Circle Up Now » Lisa DePasquale http://circleupnow.org/blog Human Rights Social-Action Network Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:34:07 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.5 Post ‘Freedom From Hunger’ http://circleupnow.org/blog/1566/post-production/ http://circleupnow.org/blog/1566/post-production/#comments Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:13:21 +0000 Lisa DePasquale http://circleupnow.org/blog/?p=1566 The energy on event day was amazing! With the whole team now on location, we drove to the event site before the sun was up, and arrived to find a frosty field. Students began arriving as the frost finally melted away and the sun gave reassuring warmth that this day was going to go beautifully!







John and Mntunzi began early with the volunteers to set-up the lines for the aerial art, as I handled logistics like the set-up of the stage, boom lift for cameras, port-a-johns, and tenting, while Marc Levey, our Executive Producer, managed the press and our partners as well as the official photographers and videographers.











The drumming of the Twenty Thousand Drums crew caused the children to erupt with excitement at the beginning of the event, and carried the same uplifting energy and spirit throughout the day.





As the drums kept the pace of the event upbeat, our entire Circle Up team worked feverishly to get the students grouped by uniform color and filtered into the image. The Action Aid team and their volunteers helped with this, and with passing out of drums and rhythm sticks to each of the students. As they sat in the image, the students drummed in perfect unison with the drum leaders as if they had been doing it their whole lives, and they cheered as the helicopter first went up into the air.







From the start, we were pressed for time since city officials would only allow the helicopter to take off and land within a fixed window of time. I found myself tucked off to the side of the image with Marc as we watched the helicopter come down early. Marc looked at his watch and got onto his two-way radio, “We still have 10 minutes… send the helicopter back up! Send it back up!” Fortunately, later we learned that our official image came from that last flight.



CNN was the first press to make the image viewable to anyone at the event, and I saw Action Aid’s PR coordinator come down the hill with tears in her eyes, saying, “It really does look like Mediba!” I knew at that moment, our hard work had paid off, and we had all created something magical.

A few days following the event, we attended the Action Aid press conference at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, where we had the unique honor of hearing Bishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Anon, and Mary Robinson speak on the serious issue of the global hunger crisis and on how to combat it.





Also in attendance were several dignitaries such as the first lady of South Africa and Sir Richard Branson. Here we presented our image of Nelson Mandela on the eve of his 90th birthday, along with a video of the event that displayed the meaning and feelings of the student participants through this experience.

Possibly the most rewarding part of the entire trip came four days after the event when we went back to the two participating high schools to present them with their own copies of the image and large mounted prints for the schools to proudly display.



The students were filled with excitement as they told their stories of seeing themselves on local news broadcasts in the image.







They were so proud that so many people saw something that they had been a part of. One student even expressed to me how she felt as if this event made her realize that she can help others too. She said that she planned to start a clothing drive to bring to the local communities most affected by AIDS. That was my personal victory, as it has always been my mission, along with Marc and John’s, to inspire and empower others to be the next leaders of tomorrow!
]]> http://circleupnow.org/blog/1566/post-production/feed/ 0 Arriving in South Africa http://circleupnow.org/blog/1553/south-africa-arrival-and-pre-production/ http://circleupnow.org/blog/1553/south-africa-arrival-and-pre-production/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:50:39 +0000 Lisa DePasquale http://circleupnow.org/blog/?p=1553 I arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, about 4 days before our Mandela event as the “Lone Ranger” from Circle Up Now, as the rest of my team was in Athens, Greece, and Los Angeles, California, creating the aerial artwork for Amnesty’s Global Day of Action. As Associate Producer, it was my responsibility to make sure everything was on track and to work with the schools and partner organizations on behalf of my team.







I had a lot of work to do in the first few days to prep, but I truly had mixed emotions about being there without the rest of my team. I was excited about experiencing South Africa, but I was a little nervous too — about being on my own in a place where a number of violent crimes had been recently highlighted in the news. This was the farthest I have ever been from the United States, and it was definitely the longest flight I have ever taken! It was winter in South Africa during our summer in the States, so I knew that weather would be dramatically different, but I was not sure what to anticipate otherwise.





Helping me to feel welcome and at home almost immediately was our on-site producer, Samantha Skyring, who was brought on to handle local logistics leading up to the event. Her involvement added far more than this however, as she operates another non-profit called Twenty Thousand Drums, which brings cultural drumming back into communities that was banned during apartheid. We plan to incorporate this cultural drumming into the image and ceremony of the event day. Samantha and I attended meetings with Action Aid to plan out final logistics and make arrangements for press.

I also met and worked with Barbara King, who arranged for the local artist, Mntunzi, who was composing the official sketch for the aerial artwork.



The day before the event was the busiest day of pre-production. We began early in the morning with in-school briefings to prep the participating students and teachers of Kwebekilanga and East Bank High schools. We informed them of what the day would look like and how it would run, as well as enrolled them in the purpose of getting out there and making this statement together.



Our Aerial Art Director, John Quigley arrived with our program coordinator, Onyay Pheori, later that afternoon. We revisited the schools with John to let him explain the artform to the students. I was able to capture their excitement on film as they sang and chanted for Mandela (also known as Mediba).



At the end of the student meetings we recruited 10 student volunteers, who were strong in math, to be our “aerial art team.” These students went down to the cricket pitch with John and Mntunzi and worked for hours to set-up the lines for the circle and mapped out the grid for the artwork, as I facilitated the fencing necessary to enclose the heli-pad as well as some other early logistics. We finished the day as the sun set on the side of the cricket pitch, overlooking Alexandra, excited about the next day’s events!
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