Welcome to the CamGirls Production Blog Keep up to date with us! (Please be patient. We're now deep in post-production and updates will be a while between - so be sure to check back for added notes as things develop.) June 5, 2007 Here's a little video blog concept I tried with my phone - didn't quite work - but gives you a tiny peek into post. Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5 April 2-3, 2007 Monday. Start of week three of editing. We're moving into actually assembling some sequences, which is very cool as there are moments that are starting to come together. Always sweet to watch moments that really work. A lot of stumbling around in the dark and experimenting - but coming along. It's a lot of quiet time for me, kicking back and watching Dan work. Answering questions, giving comments, guiding - but letting the man work. Usually he'll work on a sequence - put some things together and then we'll look at it and discuss. Discuss how it's working, how to improve it - how it will connect to what comes before and what follows and how it connects to the whole story. Tuesday. We sat down to watch Jesus Camp today. An excellent, if not entirely manipulative, documentary. There's an odd balance between a ticking clock of this exclusive six week window with Dan and not wanting to waste a moment of time and in allowing time for Dan and I to discuss and discover (our current budget only allows for a six week full-time window with Dan, the editor, and then we go to nights and weekends outside of his full time commercial editorial schedule). Today was mostly discussion, watching and contemplating - and that is all very important. There are some great lessons and discussions to come from watching a great film or two. Bouncing examples back and forth and discussing and then seeing how that applies to what we're doing - what lessons can we learn? How can we make a better film? What did they do wrong? What did they do right? There's a pressure of the clock ticking in my mind, but these are important things to do. March 19, 2007 ... The door creeeeeeaks open, spreading a thick swath of light through the dancing dust motes in the dark air. There's a thick coating of it on everything in here; it's been a while for sure. "Hello?" Hello ello llo lo o... It takes some work to pull the dust covers off of everything, sweep the place out, evict the creatures with more than four legs who have squatted here while we were away... We're back. People told me a documentary was a difficult thing to tackle. They raised eyebrows at me - really? You're doing a documentary? Good luck... But, honestly, you take this kind of scorn like a 12-year-old takes the adage "Wait till you get into the real world..." Documentaries are a tough racket, for sure. For the last sixteen and a half months, CamGirls has, officially, been in a state of limbo. Most of 2006 was spent dilligently trying to find an editor for the project. We had MANY, MANY, many meetings and discussions on the direction, shape and form this documentary would take. We ran the gambit from feature film to television series - trying to find the best way to tell the stories we captured. For the vast majority of those sixteen months I completely shut myself off from the camworld. I stopped going on AIM or Yahoo, I stopped visiting sites, I let my CamWhores account lapse. It wasn't turning my back on the camworld - it was getting distance and objectivity. Prior to October 1, 2006, I had spent two and a half years immersed in the camworld, pretty much literally 24/7. I found, as I made the first edit, that I had couldn't find the forest for the fucking aphids on the leaves on the trees... I needed some time to get away and come back with fresh eyes. In that time, we searched for an editor. At the top of my list was Dan O'Brien, the editor who I worked with on my last two projects. Dan and I gel amazingly well. We work well off of each other and I trust his eye. But Dan isn't a documentary editor. He's a commercial editor who is breaking into feature films and there was concern that we should look for a specialist in documentaries. I couldn't really disagree with that. I also had a strong notion of finding a female editor who would bring a different perspective that I, naturally, didn't have. We searched. We searched and searched and searched. We might as well have been looking for the Lost Ark... I ran the gambit from frustration to disbelief to embarassment to humiliation... How could it be so goddamn hard to find an editor? This is Hollywood, for fuck's sake... We talked to some of the biggest editors in the business and some of the freshest editors to start - some just weren't right, some passed, most were booked and didn't have the time. Some were too expensive... It was an uphill battle and all along the way we went back and forth on what form this project should take. We also went back and forth on where we were financially... With the choices we made thus far, CamGirls was NOT a cheap production - in fact it had already surpassed the highest estimation of budget level after our trip to Las Vegas, and the film still wasn't completed. Nothing happens in Hollywood overnight and CamGirls is living proof. As fate would have it, the longer we waited and the longer we searched, we held out long enough for Dan to get a solid window in his editorial schedule to take on the film. At the end of a very long journey - we're right back where we started, older and wiser. I'm VERY proud to announce that we started editing today, Dan and I... It's nice to be back. There's still a long path ahead before this project is finished, but I, and the people who have made this project possible, have committed to making this the absolute best documentary we can possibly make. That, unfortunately, takes time. An incredible side-effect of the time that has passed (and I wish I could say it was a deliberate choice, but it wasn't) is that many of the CamGirls who we interviewed have evolved to another stage of their lives in the time since we last spoke. This evolution answers a lot of our prayers for this documentary as it gives us somewhere to go - a path to take and a journey to show an audience. It's not just a window in time that we've examined this extraordinary culture of camming - it's now a window of time seen through the eyes of time and that carries a lot more weight and significance. The cam world is still very young, but in the 12 years (nearly exactly) since Jennicam first went online a lot has happened, a lot has changed. In the year and a half since we last spoke with our camgirls, a lot has changed, and some has stayed the same. All of that is incredibly significant and all will be included. No... No... the project has not died. We're still very much alive and now we're back and we're active again. I won't be blogging on here all that often, but for those few of you who are still checking back here, I'll keep you up to date. Thanks for sticking with us, I promise it will be worth the wait. All the best, Jay Holben September 11, 2005 Ah, the tortured mind of the artist... Actually I'm never really comfortable with the "artist" label - I think, generally speaking, it's far too pompus and high-falootin to be taken seriously, and those who do take it seriously are far too fucking egotistical for my tastes... BUT, I do fall into the "artist" category in that I do have a need to create. A need to make films. A need to share my "art" with an audience. I've had this need since I was five years old and it's never abated. However, I am the first to admit that I am much more a commercial filmmaker than an artist. I'd rather make Backdraft than Down By Law any day. Even with that in mind - I certainly am susceptable to the fickle mind games of the artist... Which is a long-winded way of saying I'm in a pit of self-doubt tonight. Or, really, was. I'm coming out of it already as I write this - but I was wracked earlier with self-doubt. Most of it brought on by the tight deadline and OTHER responsibilities in my life aside from CamGirls - namely the work I have to do for the Magazine. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm very proud of my work for the magazine, I'm very happy to have the position. I've put seven years into this publication and the money that I make as an editor has afforded me the luxury to retire as a cinematographer and nurture my career as a director. Without the magazine, I wouldn't be able to pay my bills or help keep a roof over my head. But with such a tight deadline looming for this project - the work that I have to do this week is freaking me out a bit as it will take me away from CamGirls... That and I hit a senstitive point tonight with the edit. Yesterday I was writing here how happy I was with the cut thus far - and that's very true. I am. And I think that happiness scared me a little today. See, there's a big difference between making a 90 minute cut of this film, making it entertaining, watchable, saleable AND getting out the story that I want to get out and the message I want to say. Those are not necessarily always the same thing. It would be far to easy to slap this thing together segment by segment and be done! Woo-hoo! 90 minutes! But what's the point? Is there a bigger message? Is there an overall story arc? Will it spawn any discussion? Controversy? Will it be memorable? These are the times when the real director's job comes into play. You have to step back from the trees and see the whole shape of the forrest (to exploit an overused metaphor). I began to worry tonight that I wouldn't have time to make 90 minutes of film (or thereabouts) AND be able to step back and massage the nuances of the segments into a bigger whole. Yadda, yadda, yadda... Okay. I'm bitching. Sorry. I'm stressed, tired, still a little sick and I'm voicing that "artistic" self-doubt - if for no other reason than to share here in this blog, in the very spirit of blogging, which seems to be a virtual exorcism of one's inner deamons. Or merely the turf of one's verbal masturbation for public consumption (now there's a mental image...). Whatever. I'm through the self-doubt now, mostly. Most of this came about because I got to the segment in the Doc that deals with CamGirls being "fucked up." We recorded various opinions on this subject - most agreeing that most CamGirls are "fucked up" in some way. But I know I'm treading in dangerous waters here. First of all - these 15 girls in this documentary are NOT a random sampling of the CamWorld. I am very aware that I was the one who hand-picked each and every one of them - mainly because they had interesting stories. Interesting generally pertains to stories about tragic or "fucked up" happenings in their lives that led (in some way or other) to their camming. So, with that in mind, it would be irresponsible of me to make a sweeping generalization (or by omission of action allow the inferment of the generalization) that all CamGirls are "fucked up," even if that IS the popular opinion - because the examples I picked are deliberately of the more "fucked up" variety. That is not to say that all the 15 CamGirls are "fucked up" (are you beginning to get a feel for the duality and constant battle that goes on in my brain?)... The point is I know I have to tread carefully to be honest and fair in the treatment of this segment. Of all segments, really. And that understanding - coupled with the knowledge and experience to know that treading carefully takes time, and that my time is extremely limited and (unfortunately) divided - lead to an evening of self-doubt and deep pensive introversion. So, there you have it... Stream-of-consciousness babbling from the mind of the tourtured "artist" ... Good Times. September 10, 2005 Well, the edit is proceeding nicely. I hit my target 40 minutes today - actually have 42 minutes (and change) cut now. Not all of it in order, but I put together 24 minutes all in order. That may be confusing - so let me try to explain. I haven't been sure how the whole "big story" is going to unfold. I know what I want to accomplish, but the nuances of how to get there have alluded me (as I knew they would) until I started to put things together. Like I said before, I basically started from a totally random point, with one particular subject and cut a sequence of that subject. I have a vague outline of what I want to include, and based on that I know that I have a target of about eight minutes max for each segment or subject. So I threw the proverbial dart at the footage and started with a segment. When I finished that (about six minutes long or so), I went on to the next segment and the next and the next. By the fourth segment, I saw that it would lead directly into the next segment which lead directly into the next, and then I saw which one would proceed the fourth and so forth... So - to simplify - After cutting three "X" segments, I cut segment E, F, G then went back and cut D and followed that with H... Then I put D, E, F, G and H together and they make up a 24 minute extended cut. After I finished off segment "H" tonight and put them all together, I sat down with my wife for the first viewing straight through... And I must say I'm very happy. There are, of course, problem areas, little fixes, some changes, some alterations to style that have developed and need to be worked into the earlier segments - but all in all it went very smoothly! Neither of us was ever bored (which is saying a lot since I've lived with this footage day in and out for five months now) - even without any music laid in yet. She had very few complaints or notes (she's always my harshest critic) AND I can see that she IS changing her mind and opinion on some of the subjects - which is amazing... I feel a bit like Dr. Frankenstein here - IT'S ALIVE!! Yet barely. I still have a long way to go before the end of the month. I'm on target to have a 90 minute cut (or thereabouts) by Sep 30 - which is what we need. We're also talking about a selected-invite preview screening (which I am a big fan of - see http://www.adakin.com/descent/screening.html for my detailed thoughts on these screenings (this is a break-out section of the official Descent website, in the director's notes section if you want to read more of my blabber or my post-production journal (pre-blog) from that film.)) the week before - so I really need 80 minutes (at least) by then. Thus far, I'm right on track to have that. I've got a damn cold. That's slowing me down. Yesterday was hellish. I couldn't concentrate - could hardly sit up. Today is much better, but my throat is killing me. Ah well. No time for this crap, I'll muscle through. I'm also going to have to spend a couple days this week working on the November issue of American Cinematographer - that's frustrating because it divides my focus, but it's got to be done. At least I have all the products I'll be writing about already in hand. That's it for now. More news as it comes in. August 31, 2005 The edit is progressing nicely, thankfully. I met