eKaqchikel 2008 - New Week, Old Classroom

Derek's Flickr Feed for today| Marie's eKaq Flickr photos | Valerie's eKaq Flickr photos

Monday, July 21 - We picked up today where we left off with the teachers on Friday. We started by resetting the hotel common room as a classroom again. We had previously spiked the position of the cameras, the light, and the furniture so we knew where everything belonged. Except for the sunlight (afternoon vs. morning) I think we produced a passable reproduction...

Lee and I started the day by picking up a few more B-roll shots on the hotel grounds and then around town. We managed to capture images to represent museum, hotel, sunny day, and post office. While we were picking up shots, Marie and Valerie were working with Ix'Nal to finalize the script and the translations. Simple though the dialogue is, we still carefully create and then follow scripts so that the process can be documented and no material is accidentally left out. Every script is first written in English, and then translated into Spanish, and then translated once again into kaqchikel. It takes a while to work this all out, but Marie and Valerie have it almost complete. Not that it's stopped us from shooting in the meantime!

After the B-roll and classroom dialogue, we returned to our hotel and set up Lee's room as the final location of the day. We needed one speaker to walk in from the outside and tell the other speaker how hot it was. Out room patios made an excellent spot to play this one out.

Tomorrow we intend to tackle the other weather dialogue (rainy) and then the three direction dialogues. It's an ambitious schedule, but if we can pull it off, it gives us much more effort to spend on the "home" dialogue and that one's going to take some time.