Where I've been

Why was I in Cambodia? It was one of several locations around the globe for this video I just co-directed with Shawn Kim for Death Cab for Cutie's new album Narrow Stairs. Shawn is for my money the best working cinematographer in music videos and has been for the past few years. I mean he's worked with all the greats, but most people instantly know his work when you say that he shot the Maps video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Feist's 1234. When I wrote this treatment I saw in my head that the band were photographed the way Shawn Kim would, so it made sense to have him do it, not just as a photographer but a director.

My crew of 2, an actress, and myself covered some 27977 miles in 13 days shooting this. The defining statement was "let's wrap cause I want to get the next snowmobile out of here". The experience was the best I've had in my life, though incredibly challenging. I've always felt that travel is a defining human experience that changes you forever, and hope that this depiction of wanderlust, obsessiveness, repetition, and loneliness conveys some of that.

here kitty kitty, her.... MY GOD IM DYING

Picture this: you're a terrorist guarding your warehouse like building full of blind alleys and crates and danger barrels. You've gotten word that a Jack Bauer style guy is coming to take you all out and defuse the bomb which you have put a LED timer ticking down on the front of just so you know it's going to be done soon. The next thing you know, a cute little kitty cat rounds the corner. As a terrorist, what do you do?

cambodia

That's myself and Arrun. He is a hotel worker, translator, student, tour guide, and hoping to save enough money to get a tuk tuk. It's hard to tell but I think only a week and a half ago or so I was in Cambodia working on a project, my first visit to the country. My feelings about what I saw and experienced have yet to resolve themselves into total coherence and objectivity - it came in the middle of a whirlwind global trip. I do recall the number of young people we met who were tireless, firecely intelligent, self educated working as cooks, drivers, hotel receptionists. Working to get a leg up in the harsh realities of the new Cambodian economy, where first world luxury plays out for the tourists and those who work for the government in the dissolution of memory and history, secret history kept forever intangible.

Eric's already written about Dith Pran's death, but here's the New York Times obituary in which they recount his work with Schanberg for the paper. Read it here. Reading about him reminds me of the great people I met in Cambodia. I have to get back there.