today with our executive producer, Ryan Harper, to show him the two sequences I've put together so far. He seemed very happy and supportive - and I am still optimistic that I can get a cut by September 30th. Today marked the fifth day of actual editing. I didn't get much done yesterday as I had a long meeting on another project and wound up doing quite a bit of work for the magazine (I still act as a technical editor for a publication called American Cinematographer Magazine and write about 3500 words a month for them in equipment reviews). So, actually it's only been four days of real editing and as of tonight I have three "refined-rough" sequences cut that total almost 20 minutes. Not too shabby. Figuring out where to start was the hardest part. I damn near picked a completely arbitrary point (but a topic I'm sure will be in the final film) and went from there. The second topic I THOUGHT I was going to move on to suddenly became much more involved than I wanted to be at this early stage and so I picked another rather arbitrary moment. Wonderfully, completing that second sequence, I found the segue into a much larger topic that I'll jump into in the near future. For the time being, however, I decided to step away from that and pick a third completely seperate topic to work on next. After finishing that one tonight, I can easily see how the second topic will evolve into this last one I just did... So, as I had hoped - by just diving in and concentrating on small parts that I know for sure I want to get in the project - I'm beginning to see a much clearer picture of what the whole film will be. What the heck happened to the normal girls on CamWhores? I mean for nearly two years, CamWhores was one of my main research tools for keeping track of the girls. After the demise of CamMafia, it certainly has become the center of the cam universe. Strangely, however, after we got back from Vegas, there seems to have been a changing of the guard there and suddenly there are a number of girls I've never seen before - and they seem to be the most active cammers! We got back from Vegas and I looked at CamWhores and thought - 'Holy crap, I've killed off the camgirls!' - All of our girls were nowhere to be seen and suddenly there were all these new faces. I mean I've been checking this site daily, sometimes multiple times a day for nearly two years and all of a sudden over the course of one week in Vegas - there's a whole new crowd there? Kind of mind-boggling, really. August 28, 2005 Holy crap - is it really the 28th of August? Woooow. Um... wow. Time really flies. Just spent the last half hour here updating the blogs - getting Renee's updates in there from Vegas. We really need to revamp this website - but that's not really high on the immediate priority list. I know Lilith has a friend who has offered help to create a forum on here - which is a great idea - anyone want to volunteer to do some design and coding? I was getting burnt out as hell on logging and organizing. I was damn near tearing my eyeballs out. Not in the best of moods for the last week. I do say WAS because the last two days have been spent EDITING... I mean really editing! Not just logging or cutting down interviews - but real honest-to-God-creative-story-building-EDITING. I'm so fucking giddy I feel like an 8 year-old on Christmas morning... The first segment is already cut together in a refined rough draft and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll be meeting this week with Buck Sanders, our composer, to hear his work to date and hopefully start plugging in some of his work to cut more. There's still a great deal of pressure to get a cut by September 30th - but I'm actually slightly ahead of the revised schedule I made for myself - so I'm still very confident that we'll have a good looking work-in-progress by the end of the month. Which will make my execuitve producers and investors very happy (or potentially investing in a hit-man to take out my hack-ass...). It's actually coming together wonderfully. The Vegas experience was important because it - like many other small steps along the way - help me to stay focused on what this project is about. I had intended to update the blogs here much sooner, but alas time has run away on me once again. What can you do? Is it REALLY the 28th? Maaan. August 11, 2005 We finished off our Vegas trip with photo shoots with Brittany and Heidi first thing in the morning. And first thing in the morning we got hit with another roadblock... The area we were shooting in - were scheduled to shoot in until 1:30 - was booked for a banquet starting at noon. We had to scramble and get our work done before then. To add insult to injury, we were not allowed to shoot anywhere else. A frustrating end to the trip. However, Chris and Mike did fantastic jobs with Brittany and Heidi and the limitations are certainly not evident in the final photos. After the shoot was done, we gathered all of our stuff in our executive producer's room and chilled for a few. There were discussions of going to get food and I was game - but we needed to load gear into the van. But, of course, before that happened - most everyone bailed. I went down with Ryan, our executive producer, and our producer's assistant Andrew and helped load the equipment into the van. I'm not the kind of director who can turn his back on people doing hard labor and busting their ass - especially if they're also the one signing the checks. I came up in the ranks busting my ass on sets and I know what the crew goes through. Although I was somewhat frustrated that I didn't get to join the gang for lunch and somewhat amused that the two "head honchos" were doing the grunt work - the rest of the crew had seriously worked theirselves silly the previous week... What can you do? I found the girls in the buffet area and sat down at a table across from them to eat some chow. I hadn't had more than a single small meal each day - and didn't have much of an appetite now. I was still feeling the ill effects of sleep deprivation, fatigue and stress and still getting some dizzy spells that had hit me the night before, so I didn't eat much. Shaun walked around the casino with me for a bit after that and we hooked back up with the girls out at the pool for a while. I really wanted to go play some poker - but I figured I was not in any shape to be putting money down on the tables. I was seriously having a hard time standing up. One solid month of planning, one solid week of non-stop work with a short-staffed crew - it definitely takes a toll. Evening rolled around and we left for the airport. The full crew was on one flight back to Los Angeles and as we boarded the plane, I was astounded to see the exit row aisle seat open for me. I can't remember if I've talked about my claustrophobia on planes here before - but that is the perfect seat for me. It's the one I really try to get every time I fly. There's room to breathe there. I sat down - the crew sat down around me and we ... sat. After ten or fifteen minutes of just sitting on the plane the pilot comes over the PA and announces: "Um, we're having some kind of mysterious mechanical problem here. We're not sure what it is - but we're looking into it. When we find out what is going on we'll let you all know how long it will be..." Great. I don't get freaked about flying (aside from the claustrophobia issue) but I had to laugh at the vagueness and moronic sounding message. We sat for about an hour on the tarmac before they finally got us all off the plane and we waited in line for another plane. Of course, on the new plane, my golden seat was taken. I suffered through an aisle seat in the back of the plane and had an incredibly interesting conversation with the man next to me about a new casino going up in Vegas that he was working on. We landed safely. I met my wife and dog at the airport and went home to pass out. Tomorrow starts the digitizing again!! August 11, 2005 Well the last day of the Camgirl Vegas trip. I was up early this morning. We had the girls going to the airport at all different hours again, but at least this time the flights were all on time. Kind of sad saying good-bye to everyone, but that’s a part of life. Whenever you spend a significant amount of time with people you tend to bond, and most of the time you walk away with just he memories. We got most of the girls off successfully to the airport, but we still had a couple more photo shoots with Brittany and Heidi. The hotel decided to switch stuff around on us. They only gave us a two hours window to shoot in the location we were planning on, so that meant getting the girls through hair and make-up asap. Plus we had to deal with checking out by noon for crew, as well. Luckily we were able to get an extra hour out of the hotel, so that helped a little bit. It was a bit chaotic for a few hours as we tried to pack up and move everything down to one room we kept for the day. In the end everything worked out, like it always does. I like to call it organized chaos. By one o’clock we had everyone’s luggage in one room, and all the girls were taken care of with rides to the airport. Our flight wasn’t leaving until 7pm; the crew had about 4 hours to do what they’d like. First on the list for everyone was food. Kamala, Dawn, and I all went to the buffet to eat. Wasn’t too bad, not amazing, but ok. After that we wanted to go hang by the pool, so we went up to the room, put on our suits and went to relax. Of course the sun was not out, but it was still very warm. Dawn and Kamala decided to have a sunscreen fight, which was pretty amusing. I steered very clear of that one, didn’t want some funky tan lines. Jay and one of the camgirls, Shaun, came by for a moment to hang out then they left. By about 5pm we all went to the room to join the rest of the crew before we headed off to the airport. Then it was off to return to LA. Check-in went pretty smoothly, expect when they tried to charge Jay excess baggage charges for media equipment. After about 15 minutes of arguing, we finally got them to take it off. Then it was off to security check. I stopped off to pick up a gift for a special someone, and everyone continued through the security point. Well funny story that’s going to crack everyone up. I got in line for security, and was sent through this new explosive detecting machine, which was kind of freaky. If you’re claustrophobic definitely one to avoid. Anyways I get through fine, but forgot one thing I left in my purse, box cutters. Yeah, smart one by the blonde producer. Plus they were bright red, couldn’t hide that one. Amazing what being blonde and attractive can do for you. Well of course they kept the cutters, but did not make a report. I’m sure if I was a man and looked suspicious in any way they would have. Interesting world we live in. Anyways made it safely to the terminal where the crew was waiting. We ended up waiting a while, so Kamala and I went to the massage chairs. For a buck we got 3 minutes of massage. Money well spent. We finally boarded the plane, and sat for about an hour as they searched for “an unidentifiable mechanical problem”. We switched planes soon after that, and arrived in LA 2 hours later than we should have. I was happy to be back, especially since my special someone was there to pick me up :). A great way to end a great week if you ask me. August 10, 2005 In the scheduling of today, we had a lot of problems. Much of the last two weeks leading up to this Vegas shoot was spent discussing today - where could we shoot - what could we do afterward... We really wanted to shoot in the Real World suite in the hotel - but the suite rents for $10,000 a night and is usually reserved for high-rollers or celebrity guests, so we could get bumped out by other paying guests and be a bit lost for where to shoot our group interview... Mike and Chris have been ROCKING through their photos - and we're actually right on schedule. We realize that we can get in the final girls today before our group interview and - AMAZINGLY - we're able to get into the Real World suite early! Chris and Mike set up in there and started shooting Li, Lilith, Kat and Shaun. After that we set up for the group interview and started rolling on that. Wow. What an amazing experience. Just having all these girls together (minus two who could not make it - Anastasia and Deandra - we miss you both) is such a surreal experience. I sat looking at them all lined up and realized that this moment - this collection of women - represented nearly two and a half years of my life spent on this project (I started research in April of 2003). Although we didn't get to cover everything I wanted in the interview - we covered some great ground. Found that there were more similarities with these girls than even I had known. Seeing all the different factions of the camworld come together at once was amazing. From girls who had just started their sites, to the longest running 24/7 cam online. From girls who had done private sex shows to girls who had never taken a picture in less than a bikini. From girls who made a living from their websites to girls who have never had a members site. From girls who are in the center of the cam community, to those who lounge on the fringe and relax in their own worlds. All had a chance to voice their thoughts. Amazingly I heard from several of the girls that this experience has opened even THEIR eyes to the camworld. That even they had stereotyped some of the other girls and this experience had showed them that those stereotypes were NOT the real deal. I wanted to jump for joy when I heard that. If there is ONE goal from this whole project - it is to show the world that what they immediately think when they think "CamGirl" isn't necessarily true. There's a LOT more to these women than just tits and ass on the screen for some vapid masturbatory pleasure of a faceless old pervert. The fact that some of the girls themselves could have a new view at the world though this project is a sure-fire sign that I'm seriously on the right track. August 10, 2005 Today is the big day! Yes the interview with all the girls is about to happen. We’ve been waiting to hear all week if we have The Real World suite to shoot in for the interview, and guess what, we do! We got the suite for the entire day and night, how about that? We took full advantage of this opportunity, and did multiple photo shoots throughout the suite. Jay had his final two interviews to do with Brittany and Heidi, so I was making sure everything was getting taken care of. Our goal was to be done shooting photos by 3pm so we could start setting up lighting and cameras for the big interview. Surprisingly we were pretty much on schedule, which is always a bonus on a hectic day. I had a little breakdown around 2pm. My body hit a wall, and decided to make my life miserable. I got horrible stomach cramps and I could hardly stand. I was literally lying on the couch in the suite trying to relax so they would go away, but to no avail. I like to think