Full Circle Project

Greetings. I have the pleasure of announcing the roll out of an exciting new project for teenagers. It's called the Full Circle Project. This past summer, I was involved as a video instructor in a six-week collaborative program between Urban Word, The Drammeh Institute and Al Santana Productions titled Visually Speaking. It's where, in the words of the program director, Iman Drammeh "Filmmaking meets Spoken Word". Please see the link below for more details.

http://www.visuallyspeakingfilms.com/

Remember, get out and vote.

Al

Merchant Marine Film

We're looking to interview more retired Merchant Marines of color. If you are a retired Merchant Marine, or know of any who served between 1938 and 1975, and was a member of the National Maritime Union (NMU), please contact us at al@alsantana.com. We would be interested in hearing your story. Look forward to hearing from you.

Al

Merchant Marine Film On Track

Hi all. Our documentary about U.S. Merchant Marines is progressing according to plans. We have conducted extensive interviews with retired mariners from Puerto Rico and are expanding the scope to include, African-Americans, West Indians and Asians. We are currently seeking finishing funds and possible pre-sales for this feature length documentary. In addition to applying to various foundations for support, we have submitted a 21 minute sample reel to the Independent Feature Project (IFP) for inclusion in the upcoming market in September.

We continue to get great leads on public domain stock footage and other sources of expertise on the subject. Please hit us back here with any leads you may have. This project began a few years ago in mini dv format and one of the big questions for us is should we continue in this format or change to hd mid-stream. Obviously, we are concerned with image quality but more specifically the change in the look by making the change.

In January we upgraded our computer and editing software. Now working with the new Mac Pro Dual Quad, Final Cut Pro Studio, 16 gigs for Ram and over 4TB of storage, we have the capability to mix formats and enough storage for our long-form documentary.

That's it for today.

Al

Reparation Blues

My most recent collaboration is with Brooklyn-based performance artist Ghai'l Rhodes Benjamin in the production of a 4 min. video titled Reparation Blues, for the WGBH Lab's Open Call. The rough cut is currently on their site http://lab.wgbh.org/. We would appreciate your comments and rating. I'm currently doing the fine cut, and that should probably be up some time next week. (Feb.)