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 Capturing the Story for the HD Documentary, "Strong Bodies Fight"
Director’s Perspective
by William Donaruma
“Strong Bodies Fight” is an HD documentary that explores the
history and the effect a university boxing team has on a culture
far removed from their own. For eighty years, their boxing
tournament known as the Bengal Bouts worked alongside the
Holy Cross Missions to invest in the future of the children of
Bangladesh. This film captures the strong spirit and beauty of
the Bengali people and their country, as well as the courageous
commitment of the Holy Cross priests, brothers, and sisters
who have served there for 150 years. Director/Producer,
William Donaruma, along with producer Mark Weber and
cinematographer, John Klein, tells an inspiring story of sweat,
sacrifice, and solidarity in the fight against global poverty. In
the words of Fr. Leonard Shankar, “We are living in this world
as a ‘we.’ It is not ‘I’ but ‘WE’ in this world.”
(Pictured) Overlooking India in the rice fields of a small village outside Srimangal. John gets
hit with a ‘bug,’ and two crew members don’t make that portion of the trip either
because of illness. So William films most of the day.
“Want to see how we treat a snake bite?” asks Father
Homrich. My cinematographer, John, and I look at each other
with unadulterated enthusiasm and run to grab our gear
struggling to keep up with the elderly priest. We had heard
rumors of how poisonous snake bites are treated in this small,
poor village of Bangladesh, but didn’t think that we would be so
fortunate as to witness one.
As we arrive at the small medical center, a young, petite
woman is charging up a stun gun (the same type and model that
American police officers use). We stare in awe as she proceeds
to use the gun to zap the bitten man three times at a location
on his lower leg around the puncture wound to neutralize the
poison. Though it appears to be a routine, clinical procedure, it
isn’t until she turns to us with a huge grin to exclaim how lucky
this man is.
I glance at John to see if he is catching something I’m not
but find the same thoughts mirror in his eyes: fear, confusion
and an excitement about getting ‘the shot.’ The young nurse
notices our confusion and explains that our patient is lucky
because of the location of the bite. If the bite had been above the
waist, they would not have been able to use the taser because
of the intense voltage so near the heart.
In this case, Father Homrich simply
explains, “You die.”
John and I share another moment of
kinship, nervously smiling at each other
as we search the dirt floor around us
for any hiding serpents. We watch with
amazement as the patient’s friends help
him out of his chair and usher him out the
door. I turn to Father Homrich expecting
to see a moment of concern. Instead, I see
a smug and quite satisfied smile spread
across his face, and as he looks back to
the retreating patient he says, “They’re
seeing how far he gets, or if he drops
dead,” and laughs facetiously.
It wasn’t until the day we left the village that our colleagues
divulged that Father had killed a cobra in our room the day
we arrived in Pirgatcha. It was then I looked at John’s pale
expression and remembered an old adage that my mother
would always say: “Sometimes it’s better not to know than to
know it all.”
From that moment forward, “cobra”
became the code word for “you don’t want
to know.”
In June 2008, I traveled to Bangladesh
with 5 college student boxing team
members and my cinematographer, John
Klein (a former student). We set out to
trace the affects of a 79 year old boxing
tournament called “The Bengal Bouts,” which donates all of its proceeds to Holy
Cross missions in Bangladesh. One of my students and the
captain of the boxing team, Mark Weber, came to me with the
idea of going to Bangladesh in late 2007. Never before had the
boxers met the people or viewed the region they were trying to
help. His idea blossomed and the trip quickly became reality
in early 2008. Mark and I acted as producers, while long time
boxing coach and tournament referee, Tom Suddes acted
as Executive Producer, raising money from boxing alumni
to help fund the project. John Klein, who was working as a
cinematographer in Chicago and had extensive experience with
his own Panasonic HVX200
camera, came on board as well.
I operated the B camera while
directing the project.
We immediately knew we
wanted to shoot in HD, and I
had the resources to use two
HVX200 cameras and several
16Gig P2 cards. I also brought
a smaller HD camcorder that
we could always have on hand
and be able to put into obscure
places.
We shot in 24PN on the Panasonics. This would allow us a
solid 84 minutes on two 16G P2 cards. We also knew were going
to shoot slow motion, which is achieved at this setting, anyway,
and we could maintain a close to homogeneous timeline. The
goal was to shoot as cinematically as possible, incorporating the
land, colors, culture and conditions into the narrative and stay
away from straight-forward interviews throughout. In doing
so, we shot most everyone outside to showcase the landscape.
Sound was just as important, so I also carried a recorder in
order to pick up off camera sound bites, children singing, and
natural sounds, etc. The
directive was to avoid
the pitfall of becoming a
travel tour video and build
transitions from each
narrative segment that
would help define the area
where we were travelling.
There were many
uncertainties travelling
with equipment to this part
of the world. One reason
was that it was the rainy
season, but another was
the reputation of the airport, customs and possible corruption. I
packed the gear so that we carried everything we would need to
shoot something, even if nothing arrived at the airport. Much to
our relief, getting in was easy, though we were without a tripod
for the first full week of shooting. I pre-plan meticulously, and
I had lists printed in each case with its inventory. We made
sure we had power converters, inverters, and different kinds
of batteries, but the one thing I hadn’t planned for was the
frequency of the rolling black outs. After all of the research I
had done about the area, I heard about power issues and was
well prepared for camera power, but was not prepared for how
often and for how long we would lose power for hard drives. An
APC backup would have helped. We found this out the hard
way when we first tried downloading our footage to 2TB LaCie
Raid drives, and the power quit on us. This was in the city of
Dhakka, and since it was so hot, it was more frequent because
of electrical use. It is a country the size of Wisconsin with half
the population of the United States, most of which are in the
capital city. Luckily, we had plenty of P2 cards to rely on, but
we quickly became backed up with footage that needed to be
dumped. The P2 Store unit can only handle about 4 cards, so
we were barely ahead of our resources, and we headed out to
the rural northern missions just days into the trip. It is out in
the these areas that we found out power didn’t just fluctuate, it
was provided by generators that were cut off by the time we got
settled back in with any time to off load the days work. When
I say “settled,” I mean tucked into the netting around the bed
and sweating it out.
Continued
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