that I’m tough and can work through things like that, but there comes a point where I can’t handle so much pain. I waited for Jay to get up to the suite before I went down to my room. Jay asked what was wrong, and I just lost it and cried. I went down to my room to chill for a couple hours as they set up shop. I hated not being there, but I trusted everyone was fully capable of not having me there for two hours. Kamala was a lifesaver for me. She was so sweet to offer to go to the drugstore and get me stuff to help the pain. So about an hour later she came back with stuff that made it possible for me to sit through an over two hour interview. Thank you Kamala!!!! Well the interview was absolutely amazing. It was so incredible seeing all the camgirls in one spot all discussing a topic they are could relate with. It was neat hearing the wide range of experiences and opinions each girl had. The goal of the interview was to answer questions that the typical person has about the camgirl, and I truly believe the answers given will really open people’s eyes to the girls behind the cam. After the interview we released the girls for about an hour to go get some dinner, and told them to come back around 9pm for the wrap party. We had beverages and some snacks for everyone to enjoy. Some of our investors stopped by with their friends, so we had a great mixture of folks. Chris and Mike D., the photographers on this trip, pulled out their laptops and started showing some of the photos they took. AMAZING!!!!!! All the camgirls looked absolutely beautiful. By mid-night everyone was tired, and had already gone to bed. I wasn’t far behind. It was a long successful day, but very fulfilling. August 9, 2005 Ugh. Feeling it a bit today. For some reason, whenever I get back into working heavy and I have little sleep - it's always the THIRD day that hurts me. That's the roughest one... It's like my body can take the first two days just fine, but day three it suddenly realizes that it's not cool with the torture going on and starts to rebel a bit. If I can muscle through the morning, however, I'm usually fine for the rest of the gig. Just gotta get past that third day hump. All of our remaining CamGirls are coming in today - Li, Heidi, Brittany (no site currently) and Shaun. Of course there are airline problems again... What the heck is it with these damn plane things??!? Ugh. We start the day with photo sessions with Ana and Steph in the Palms' nightclub Rain. Chris and Mike are rocking it with AMAZING photos of both of the girls and I sit down to do a follow up interview with Immora and then Steph. Then Immora went in for her photoshoot with Mike. Tonight the hotel throws a pool party - a skinny dipping pool party - which we're all very curious about. Unfortunately the girls who are under 21 years of age can't attend. To help make sure no one is feeling left out of anything, we through a little hello gathering in our coordinator's room and get all these girls together for the first time - that was pretty amazing. Lots of girls who have known of each other online for so many years get to meet for the first time. It was very cool. Some of the girls and crew decide to take a veture down to the pool party - and I go down to talk to the staff there and verify that we're good to shoot the party. We were told that it would be cleared, the hotel would post shooting notifications and we'd go in with a single camera to follow the girls who decided to venture in. Well - that didn't happen. I spent 20 minutes talking with security, the head of the party, etc. No one knows who we were or what we're doing there. Phone calls go out - all sorts of messed up communications and all of a sudden I look like some cheap fu*K trying to scam in on a party... I'm VERY frustrated, but there isn't much I can do. The party accomodates us by allowing in our girls and crew without cover charge, but we're not allowed to shoot... As it turns out that's not really a big deal. The party is pretty lame. Only Steph, Ana and Sunny come down to the party - along with some members of our crew - and it's less interesting than the pool during the day. Nudity in the casino is illegal. As we knew - and the false advertising of "Skinny Dip Swiming Now Legal" on the posters is really a mix of the NAME of the party "SKIN SKINNY DIP" and the phrase "swiming now legal" - which is just stupid. Ah well. So much for that. Again - I'm in bed late... Will be getting up early. August 9, 2005 Sleeping in would have been so nice today, but gotta work and get everyone going. Today we were doing more photos shoots, and more interviews, and picking up at the airport. I never got a call from Li, so I guess no news was good news. So I assumed she would be here in the afternoon. That is if thunderstorms didn’t delay any more of her flights. Exactly at 8am I heard a knock at our door. It was Steph, all ready to do make-up. Unfortunately make-up wasn’t scheduled until 9am, so I sent her upstairs to hair, but it was so cute to see how excited she was to get all dolled up. I don’t blame her; it’s always so much fun having people transform you into a person you’re not used to seeing everyday. Photo shoot hair and make-up isn’t practical in most daily lives, but its fun once in a while. I’m personally low maintenance, but I like being girlie every so often. I don’t like the novelty to wear off. Keeping things new and fresh is what makes them memorable and special. We had four people arriving today, the last of the airport pick-ups. I’m sure Shaina and Kamala were glad about that. They got to know the airport pretty well the past few days. Today was much mellower then yesterday. Since we were short staffed I had to leave the hotel for a bit to go grab drinks, etc. for the crew. I took Kamala with me. I needed a young strong, scrappy girl to carry the load, and she didn’t disappoint me :) Actually thought we were stronger then we were and tried to carry too many cases of water at once instead of letting the bellman do it. We made it to the elevators and completely died. My arms were useless, so we ended up taking a few trips up stairs, we definitely learned our lesson. Most of the girls had today to relax and explore Vegas if they choose to. We had larger plans for tonight that were canceled so we decided to organize a little meet and greet later that evening with the girls. We thought it would be a good idea for most of them to meet before we had the big interview on Wednesday. I designated Shaina and Kamala’s room for the little gathering, and they thank me very much for that. It actually turned out to be kind of cool. We had beverages for everyone, and all the crew was there as well as most of the camgirls. Took lots of photos, we all have a little bit of camgirl in us. That evening was the party down at the Palm’s pool called Skin. The only problem was it’s of course 21 or older, so that meant only half of the girls could go if they wanted to. Since we were completely delirious and aching for some social interaction, Shaina, Kamala, and I decided we would go. The little gathering in their room came to an end and we all put on our going out gear for the night. Dawn being the make-up guru that she is was away attending the one of the Cirque du Soleil shows. We went down to Skin with a few other camgirls and Jay. One of my friends happened to be staying here at the Palms, so we met up with him and his sister. We hung out at the pool for a bit then headed up to the Ghost Bar. The Ghost Bar was fun, but I was really tired and getting cramps, so only stayed for one drink. Kamala went back to our rooms around 2am and went to bed. Everyone else stayed up for at least a couple more hours. I guess my old age is kicking in :). August 8, 2005 AIRLINES!!! HOLY CRAP!!! We had seven girls flying in today... and, I think, ALL SEVEN got bumped, canceled, re-routed, delayed... SOMETHING messed up the schedule for the day... UGH!!! Also, our arrangements with the hotel to provide transportation with the girls to and from the airport seems to have fallen into the abyss of "what? who? when? i never heard anything about it..." With all the crazy schedules, I lost BOTH of our production coordinators today to runs to and from the airport. That hurt. We're such a tight, small crew - the loss of both of them made my day much harder. We started out the day with photography sessions with Shelly and Renee and Jessica out by the Palms' pool. The sessions went AMAZINGLY well - looking fantastic. I also sat down for an hour for a follow up interview with Renee. It's a long day. Many, many complications, many small details needing to be shuffled around... Constant calls from girls on flights that were messed up... Our crew is exhausted from working in the sun and heat all day. We're all dragging and it's ONLY the first day!! With the photography sessions we wanted to get a number of different "looks" (different outfits, areas, poses, etc.) from each CamGirl to use in different promotional media. Originally, I wasn't sure how many looks we could get from each area. I figured only one or two, so I had scheduled a night shoot in the hotel spa (we could only get in there after 8pm). But Chris and Mike (our photographers) were kicking such ass that they got five or six looks with Renee, Shelly and Jessica all by the pool area with no problems at all! I figured I would just cancel the night shoot - but by the time I had started to make that decision, the girls were already in hair and makeup touch ups for the night shoot and I figured we'd go through it anyway. Bad call. Everyone was tired. The general energy in the room was very weird. It seemed to be the time that everyone wanted to drop by to see the photo shoot (husband, boytfriends, friends, producers...) We kicked everyone out - but the energy necessary to do a photoshoot wasn't there. Then a lamp fell into the water (never a good thing) and although it was perfectly safe as electrical code requires all power within a facility around water to have GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interupters) to kill the power nearly instantly when it comes in contact with water - it was too much. Shortly after the shoot started, I called it and shut it down sending everyone to relax for the evening. It's one of those times that I should have listened to my instincts and just canceled it. We got a couple great pictures from it - but it wasn't necessary from the GREAT pictures we got all day long. Eventually - after MUCH chaos, and problems, six of our seven CamGirls arrive today - Steph, Sunny, Lilith, Kat, Ana and Immora (formerly of Immora.net) all make it in safely. Li, unfortunately, is so screwed by incliment weather that they cancel her flights all together. She spends over six hours in her airport getting bounced from one flight to the next and eventually goes home very frustrated and tired. We end up booking her on a new flight for the morning. I collapse into bed sometime around 3 or 4am and set the alarm for 8:00 the next morning... August 8, 2005 So today was a very hectic day. We had about seven of the girls arriving at the airport all at different times, and we had photo shoots with Renee, Shelly, and Jessica. Plus we were doing follow-up interviews with the girls as well. With a small crew this was a fun day. I like to call it organized chaos. I swear I was like a chicken running around with its head cut off. We left the airport pick-ups and other misc. stuff for Shaina and Kamala to do. I stayed at the hotel with Jay and tried to keep everything organized as much as possible. The first official day of shooting is always a little hectic and today wasn’t any different. Renee was up first for photos. Once we got her started at the Palms pool, we got Shelly going in hair and make-up for her shoot. They both looked amazing, Dawn did an incredible job on make-up, and the photos taken by Chris and Mike D. were phenomenal. By the time noon came around I had only eaten a cereal bar, but I was running around so much that I never had time to feel hungry. We had set up craft service in my room, guess who decided that one :), so we had plenty of waters, snacks, and my favorite pb and j sandwiches. Yippie!!!! I hope you can sense my sarcasm in that. Actually I love PB&J reminds me of school lunches when I was a kid. Anyways by now a few of the other girls were arriving. This was another fun thing to organize because Jay and I wanted to be there to greet them and get them checked in, but at the same time we had to be at other places in the hotel. Somehow we both managed to be Superman and Wonder woman. It was great seeing most of the girls because I hadn’t seen them since Oct./Nov. of last year. It’s always fun having a reunion of any sort. It’s interesting seeing the changes people have gone through, some more than others. The afternoon turned out to be a little more hectic for me because Jay was doing interviews with Renee and Shelly, so he was inaccessible. We encountered a little problem when Mike D. was shooting Jessica. The shutter on his camera was having problems causing the pics not to come out as they should. We were losing sunlight, but luckily we also had Chris as a photographer, so we had him stop his photos with Shelly and come finish up with Jessica. I played wardrobe girl for Jessica. I was very proud of the choices I picked for her. Maybe I missed my calling in life ;) Once photos finished up I had most of the girls who had just arrived come to my room to get their goodie bags. We put together “Camgirls” clothing for them. We had tank tops, t-shirts, sweat pants, jeans, sunglasses, and robes. Very fun giving away free stuff, especially when I get a bag too. We did one last photo shoot with Renee, Shelly, and Jessica all together, and then we were done. I could tell everyone was exhausted. Oh! forgot one huge thing we had to deal with all day, and that was delayed flights. Something must have been in the air because every single flight was delayed. Li’s flight was actually cancelled, and she was coming from Virginia. She sat at the airport all day and was never able to leave. This of course made her very frustrated and not wanting to come out. I don’t blame her, but I know she would be missing out, and we really wanted her to be a part of this. So I got on the phone with her and literally begged her to get on the flight in the morning. I finally got her to agree, so Li would be on her way in the morning. By now it was around 10pm, and I had only eaten that cereal bar and a PB&J sandwich, so I needed to eat. Ended up going to the café at the hotel with Shaina, Dawn, and Kamala. Ended up splitting a huge turkey burger with Kamala. Now it was time to sleep. Oh the bed never felt so good. August 7, 2005 Renee and I arrived in Las Vegas this morning at 10:00am from Los Angeles. Good flight. We're due to meet Renee and Shelly at the airport shortly after 10:30am. Because they were both bringing their husband/boytfriend, they had asked to book their own flights and came in very