sailing_nz_001
Not an Oxymoron
These Grand Men

Walking the Walk, Sailing the Sail

I sometimes give short shrift to the idea that one of the key factors in determining a person’s success in life is the impact of seeing the successes of others who are like them. Let’s not disregard the power of personal initiative, of talent… both by nature and by nurture… and the random events that turn a dream denied into a dream delivered. However, I want to acknowledge the idea that when the weight of low expectations seems a bit much, it helps to look at someone who has felt that same weight and realized that, yes, what you’re looking for can be found, even if… or especially if you didn’t know you were looking for it.
I found what I was looking for on a boat in New Zealand.

Sailing of the coast of New Zealand
Sailing off the coast of New Zealand on the Higher Ground

On its face, the idea of a blind sailor seems as unfathomable and counterintuitive as… well, OK, a blind filmmaker. Spade, I call you spade. Learning to read the water by the feel of the wind has been the ongoing challenge of my 5 to 9 life as much as learning how to communicate my vision with a considerable lack of same has been in my 9 to 5 life. I’m not quite sure what it is about the hard way that appeals to me, but sailing fits the mold perfectly.
I should note that, as I write this, I’m on a United flight from San Francisco to Chicago. I’m heading there to compete in an international sail racing championship, a competition for blind and visually impaired sailors. Learning to do this – to helm a boat with the same proficiency and skill as a fully sighted skipper, has been a consuming effort since last summer, back when navigating my way from the Mission to Union Square was still a major challenge.
the bigger challenge, though, was far more internal. I was still very much in the “don’t stick me in with the blind… insert activity here” category. Hikers, bloggers, Monopoly players, whatever activity you care to mention. If it involved palling around with other blind or visually impaired folk,I was so not interested. My catchphrase at the time was a variant of the following: “I don’t want to be in a blind hiking group. I want to be in a hiking group. Period.”
And while I am still stoked about being in a hiking group of any kind, sighted or otherwise, it’s taken since last year to get over that feeling of shame that first wraps itself around most visually impaired people when they’re invited along with others who are like them. It seems to be a forcible shove to a lower rung on the ladder. An implicit assumption that since “normal” activities with “normal” people are no longer possible… well, at least you can enjoy a special day out.
How amazingly conceited of me.
I have been on a quest to find blind people who don’t act like other blind people. This is not uncommon among the visually impaired, especially those new to the game. There is a startling lack of solidarity. It’s not that there aren’t blind people who hang out together, and it’s not that there aren’t advocacy groups (big hugs, NFB and AFB, not to mention the Lions Centers and Lighthouse organizations, which do the yeoman’s work of advocating and support, as well as being patient with people like me). However, there is a lack of what, in my film, I call “blind culture,” the way a phrase like “deaf culture” is a recognized phrase. We have heard the stories of deaf and hearing impaired individuals who turn down treatments that would return significant amounts of their hearing. I have yet to learn of a single blind person who, given the opportunity to see again, has said “Nah, I’m good.”
And here I’ve been, in San Francisco, learning to regain old skills and acquire new ones, in the face of a tug of war. On one side is the group of people, and there are a lot of them, who just want to be left alone with their handicap. On the other side are the passionate advocates who fight the good fight.
Enter blind sailing, which sits pretty squarely in the middle.

 

Blind sailing
Blind sailing is a combination of teamwork and independence not often seen on shore

