to the task of mentally and emotionally preparing ourselves to be apart and out of communication from family and friends for days, even weeks at a time…. that’s all part of pre-production.
For Forest of Ecstasy, there was an added component of being physically up for the challenge. I knew we’d be heading out into the hot muggy rainforest, carrying all our gear on our backs. I’m reasonably fit but, let’s face it, I don’t train for triathalons for fun like Adam Yamaguchi. To prepare, I went on weekly long hikes in the hills of Northern California where I live. My husband acted as my personal trainer, encouraging me to keep those feet moving when I’d start to tire. We couldn’t replicate the humidity of Cambodia but we did load up my backpack up with bottles of water and handweights. My husband said that other hikers we’d pass would give him dirty looks for letting me do all the heavy lifting!
In the end, this is what we carried on our backs :
- Satellite phone (for emergencies only at $8 a minute!)
- Videocamera and 4 big batteries
- Water purification tablets
- First aid kit, replete with quick clot
- Hammock with mosquito net cover
- Silk sleeping sheet
- Extra shirt
- Cans of tuna fish
- Plastic bags to protect the gear from the rain
Here’s what I really wished I had packed
- A pair of flipflops
- Extra socks
- Deet-laced mosquito repellent (to make the leeches drop off)
Of course, you can never be prepared for everything. And during the river crossing, Adam Yamaguchi couldn’t resist turning the camera on me at a particularly vulnerable moment. Earlier in the day, I had overcome my repulsion of leeches—just pick ‘em off your neck with the left hand while filming with the right hand!—but making my way across the slippery riverbed was an unexpected twist in the journey. I knew about the possibility of landmines but this water component was almost too much. I fearfully pictured a Siamese crocodile making a rare appearance just for us. But forge ahead I did….
Joanne crosses the river (Video)
BTW, I wasn’t waving a white flag high over my head. That’s a double plastic bag with all the shot tapes that I’m trying to keep as safe as possible. And I can answer my joking question on why we at Vanguard do these things...to bring the story back to you.
Recently from the Vanguard blog:
An overview of Cuba: Past, Present and Future - by Adrian Baschuk
Don’t turn off the TV, yet - by Adam Yamaguchi
We warned you about the dollar…sort of - by Mitch KossNext week, Forest of Ecstasy airs (here's the sneak peek). It goes down in my... more
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This was a busy summer for me. I produced two stories, “Forest of Ecstasy” airing October 28 and "Cocaine Mafia" airing December 9. I traveled to Cambodia with Adam Yamaguchi where we traipsed around a leech infested forest in search of secret factories where rare trees are harvested to make “ecstasy oil”.
Here's a sneak peek from the show:
Sneak Peek Vanguard Season 3: Leeches
I barely had time to unpack and repack when I was off to Italy where I met up with Christof Putzel to investigate one of Europe’s largest hubs for cocaine trafficking, a town just outside of Naples, Italy, called Castel Volturno. I spend most of my time on shoots looking through the viewfinder and filming. I love making images and hate being the center of attention so this is the perfect gig for me. But recently, I looked for some photos of myself in professional action—perhaps a shot of me hacking my way through the rainforest with some armed Cambodian forest rangers and realized I never got them. I’m usually so busy trying to make sure I capture the story unfolding in front of me, that I rarely stop to ask someone to take a keepsake photo of me. So going through my digital camera, I didn’t have much luck in finding the quintessential “badass” producer shot. Instead what I found was this classic snapshot of me, hanging out in a sun-drenched piazza with some old Italian gents. It was one of our last days of filming in Italy and we were trying to get some visuals that encapsulate the picture perfect Italian small town life. Except we knew the town was a mafia stronghold and journalists were probably not super-welcome. I felt like a lot of suspicious eyes were on us outsiders. So I played up, pretending to be a tourist and even asked someone to take my picture with some of the locals. And there you have it, visual proof of me on the job, as a Vanguard producer.
Also from the Vanguard blog:
- Mitch Koss on Vanguard’s Documentary Origins
- Laura Ling on Vanguard’s Mission
- Vanguard goes to Dr. Phil by Darren Foster
This was a busy summer for me. I produced two stories, “Forest of Ecstasy”... more
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Tonight is the premiere of the final episode of the Vanguard season: Cocaine Mafia. Christof Putzel travels to Europe to see how they're feeding their growing appetite for the drug.
This Week on Vanguard: Cocaine Mafia (Video)
This season of Vanguard has been a really great one - so we'll be featuring a lot of the previous shows today and the rest of the week on the Current News page. You can watch them all online, you know - so if you missed one - get caught up! Watch Adam Yamaguchi tromping through the Cambodian rainforest in Forest of Ecstasy or Mariana van Zeller following the pain pill pipeline in The Oxycontin Express.
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Who will pay for climate change? - Copenhagen
- Obama lays out plan for jobs; Meeting lawmakers tomorrow
- Photography in conflict: Jeff Antebi covers the Afghanistan election
- Iran students' day of protest
- Copenhagen backgrounder - A roundup of pre-conference readingTonight is the premiere of the final episode of the Vanguard season: Cocaine Mafia.... more
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