All respect to Ché, this was our motto as we began our travels in Australia for The Palette Project. We would shoot the stories we came to tell, but we would be open to whatever new adventures came our way, and when it came to new stories, we would not be disappointed. They… were… everywhere.
I often tell beginning storytellers if they end a project with the same story they started with… they’re doing it wrong. My goal was to leave the southern hemisphere with loads of footage that was never on our shot sheet. That said, this would require several leaps of faith. It’s one thing to prepare for a documentary about a visually impaired videographer exploring the world. Touching down in Adelaide is when it all becomes very real. Imagine if you will, a ledger with questions on one side and answers on the other. Even with almost six months of preparation,all the handwriting was still on the left hand side. Answers were in short supple.
- What would it be like to apply the same orientation and mobility skills that work in the familiar confines of San Francisco to theAustralian outback?
- Would the hiking techniques that work on trails I’ve hiked dozens of times work in unfamiliar and harsh terrain?
- Could I put my directorial money where my promotional mouth was, and successfully return to the United States with the footage I would need to edit a film… when for the first time in my professional life, it would, for the most part, not be my eye pressed against the eyepiece of my own camera?
These are the questions that were front and center as my shooting partner and I touched down in Adelaide, staking my career on the outcome of the next three weeks.
Spoiler alert – it worked. Not without some hard won lessons along every step of the way, but I have to follow my own advice. If I ended up with the same story I started with, I really should go to storyteller jail.
As it happens, Adelaide is an incredible embarkation point for this kind of project. Not just for a visually impaired traveler and filmmaker, but for anyone wanting to get a first taste of this diverse country/continent/island. I had been skeptical of my own handiwork – avoiding the larger cities of Melbourne and Sydney for the smaller entry point to the Red Centre – but we could not have been more pleased with the experience. I should add that Adelaide itself is hardly a tiny village. There are 1.2 million people in the metropolitan area. This is a sizable city any way you slice it. However, the city just doesn’t feel that large. It fools you in its manageability. My shooting partner commented more than once that if we hadn’t been lugging hundreds of pounds of gear, renting a car would have been a negotiable expense.
The city itself is very easy to learn, and for a visually impaired traveler, very easy to navigate. Most of the city is on a grid. What’s interesting about Adelaide is that the city is filled by an outstanding array of parks and beachfront. No matter where you are, you are very likely to be within a few minutes walk of one or the other.
Further, the effort that has been made in order to make this city accessible goes well beyond what I had expected. Much like San Francisco, and unlike many cities of similar size in the United States, great pains have been taken to outfit the city with everything from audible crossing signals citywide, Braille descriptions of roads and streets, and mass transit that was was often free of charge… for everyone.
What this base level of accessibly did was make it possible for us to do the jobs we set put to do – tell interesting stories, and find the stories we didn’t even know were there, and the surprises kept coming.
We had been in Adelaide for less than an hour when that first surprise revealed itself. As anyone in the film and production world knows, you don’t plan on shooting anything during your first few hours, or even your first day, in a new location. The gear needs ro be unpacked, it needs to be prepared, it needs to be organized and tested. However, when you’re doing a documentary about traveling the along while facing the prospect of total blindness along the way and you happen upon a previously unknown (to us) and hitherto unsuspected (again, to us) guide dog training center and interactive exhibit on the way to your hotel… the plans go out the window. Our fist shoot was not on the schedule, but we were about to make sure it would be now.
Next Thursday: we put on our reporter hats and get the job done. On deadline and on time, the video is on the way! Plus, if you’re not eating in Adelaide, you’re missing half the fun.
