Looking back over the journey that brought me here to Bali and Asia, I see the evolution of a cameraman in a most unexpected way. I often meet cameramen who came through more traditional paths, indeed, while in school working on my degree in anthropology, I got the bug too. However, unlike my friends, I stayed with what I loved because ultimately, it was anthropology and my personal sense of adventure and wonder at the world that eventually led me to the lens. It hasn't been easy, far from it. The money still hasn't come but it will. Regardless of all that, I do what I do and in my mind, there's no turning back.
I returned to Uni to finish my degree at 26 after a hiatus backpacking around Africa. The first day back, Anthropology 102 Dr. Wade Pendleton showed us an ethnographic film. I was blown away. A few days later, he showed another and I knew, not only was that what I wanted to do, but that I could do better. I wonder if he realizes the impact he had on me.
I got a job at the campus TV station, the only non-film student to work there and started pushing a cart across campus to shoot psychology classes with a tiny little camera. They stuck me in the studio as well where I soaked up everything around me like a sponge. Then, one night at a beach party, I met a guy who worked for a whitewater photography company. Having worked already for 2 seasons as a whitewater river guide, I jumped on this idea and called the owners of the company the next morning. They wanted me but there was a catch, I had to provide my own camera... As a poor college student, this was not possible so just as I was about to turn the job down they made me an offer that changed my world. "pick out the camera you want, we'll pay for it and you pay us back over the course of the summer". Mentors...
I shot hundreds and hundreds of hours on that Panasonic AG-450. I cut my teeth in the field, making mistakes, screwing up, reading, talking to people, looking at my work over and over. I even drowned my camera a few times on the river. The techs in town would all come out whenever I walked in the door "What have you done now Joe?"
During the school year, I shot weddings (to this day the worst job I've ever had) and city council meetings and in the summer I shot whitewater. I was just about to go back to school to finish my last semester, when a friend paddled up to the rock I was shooting from and asked me to come and help them fight a big hydroelectric dam in Costa Rica with my camera. Two weeks after graduation, I was on a plane. I stayed for four months, shooting whitewater, getting' scared, hanging' out of small planes shooting clear cut and even made my first piece. A short on a disaster relief project done by the Costa Rican and International Red Cross. The piece was terrible but it was a starting point.
A little later I reached another turning point. There was a possibility of a job in Africa on the Zambezi River but I was also interested in grad school. Stanford was the goal but grades had never been my forte. Every time I would go to see the director of Stanford's doc film program we would talk about traveling and filming. Eventually he asked me, what will you do if you don't get in this program? When I told him I' would most likely go and work in Africa, he told me to get out of his office! Another mentor pushed me along the path.
Africa again, this time behind the lens on the biggest scariest river I had ever run in my life. Rapids two stories tall and crocodiles in the eddies waited for me every day I went to work. I was hired for my video skills, they figured survival instincts would kick in and my kayaking skills would improve. They were right, fear is a powerful motivator I got stronger, smarter and my shooting came along with it. But that was also the first time I saw the white light.
An English guy who was working on an aid project liked what I did and suggested we make a doc of his project. We went to the British High Commission, got a small grant and produced an 18 minute piece on the project. I shot, wrote and later cut in California at the East Bay Media Center. I developed a warm relationship with the people at EBMC and they encouraged me to put the piece in their festival. Honorable Mention in the ethnographic category... in my mind, I was on my way.
The plan was to go back to Africa but that was not meant to be. After a conversation in a parking lot, I found myself on a plane heading for Bali. Nine years now I've lived and worked here. I've crossed Borneo by kayak and made a film, which won at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival and is now being aired on Nat Geo Adventure 1. I've worked for the UN in East Timor creating a Voice of the People television series. I've taught rape and violence counselors in East Timor how to make documentary film and helped create a series on refugees for the International Organization for Migration and we've done a lot of corporate work. And now, in another twist of fate, the playing field changes again, at the end of the month my team and I will embark on a new mission; creating a doc of a marine and terrestrial biodiversity survey being conducted by The Nature Conservancy and WWF. You can follow this survey on-line at www.reefbase.org . You can also check my company out at www.jungle-run.com .
The other day a young man approached me. He said. " I went to film school and I want to make docs and be a cameraman, what do I have to o?" I looked him in the eye and said "just do it".
