In the Summer 2006 NAICA online edition, I introduced the readers to Longhouse Media’s Native Lens Program and interviewed executive director Tracy Rector. This past June I had the honor and privilege to participate in the Native Lens SuperFly 2007 Program as a mentor/visiting teacher, which was held in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival’s FutureWave program.

The SuperFly 07 Program productions were provided with a short narrative script written by Sterlin Harjo called, Fish.  Visit SuperFly's website HERE to learn more.

DAY ONE: Making friends, meeting the Native Lens Crew and logistics.
When I arrived in Seattle, I met up with Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip photographer educated at the renowned Brooks Institute) at the airport and we waited for Cedar Sherbert (a Kumeyaay filmmaker and educator) another mentor/visiting teacher with the SuperFly 07 Program who was arriving shortly after me. Matika brought Cedar and me to get our Seattle International Film Festival badges and then dropped us off at our 200 Roy Street apartments where we would be staying. Prior to the next scheduled commitment to SuperFly, I proceeded to acquaint myself with my new friend Cedar. At 6:00pm, we were to meet everyone involved with the SuperFly 07 program at Solo next door to where we were staying for a meet-and-greet as well as a logistical meeting regarding the upcoming workshop. Up until this point, I had as of yet to meet Ms. Rector. Cliché as it might sound, I felt as if I had known her for quite sometime. At Solo, the minimalist tapas restaurant and bar, we made our introductions to the Native Lens skeleton crew: Jamie Donatuto, Sukhi Sanghera, various other individuals involved as the hard-working Native Lens crew and the visiting teachers as we were donned. Here my time was spent getting to know those individuals involved and at what capacity they were serving the program. Time was rolling by and there was still no sign of Ms. Rector. I was anxious to finally meet her and I kept a keen eye on the door of the establishment. Up to this point, I had already met Sterlin Harjo, Cody Lightning, Travis Adams, and Theresa Brownwolf. I also met other people involved as mentors/visiting teachers, but I am horrible with names—though their faces will never escape me. The evening was turning out to be very pleasant and jovial. Finally, Ms. Rector rushed in as only a blur of light could and then out (just a quickly as she came) and then back in again. As characteristic of Tracy, she was working hard and at a rather frenetic pace. She slowed down long enough to stand in one place and I was finally able to give her that long awaited hug, which only old friends seem to offer and it was just like that, we were old friends. There was one person missing at this point, Blackhorse Lowe! Apparently his attempts at flying the friendly skies were not going so well, he missed two flights for some reason or other, but he finally arrived around 9-ish. Blackhorse and I have known of each other for quite some time now, when he finally arrived we greeted one another like old friends. Then we got down to business, the logistics meeting was short and sweet, and Tracy explained what was expected of us and what our time schedule was. Solo had provided all of us with a wonderful assortment of tapas throughout the evening. The rest of the night we danced and mingled getting to know each other on a more intimate level. The party decided to move elsewhere and go out, but for me, this was the end of day one. I was a bit jetlagged and was looking forward to a sound night’s sleep.

DAY TWO: Bonding and the beginning of the 36-hour production.
The morning started out with a little exploring and breakfast in Pike Place Market with Cody, Travis, Cedar, Matika, Sterlin and myself, apparently we forgot to get Blackhorse. I think it was Cody who pointed out we were eating in the diner where a scene from Sleepless in Seattle had been filmed. After breakfast we headed back to our prospective apartments and planned on meeting up a little later to head up to the Northwest Film Forum where the Native Lens office is located and where we were to be broken into groups distributed equally among the youths, and where my group would eventually work on postproduction. But before we did, we swung by another hotel to pick up our most recently arrived member, Native actor Robert Guthrie (The Doe Boy, 2001 and Goodnight Irene, 2005) and Cedar who had headed out on foot before the rest of us left. After picking them up from Robert’s hotel we made our way to the Northwest Film Forum and Native Lens office. Here we sat in as Sterlin, and Bird Runningwater (Programmer of the Sundance Institutes Native and Indigenous Initiative) addressed the audience regarding Sterlin’s most recent film, Four Sheets to the Wind, 2006 while Elaine Miles (Northern Exposure and Smoke Signals, 1998) moderated. Shortly thereafter, introductions were made pertaining to those of us fulfilling the roles of mentors/visiting teachers and we were each assigned to our groups. The group that I was assigned to also consisted of Blackhorse, Cody and Theresa. Cody devised a new name for us instead of “group one”, we were now officially called, “The Squatters”. Our group decided to engage the pre-production phase of Fish so we took the youth to a nearby coffee house and began our logistics. The youth took the initiative on preproduction and decided what functions they wanted to perform. The actors broke up into their own group with Cody reading over the script with him. The production roles were decided, so we strategized on locations, filming (establishing shots, pick-up shots and masters), storyboarding and how the script was to be broken down into a shooting script. We had until midnight to discuss preproduction issues because the following day we were to start the production phase at 8:00am. Our group wrapped up their preproduction meeting, we headed back to the Northwest Film Forum and said goodnight.

