Contact Jim: jim@dollarhide.net

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4:00 AM.  Quito, Ecuador.  5/26/06

23 Hour Day - June 3rd, From Santo Domingo to Indianola, Miss

June 12th.   From Moscow. 

We spent last week working on the BB King project back in Mississippi.   Mr. King was in The Delta for the annual BB King Homecoming in Indianola.   After he finished his usual  engagement in his hometown, he devoted a couple of days to visiting old friends and allowed us to film him going back to his birthplace and the plantation where he worked as a young man (above photo).  Any time spent with BB is a great time.  He’s such a great guy.  It was our first meeting with the BB King Museum’s new executive director -  Connie Gibbons.   She got a first-hand look at our crew dealing with the complexities of filming such an incredible icon like BB. 

After BB headed to Chicago for his next gig, we rented a Jet Ranger helicopter and put a Tyler nose mount on it for some unique imagery of the flat alluvial plans of The Delta.  Our Panasonic Varicam was outfitted with a Fujinon 5.2mm wide-angle zoom and I kept it on the wide end of the lens.  I’ve done quite a bit of filming from helicopters in The Delta in the past, but this time the experience struck me differently.  

Driving through the flatland is one thing, but flying across it, 20 feet off the ground with no borders and no roads gives you a new outlook on the land.   And getting the image in High Definition was a new experience for me.   In the past, all my Tyler mount experience has been with film.   Seeing it in HD.   Wow is all I can say.  (Jim Dollarhide, Jr., double checks the Nose Mount below)   Interesting note:  BUGS.  Flying at 20 or 30 feet of the ground through the agricultural fields, we tend to pickup some insects on the lens.  There's nothing you can do but land, get out and clean off the lens and take off again). 

Friday and Saturday we had a day off, then left for the next leg of our trip around the world for Habitat for Humanity.   Our first stop is Kyrgyzstan, but you have to fly to Moscow to get there. And even this hasn’t been easy.   An hour to Atlanta of course, then a six hour layover, then a nine hour flight to Moscow, and now an eleven hour layover here before a six hour flight to Bishkek.   A Delta Crown Room has never been such a welcome sight. 

I’ll post some photos from Bishkek when we start shooting.   From there, we head to Tanzania in Africa, then to India, and finally to Vietnam before returning to the US. 

I have spent time at many Habitat locations in the US while doing their filmed public service campaigns over the past few years, but this is my first look at their work abroad. 

It is a quite humbling experience.  To see what Habitat is doing on a global scale, one family – one home at a time – makes one not only proud to be associated with such a great organization, but it makes you appreciate the life we have back in the US. 

Susan Lindsay and Sam Watson check out the Old Town section of Santo Domingo a couple of weeks ago.   More to come soon, from Bishkek.    -- Jim