early. As we arrived at the airport Renee and I made our way to baggage claim and waited patiently for our luggage to have a ride on the carosel. We quickly got her suitcase and my suitcase and... and... Um... Where's the camera? Yup. Somewhere in the vast distance between Los Angeles and Las Vegas - our camera was lost in oblivion. Sonofa... ! As I walk briskly toward the airline customer service area, I run in to Shelly and Renee waiting for their luggage. I file a lost bag claim and hope in my heart that someone didn't walk away with one of our cameras. Luckily, in the spirit of covering-our-asses we trucked our two other cameras in with the equipment - they were due to arrive in Vegas within the hour - and I had carried on our fourth "behind-the-scenes" camera. We hopped in a car to the hotel - getting there long before check-in time - and sat down to get something to eat. The crew was due to arrive at just after 2:00 that afternoon and we were scheduled to start some work in promotional photography session with Renee and Shelly at 4:00. We were told, however, that we weren't going to be able to check into our rooms until after 4:00. Ugh. Day one and the schedule is already out of whack. Shelly and Renee had long flights from Florida, we're off schedule aready and I made the call to just cut the session that night and relax. We'd jump in head first in the morning. I heard a little rumor that some of the girls were upset that some girls were coming to Vegas sooner than others. It's frustrating to me that that happens - but I suppose it's only natural. Anyone who came to me and asked me about it, I explained that there were a number of reasons that we staggered the arrivals of everyone in Vegas. The main idea for the Vegas trip was the group interview on Wednesday, so in scheduling we had to have everyone in on Tuesday. That was the first step. Then we had to consider doing the promotional photography sessions. We couldn't shoot everyone on Tuesday - it simply wasn't possible, so we started figuring out how many of the girls we could shoot in one day (even going so far as to add a second photographer to the crew to make sure that we could get everyone in). This timeline backed us off to starting on Monday. With photography happening on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we could get everyone in - assuming our locations within the hotel didn't get messed around. We, unfortunately, couldn't afford to bring everyone in the whole time - and the hotel didn't have the room for all of us the whole time - so we staggered the arrivals - starting primarily geographically and bringing in the girls from the farthest sooner. There also was a marrying of specific girls to specific locations within the hotel and restrictions on when we could have access to those specific locations to shoot - that was a factor. Another important factor was that some of the girls I needed to do follow-up interviews. I needed to ask questions that we missed on the road the first time or go deeper into a subject that will most likely be covered in the doc. Those girls needed to come in earlier with enough time to make that happen.. Making the schedule for this shoot was a lot like trying to solve a Rubics Cube. Everytime you shift a row to get your color in line, nine other colors shift OUT of line... The bottom line is that we aren't playing favorites with anyone - it's all about logistics. I hope that clears it up. All of our team arrived well and safely. Jessica (formerly of GorJess.net) also arrived today - as she wound up taking the slot of one of the CamGirls who dropped from the project, we schedule her in very early as well. The airline found our camera. The gear arrived and we're all set to start work in the morning! Woo-hoo! One of my hobbies has become playing poker, so - you know - while in Vegas... Tonight I sat down at a $2-$4 Texas Hold 'Em table for about 20 minutes before going to bed. I laid down the minimum of $20 dollars and walked away with $67. I was very proud of myself and went to bed with a smile. I doubt that I'll have the chance to play again - so I'm glad that I was able to sit down for a little bit. August 7, 2005 So the day has finally come for us to head to Vegas for the Camgirl reunion. I’m very excited about it. I haven’t seen most of these girls for over 10 months, and a lot can change in that short amount of time. It’s going to be very interesting seeing these girls meet for the first time. They all know of each other since the cam world is a small one, but most have never met. I’m sure they’re a bit nervous because I know I would be if this was my first time to Vegas and meeting a bunch of new people. So today was basically our travel day. I met Jay at the airport at 7:30am. I’m not much of a morning person, but surprisingly I was in a great mood as I was dropped off at the airport. Jay and I left on a different flight than our crew because we had to meet Renee and Shelly in Vegas since they were coming in earlier than everyone else since they had booked their own travel. We had no problems with our flight, which was great since we were flying Southwest. We arrived in Vegas and made our way to baggage claim. We encountered our first problem as we waited at baggage claim. We were missing one of our Canon XL2 cameras. Kind of a problem I would say. All we could do was report the claim and wait to see if it shows up. In the meantime we met up with Renee and her boyfriend Mike and Shelly and her husband Mike, headed off to the hotel. We got to the hotel, around noon, but we couldn’t check in until 3pm, so we had to kill some time. We all went to the breakfast buffet at the hotel, which wasn’t too bad. I love breakfast food, so I had no complaints. I was curious about our camera so I called the airline and miraculously they had it, and said they would deliver it to the hotel. The rest of the crew arrived in the afternoon. We all just hung out until we could check in, and once three rolled around we were excited to finally get in our rooms. I’m rooming with my really good friend Dawn. She’s our make-up artist, and is absolutely amazing. I’ve known her for over 6 years, so if fun that we get to hang out for a week together. Also my friend Shaina and Kamala are playing production coordinators for the week. Shaina used to be one of my roommates, so kind of a reunion for me. The rest of the day was very laid back. We decided not to do any photo shoots until the morning. We had a crew/production meeting that night, and then it was off to bed to begin a very busy week. August 6, 2005 Well, we're off in the morning for Vegas. People keep asking me if I'm excited and I'm never really quite sure how to respond. I've found that I say, 'No. I'm just concentrated.' helps to answer the question honestly and fairly succinctly. There are far too many details and far too much going on for me to have time to really be excited. It's going to be much fun, for sure, but there is a lot of work to be done to make sure this week happens, so all those details are taking up all the 'excited' room in my brain. We've got a great team assembled for Vegas. We have two new cameramen - both very talented. I've worked with Keith before, but this will be my first time with Eduardo. I met Keith when he was working on Catch Me If You Can and we hit it off well. He lit a cooking show for me - wonderfully - and we've been looking for a chance to work together again since. I'm glad he's on this. Shaina and Kamala are our two coordinators who will be taking care of the logistics of three simultaneous working crews every day in Vegas. Three of our execuitve producers will also be there in Vegas, Eric Arlt, Ryan Harper and Rusty Gray. And we've got two amazing photographers doing our promotional shooting - Mike D and Christopher Probst. All good stuff. Night all! August 4, 2005 Woof! Gearing up for Vegas and snapping all the final pieces into place. Got a chance to update the blogs from our Northern Cali trip - Renee is back, folks! Woo hoo! (see below) Things have been crazy and chaotic - but all good. We've got our full crew in place and all of the components (save for one anoying detail that I'm still working on) are locked in. It's going to be a blast. In my moments between setting up Vegas, I've been working on the rest of the footage. We only shot a mere five hours up in Northern Cali and that was fairly easy to get into the system (actually took 10 hours to get it in, but still no big deal). I went through and logged all of that and then finished up the logging on Sunny... So... I'M DONE LOGGING!!! That is, until we shoot more. There's also preliminary editing and categorizing of six of the girl's formal interview sessions that I have yet to do. Probably another 30 hours of work before I get into the new footage - but I'm trying to get most of it done as I can before we leave for Vegas and get more footage!!! Weee... I threatened my two new cameramen that if they shoot too much, I'll burry them in the sand between LA and Vegas... Dan won't be with us on this trip. He's busy producing the new show So You Think YOu Can Dance - everyone watch his show and show your love. During this week, my wife took time off work to do a late spring cleaning in the house here. It has been scheduled since, like, April - and it just happened to land in my prep week for Vegas. Although I'm glad to have been spared most of the work (she worked like CRAZY for four days straight) I really feel guilty for not helping more. I pitched in when I could, but every time I was cleaning, I started stressing on the amount of work needed to be done on CamGirls. Sometimes balancing home life and work gets to be a delicate deal. She was pretty amazingly understanding though and happy when I helped with whatever I could. Gotta love the woman (I do!). So we're just a couple of days away from Vegas. Most of the equipment pick up happens tomorrow. It'll be trucked in - which makes the crew flights much easier (no lugging twenty heavy cases and getting hit with luggage overages at every flight...). More as it happens. July 29, 2005 I woke up about four this morning damn near in a cold sweat realizing that we overlooked a pretty serious detail... We need three cameras for Vegas. My plan was to actually purchase one camera, which we would have until the completion of the project and then sell it, and rent two. We got a wonderful offer from Canon to purchase directly from them at a low cost, but there was a timeline to do that - and it has passed as we were concentrating on other things. Now we've got to purchase one (to keep long term - about two or three months - and not pay a daily rental, works out to be MUCH cheaper) at a higher cost and, after selling it later, spend more money than originally intended. I was not happy this morning. Fired off a "CRAP!!" e-mail to my executive producer, who responded this morning with a "don't worry about it, we'll take care of it" very calming response. He rocks. I'm back to logging today, spending most of the weekend trying to get through the remaining 10 hours (5 left from Sunny and 5 we shot with Shaun and Jessica). We all sit down for a production meeting on Monday and this week is all about final details. Good stuff. July 26, 2005 9:40pm We're back in Los Angeles! After the interview with Jessica last night, Renee and I invited Jessica to come along to Vegas and participate in the group interview. She agreed, but was having difficulty with a family member who was very concerned about her sudden decision to run off to Vegas with a "documentary crew" - heh - who could blame them? I got a call from Jessica this morning that her family member would like to meet with me. Not a problem. As I had said from the beginning with all the interviewees, I have no problem talking with anyone who has any questions about the project and have no problem with anyone looking into me before agreeing to participate. We met with Jessica's family member and had a lovely talk. After calming her concerns, Renee and I headed back to Los Angeles a couple days early. Although we lost one interviewee and had to cut our trip short, we gained one through the help of Shaun and got two wonderful interviews in one! Plus, it gave me more prep time and that is considerably lowering my stress levels -- always a good thing. Renee and I made the drive back today. I'm already digizting the footage we shot with Shaun and Jessica and getting ready to finish off the last of the logging (before getting a ton more footage in Vegas, weeee). Now off to bed soon, I'm beat. July 26, 2005 1:30am Holy crap, what a day! Renee and I hooked up with Shaun at her house at around 10am. Renee was a bit off kilter because there was no air-conditioning in her room, so she requested a room change before we left the hotel. Man, I would have flipped out and probably tried to strangle someone. We met with Shaun and got a tour of her house, spent a little get-to-know-you time, she's very shy and quiet, but once she warms up she's got a sharp scarcastic wit that keeps you on your toes. We ventured out to do a little grocery shopping with Shaun, picked up a few things, and Shaun got a call from Jessica (formerly of GorJess.net), a friend of hers, about meeting up with Shaun later that day. I was very interested in meeting Jessica as I had originally approached her for the documentary, but she had turned me down. After shopping we went back to Shaun's, spent some time on the computer. It always amazes me when the camgirls get on cam how many instant message windows pop up... She dealt with the barrage very well. After a while, Jessica came over and we got a chance to meet her. She seemed very shy and reserved when she first met us, but when she warmed up she was not shy at all. After dinner we went back to Shaun's and set up for the interview. We asked Jessica if she would be interested in doing a bit of an interview, and she was open. This was a first for me - actually interviewing two camgirls at once, and it opened up a very interesting flow (sort of a precursor to the group interview in Vegas, for me). As we got rolling, it became an amazing interview. Almost two years ago when I first interviewed Shaun online, she was the first one to bring up the idea of Social Anxiety to me and the relationship to the cam world - it was significantly due to that discovery (for lack of a better word) that led me to start thinking about a documentary. Shaun talked openly about her troubles with social anxiety and how her site helped her. It was a fascinating conversation. Jessica, the soft-spoken but outspoken former camgirl sat back and gave answers like she was reading off my note sheets. Her views were spot on with my whole thesis of the project - namely there are immediate stereotypes that people impose on camgirls, but there is much more to the world than meets the casual eye. Both Shaun and Jessica - like so many of the women we selected for this project - have a very clear concept of what they're doing and why. The