The Marin Sailing School and its sailing program for the blind and visually impaired has been, at least metaphorically, a lifeline because it starts with the assumption that on a boat, there is no such thing as a handicap. That there’s the water, the boat and the wind, and that picking up the skills behind racing a boat is right there for the taking. That’s why I’m on this plane…because the boat is a unique… or at least a rare place. It’s a place where low expectations are left on shore.
When the Palette Project hit New Zealand, our first shooting goal was to meet the Kiwi equivalent of what I had immersed myself in back in California. Auckland is one of the places where blind sailing really took off. Local sailing classes started in the 1990’s and thanks to the work of men like Don Mason and Dick Lancaster, and now continued by Vicky Sheen in the UK, the sport has gradually grown into a worldwide and organized endeavor in locations as varied as Japan, Italy and Texas. I would be directing the Blue segment in Auckland and Picton, on the North and South islands, respectively, but I still wasn’t sure what I was going to encounter. My cinematographer and I were enjoying a royal breakfast alongside the docks at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, awaiting the arrival of the six sailors – four of them visually impaired – who would be taking me on the water today.
“Hey, are you the blindey?” came an inquiry from behind me.
That’s how I met Davey Parker, lifelong Kiwi, B2 sailor (about which more anon), and someone who was utterly comfortable with his visual impairment.
Meeting someone who was just as comfortable joking about his handicap as I am. It was like having a baseball cap two sizes too small which I didn’t know I was wearing yanked off my head. I didn’t even know I was looking for the kind of easygoing equanimity, And here’s the thing: they were all like that. It was the first time I had spent time with a group of blind people who did not, as a group, act like what I thought a group of blind people acted like.
Freeze frame for a moment. Truth in advertising again requires me to admit that these are my own misguided perceptions and lowered expectations building a brick wall in front of reality. As one man we interviewed in Adelaide said, “I didn’t know what a blind person was supposed to look like. I just didn’t want to look like one.” Again, kettle, this is the pot. You’re black.
Okay, roll tape.
What I want to say is that being with these sailors, taking Lou Gehrig to heart and unashamedly cribbing from his speech… spending just one day with these grand men… on a 35 foot keelboat in the middle of Auckland Harbour, watching them jibe around the mark, hearing them trim the sails to perfection and gauge the dead patches of water by the feel of the wind on their faces. It made me see just how far I have to go. Not just in honing my own skills on the water, but in overcoming my own prejudices about what is possible, and it reminded me if I… who am living a life which is dedicated to convincing the rest of the sighted world to change perceptions, raise expectations… and for goodness sake hire a blind dude or dudette to pour your coffee or sell you an iPhone, I better do some internal maintenance first. The frustration I feel when I do something as simple as cross a busy street or find the dino kale at the Safeway and someone says that’s “amazing” or something similar? I better remember easing the mainsail by 25 degrees is not amazing or inspiring. It’s just the result of hard work.

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However, I am maintaining my right to be inspired. I think the only people who have the right, or at least the duty to be inspired by the achievements of others are the ones who are like them. I believe I have a duty to be inspired by a champion blind sail racer even if a sighted person shouldn’t be, because it helps to know there are other people like me who just want to do fun… not inspiring, but fun activities. I also have a duty to be inspired by a blind Fortune 500 CEO, a blind welder and a blind barista… if only I could find them, or the people who hire them.
Here’s what I… at long last… am trying to say. Just to get on this plane, I encountered four people… a pretty normal number… who wanted to offer me a seat, guide me onto an escalator or walk me down a jetway, when all I wanted was to know if the correct direction was at 11 o’clock or 10 o’clock on a virtual clock face. When I walk down any street in Chicago, San Francisco or Auckland, there will be wonderful, friendly and very well meaning people who want to help, because watching me find the correct route by finding the obstacles with my cane is not pretty and it’snot fun to watch.
However, the minute I step on the dock, along with fifteen other visually impaired racing teams from around the world, it’s out of my head. It’s out of my head because sailors, for whatever reason, seem to get it. Sighted sailors, as a group, seem to know the water is a rare place, where expectations start high. I’m competing with a bunch of blind and sighted sailors, but I’ve sailed in mainstream races too, and I sail to win. My opponents give me no quarter and none is expected.

Lou Gehrig had it right, whether it's baseball or not.
Lou Gehrig had it right, whether it’s baseball or not.

I came to New Zealand to film Blue for the Palette Project. As this segment of the story continues, I want to tell you what Blue is all about.
Spoiler alert… it ain’t sadness.

