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Capturing the Story for the HD Documentary, "Strong Bodies Fight"
Director’s Perspective

by William Donaruma

...Continued from Previous Page

John and I eventually came up with a system whereby we would hook up his iBook to the camera and off load to 250G Rugged drives while we travelled in the packed van to each village. We had hoped we could maintain charges with the power inverter for the van, but that overheated within the first hour for some reason, and we were out of luck, again. The Rugged drives were eventually unloaded to the LaCie Raids when we knew we could run for a couple of hours. Times like this were in the eastern village of Srimangal, where we knew the power would go off from about 9:00pm to 11:00pm every night. It was more consistent because of the tea gardens and the factories that processed the tea, so we could gauge a decent time to move footage.

(Pictured) Off-loading set up back in the Moreau House (the crew’s base and the Holy Cross ‘HQ’) in the city of Dhaka. MacBook Pro and Powerbook G4 moving footage from cards to drives and finally to the 2TB Raid.

We eventually got caught up by the end of the first week and found a rhythm to our production process. John and I worked well together, because I could trust his vision; and Mark was able to capture lots of great stills to add to the visuals. In the end, I think we captured a beautiful movie about beautiful and strong people. Though it was exhausting, the experience was rewarding, educational and eye opening. The challenge now is to show how fighting for poverty, quite literally, is a worthwhile and peaceful mission and one all of us can do in our own way. Luckily, one of our guys (Leo Rubinkowski) won his final fight and championship of the tournament last month, so we have the drama. We’ll continue post through the summer for a premiere in November. As for the snakebite … cobra.

(Pictured) In a small village on the edge of India outside of Srimangal to the Northeast of Bangladesh, filmmaker William Donaruma sits to take a rest with his camera.

More of the history of the Bengal Bouts and this production may be viewed at www.strongbodiesfight.org.

This article appeared in StudentFilmmakers Magazine, (April 2009 Edition, Page 6-11) and may not be reprinted in print or internet publications without express permission of StudentFilmmakers.com.

About the Author

William Donaruma has years of production experience having worked for Universal Studios as well as a variety of production companies and major television networks in film and video production. Returning to Notre Dame to teach production courses, he has won the Kaneb Teaching Award and was granted a fellowship at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. His website is www.williamdonaruma.com.

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