interviews were great! There was a dark side to the evening, however. Just before we sat down for the interviews I got a call from Kellee. I had been unable to contact her for almost a week and was getting very nervous. She sounded very distraught and told me that she couldn't participate in the project. There are other events happening in her life that have caused her to reconsider. It's not my place to make any judgements, nor to go into any further detail here. I'll close by saying I sincerely wish her well and hope only for the best. Like Drea (if you have been reading all along, you may recall Drea as a camgirl we were scheduled to interview but due to a tragic turn tried to take her own life just a few days before we were scheduled to meet with her, she has since recovered and - to my knowledge - is doing well), her well being is much more important than being part of this project. Take care, Kellee. July 26, 2005 In the morning when I went Jay’s room, very cranky and tired, I was informed we would be meeting with a member Jessica’s family before we left to come back. We waited for her in the lobby for a bit, and when she arrived we talked to her about her concerns over the project and the trip to Vegas. By the end she was comfortable enough to let Jessica go. So we have another CamGirl on board for Las Vegas! I’m very excited because Jessica had been a CamGirl for over 6 years, so she has plenty to talk about. Well once that was done we got back on the road and drove back to LA. I took a much need cat nap in the car and read the script of a project that has been offered to Jay. Other then that it was a pretty simple day. July 25, 2005 Woke up around 9am. Was a bit tired, didn’t exactly sleep well in over a 100 degree room. I went to the front desk and got my room switched, but we had to leave to meet up with Jaunty so didn’t get a chance to check it out. Made it to Jaunty’s, and I could tell she was a bit shy. I would be too if I had two complete strangers who wanted to invade my life for the day. We ended up filming Jaunty for a bit in her house and then we went on errands with her. We went to the grocery store ( which had some amazing deals!), we then went to lunch at Chili’s (my influence) and then back to Jaunty’s house to wait for her friend Jessica. By late afternoon, Jessica showed up. She used to be a CamGirl for a quite a while(gorjess.net), so she was already familiar with what we were doing. She is a very cute girl with a great personality. So we ended up going to the mall with the two girls as they returned clothes. We stopped at Mrs. Fields cookie, cus Jessica was craving cookies. She got a bag full of the small ones, which I ended up eating a few J. By now everyone was getting kind of hungry, so then went to Jamba Juice, and from there we went to dinner. We all had a great dinner, and at dinner Jay and I proposed having Jessica come to Las Vegas. She seemed very receptive and down for going, but had to speak with her family before officially confirming. By now it was getting dark enough to set up for the interview. So we went back to Jaunty’s and decided to try something unique. We decided to do kind of a duel interview with the two girls. Right before the interview was to begin, Jay got a phone call. He disappeared for a bit, so I went outside to check on him and could tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t good. Well I guess the call was from Kellee, our girl up in Oregon. She had second thoughts and didn’t want to be involved in the project anymore. Nothing much we can do about that, so it meant we’d be driving back to LA two days early. I immediately got on the phone and I was able to get our hotel rooms canceled without having to pay fees. After that was taken care of we started the interview, which was great because both girls had some amazing things to say about the cam world. Besides interviewing together we also had some one on one time with each girl. Once the interview was done we packed up and went back to the hotel. I went to my new room, and the air conditioning didn’t work in there either. I guess you could say I’m stubborn, because I decided to suffer through it and not go switch rooms again. Well it was the wrong decision because that room was literally over 100 degrees and no ventilation. I slept on the floor by the window, but still couldn’t sleep. July 25, 2005 3:20am On the Road Again… We arrived in Modesto, California about an hour ago, checked into the hotel – which was built and designed sometime around when Elvis was King – and got all our gear up to the room. Love hotels without elevators when we’re on the second floor. Renee and I set off from Los Angeles just before 9pm tonight and made the drive north. We settled into our old repoitoire rather quickly – amusing each other with the odd anecdote and even getting lost on our way here. HA! Good times. :) It’s a little odd switching gear and getting out of postproduction mode back into production mode. I’m happy to be back in shooting mode, again, back in the learning and interviewing phase and anxious to meet Shaun tomorrow, as she marks a turning point in this project from the first interview to the start of the last phase. It’ll be very cool to meet her tomorrow. Many details still to figure out for the Vegas end of the project. Still crewing up some positions, constantly looking at the budget and reevaluating areas to try and keep the costs down. I am happy to be in the air conditioning, however. Most of Los Angeles doesn’t have air conditioning – and we fall into that category. For about 48 weeks out of the year, that isn’t ever a problem. But there is a 3 to 4 week period in July and August that things get really unbearable. My poor wife and dog are stuck in the sauna of an apartment with some nine fans running at full blast. I get to sprawl out in the hotel room and crank the air conditioning to a hearty 65 degrees and sigh with devious pleasure (I’m fairly famous for always keeping hotel rooms at a nearly frigid temperature. Keeps the ice in the ice bucket from melting too soon… :) ). Today was a pretty relaxed, but busy day. I had prepped all the gear and packed that away yesterday (Saturday), so I just had to pack my personal stuff today. I spent a good portion of the day logging Sunny’s footage (not nearly as much of a nightmare as I had feared) and am more than halfway through. I had wanted to finish off her footage – thereby finishing off all the logging – before we set out for this trip, but that didn’t quite happen. I got close, however, just four more hours of footage to go (about 8-10 hours of logging). Then I’ll get to add in the footage we get from Shaun and Kellee and log that! Weee… When I get back to LA, my wife has a spring cleaning week planned. Whoo boy. Much fun. I promised her I would assist while I was capturing the new footage into the computer (probably take two or three days to do that depending on how much we get from Kellee and Shaun), but when that was done I had to abandon the dust bunnies and bulging charity donation bags and get back to logging. She gave me one of those I-can’t-believe-I’m-going-to-let-you-get-out-of-this kinds of looks and just said “Well, you’re going to work your ass off the days you are working.” And indeed I will. Time to get some sleep. We’ll be up with Shaun around 10am and then making our drive into Oregon on Tuesday. July 24, 2005 Hard to believe it has been over 9 months since we were on the road filming. Well we’re back at it again. This time it’s more of a local trip. We’re heading to Modesto, CA and Eugene, OR to film Jaunty and Kellee who are obviously two more camgirls. We didn’t leave to drive the five hours trip until 9 pm on Sunday. I was throwing my best friend a birthday party that afternoon, so Jay was nice enough to postpone leaving till then. It turned out to be a great party. We held it in the backyard of one of my friends, and his roommate’s band played almost the entire time. I cooked food for everyone, and we had plenty of alcohol and munchies to eat. My girlfriends and I dressed up in dresses for the fun of it. As soon as 8:30 hit, I headed home and waited for Jay. Jay picked me up around 9p, and then we were off. I was a trooper and even though I wanted to go to sleep, I stayed awake to keep Jay entertained. We took a little detour along the way, but in the end we made it to Modesto at around 2am. We checked into the hotel, and I got to my room and the air conditioning was broken. I was too exhausted to go bitch about it, so I just suffered through it. July 22, 2005 Okay... It's official... I am seriously sick of logging footage. It's been three months of non-stop footage logging. Sure, it's the nature of the beast, but I'm starting to get numb, and that's not good. I'm starting to loose patience with the footage, and that is even worse. It's a good thing Renee and I leave for a week on the road to get two more interviews on Sunday. Get out - get back into the thick of it, back to the orgin of the stories and the reason I'm doing this thing. Back to GATHERING MORE FOOTAGE TO LOG!!! WEEEEEE! I've suddenly become the Sisyphus of digital footage... But all bitching aside, I'm SERIOUSLY looking forward to starting to edit this baby. There's a lot of pressure to get a cut by a tighly looming deadline, but I'm fairly confident that I can do so. Although I'm notorious for missing "soft" deadlines (ones that are not really set in stone), I have never missed a hard deadline in my life. If it can be done, I'll be doing it. And having a ball. Looking foward to meeting Jaunty and Kellee. Kellee and I have been chatting online for years and she is a very unique addition to this project. Unlike any of the other girls, Kellee has never had a website. Her camming is on a much more personal level and she has had some extraordinary experiences. Jaunty is actually the first official interview I ever conducted online - even before the project was a documentary or I had even dreamed of the idea of doing a doc. Jaunty's interview was part of the initial inspiration that showed me there was a lot more going on to this camworld than just naked women and money (which is the common perception). I've got to divorce my mind from the logging process. I'm a bit gunshy on collecting footage now, because I know I'm just going to have to go through it later. When we started out our interviews and visitations, we were shooting a bloated 18 hours a girl. By the end of the trip we were much more focused and thoughtful in what we captured, getting more along the lines of 6-8 hours a girl. Because I've been in this logging hell for so long, I have a desire to go gather an hour of footage and call it a day - but that would be short-changing the experience with these girls and not doing justice to them or the doc. Finding a good middle ground is important. Need to sit back, take a deep breath, and get myself back into director mode. That's easier said than done, really, as I'm finishing up the last two girls now in logging. The final girl is Sunny, and I'm TERRIFIED to get into Sunny's footage. During the 18 months of my research, Sunny became one of my closest coconspirators online. Not only is she just damn brilliant, but her knowledge and insight into the camworld is without equal. I treated my time with Sunny different than any other interview, because Sunny was my resident expert. I also knew the time she was spending with us outside of her home was extremely difficult for her - so my two days with Sunny was spent in a Toronto hotel room in constant interview mode. Whereas with the rest of the girls we had a two hour, or so, interview and the rest of the time was spent going about their normal day - with Sunny, it was eight or nine hours of constant interview and discussion (over the course of two days). That is the hardest stuff to log - and since nearly every other sentence out of Sunny's mouth is a nugget of information gold, I know the work to log and sift through her footage is going to be considerable. Nothing like saving the hardest for last, huh? This blog document has gotten so long now. I know most great camgirl programmers are cringing at the lack of sophistication in my blog here (yeah, it's just me in Notepad typing in each entry in HTML), and it's probably time to archive off half or more of this... Maybe soon. Now it's off to bed. Gotta get up and keep logging tommorrow to get as close as possible to finishing it all off before we leave on Sunday night. Wish me luck! Hey, once we get back on the road, Renee will be back in the blog as well. She's been working with me in postproduction hell here, but has been staying quiet. We'll let her out of her cage next week. July 19, 2005 Hey! So the big news is out. Actually, it's been out a while, but I've been so slammed dealing with it that I haven't had a chance to update. Phase 2 of the documentary is finally under way. We'll be bringing ALL the interviewees (except for two who, unfortunately, can't make it) together in Las Vegas at the Palms to do follow up interviews and a big group interview. Thirteen CamGirls from all over the US and Toronto will come together for the first time for a few days and talk about the CamWorld. We're all very excited and preparations - as you can imagine - have been pretty hectic. On the postproduction side, we're STILL logging footage. Yes, STILL. Editing hasn't officially started yet - but we only have two girls left to log and Renee and I are working like crazy to get that done before we head off for our next two interviews before Vegas. We'll be going up to Northern Califorina to interview the very first camgirl I ever did an online interview with, and then going into Oregon to interview a very different kind of cam girl. Once we get back, we'll have a final week to prep for Vegas and then it's pure fun. Everyone is looking forward to this and there is a lot of discussion happening in blogs and forums about this trip. We're very honored to bring together the largest single group of camgirls at one time - that we're aware of - ever. The original idea for this group gathering was to have a rough cut of the documentary completed and bring all the interviewees together to see it and then talk about it after, but that is not going to happen for a number of reasons. First off, I became far too sold on the value of the group interview. Getting everyone together at once to discuss the big issues around camming was something I absolutely had to have in the doc. Since this will be part of the documentary, I couldn't complete it without it. Next, since we're still logging footage, there won't even be a rough-rough assembly by the time we get to the dates for Vegas. The Vegas dates were determined based on availability of The Palms hotel and casino (who are graciously hosting us) and the fact that a cut of the project (including the follow up and group interviews) needs to be completed by September 30 - there was no other window of opportunity to do this. I would still like to get the