Yesterday evening I was immersed in a multidimensional universe that literally blew my mind; creating new mental pathways and neurons in my brain, so much so that I dreamt in vivid 3D all night.

As a film maker I can only give you a limited description of the most amazing filmic experience I’ve ever had in years; one that transported me to a whole new universe that left me wanting to migrate to … Pandora.

Avatar is the career making film I would have loved to make, but I don’t yet have Cameron’s gazillions of dollars that paid for the the performance-capture soundstage, and budget to pay for the intricate computer-generated (CG) scenes, which make up about 60% of the finished film, and milions more for  software and special cameras created for the film.

That said, I was in heaven for the three odd hours it took to get into Avatar’s world. Every one of the 2,500 special-effects shots, took my breath away as the ground beneath me literally shook (excellent sound design and score!) and I almost touched the jungle beauty of Pandora with my own hands. I was immersed in a rich sensual environment and story that melded the real world and the fictional one with not even the tiniest sense of dislocation – however I’ll have to watch it again, in 3D, to see if I missed anything. It’s the director in me. 

“And as much as he could, Cameron tried to place the cast emotionally inside the environment of Pandora. He took the actors to Hawaiian rain forests and shot reference footage for them to use as sense memory. To help them feel an explosion, he boomed a noise over amplifiers, threw foam particles at them and whacked them with a padded jousting pole. To approximate Pandora’s moss-covered terrain, he laid plastic sheets on the floor, forcing the cast to walk gingerly. When Zoe Saldana, who plays Jake’s Na’vi love interest Neytiri, was “riding” a flying creature, she clung to a giant gray hobbyhorse rocked on a gimbal by grips. For scenes that combined live action with CG, Cameron used a new tool called a Simulcam, which allowed him to see actors playing in exotic CG surroundings in real time.  It was the kind of filmmaking environment that required both imagination and patience.”

Cameron’s dedication  to the art of film making means that he has again broken new ground for onscreen storytellers like myself. Inspite of the naysayers he pushed for the making of Avatar and staked his reputation on a fantasy. I’m thankful that his crazy dream has come true and that Avatar’s muted prophecy of man’s future demise (unless we get our act together; take care of Planet Earth, choose peace, listen to the most wise amongst us who don’t necessarily look or play the part and quit the war mongering) rings home and true for many.

My new short ‘just because’ film made from a series of stills taken of the beautiful Maasai people, my people! (well at least 1/4 of me is Maasai! The rest is Meru, and that’s another story …)

‘Red’ is the precursor to a book (or film – haven’t decided which) that I’m working on based on the story of my grandmother, a Maasai woman who was kidnapped from her people by my grandfather when she was barely out of her teens. I’m fascinated by her experience and I can’t wait to tell it. Watch this space. 

The voiceover is an excerpt from Michael Jackson’s ‘Planet Earth’ poem (’This is it’ album). 

Red (c) Influence Media, 2009.

Masterchef runner up Poh stars in a wry and rather tart-y TVC that I helped produce for Matchbox – a leading Australian kitchenware retailer. Funny story, happy client, great results! (Credits: Producer, Production Company: Storyhead)

Story … is a pattern … threaded through all of us … that defines who we are by allowing us to organise and share our experience well as shape and make sense of our belief systems and reality.

Since the dawn of mankind, while children nodded off to sleep around the campfire, fathers, uncles, grandmothers and wise men told of brave warriors, immense beings, grand wars and great victories. They wove fantasy and adventure so skillfully that it only served to awaken our innate sense of curiosity and make us believe the impossible was possible.

From Jesus to Homer, Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote), Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, President Obama, Leo Tolstoy, Ngugi wa Thiongo, CS Lewis, Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Speilberg, Guillermo Del Torro, Tim Burton, Michael Jackson, and U2, the best leaders, politicians, bards, ashiks, griots and prophets have understood the power of story. They’re each skilled orators weaving together the dreams and hopes of entire populations using myths that are intriguingly similar in content and structure from culture to culture.

In ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ sociologist Joseph Campbell explored the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth. In a well-known quote, Campbell summarised his theory: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Joseph Campbell’s monomyth explains the structure of humanity’s eternal story, a tale that lies deep in our souls, placed there by the Ultimate Storyteller. This eternal story is what we respond to and recognise when we read a fascinating book, watch a poignant film or hear an amazing tale. 

The power of story to galvanise and inspire humanity rests in the dramatic tension, the unexpected yet familiar emotional reaction, the memorable story arcs and prevailing resolutions that convince us of a reality distant yet very similar to our own, that make us laugh and cry and that transport us to a place and a dreamtime far, far away, where everything is possible, where joy abounds and where there is no weeping and no pain.

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” CS Lewis. 

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.” Ben Okri.

“Our individual stories are an infinite, ever changing, unfettered, unmeasured, organic life force in themselves. Yes it seems that we are all telling the same story. One of birth, rebirth and despair, joy, love and pain, heartache and rejection, victory, triumph and redemption.” Neva Mwiti.

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.” 

From blue chip corporations to single individuals, we each have a story to tell. Stories shape how we see the world

and in turn how the world views you … me … us.

So … what is your story?

I watched a film last night that was probably the best ever I’ve seen in years. Directed by musician Justin Dillon, CALL+RESPONSE is a rockumenatry that delves deep into the world’s 27 million dirtiest secrets: there are more slaves today than ever before in human history.

CALL+RESPONSE goes deep undercover where slavery thrives … from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India. CALL+RESPONSE reveals that in 2007, slave traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined and the industry is only set to explode as trafficking becomes the fastest growing criminal enterprise on the planet.

Wonderfully edited, and beautifully lit, this harrowing story of the millions languishing under slavery today will hit you square between the eyes and the almost complete subjugation of the trafficked victims interviewed on screen will leave you in tears. You’ll be guided through the issues, complexities and obvious questions by the brilliant minds of Madeleine Albright, Daryl Hannah, Julia Ormond, Ashley Judd, Nicholas Kristof, and many other prominent political and cultural figures who offer first hand accounts of this 21st century tragedy.

What I especially enjoyed was that the serious themes were woven into the live-filmed soundtrack featuring the emancipation songs of Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists such as Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, members of Nickel Creek and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Rocco Deluca.

Then there’s Princeton University’s Dr. Cornel West, who eloquently connects the call and response songs of the American slave fields to the popular music we listen to today, and offers this connection as a rallying cry for the modern abolitionist movement currently brewing.

Bravo Justin Dillon, this film is worth an Oscar and it’s a call, if any there was, for us all to get off our butts and make a difference using the skills and talent we already possess. The time is now. www.callandresponse.com.

My latest and greatest for Nikon – Extreme sports photographer and Nikon Ambassador Mark Watson tells of the photographic adventure of a lifetime – capturing the spectacular Morning Glory cloud. (Credits: Producer)

Is there a social networking class divide online? Research suggests yes. A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

More specifically, almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16 percent of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28 percent of Facebook users.

MySpace users tend to be “in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods,” said Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, which used an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the United States in August. “They’re on their way up, or perhaps not college educated.”

By contrast, Mancini said, “Facebook [use] goes off the charts in the upscale suburbs,” driven by a demographic that for Nielsen is represented by white or Asian married couples between the ages of 45-64 with kids and high levels of education.

Even more affluent are users of Twitter, the microblogging site, and LinkedIn, a networking site geared to white-collar professionals. Almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year.

Excerpted from CNN. For more info visit the full report.

Social networking by the numbers

Users with household income above $75,000 
Facebook — 41.74 percent
MySpace — 32.38 percent
LinkedIn — 58.35 percent
Twitter — 43.34 percent 

Users with household income under $50,000
Facebook — 28.42 percent
MySpace — 37.13 percent
LinkedIn — 17.34 percent
Twitter — 28.36 percent 

Female users
Facebook — 56.33 percent
MySpace — 56.69 percent
LinkedIn — 48.11percent
Twitter — 53.59 percent

Users aged 18 to 24
Facebook — 10.27 percent
MySpace — 15.46 percent
LinkedIn — 3.99 percent
Twitter — 9.51percent

Users aged 35 to 49
Facebook — 31.54 percent
MySpace — 29.09 percent
LinkedIn — 43.64 percent
Twitter — 34.02 percent 

Source: The Nielsen Co.

