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In the fall of of 2011 I was approached by Save the Children to help tell a story. This story would be an ordinary story — a snapshot into the lives of five different people. However, those five people were not exactly ordinary. The subjects all had physical or mental handicaps.

But what was ordinary about these people — was their desire to live life to its fullest. They wanted the same things all other Chinese people wanted. They wanted jobs and financial security. They wanted a husband or wife. And they wanted to be treated equally and with dignity. While their lives were a little different, they were in many ways the same as all other people.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population.

In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back.

Through contributions from Save the Children China, the European Union and Kingfisher — friend and journalist Kit Gillet and myself got the opportunity to help create short videos to help show this ordinary side of China’s disabled population. We didn’t want to portray these people as heroes or create sympathy. Instead, the idea was to show the actual reality of their lives — and minimize superficial and sensational ideas surrounding them.

Toward the end of the main feature Li Weihong, Vice Chairman of the China Association of the Blind says:

“I think disabled people can participate equally in normal life and through their efforts help others. I think having a disability is not bad luck but simply an inconvenience. We can do a great job and be involved completely and equally, as long as we are provided with a barrier-free environment and help in overcoming our disabilities.”

This quote summed up a big part of our goal. While showing the ordinary side of these people, we also had to show the different side — as well as the challenging side.

We wanted to make an integrated video package which would allow a big picture view — but also give the opportunity to see the individual peoples lives. With the help of Save the Children we found five subjects in Beijing, Anhui and Sichuan who we could spend some time with filming their daily routines. After filming them we found a couple experts to ask about issues surrounding China’s disabled population. This accumulated to about 1 TB of footage which we split up into six videos. The first, embedded above is the main piece titled “We Are DIfferent, We Are the Same.”

This 10-minute feature gives an over view of the current situation for disabled people living in China. After piecing this together, we made five additional short four-minute videos that show the ordinary aspects of the people’s lives seen in this film.

The video profiles include a visually impaired stenographer in Beijing, a teacher in Hefei with brittle bone syndrome, a mentally handicapped chef outside of Beijing, a boy with cerebral palsy in Fuyang and a ping-pong playing, car washing man in Chengdu. We talked to their families, their spouses and their friends and coworkers. We saw their daily triumphs and hardships while at the same time, saw how society was viewing them as they went through their daily routines.

I believe the situation for disabled people China is immensely better than in was in the past. However, the population still faces great hardships and barriers to having normal lives. Many of these hardships come from China’s infrastructure and environment.

Li Weihong, goes on to say:

“The biggest problem, As I see it, is to form an environment where the blind can see, the deaf can hear and where the physically-handicapped can get around. If that can happen then the disabilities of those with handicaps will be gone and they can live a life like any other person.”

I Believe Weihong is talking about more than a physical environment here. And while it is easy to look at China as a developing country with issues that need tending, I think many of these same issues still exist in the West.

Please enjoy “We Are DIfferent, We Are the Same” and help share these videos with people of all countries to help create greater awareness of issues facing disabled people around the planet.

Barriers and stigmas can only be broken with dialogue and awareness.

Check back throughout this week for the five shorter video profiles.

Jonah

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Murong Xuecun is one of the least boring people I have ever met.

He is energetic. He is dynamic. He is impressively clever. And in the last year, he has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of censorship in China.

However, he is a writer.

And when New York Times’ correspondent Edward Wong first mentioned he was writing an in-depth feature on Murong, I initially doubted an accompanying video component would help add much value to the package. I did some background research and found articles with pictures of the young writer. Nearly every single one showed the author looking at a computer in some form or another, 3 out of 4 being a silhouetted picture of the back of his head with the computer out of focus or him at an internet café.

The still images I saw were far from inspiring. I imagined a video full of talking heads, with sequences of static imagery that would inevitably go on for too long and drive viewers to click away.

But right before I decided it wasn’t worth making the video, I read this speech Murong had recently given. Words started jumping off the page:

This is castrated writing. I am a proactive eunuch, I castrate myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel. Our language has been cut into two parts: one safe, and the other risky. Some words are revolutionary, and others are reactionary; some words we may use, and others belong to our enemies.

And just like that, I was hooked. This person was clearly an outspoken agent calling for change and reform in his society. All of a sudden Murong turned from a writer into an incendiary subject on a hot topic. I jumped on board and got to thinking — how do I make a person who is visually boring interesting? And my first inspiration came directly from the same speech. Toward the top of his speech, Murong said:

From my many years’ experience in writing and publishing, I could compile a Sensitive Words Glossary, in which you would certainly find the words “system,” “law,” “government,” as well as a large number of other nouns, several verbs, quite a few adjectives, and even a few special numbers. The glossary would also include all names of religions, all names of important people, all countries, including of course China, and also the phrase “Chinese people.”