interviewees all together and watch the final project, but that will have to wait. I know there are a lot of nervous people in the community who are dreading the release of this project. I know there have been whispers of "media is baaaad" circulating around - but, really. If we were looking to do some cheesy expose on the horrors of the Internet - it wouldn't take over two years to do. That kind of sensationalistic crap is pretty easy to do with just a little footage and some creative editing. My biggest problem is working to integrate all the extraordinary stories into one 90 minute doc. The follow-ups and group interviews will really help me get the most about the most important subjects. My initial interview consisted of a questionaire of well over 100 questions. Each interview was at least two hours long. After going through 90% of the footage and those interviews, I've got a much better idea about the important subjects to discuss and that "shotgun" approach can be greatly refined with just a few follow up questions. As Production is gearing up again (we leave for Northern Califorina Sunday night), we'll be updating the blog more and keep you all up to date on what is happening in Vegas. Or... At least the things we can TALK about that happen in Vegas. Because, as everyone knows... What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... Except, of course, what the CamGirls cameras happen to witness. :-) June 25, 2005 Happy Saturday, all. It's been a good week - a busy week. Renee and I have been getting through quite a bit of the footage this week - plugging away. Got a call from our executive producers to greenlight the second (and final) phase of the documentary shooting! Yeah!! Big announcements coming soon. We're working on some fun stuff! Not much I can get into right now, but the last two days have been extremely busy. All good stuff and we're all very excited about it. I'll post more when I can. June 7, 2005 Wow! I feel so loved! I've gotten some overwhelming responses to the fact that I started updating this blog again. I had no idea so many people were checking back so often. Sincerely sorry, folks. Had a great meeting tonight with composer Buck Sanders, who has worked on all of my last projects. Buck is amazing and I'm really happy he's signed on to CamGirls. We talked about a number of different musical concepts, how we might suppliment that with already-recorded music and what kinds of sounds I was hearing for the project. I gave him some inspirational music that I was listening to while I was working on the project and I'm excited for what he'll come back with. Renee has been spending a lot more time in the edit suite working on logging footage with me. She's helped considerably to take a bit of the load off. Unfortunately we aren't set up to work simultaniously, but the more time she is able to put in frees me up to work on other aspects of the project like graphics and so forth. Last week Renee and I had a great meeting with executive producer Ryan Harper to discuss what it is going to take to finish this project: the additional interviews, equipment and some relatively big plans that - if they come to fruition - will be a hell of a lot of fun! I'll keep you all posted on those. The biggest challenge for me in this post-production phase has been how the structure of the storytelling is going to work. I talked quite a bit in the last entry about the mechanical aspects of the edit, but now I'm dealing more with the narrative aspects. It's very easy to cut a film that jumps from one subject to the next and tells about the cam world - but that's not what I'm trying to do. We very carefully selected all of our interviewees because they each had something unique - a unique perspective, story, inspiration, attitude, etc. I don't want to lose each interviewee's personality in a clinical and dry edit. Also, I've been struggling lately more and more with keeping Renee and I out of the documentary. Meaning - us as characters in the story telling. There are two ways (there are many more, but let's just look at these two for now and put the rest back in the Pandora's box of editing structures...) to put together a documentary. One is that the filmmaker becomes part of the documentary - a la "Super Size Me" or "Bowling for Columbine." In those films, Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore narrate the project as a "this is the journey we went on - and this is what I learned..." - that's one way. The other way is to keep the filmmaker invisible to the audience. Let the subjects tell the whole story. You have no idea who the filmmaker really is because they aren't part of the final project. That's the way that I've been leaning for quite some time - but I'm starting to think it might not work that way... Or that could just be a cop out. It's WAAAAAAAY easy for me to cut this thing together as "Hey, I'm Jay - and Renee and I went on a mission to learn about CamGirls..." and we're off. Too easy. It seems like that would be taking the path more traveled... BUT - sometimes taking the more readily used path is the best choice... And with that you get an insight into the torture I've been putting myself through for many months... BUT! Never fear, fearless reader, I'm getting a hell of a lot closer to making a decision. More on this story as it develops. Jay Holben, CBS News, Managua. May 23, 2005 HELLO ALL! Contrary to popular gossip - no we have not dropped off the face of the planet. No, we have not taken the footage, sold it to Dateline and ran off to the Bahamas... No, we haven't been sucked up by Aliens... We're still here. Going strong and working hard. I realize it's been a long time since we posted here. When I started this production blog I had no idea how popular it would become - and it was only intended to be a production blog, not a post-production blog (which is, technically where we are now; in post-production). To catch you all up a bit - after returning home in November we all had a little breather and then started putting together the resources to build an editing room to cut the movie. Unfortunately, for one reason on top of another, it took more than three months to gather together the resources for that system. By early March we had all the components in place and I dove head-first into getting all the footage into the computer. For those geeks out there, we shot 160 hours of footage thus far. It was all shot 24p DV with the Canon XL2 (we were the first feature to use the new model) and capturing that into a computer at about 13 gigabytes per hour works out to be just under two terabytes of storage space. Just figuring out how to cost effectively and efficiently put together that much hard drive space was no easy feat. In addition, it took nearly three weeks to get the footage into the computer... That brings us to April. April was a very busy month for me. Unfortunately, I do still have to work on other jobs than just CamGirls to keep the bills paid. I wound up doing a great deal of work for Nike, some for Teen People and we had a promotional screening for all of the productions Your Half Pictures has been involved with thus far. In addition, I had to spend a week in Vegas for an industry-related trade show... Then comes May... FINALLY! Although I had looked at a good portion of the footage prior to this moment (really about 50 hours or so), I wasn't able to really catalog that footage until now... Finally, at the first of May, I am able to start to dive into the footage hardcore. Now there is 160 hours of footage and I need a method of dealing with that much footage as I try to cut a 90 minute movie - so I spent a lot of time in the preceding months trying to figure out an organization system. I finally found a good system that is also helping me to define what the structure of the actual documentary will be. Again, no easy feat. A number of times during this I've had to re-invent the wheel and fumble my way through things like creating a viable database to log all of the significant moments from each hour of footage. I found out about two weeks into doing just that that there is already a program that exists for reality television editors... Go figure. I'll stick with my own. :) It takes me about a week to get through each interviewee's footage. I have to watch each hour. Each moment that something significant happens that may be useful later (a VERY nebulous definition, I know), I have to mark that moment and then record in my data base who the interviewee was, what tape it was on, what happened, the general category that fell into (pets, home, friends, technology, etc.) what the capture clip is named and then move on to the next moment. Each hour of footage has somewhere between 30 and 60 such moments logged. When it comes to the formal interviews, each time a new question is asked, I have to log that moment. Each time a new idea is discussed, I have to log that. Right now, I'm into the footage of the fourth girl. I've been through about 35 hours of footage and have more than 1500 moments logged in the database. After I do that, I take the formal interviews and sync the two cameras together (we shot two cameras on most of the footage, especially the interviews) and then edit out every time Renee or myself speaks and make edits for each new answer and each new thought. Then those answers are copied into a folder with all the other interviewee's thoughts on that particular subject. For instance, everytime one of the interviewees talks about viewer requests, I put that response into one area so that one area has everyone's comments on that one subject alone. It's a looooong process, but it's remarkable how much I am relearning about what we got on the road. How many answers that I wasn't able to fully digest in the heat of the moment. With all that being said, we still have shooting to do. There are still more interviews to gather and we're trying to organize all of that. So, since we've had so many requests to do so - I'll try to keep this blog more up to date as the process continues. Right now it's a very tedious process that doesn't really illicit much to talk about - but I'll give it a shot regardless. Best to all of you. Thanks for reading. November 23, 2004 Been home almost a week - will be a week tomorrow - and getting back into the swing of things. It's rather odd how bizarre certain aspects of home felt when I got back. I had never been away for that long before, and little things - like this keyboard on my desktop computer - were rather foreign to me. Even my bed, which I love, took a night to get used to. Had a chance to see and catch up with friends, return some of the gear and start to prep for the last phase of shooting. Yesterday I spent a large portion of the day shooting my computer screen - shooting elements of the sites for the girls that we visited. It's a tedious process, but it's got to be done. :) The holidays are always rather disruptive to any kind of productive business. It's so hard to get people to work around the holidays - so many people take vacation, go see family elsewhere, or just plain shut down. Chances are we won't really be back up and running until after the first of the year. Hopefully we'll get some good work done in December - we'll see. Working on the ghost tales tonight to get that page up. Had a lot of requests for it and a lot of people refreshing that damn "coming soon" page - sorry folks. Just a little tease there. It'll be up soon. November 17, 2004 Travel day back to Los Angeles. We were up pretty early - at the airport by 6:50am - checked in and caught our flight out to Atlanta. Then the next flight to Los Angeles. Josh, our executive producer, met us at the airport with a vehicle to cart away the gear and my lovely wife and dog met me at the airport to take me home... Man it was nice to see them. Spent most of the day getting settled and zonked out rather early - sleeping a good 12 hours. The job certainly isn't done yet. We've finished up our big tour, but we've got another half dozen girls to interview and then post-production begins. Everyone is asking me "How long do you think it will take?" Good grief. I have no idea. I'm hoping six months - but it could be longer... We'll see. November 16, 2004 Our last day of shooting on this trip. We spent the day with Renee again, starting out with her at her place and seeing a bit of the school work she's doing for her graphic design classes. Then we spent a few minutes on cam, our Renee getting into the action and having dueling Renees on cam. We spent a good half hour or so arguing the political views of gay marriage and then went off to get some grub. After some grub we went off and hit a go-cart track and did a little racing. The two Renees went first and came back visibly shaken. Apparently the track was a bit of a scary one. It's multi leveled, lots of ramps and curves and made up of wooden slats - like a rope bridge. That got Dan and I going for sure. I am NOT a roller coaster fan. I do not like being out of control and being zipped around - but if I am in control of the vehicle - then BRING IT ON! Dan and I went for a race around the track - he whomped my ass, but I had my car floored the full time and couldn't catch up with him. He slowed down at one point so we could race neck-and-neck - and we had fun doing that - but he still whomped my ass to the finish line. We ended the evening at Renee's favorite watering hole and then headed back to her place to say goodbye. For all the crap that has been written about Renee on the Internet, for all the slack that she's taken for her site and her cam, she is NOT what people make her out to be. Renee's a wonderful woman, very down-to-earth, very smart and a lot of fun to hang with. It was really a great end to the trip. November 15, 2004 WE'RE BACK! Sorry folks - we haven't been neglecting you. Internet connections here in Florida have been sketchy (dial-up, baby - it sucks) and, for some reason, I haven't been able to access my server at all. That seems to have been remedied. Renee's updated blogs will be coming soon, too... As will the Ghost Hunting page... bear with me on that one. We're still discussing potential debunking theories and still discovering "orbs" around us quite often. We think Renee might be haunted. :)... Today we met with Renee, and I can honestly say that I was a little nervous about that. She has been so scorned by the media that I was afraid we would never have a chance to talk with her. I'm very happy that she's decided to meet with us and be part of the project and it says a lot about what we represent that she's willing to trust us. As with all the interviewees, I have a great responsibility to be faithful to their intent as I edit this project tkljhsogethenaewill be no small challenge to take over 150 hours of footage and edit that down to 90 minutes without harming the context in which each piece was intended. It's far too easy to tweak things one way or another and I've been working very hard to keep a hold on what is said and what is intended. I've been doing this kind of thing for years in my writing for American Cinematographer Magazine, and now I just have to do it on a grander scale. Renee was fantastic. She is an incredibly intelligent girl, very modest, very humble and very sweet. I've worked to maintain an open mind with all my research and not form any impression of anyone before we meet, so I've never had a situation of meeting one of these girls and thinking, "Wow. They're nothing like I imagined." But I think Renee has a reputation for being aloof, goofy, young and a bit cold. She is none of these things (except maybe young). I was very happy to give her the opportunity to address the horrible CBS 48 Hours piece on her, which basically accused her of doing child pornography online. That and the salon.com article are two of the most ridiculous pieces of trash done on the phenomenon of camming and I'm happy to be able to take a stand against both with comments from Renee and Kat. Of course the doc won't completely be about that, but it's a significant point to make to illustrate how the cam world has been treated thus far by the media - unfairly is putting it lightly. We dove right into the formal interview with Renee and she had some great things to say. She's a very well spoken young woman who is very aware of her position in life and very comfortable with it. We'll meet again tomorrow and spend a bit more time with her before leaving Florida for Los Angeles. This is our last leg of the big trip. We still have a few more camgirls that I'm working on securing interviews with that are closer to home in LA, but this is the end of our big tour around the country. 