The Palette Project

The Palette Project Trailer

This post on The Palette Project Trailer was updated on February 9, 2016
The Palette Project
One of the many stunning landscapes. this one in the Australian outback, we saw while shooting The Palette Project

I am so glad that only scant portions of the original Palette Project trailer have survived to version 2.0 as this video posts. When the Kickstarter campaign for this documentary began last October, I was so very uncomfortable with the idea this project was going to look like it was all about me. that this was going to appear to be a documentary about Michael’s vacation around the world.
I went to great lengths to explain at every opportunity that my twenty-five year long refrain… be the storyteller, not the story… was still intact. However, that trailer sure was pretty me-centric. The problem, as I saw it then, and see it now, is the editor’s curse. You cut the story with the video you have, not the video you wish you had. It’s pretty difficult to cut a promotional trailer about traveling the world in pursuit of good stories and good causes when you haven’t left the United States yet.
I’m happy to report I’m getting closer to my goal of taking a back seat in this story. It’s because the story,of course, is not about me. Oh, there’s still a little to much Michael in this trailer for my tastes, but I am so moved by the generosity and spirit of the people we’ve are meeting along the way – their willingness to share their time and their stories with me.
You’ll get this first chance to meet a few of them in this trailer, and you can rest assured that as the balance shifts away from the storyteller and to the stories themselves, there are more interesting people to meet along the way.


I’m also so in love with the idea that, for the most part, I would actually have to tell you that any of these people are handicapped in any way. That truth allows me to fall back on my preferred use of the word “handicap,” the way it’s used in golf, as an extension that levels a playing field so that everyone can compete on equal footing. These fine men and women are not handicapped. They are living with handicaps… they are employing tools, skills and abilities that allow them to declare that they are not impaired.
Thank you for allowingme me to introduce you to some of my favorite people around the world.
Onwards!

Some notes on the shooting:

Te header image for this post was shot with a Canon EOS 44i, an excellent camera for landscape videography. There are newer generations, bis camera has really held up, especially with the Canon 18-135mm lens.

One of the many reasons I found myself here, on the route to Uluru, was the description of the Australian outback by Bill Bryson. His book, In A sunburned Country, about traveling in Australia, is a great read

The Tascam DR-60D

Good Audio for Great Video: Turning to Tascam

One of the most important… and useful… sayings I’ve ever heard, and which I’ve incorporated into my workflow as a filmmaker is this: ninety percent of good video is good audio. From my earliest days in television news and all the way through to my current documentary, this is valuable advice that I keep in mind every day during production and editing. It makes a lot of sense when you consider the effect of your shooting and editing on the people who will ultimately be taking in your work.

Most of us multitask, not so much as a matter of Continue reading “Good Audio for Great Video: Turning to Tascam”

The Panasonic GH4

Mulling Over a New Camera for Documentary Shooting

Can the Panasonic GH4 be a camera for documentary shooting
I’m considering whether the video features of the camera override some of its reported flaws.

I’m pleasantly surprised by how much of my filmmaking can be accomplished by using a DSLR camera for documentary shooting. It’s one of the most crucial tools in my current documentary, The Palette Project. While even our primary camera, a Panasonic HPX250 is a smaller camera than I ever thought I would use, the DSLR is becoming quite a workhorse.

Right now, we’re shooting with Continue reading “Mulling Over a New Camera for Documentary Shooting”

GoPro Filmmaking
GoPro on the Deck

GoPro Filmmaking: How To Make It Work For Your Film

GoPro Filmmaking: How To Make It Work For Your Film

This post on GoPro filmmaking was updated on February 6, 2016

GoPro filmmaking
GoPro filmmaking can be a key ingredient in your film production.

GoPro filmmaking is no longer confined to action video shoots. It can and should be a part of your camera arsenal. I refer again to what I call "The Crayon Box Principle."

I often refer to the this idea, and the metaphor of the crayon box when it comes to my craft as a visual storyteller. The backstory can be found here, but the general idea is that the tools you use rank a distant second compared to your passion for telling a story with the tools you

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