On the backend of the speech, the author continued:

If there really were a Sensitive Words Glossary, I hope that it could be published; in this way at least we could all save a lot of time, and reduce the possibility of unwittingly committing “word crimes.”

Sitting in a small airport in Burlington, Vermont on my way back to China I thought — maybe I can help him publish this list of sensitive words. I dreamed up a bunch of scenarios of how I could visualize a list of words and eventually came to the conclusion that I should let this man say the words that ordinarily he can’t say.

This train of thought continued to a greater concept on voiceovers vs subtitles. While most international news videos get a voiceover treatment, I started thinking it would be completely ironic to mute the man, when he is in fact, talking about words which he can not use. I decided subtitles were more appropriate which then opened up more doors for cinematic storytelling and made it a little easier to justify adding music to a news piece. Although I was excited to make the piece, I was still a bit worried about keeping it moving and wanted the music to keep the piece from drying up.

Now, regardless of the man’s profession, I had a hot subject and an idea for a snappy intro. I had music to help move the piece in a rhythmic narrative and a logic behind how I would represent his opinions visually.

And while I knew I had to shoot him writing or at the computer, I also knew I wanted to get him out of the context where we are used to seeing writers. When you get stuck shooting a “boring” person (or one, who doesn’t do anything visually exciting) I think this is a great exercise to find a new physical environment. Simply, get them out of the physical environment where they normal are or where we expect to see them. It doesn’t matter where — just someplace else. I wanted to see him interacting with people, and when I found out he was going out to dinner with some journalists and human rights lawyers, I was ecstatic when I got the invite to tag along.

This was the trickiest part of the video — both visually and narratively. How to link the home interviews, the writing visuals and a bunch of guys at dinner. With some thinking, it was easy enough to have narration lead the story into the restaurant, but shooting this was much more tricky.

There’s a Zoom H1 hidden on the table near the bear drinking, cigarette-smoking intellectuals. I have a 60D switching between a Gorilla Pod, a tripod and the in-table lazy susan. In addition, I had a 5DMII on a shoulder rig. And while I didn’t leave a camera rolling the entire time, I did leave the audio rolling. When I got back, I synched all of the audio with the video clips I had, and although I had tons of great dialogue, in the end I just grabbed one meaty quote that allowed me to jump from frame to frame anachronistically. Had I used multiple quotes or too much back and forth dialogue, I would have been forced into using more real time footage. Using just one quote allowed me to use some of my favorite visuals from the entire night.

With the intro set and multiple environments in the bank, I just needed to shoot the interviews. Knowing that I was at risk of having a boring video, I kept two cameras rolling continually during the interviews so when it came time to cut, I could keep all my frames short and bounce between a Canon 50mm f/1.2 and a Canon 24mm f/1.4.

With the credit roll, intro and title sequence, the video came out at 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Keeping voiceover out, adding music, using multiple environments and multiple cameras rolling during interviews, I hope I succeeded in making a visually “boring” person interesting.

And while I can’t answer that question for you, I can say the greater lesson I took away from this project was the potential assets we gain from simply researching what our subjects have to say, have said and what they might want to say.

MORE ON MURONG XUECUN:

• Read Edward Wong’s story “Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper”
• An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’
• More on Murong: Words We Can Use, and Those We Can Not

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As a video journalist I’m frequently approached by people asking me to come film — whatever it is they have that’s going on. A Chinese rock band, a new brand or some really exciting business conference are the usual suspects. These people often think their event would be so fun to film, that I would love to do it — for free.

Sadly these people are mistaken, and generally speaking whatever guest speaker is at the “Annual Chinese Conference of Bilateral Business” is not actually that interesting.

However, last week while at a small bar in Beijing a Québécoise approached me and told me he had built a device out of a tricycle that could paint Chinese characters on the ground with water droplets as it was peddled. I stopped for a second and thought about it and my first question was — why?

And his answer was … “because!”

Meet French Canadian Media Artist Nicholas Hanna. This guy decided to build a device for no reason, that doesn’t really serve a clear purpose. So, I decided, this would also be a good time to create a video just “because.”

I wanted to keep it short, sweet and corky. An afternoon filming, a weird soundtrack with an upright bass and a didgeridoo and some editing and we had this fun device on film.

Ironically, I found the best way to film this strange contraption — was on another tricycle, peddled by the days assistant Annie Sallaberry. Now picture both of these tricycles peddling through the old streets of Beijing and you can imagine we were quite the spectacle. As we filmed, people would actually just start following us down the street as if we were the Pied Piper of Chinese people.

As working visual journalists I think its a really great exercise do go out and shoot stuff for fun. Its really easy to get in the habit of only shooting when working. But this two day project was a lot of fun and helped me get back to my roots a bit. It reminded me why we do this in the first place — because its fun.

So — for no reason at all, enjoy.

