Harare, Day Two

The Plan Begins

The day started with a French Style breakfast. The Gin's dip their toast into their tea! This took a little while to get used to but I'm actually hooked. One thing about the French, you don't question the choice of food. :)

Michel and his G4...two friends rarely separated...well, at least until the G5 arrives...

Joliette Serving Toast and Tea...

From there, we cruised over to the French Embassy to pick up...Sugar...which turns out to be quite a commodity. The whole country is a bit surreal this way. Without connections or foreign capital, life is extremely difficult. There is no petrol and no sugar...though with US Dollars, everything is right around the corner. In the morning we were getting Sugar, later in the afternoon...I was waiting with someone else at an apartment for petrol. You get used it...most Zimbabweans have. For most, there are ques for everything...even cash. The ATM had a line of 20 cars today waiting for a trickle of cash. When you get it...it comes in $50 bills...which sounds great until you realize that lunch is $3700 and a coke is $700. What's amazing is the patience people here have for the challenges. There's no yelling and few outbursts. Everyone just finds the que and adjusts their life.

mmm...Beef Stew and Sadza...my favorite meal...it's much better when eaten with one's bare hands...

The delays were everywhere today. The new eMacs we sent to ZIVA have been in customs since Saturday. To avoid the $800 US dollars we would have to pay in duties...we had to write a letter to the Art Commission to write a letter to customs...who now tells us we can't get the computers until this coming Monday because there is no one to type the release.

With all of the challenges, you would think we would give up. I admit, there are times when I ask myself "I gave up working on Star Wars for this?" but working with the students brings it all back into focus. While the lack of access to hardware and software makes it difficult for the ZIVA students, they make up for it with design skills. ZIVA is primarily a design school which is one of the reasons we are working with them. The students' ability to create truly compelling work is amazing.

Farai and Tanzilla working on Lower Third Video Designs

Shawn working on the Digital Set design

Today, we watched a few DVDs...First, the demo DVD from Eric Chauvin, a friend of mine who has done work for Alias, Star Wars, and many more TV shows and Films. The intention was show the students what was possible with a desktop computer. It can be hard to persuade people anywhere, let alone Africa, that you could do Visual FX for Feature Films on an eMac. I know, because I worked on Star Wars with a computer far less powerful but explaining this to students is somewhat like describing Gymnastics...you just have to see it and do it....it makes little sense on paper.

Today, the Video team showed work already created...which was very impressive, I'll post next week. The Compositing team began with Greenscreen tests and continued lower third graphics designs. The 3D Team completed early designs for the digital set and the Immersive Team begin modeling 3D faces with RealViz Image Modeler .

Roddy working in FormZ .

Tanzilla preparing to be photo'd for Image Modeling.

Nozipho building a 3D model her own head with Image Modeler...

Tomorrow, we'll take a breather and watch a movie (Matrix Reloaded...on DVD)...Monday, hopefully with new computers, we'll begin the graphics work in force.

Posted: Thu - July 3, 2003 at 05:43 PM Africa, Summer (Winter) 2003 Email Comments