Budgets spiraling out of control; cast and crew on the verge of collapse; sets destroyed: Just a few of the catastrophes to afflict the ill-fated productions in CNN’s List of Top 10 movie shoots from hell.

From “Cleopatra” to “Apocalypse Now,” these infamous productions have all been struck by extreme weather, tragedy, illness and sometimes death.

Amazingly, despite the setbacks, these shoots didn’t always result in failure. Some of these films are cinematic gems — although this list has its fair share of flops as well.

Classic examples on the line-up include:

-  ‘Heaven’s Gate’ (Michael Cimino, 1980) , a disastrous Western that nearly brought down United Artists, the studio founded by Charlie Chaplin. Given free rein, Cimino overspent massively and the original budget of $8 million ballooned to a whopping $36 million. 

- ‘Fitzcarraldo’ (Werner Herzog, 1982)
A a shoot that remains one of the most dangerous of all time, made notorious when director Herzog forced cast and crew haul a steamship over a mountain to tell the story of an music fanatic who wants to build an opera house in jungle. 

-  ’Twilight Zone: The Movie’ (John Landis, 1983)
- a special-effects explosion caused a helicopter to lose control during a Vietnam War scene killing lead actor Vic Morrow and child actors Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le were killed when the helicopter crashed on them. 

-  ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ (Terry Gilliam, unfinished)
 Lead actor Jean Rochefort fell ill, and if that wasn’t calamitous enough, a flash flood washed away the entire set in northern Spain. 

- ‘The Crow’ (Alex Proyas, 1994) 
 lead Brandon Lee died on set shot by a misloaded prop gun. The untimely death of Lee, the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee who suffered a bizarre death of his own, added an eerie dimension to the already dark film about a man who comes back from the dead. 

and

-  ‘Three Kings’ (David O. Russell, 1999) which became a set of comical errors, when Director David O. Russell and actor George Clooney came to blows after Clooney stepped in following Russell’s apparent abuse of an extra. 

It’s quite a list of what-not-to-do as a film director and a fantastic insight into the mishaps that happen on EVERY film shoot. I would know, I’ve had a few of my own set backs including two of my principal cameras failing while out in the sticks of India without a repair shop in sight!  

Excerpted from: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/09/top10.worst.shoots/index.html

Three young culture influencers from Africa who are shaking up the old continent with their own unique and inventive mix of narrative, hard-nosed realism and pure grit. They inspire me.

1.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977) is an acclaimed Nigerian writer whose first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and won the Best First Book award in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived Biafran nation, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published by Knopf/Anchor in 2006 and was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Her third book is a collection of short stories titled The Thing Around Your Neck and was published in April 2009 by Fourth Estate in the UK and Knopf in the US.

2.

Dambisa Moyo is an economist and the author of Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way For Africa, published in the spring of 2009. The book offers proposals for developing countries to finance development, instead of relying on foreign aid. It became a New York Times bestseller upon its release in the United State and remains a bestseller amongst Political and Economic books. In May 2009, TIME Magazine named Moyo one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Click here to find out more in an interview she gave the New York Times.

3. 

William Kamkwamba, a young Malawian in re-inventing how Africans access natural resources. In the middle of one of Malawi’s worst droughts, seven yers ago, the then-14-year-old taught himself to build windmills. He scoured through junkyards for items, including bicycle parts, plastic pipes, tractor fans and car batteries. For the tower, he collected wood from blue-gum trees.”Everyone laughed at me when I told them I was building a windmill. They thought I was crazy,” he said. “Then I started telling them I was just playing with the parts. That sounded more normal.” That was 2002. Now, he has five windmills, the tallest at 37 feet. He built one at an area school that he used to teach classes on windmill-building. The full story – http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/05/malawi.wind.boy/index.html