Robin, Luke & Evan filming in the DR Congo (by Erin Bond, 2009)

Although I haven’t updated here on the congocast.org site since the winter, spring is coming and with it some major changes for this project!  To catch you up to speed, here is a brief synopsis of what has been going on with the Congocast project over the last few years.

• Beginning in the summer of 2006, Robin Tabbiner and Wendy Merritt lived in the DR Congo (with a video camera) for a year working with victims of the ongoing conflict facing the country.
• From 2006-2009 I interviewed Robin and Wendy in the US, in the DRC, and anywhere in between following their work as I directed/edited the documentary podcast found here at congocast.org.
• From 2007-2010 Robin returned multiple times to continue the work she was doing in the DR Congo (with the help of Port City Community Church in Wilmington, NC).  Sometimes she had a camera or a camera-man (me) to document the work.
• The podcast was completed in the spring of 2009, telling the parts of the story videoed from 2006-2007.
• In July 2009 my wife and I had a baby and the project was put on hold as we adapted to parenthood.

In the summer/fall of 2010 I used a great bit of my vacation to explore the viability of turning the podcast into a feature length documentary including the footage / story being carried on by Robin through the present.  While doing this I began to realize it was going to take more than vacation days and working as a weekend warrior to finish the film and do it justice.  So after many conversations with members of the staff at Port City Church (where I worked and who graciously funded the project to this point), I’m leaving my position to dedicate myself full time to finishing this project as a film.

This is a huge step of faith for my family but I know that this film will add something unique to the conversation about the DR Congo and will offer hope, not just to those who are in need in the DRC, but to those who wonder how it could be possible for them to help make a difference in such a desperate situation.

We will be updating this site with the progress of the film and ways you can help be a part of completing it.  We’re aiming to have it finished sometime in the summer of 2011 (hopefully) in time for the film festival season.  We are hoping to find a new and broader audience through this film in an effort to help spread the word about the violence continuing to face the DR Congo and inspire others that they too can make a difference in a world that so desperately needs their help.

You can get ongoing updates about the progress of the project as it comes together over the coming months at:

BLOG: http://www.congocast.org/blog
FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/congocast
TWITTER: http://twitter.com/congocast

So I’m back in the saddle (or editing bay as it were) and will be for the forseable future!  Stay tuned for more info about the progress of our film and ways you can help us get it finished!

- Evan Vetter, Director of Congocast.org

350+ Interviews/Events Filmed

8500+ Video Clips

It is easy to get overwhelmed when you don’t know where to start.  The idea of trying to turn this podcast into something that is a 90-120 minutes long documentary has terrified the mess out of me over the past year.  Once the podcast was finished there was a sense of relief that was tempered by a feeling that the story was incomplete.  After our trip back to Congo in 2009, I knew that I had the end of the story the podcast told, but with a baby on the way for my family, I knew I wasn’t going to have time to tell it then.

So earlier this year, I ramped back up the process of the Congocast podcast into a film.  I’ve felt like I had a rough idea of the story I’m wanting to share, but with all that footage, I’ve had to keep reminding myself of a simple truth:

To climb up a mountain you have to take the first step.

Doesn’t matter if the mountain is made of stones or miniDV tapes, they both are scaled the same way, one step at a time.  With over 200+ hours of footage filmed, and 80-90% of it logged & captured into the computer, taht next step had intimidated me for months.  I was paralyzed just sitting in front of the computer, staring at all the folders full of video clips, trying to figure out where to start editing (in fact I should be editing right now, but blogging is a nice diversion).

So back in September, I decided to step out and I start breaking down the story.  I found some great articles online about screenwriting and basic three act structure and began looking at how I could get all that footage to fit into the basic story template.  For anyone who is a film geek out there here are some pics of what my process has been looking like:

Storyboard using colored notecards

Storyboard using Notecards on Wall

It may make me look crazy to have all those notecards on the wall in my home office, but it seems to be working for now.

I’ve also got a video of me creating these two walls over the course of a week that I took off back in September to lay the narrative and storyboard out, so check back in the future for a post with a time-lapse of these two images coming together!

You may be wondering what the point of making a film is at this point.  Well, the podcast only told part of the story.  The hope of the film is that it can more concisely help answer the question, “What do any of us have to give?” to a situation as desperate and dark as the one facing the DRC.  The scope is wider reaching, the story more engaging and hopefully the time invested now will produce a story that can be used to effect great change for the DRC and the Congolese people.

Stay tuned to this blog as we will be updating you on the process/progress of trying to turn our little podcast into a feature length documentary film as well as info about ways you can continue to get involved in the DRC!

The first step is to just start pulling things out and see what is left and whether it makes sense! I have an additional 60 hours of footage from last years trip waiting in the wings – but I thought to get the process rolling again I could start by editing something I’m more familiar with.

I’ll continue updating the congocast.org site as I get more into the process of turning this crazy project into a film! So check in again soon as I will be using this blog to update you on things that are happening in the Congo activist community and the progress I am making in cutting the film together!

- Evan

Editing on the Congocast project has restarted. Thanks to the help of some awesome volunteers this past fall, we have gotten all of our footage from our trip last year into the computer (it was giving us quite a bit of trouble). It is ready now to be edited, so we will keep you updated as the process of doing post production unfolds. To start, I’m currently taking all 17 episodes and putting them together in a single video project to see what happens. Right now the whole thing is 2 hours and 24 minutes long!

(Here is a shot of the what the video timeline looks like with that much footage on it.)

So needless to say, cutting this video into a longer format project is going to be some work – not to mention adding in the new footage that we shot last year to wrap the whole thing up! I’ll check in again soon as we start to make progress!

- Evan