30 days on the road, 3700+ miles flown, 1600+ miles driven, seven different hotel rooms, three different rental cars, seven cities visited, 11 girls interviewed, 139 hours of footage shot thus far... it's been a pretty wild trip. It'll be nice, though, to be home. With my wife, with my dog and sleeping in my own bed. I may not get out of bed for a week. :) November 14, 2004 Day off! Woo! We had a "spare" day today and decided to take in some of "The Rat's" attractions while we were here. Although I tried really hard to convince Dan and Renee to go to MGM Studios with me (as when my wife and I were here about 13 years ago - it was the best place we went to), upon further investigation the only two cool attractions for me at MGM were Indiana Jones and Star Tours - both of which I was dying to see again, but decided not to venture out for the five hours or so it would have taken to get to that park, pay my $60, get in line, ride/watch those two attractions and head back to Epcot to meet my other compatriots. So, alas, we stuck with Epcot for the day. I did get to see some things that Jennine and I had not seen when we were here last - namely all the stuff around the "big golf ball," which was interesting. The most fun of the day was the Chubby Checker concert at the end of the night - he's 70+ years old and still rockin. The end of the show he called Renee up on stage to dance with him - it was quite the spectacle. :) November 13, 2004 Blogging is hard! This blog has been a bit of an experiment for us - a bit of a venture into an element of the camworld - and we've discovered that it's really hard work. Especially with the schedules that we've had and the difficulties in each city to figure out how to connect to the Internet. Each night there is so much work to be done. When we finish shooting for the day, we come back to the hotel and have to go through camera reports, organize tapes shot for the day, make the production reports (a record of what happened that day, what was shot, where we were and any significant incidents that happened). Then I have to go through all my research for the particular camgirl we're with and make my notes for the formal interview questions - what more do I need to ask? How much of what we discover during our time with each camgirl do I integrate into the formal interview? The question list is the same for everyone, but there is always some specific work that is done to tailor the questions to each girl. All of that happens after a full day of shooting and before getting to sleep. Add to that, the blogs and updating this page (all done by hand in HTML - no blogger for us, we're not that sophisticated) and it's really difficult to keep up. We're very pleased that so many people are reading this blog and keeping up with us and the comments we get are fantastic - but it's hard to live up to those expectations. All more for us to understand a bit of what our interview subjects go through on a daily basis. We had our second day with Deandra today. We were scheduled to meet up with her at noon, but when we arrived at her apartment, she was nowhere to be found. Renee, Dan and I went off to get something to eat and wait for a call back from her. A few hours pass and we try a few different times to call her, to no avail. Now were getting a little worried - especially after knowing what happened to Drea (no update there, yet - we certainly hope she's okay). Wasting some time, we stopped in a pool hall not far from Deandra's apartment and Dan and I played a game of 8-ball and a few games of 9-ball. I did all right, but only by pure luck. About 2:00, Deandra called and apologized. She had driven a friend of hers home - a long distance from her apartment - after a night of partying and gotten completely stuck on a dirt road. After hours of waiting for AAA, they finally got her car out (after telling her they might completely destroy it in the process and scaring the hell out of her) and she got home around 9am. The poor girl was exhausted. We met up with her about 2:30 and started in on the interview shortly after that. We've got a day off tomorrow and we're planning on hitting Disney World - most likely Epcot Center, although I'm trying to talk them into MGM studios, which I found so much more fun when Jennine and I were here in Orlando in the mid 90's. We'll see what happens. November 12, 2004 Grumpy day for me. We were up relatively early today - about 8:30 am - which is early for us on this trip. I woke up grumpy and then went out into the muggy, warm Florida day (I am NOT a fan of heat and certainly not of humidity), which made it worse. It was our first day meeting with Deandra who is an energetic and passionate spirit. We joined her for a day at Coco beach with her friend and watched as they got pummeled in the rough seas trying to boogie-board, swim and ride a large inflatable inner tube. Deandra, who is planning on becoming a defense attorney, has been following the Scott Peterson murder case quite closely (she even traveled to California to attend the closing arguments) and at one point in the afternoon as I was walking back from feeding the parking meters - Deandra was running across the sand toward me. She told me that she just got a call that the Peterson verdict would be read in 30 minutes. She quickly ran to a nearby hotel and asked the management if she could watch Court TV in the lobby to catch the verdict as it was read live. She was pretty excited, watching the minutes count down as if it was her own fate on the line. When the verdict was read (guilty one count of murder in the first degree for Lacy Peterson, guilty of one count murder in the second degree for unborn baby Connor) she was incredibly upset. Having followed the case very closely, she did not feel that the prosecution put up a convincing case and that the verdict was not what she was expecting. Shortly thereafter she had to get to school for the afternoon and we left her to get back to our hotel and regroup. We didn't wind up connecting back with her tonight, but made plans to meet tomorrow and do the formal interview. Renee, Dan and I finished off the evening with a game of miniature golf near our hotel. Dan won the night with a 50, Renee with a 52 and myself with a depressing 75. That's pretty darn close to my bowling score. How pitiful. November 11, 2004 Today we got to meet Shelly, who is an amazing young woman. Shelly has been through a great deal in her life - including a turn with significant colon troubles that could lead to fatal cancer. She is an incredibly sweet and giving woman who cares a great deal for her friends. It's Shelly's birthday tomorrow and we got to spend this evening with her friends in a celebration of the special day. Due to some wacky scheduling issues in putting this documentary together, we actually only had the single day with Shelly, although we would certainly have liked to have spent more with her. We're still debating trying to hook up again and spend more time with her. Her interview went wonderfully, she's very well spoken and had some fantastically insightful comments to make. Shelly, along with Deandra who we'll meet tomorrow, represent the "PG" or non-adult aspect of the cam world. Neither of them have a pay site, neither of them have ever posed naked or - for the most part - even provocatively. It's very important for me to represent that aspect of the cam world - and Shelly is a fantastic example of that side. She started this particular cam site just prior to a significant surgery on her colon when she knew she would be laid up for a while and be bored to tears. The site opened up a hobby for her and a way for her to communicate with the outside world as she was recovering. It might well be one of the most pure motivations for starting a cam that I can think of. We got to talk a bit to Shelly's friends about her - and they all had similar stories of how she came to their aid, or supported them in a time of need - including two cases of having people come live with her to help them. This whole trip has really been an exercise in meeting fantastic people. There is not a single camgirl that we've met that I have felt was a waste of time, or did not have a compelling story. Of course they were all chosen because they had stories to tell (otherwise this would be a pretty boring documentary), but they've all been so extraordinary in so many ways that I know the experiences of this trip will be with me for a long time to come. November 10, 2004 We left Lil and her boyfriend Ari at about 2am and got back to the hotel about 2:30. We packed up and headed out for the airport at about 3:30, arriving at Boston Logan at about 4am. I took the rental car back and met Renee and Dan to check in. This is always a bit of a fiasco due to the amount of luggage and equipment that we have with us - but it went fairly smoothly. Having been up all night now, we're all a bit tired. My problem is that I can't sleep on a plane. As I think I've mentioned here before, I don't fly very well. I get extremely claustrophobic on planes. If I'm not in a comfortable aisle seat with good room for my legs (preferably bulkhead or exit row), I can be in for a nightmare flight mixed with feelings of extreme anxiety, discomfort and pure rage. It's not a good time. The first leg of the flight from Boston to Atlanta wasn't too bad. I wasn't able to sleep, but I was able to get some work done. We then had a layover for about an hour in Atlanta and, by this time, I was feeling pretty bad. My stomach was bothering me - as happens when I don't get enough sleep. When I was younger, I used to be able to pull all-nighters all the time without batting an eye, but when you get older than 30, that kind of stuff gets harder to do without serious repercussions. The second leg of the flight from Atlanta to Orlando was hell. It was horrible. The first flight on this trip that was bad for me. I barely had room to breathe - even being in an aisle seat, I was totally trapped against the seat in front of me and the passenger next to me. An older woman to whom I spoke not a single syllable (not normally like me as I try to be polite and friendly). I actually got some sleep on this flight - sleeping nearly the whole hour in little 10 minute bits - but my anxiety and discomfort was pretty high. By the time we got to Florida, I was pretty damn drained. We got in a little too early and decided to get some food before we could check in. I damn near slept through the meal and when we finally got to the hotel we all went to our rooms for a nap. I'm not good with naps, either, but the three or four hours I slept today REALLY made the difference. I felt SOOO much better when we woke up and met for dinner. This is the last leg of our trip. After literally thousands of miles and a whole month, it will be nice to get home and start to get through all this material. I figured out last night that we will shoot over 150 hours of footage (still more to shoot in LA when we return) and it will take three full weeks of working 8 hours a day just to get the footage into the editing system to start to look at it. That's pretty crazy. Maybe my six-month estimate to complete this project was a little too optimistic... November 9, 2004 This is our second day with Lilith. She asked that we meet with her late in the afternoon - at 4pm, so we had a chance to get some sleep, which is a good thing because we know tonight will be an all-nighter. We have a 6am flight to Florida tomorrow morning and will probably be with Lilith until the time we have to leave for the airport. When we got to Lil's place, we started setting up for the formal interview and then dove in and did the first hour and a half of the interview before we broke to go get some food. We went to a place in Boston called Red Bones - great bar-b-que food and a fun atmosphere. It's REALLY cold here - about 20 degrees tonight - but I'm TOTALLY loving it. Dan and Renee are rather miserable, but I love the cold. I grew up in the Arizona desert and I REALLY hate the heat. This stuff is great! I'm dreading what Florida is going to be like - MUCH different than this, I'm sure. We went back to finish off the interview and then spent some time with Lil while she was camming - both streaming on Yahoo! and updating images to camwhores.com and chatting on the tag board. Once again, Renee was a great hit with the camwhores viewers and even the famous Stile got into the act. Lil was excited to have a girl to join her on cam and we spent quite a while having fun there. November 8, 2004 Another travel day, and actually this was our last road trip in the car. Today we drove from Edgewood, MD (basically Washington D.C.) to Boston, MA. It was about a 6-hour drive, but took a little longer because of some traffic and those damn toll fees along the way. The one thing about California is we don’t have toll fees, so it’s really interesting to see how many there are on the east coast. I decided to be very generous on this trip; I let Dan sit in the front seat. Actually the truth of it was I wanted to try and sleep in the back seat. The problem was I never slept because we put the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on the DVD player. That took up half the trip. I’ve been trying to eat fairly healthy on this trip, but on these road trips it’s virtually