update

Sara and I have been diligently editing our footage and formulating a narration. She is meeting with someone this evening to record it and we will fit it into what we already have on Monday. We went back up to the site yesterday to get a little bit more b-roll, and it was beautiful!

Dr. Stanovsky met with us today in the media lab to look over what we have so far. It was pretty confusing having to read the narration then watch the footage that we have set up, but he said he liked where it was going.

What we still have to do:

-find background music

-overlay pictures and b-roll while people are talking

-fix narration so everything makes sense

-add titles, names & credits

possible title?

Today when leaving the LLC, Christina and Alex were joking around about the rumors from Heavenly Mountain and Christina tossed out an idea:

Shedding Light on Shady Situations: A Documentary exploring the affairs at Heavenly Mountain

I don't know what any one else thinks, but I told Sara and we both really like it. Any comments/ideas about it?

ROUGH edits

Joe Furman

Above is a rough edit of our interview with Joe Furman, the head of the Watauga Planning and Inspections Department. When we put the rest of it together there might be more of his interview plus footage of what he is actually talking about.

Below are some pieces of b-roll that we have cut down and put together to use throughout the documentary.

b-roll footage

(Sorry these are links to youtube, when I tried to upload them directly to blogger it took over an hour and a half... bah!)

Keep in mind this is VERY rough! The final project will have more information including our interview with Jessica and an interview with David Kaplan himself! Sara called David earlier this evening and he actually got back to her within a few hours! (We think it was because she left him a message saying this project was due in roughly two weeks! He said he was only free TOMORROW. Wow. He gave us directions to his house and told us to come by around 2. I'm so nervous! Other than his interview we plan to go to Bare Essentials to talk to the owner and get whatever information he has to offer. After those interviews we will be set on footage and we can begin putting everything together.

Please leave any questions or comments for us, we could really use some feedback!

more photos!

view to the left from Jessica's balcony

view looking out from Jessica's balcony

front view of the apartment buildings/old mens campus

water damage inside the old mens cafeteria

inside the kitchen

view down the hallway in the downstairs part of the old cafeteria

Here are more pictures (with descriptions this time!) from our explorations at Heavenly Mountain. Jessica was kind enough to let us into her apartment to look around and she also showed us around the property. We went inside the abandoned mens cafeteria and wandered around and took b-roll and a ton of pictures! Sara and I each chose our favorite pictures out of the ones we took to post. Here is a link to her blog so you can check out the ones she posted.

Our next move is to edit some footage together to show the class in our mini presentation on 4/8. I hope everyone has a great Easter break and I can't wait until Christina's event on Saturday!!

long overdue rough abstract

Heavenly Mountain Abstract

It is our goal, through documentary form, to show what happened in Heavenly Mountain and to portray any future developments on the land. The documentary should be 10-15 minutes long with interviews and footage from the location itself. Following is a brief outline of what we would like to achieve by the end.

We would like to have 3-4 key interviews from different perspectives. One from the planning perspective, one from someone who lived up there at the time it was all about TM, one from someone who lives there now, and hopefully one from David Kaplan – the owner. However, they are subject to change as we continue researching. After having been up there twice we already have some great pictures and b-roll. This footage will show during the interviews so the audience will be able to see what people are talking about.

The documentary will start with a brief introduction of TM, the Maharishi, Heavenly Mountain and David Kaplan. After that introduction we will move into the interviews and show pictures and footage. David Kaplan’s interview will be the most important and will probably take up a majority of the time. After throwing in some controversy from the other interviews along with his interview we will move on to future plans for the property and Kaplan. We plan to ask Kaplan about how and why he started Heavenly Mountain, what happened to make it decline, how he felt about what skeptics were saying about it being cult-like. With some help from Tom Hansell we know how to phrase questions so they do not sound attacking, so that will be very helpful.

Sara or I might have to do a little bit of a voice over to make sure the events proceed in a story-telling manor. Depending on the phrasing in the interviews we may have to have some writing too to help it make sense. We have not decided about music or sound effects yet, but that will become more important when we begin the editing process. Once we are finished filming and we begin to edit we will figure out what is best. Our plan is to get plenty of information and footage so that once we actually do begin editing we will not need to rush around get more footage or do more research.

photos from exploring!

Here are some pictures from exploring around Heavenly Mountain, it's not many because my camera battery was dying. We got our interview with Jessica and a lot of b-roll though! More will be up soon!

B-roll & pictures!

Sara, Jessica and I just got back from Heavenly Mountain and we got some great pictures and b-roll! We were not up there for very long, but it was still incredibly helpful. We got to see the temple and dining hall on the men's campus and Jessica even showed us inside her apartment. The view from her balcony is amazing!

Pictures will be up soon!