documentary

Lynne Melcher and I have been friends for many years. We cooked up the idea to work together - she making a video, me making photographs - for a project for Operation Breakthrough a couple of years back. But she didn’t have a video camera, and the one I had to lend her didn’t work all that well, so the idea faded.

Then came Uganda. Once she decided to come along and make a video of my experiences there, there was, suddenly, no turning back. She took a couple of filmmaking workshops and became – at least in her own mind – an aspiring filmmaker.

She already had the eye from years of experience as a designer and artist. It was the technical stuff that overwhelmed her. This is from the blog Lynne wrote during the workshop she attended in Cambodia in July, 2007, just a few months before our departure for Uganda:

“For this segment we used Brenda's camera. She has made documentaries before, so she pulled out the big guns. I think her camera, with mic, lenses, etc, must have weighed at least 20 pounds. Now, I do work out with a trainer, and I do work on my biceps, but this was a workout unlike others.
To hold the camera steady, for many, many minutes, and to focus, walk, pan, etc...it was like doing tai chi, but with a frozen turkey in your hands. 
It was draining, fascinating, invigorating, and so much more. It was, in it's own way, kind of a rush. I can't wait to start all over again tomorrow.”

That’s how it’s been for Lynne and the camera ever since. She broke down and bought one of the “big guns” for herself. Was it just a few weeks before we were supposed to leave for Uganda? Oh, and then she got pneumonia, so she couldn’t really practice with it that much. At any rate, she carefully packed this thing (it affectionately came to be known as Lynne’s “baby”) and lugged it to an orphanage half a world away to tell the story about children who’d lost their parents to war and HIV/AIDS.

It was like watching a duck take to water. The camera soon became an extension of Lynne’s keen eye, her warm heart and her sharp intellect. You will see what I mean when you watch her movie.

Coming home from Uganda with 25 hours of tape would have sent most novices over the edge. With tenacity and determination, Lynne got to work even before the jet lag wore off. She hired a tutor, and she basically went underground for the next several months. Friends began to ask with some concern, “Where did Lynne Melcher go?”

She had a lot to learn, but that didn’t get in her way. At one point, after she’d already been working on the film for several weeks, someone asked her, “Who’s going to write the script?” And Lynne said, “The what?”

With each realization that she needed to know more, she simply dug in her heels and learned more.

So… where Lynne has been is in her studio… developing the skills do something she has longed to do for many years now – tell the stories of people from other lands, other cultures.

The children and staff at St. Mary Kevin Orphanage have no idea what a friend they have in Lynne Melcher. She has given her life over to them, to this project, for the past six months. On their behalf, and on behalf of Change the Truth, Lynne, I say “thank you.”

This is Lynne’s first major motion picture, you might say. I have seen it, and I’d give it five stars.