Kit List for this Project:

• Canon EOS 5D Mark II
• Canon EOS 60D
• Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM
• Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
• Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro
• Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
• Franken-Rig made from Ikan, Genus, Jag35 and Zacuto parts.
• Kessler Krane Pocket Dolly v2.0, Traveler Size
• Kessler Crane All Terrain Outrigger Feat
• Rhode NTG Shotgun Condenser Microphone
• Pearlstone Universal Shock Mount
• Sony UHF Wireless Lavalier System
• Zoom H4n Mobile Handycam Audio Recorder
• (2x) Manfrotto 190Cx Carbon Fibre Q90 4-section Tripod
• F-Stop Satori Expedition Pack
• F-Stop Tilopa Expedition Pack
• (3x) F-Stop ICU (small, medium, large)
• Blackrapids RS-7 R-Strap

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NOTE FROM JONAH: This post was originally written for Dan Chung’s DSLR News shooter blog.

On a recent assignment for the New York Times I was tasked with filming a filmmaker.

I’d taken portraits of photographers before, but I had never filmed a filmmaker. Its hard not to have a little bit of anxiety when you know the person you are filming not only knows what you are doing, but has their own opinion on how to do it.

The idea was to create a behind-the-scenes video that describes how Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang makes his films.

The first step was getting my hands on his films, which wasn’t the easiest thing, given his films are not available in China. Your first question might be — why aren’t Zhao’s films available in China? If you get your hands on one of them the reasons for their unavailability will become pretty clear. For the most part, the content of Zhao’s films is not exactly the type of material the Chinese government wants you to see.

I have discussed previously that I am not necessarily a documentarian, but as a visual journalist working with cinematic storytelling the two fields are certainly not too far off. Regardless of how you work with video, I believe Zhao’s films can teach us all something.

On my first screenings, I though Zhao’s films didn’t necessarily have “beautiful photography”. Even from the samples of the films I used for my video, you can tell most of his films are not multi-million dollar productions or maybe not even multi-thousand dollar productions. These are truly grassroots-style productions that often use gorilla-style photographic techniques.

While the photography isn’t necessarily beautiful, it is in fact extremely powerful, which in itself, I would consider beautiful.

As an image maker, I spend so much of my time trying to compose beautiful images that I had to spend some time thinking about why I felt these images were so powerful. I think the answer comes in the relationship between your content and your images.

Zhao’s films show a truthful view of China, rarely seen. The raw video footage makes the truths and injustices he reveals even more real. Let’s say that Zhao was about to use jibs, dollies or even regular tripod use while filming — the visuals would feel way more contrived. There is some tripod use, but a large majority of this footage is handheld and there’s quite a bit of shakiness to it.

These things are a bit counter-intuitive to a lot of us who spend half our day thinking about gear; however, the effect is one that should be applauded. Not only does Zhao let the footage speak for itself in a digital age, the raw nature of the images actually reaffirm the stories he is telling.

I would describe Zhao’s films as having a “slower pace.” He’s not in a rush to tell his stories. You can tell this — even by the mere fact he spent 12 years filming his movie “Petition.” However, I believe the slow pace matches that of his characters’ realities. This pace creates the opportunity for the audience to actually experience the reality of his subjects.

To visualize this Zhao has left in some less-than-exciting images and scenes. However, these images are real. There are seemingly very few contrived scenes which many other filmmakers set up to help tell their story.

Videos with an interesting story, but that have boring or disconnected images are clearly not good. Videos with amazing imagery, but broken storylines are also not good. In video journalism and documentary film making, the relationship between our images and stories is what separates great productions from the pack. Whether this means holding back on production level like Zhao has or going the opposite direction — when our images and stories work together, our videos become infinitely more powerful.

And in a world where gear means so much its refreshing to see Zhao showing us that you don’t need a million dollars to make a film with a million dollar impact.

The New York Times, Ai Weiwei and Zhao Liang

While my portion of this project was a “behing the scenes” look of Zhao Liang’s productions, New York Times reporter Ed Wong’s lengthy profile shows a much different side of making films in China. Wong reveals how many believe Zhao has now “switched sides” in order to continue to make films in China. While Zhao is still very respected, his cooperation with the Chinese government on his recent film Together as well as a decision to pull out his film Petition from the Melbourne film festival has cost him friends, including the controversial artist Ai Weiwei, who only recently was released from prison.

The Times included a video from Ai Weiwei along with mine as part of the Ed’s story as well as photography by Beijing based photographers Chi Yinsim and Shiho Fukada.

For journalists, cinephiles, videographers, photographers and documentarians — the piece is very interesting and I encourage all to check it out.

– To read New York Times reporter Ed Wong’s story on Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang click here.
– To find Zhao Liang’s movie check out dGenerate films web site here.
– To read a follow up to Ed’s story, check out New Yorker writer Richard Brody story “CHINA’S CULTURAL EVOLUTION” here.