DAY THREE: Production and Post—8:00am, June 8th to 5:00am, June 9th.
One block across from the 200 Roy Street apartments in the Queen Anne District of Seattle stands the famous Space Needle within the grounds of the Seattle Center. The morning resumed at the Seattle Center House/Conference Center. I gathered our film and audio equipment and waited for the group to assemble. Slowly they began to resemble an independent film cast and crew and we headed out to film within the Seattle Center. They chose their first location within the Fun Forest Amusement Park, thus filming of the establishing shot began. The amusement park is right next to the Experience Music Project building whose architecture and building materials echo funhouse mirrors, but here the exterior is extremely colorful. They got some B-roll shots and we headed over to the middle of the Seattle Center to film one of five main sequences. Once we finished here, one of the youths decided she would get a jump on postproduction by heading back to the Northwest Film Forum and start editing the opening sequence of the narrative. After we concluded this first main sequence, wherein we are introduced to our two main characters, we headed to Pike Place Market to film the second of the main sequences, which was complicated due to the majority of foot traffic in the area, but the youth pressed on and got their takes and once again we moved to another location. From Pike Place Market we headed toward a beach on the Puget Sound where the group would complete their final three main sequences of the narrative and work on pick-up shots. The youth were graced with an elder that drove them to and from their chosen locations his name is White Bear (Apache). While on location here the group was visited by a television news reporter interviewing the youth and mentors about the project. Once shooting was completed the entire group loaded into vehicles and we returned to the Northwest Film Forum to continue the postproduction process. Upon our arrival we found out that our group was the first group to return and we entered the editing suite to view what had been edited thus far of the opening sequence. I set up a small group, which included our lead actress, to record in-camera audio for the voice-over in a projection booth while the image sequence was being creatively edited together. Over the next ten or so hours, Blackhorse and I accompanied those of our group that would endure the late night hours of the editing process. At about roughly 5:00am the sequence was completed and the skeleton crew from our group returned to our respective hotels/apartments for some much needed rest. It was here in these in-between hours of the early morning and late morning that Tracy and master teacher Fiona Otway viewed final cuts of each film before Fiona would master the cuts and export them for screening.

DAY FOUR: A continuation from DAY THREE and the FESTIVAL.
Our groups and the hard-working youth received a well-deserved break in the morning. We didn’t have to meet until 3:00pm, those of us who edited all night caught up on sleep. Prior to returning to the Northwest Film Forum, Blackhorse, Sterlin, Cody, Travis and I explored around Seattle’s Capitol Hill area in the rain. On this final evening, the completed films were going to be premiered at the Egyptian Theater at the Seattle International Film Festival’s FutureWave section at 4:30pm and the excitement in the youth was fervent. Except for the SuperFly films, the audience members juried this section of the Film Festival where two of our own participating youth had their films accepted into competition (Martin Edwards’, Walking the Red Road, 2006 and Felicia Mason’s, Remember When, 2006). When it was over we filed out of the theater and headed up the street for the wrap party. It was no longer frenzied work, but time to mingle with and enjoy the youth that we had worked with and those from the other groups.

After watching all the wonderful films involved in the SuperFly program and those individuals from our groups in the FutureWave juried portion, I was overwhelmed by the fact that these youth I was involved with would be creating names for themselves within the media industry, if they hadn’t already. Some of the youth had created their own DVDs and had their own business cards, so professional looking I was taken aback (I’ve never had a business card). Some of the youth had works in progress and asked us to visit their websites. At this point everything seemed so overwhelming most of us simply decompressed.

THE REALITY OF NATIVE LENS.
In the four days I was involved with the program the women of Native Lens never ceased to amaze me at how truly dedicated they are to SuperFly. At any moment one could glimpse that this was a living, breathing, seasoned machine. Constantly logistics were being handled from simple tasks of printing and photocopying to accommodating people on an individual basis, and the accommodations were professional. These women are true hardcore warriors, thriving on what I did not know, they lacked sleep, proper nutrition and woman-power, but they persevered. All of their hard work, selflessness and personal sacrifices have in my opinion paid off, creating a program that in Indian Country, and for that matter the world, should be the envy of any youth media program, not to mention a model for a successful one at that. The SuperFly program is not mutually exclusive to Native people they are inclusive of all people, this year a youth member even traveled as far away as Switzerland to participate. What was most impressive were the youth involved in the program and their level of maturity as well as their proficiency with the technology. The program focuses on empowering youth with an understanding of the technology and power of digital media through the representation of Indigenous life. My involvement in the SuperFly program was simply in a capacity of sharing my knowledge—hopefully I left a positive impression with the youth involved. But, what Native Lens does is so much more important because they provide the forums for people like myself to share our experiences, they find the funding to promote and conduct their programs and they put in the overwhelmingly demanding hours to maintain their vision with an extremely limited, but talented skeleton crew. Eventually these things are noticed within the wider community as I had observed on location. I had to keep a secret from Native Lens from the previous day, which wasn’t going to be revealed until later in June by the Mayor of Seattle. The television news reporter that interviewed some members of our group during production informed me that Native Lens was going to be a recipient of the Fifth Annual Mayor’s Arts Award to be honored at an August 31st ceremony in partnership with the 2007 Bumbershoot, Seattle’s Music and Arts Festival. Accolades aren’t the reasons why Native Lens is creating programming to engage our youth, but it is always nice to know that an organization like Native Lens receives attention from the broader community. I know the reason why Native Lens does what it does—it was evident on the faces of the youth I interacted with while in the production phase, it was especially apparent on their faces during the SuperFly screening at the Festival and during the wrap party afterward. The faces of the youth revealed why Native Lens creates their programming and engages this younger generation, because Native Lens believes that our youth possess the promise to affect positive change and Native Lens knows that the voices of our youth should never be ignored.