impossible, especially when Jay and Dan are buying Pringles and hostess cakes. Oh wait that was just Jay, Dan always gets sunflower seeds, and I haven’t mastered the art of eating those. So as you can imagine I’m easily tempted to indulge in those wonderfully tasty foods. We got into Boston around 7pm, and we had to meet up with Lilith around 8pm at her work. So as you can imagine we had to drop our stuff in our rooms and jump right back in the car. I was starting to get cranky since we hadn’t eaten a meal since Denny’s that morning, so I took the car keys and drove us to a Boston Market to get some food. Then we went to meet up with Lilith at her work. She works at Drugstore, and we thought we had found the correct one, but we were wrong. We were at the wrong one, so we had to buy a map and try to find out where we were going. With my wonderful driving and sense of direction we finally found it ;-). We went inside and hung out for a bit while Lilith showed us what she does at work. I had a ball going through the aisles. Drugstores are fun places to browse through; you never know what you may find. We then left there and went back to her place and hung out there with Lilith and her boyfriend. I worked on my computer while Dan and Jay filmed Lilith. We headed back to our hotel after that, which of course was another late night early morning kind of deal. November 8th Back on the long road. We set off fairly early from Maryland to drive to Boston and meet with Lilith. It was another rather long trip (our last one) - about six hours or so. Dan put in Return of the King and I again listened to the film while I drove. November 7th Today, knowing that we were off for the day, we took a very slow start and then ventured into our Nation's capitol, Washington DC. I've never been to DC, so it was a very cool opportunity to venture into the city and poke around a bit. We took the cameras with us to get some "Man-On-The-Street" interviews with the general public on the Internet in general, but ran into a technical glitch that halted our shooting rather quickly. We ventured to the Washington Memorial, walked along the mall to the Capitol building, then walked around to the White House. While walking along Pennsylvania Avenue, we came across a building that looked kind of like the White House and Renee was dead sure we had arrived. But here was a big ugly construction trailer right next to it, no front lawn (like we see in all the movies) and we were REALLY close to it - maybe 50 yards... I was unconvinced and kept saying "This isn't it..." We talked to two other guys who were taking pictures and asked them what building this was - they told us they thought it was the back of the White House... I wasn't buying that, either. So, finally I went to ask a security guard: "Where am I?" (a truly open-ended, question, I know - but it's what came out...) "Washington, D.C." Was his deadpan reply. I smiled. "Yeah, I know that part. More specifically," as I pointed to my right "What is that?" "That's a pillar, sir..." Smart-ass with a badge... Finally he divulged that it was the US Treasury building. We then followed the sidewalk to the front of the real White House. While we were there - VERY FAR AWAY from it, I might add - we noticed that the motorcade was idling out front. A few moments later a very terse Washington Police Officer came along: "SIDEWALK IS NOW CLOSED!" He bellowed. "Got to move along!" (a pause) "No. Too late. NOBODY MOVE." Okay. I'm not going to argue. But some guy either didn't hear or didn't care and kept walking - "YOU! STOP RIGHT THERE!" And the dude froze. A moment later the motorcade pulled out of the gates and drove off. We were then free to move again. It was all very impressive, regardless of who is currently residing in that house and who will remain there for the next four years... So we ventured from there to the Lincoln Memorial - which is VERY impressive. I spent some time there reading Lincoln's second inaugural address and taking in the enormity of the monument. When we left there, we found the Vietnam Memorial and it took my breath away. No matter how many pictures I've seen of it - they all don't depict the absolute enormity of it. How incredibly vast and expansive it is... It goes on and on and on and all those names. Each one representing a life. It's a very humbling experience. Today is also my one-year wedding anniversary. A year ago today, my wife and I exchanged our vows and joined our lives together officially in front of those people we love and care for. It's hard to be away from her for so long, but even harder on this special day. It's fortunate that we've been together for 15 years, though, which helps to minimize the impact of being apart on our first anniversary. A lot to say for a day we didn't really work. :) Tomorrow we're off to Boston. November 7th Well today was a relaxing day for us. We decided to go into Washington D.C. for the afternoon and interview people while we walked around the city. We grabbed some Subway and jumped in the car and headed out. It was only about an hour drive, so it wasn’t too bad. We kind of just winged it once we got into the city since we didn’t have a map on us. We eventually found the Washington Monument, which was at the center of everything. We parked and began our long walk. I wore my boots that have over a two-inch heel, so by the end of the night my feet were killing me. We talked to some people along the way, and after a few interviews or microphone had some problems so we had to stop shooting. So we just walked to the White House and the Lincoln Memorial and enjoyed our fun little adventure in the city. It was my second time to D.C. (saw it when I was 13), but it was the first time for Jay and Dan. After walking for a while we were hungry, so we stopped at ESPN Zone to eat. Wasn’t the best service at all, I suggest they just stick to TV and not the restaurant business. We then headed back to Maryland, and turned in early for us, which was 11pm. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, so have to get a good nights rest. November 6th We waited for a long time today. I was constantly on the phone with the hotel Internet tech support trying to get them to figure out why we couldn't connect to the net. It's amazing how much we've come to rely on the world wide web to get our work done. As we were stagnant and waiting to hear from Drea and had no word yet (my last e-mail to her bounced back to me), Dan asked to take off with a friend of his for the day and return as soon as we needed him. As it was looking less likely that we would hear from Drea, I didn't see any problem with that - so Dan went off for the day. Renee and I partook of the hotel pool and I kept checking with the front desk on their Internet problem and if anyone had tried to check into Drea's room. My cell phone was giving me problems all day, too. Maybe this close to the nation's capitol, things are going wonky - hows that for a conspiracy theory? :) About 8:00, as Renee and I were preparing to leave for dinner, the hotel finally got their Internet back up and working and I checked my e-mail box for word from Drea. No word. I went to check Drea's site and my jaw dropped to the floor as I read a posting from Drea's webmaster that she had attempted suicide just a few days before. After being released from the hospital her parents kicked her out of the house. We did everything we could to contact Drea and finally found information on her webmaster who lives in Seattle, WA. I called him and spoke to him on the phone. He had not heard from Drea since she got out of the Hospital on the 3rd and e-mailed him asking him to update her site. She is apparently living with her grandmother currently. We got no further attempting to contact Drea, but we wish her well. We certainly hope that things improve for her - and, if you're reading this, Drea, know you've got someone to talk to. November 6th Finally, today, my cold was much better. It didn’t sound better since I know have that awful hacking cough, but I definitely felt better. I got up and decided to go work out. We hadn’t heard from Drea yet, so basically today was just hanging around seeing if she was going to show. After working out we all went to lunch, and afterwards Dan went and met up with a friend of his while Jay and I hung out at the hotel waiting to hear from Drea. I worked on some budget stuff then went for a swim with Jay. We had a doggy paddle race, which I won :). I wish we had it on tape because we looked like complete idiots. After that we finally got Internet access and logged onto Drea’s website which stated she had tried to commit suicide recently. We were shocked and did what we could to contact her, but only got her webmaster on the phone. He didn't have much more information for us. Jay and I went to eat and ended up going to sushi, which was so yummy. After that we were going to see a movie, but Jay got the times confused so we ended up missing it. So we drove around for a bit, stopped at a 7-Eleven and got some snacks. My nose was so stuffed up that I couldn’t taste anything it was horrible!!!! Went back to the hotel and I eventually went to bed. November 5th LONG-ASS TRAVEL DAY... Woof. Today was our nightmare travel day - making our way from Toronto, Canada to Baltimore, Maryland. It's a 550 mile drive - about 9 hours. After saying goodbye to Sunny, we packed up the car (got a bigger SUV this time so poor Dan isn't packed in like a sardine in the back seat), had a bite to eat and headed out. Since we were so close, we decided to stop at the Canadian side of Niagra Falls and were pretty amazed by the sight there. Although we all got soaked by the mist/spray/deluge coming from the falls - it was fun while we were there. Other than the Grand Canyon, I've never seen any of the Wonders of the World - now I can knock #2 off my list. From there we started on the major portion of our trip - proud to say we didn't have any U-Turns on this one (although Dan was doing most of the navigating from the back seat, so maybe that means something... hmmm... ;-) ). Dan, who brought along a portable DVD player, had the brillant idea of putting in Lord of the Rings while we were driving. We hooked up his iPod FM transmitter to the DVD player so the sound came through the car stereo and then put the DVD player on the counsole in the front seat and set off on our own quest while Frodo and his clan set off on theirs. Of course, being the driver, I couldnt' watch the movie, but it was totally cool listening to it and it made the drive go SOOOOOOOOO much faster. We got through both Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and only had about 10 minutes to spare before we pulled into our hotel just a bit before the stroke of midnight. I'm a little nervous because we haven't heard from our camgirl here in the Balitmore area. The number we have for her is disconnected. I have faith that we'll see her tomorrow, though - but I'm a bit scared, too. It's a very expensive trip if we don't hook up with her or something happened. Hopefully everything is okay with her. We'll see tomorrow afternoon. November 5th Today was our longest travel day. We left Toronto, ON and headed out for Edgewood, MD. We didn’t get out of Toronto until around noon, and we decided to make a stop at Niagara Falls (Canadian side) on our way out. Wow, what an amazing wonder of the world. The falls was gorgeous, not to mention the rainbows that would appear every 5 minutes below the falls. As we were taking lots of pictures we got soaking wet because of the mist from the falls. It was pretty funny seeing us get soaking wet and try to run from it, but realizing there really isn’t anywhere to go to escape it. After the falls we had to go through customs to get back into the US. Funny thing is we thought we would get searched since we have so much equipment, but they just let us right through. It was harder for us to get into Canada then into the US, go figure. After getting back into the US we had about 8 hours of driving left. To pass the time Dan had his portable DVD player and adapter, so we hooked it up and watched Lord of the Rings 1 and 2. I tried to sleep at one point, but I love those movies so much I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. We stopped at a Wendy’s for dinner since we just wanted to get to the hotel. We ended up getting into Maryland around midnight, and then it was off to bed for me. November 4th Our final full day in Canada. I think we're getting used to it. After hearing the results of the elections in the US, we've all joked about applying for citizenships here... After trying Poutines (french fries with cheese and gravy - yum) and walking around town (eh?), we're pretty comfortable. It seems our flip-top-head neighbors to the north are actually pretty cool (South Park reference for those of you who may be pop-culture impared. :)). We spent most of the day with Sunny in her hotel room as I grilled her like a gormet fillet. It turns out my conversations with Sunny in real life are just as animated and interesting as the ones we have online. Her knowledge and insight on the camworld is truly enlightening. I can't wait for her book to come out. We moved locations around the hotel a bit to mix up the overall looks of Sunny's interviews - ending up on the top floor ballroom for one segment of the interview. While there, of course, we continued the Orb hunting (see notes here). Dan managed to tear down the massive curtains over one window while attemting to eliminate glare/flare as a potential cause of the Orbs... I also did an experiment with dust that failed to disprove the supernatural theory - but you can read more (if you're so inclined) when I finish that page... Sunny and my conversation went pretty deep into the night before we shut the cameras off and turned in. In the morning, her husband came to pick her up and brought along their adorable 2-year old (almost) son who seemed a bit overwhelmed by the trip to the big city. November 4th Well, today was not a good day for me. I woke up at around 7am feeling horrible. My throat was really sore and I could hardly breathe. I fell back to sleep and woke up a few hours later. I still felt crappy, but what are you going to do? I met up with everyone for lunch and went to this café called Eggstacy. I absolutely love breakfast food, but it was a bummer not being able to really taste anything because of my cold. After lunch we came back to interview Sunny some more. I took all our laptop computers to try to figure out why we aren’t getting wireless reception on our floor. Out of the three computers we could only get mine to work, but only on the bottom floor. So I stayed on the bottom floor working on stuff that required internet access. We wanted to interview Sunny at a different location so I got permission from the hotel to shot on the top floor where there are conference rooms. While we were up there Dan pulled a little to hard on the large curtain and it fell down. After the interview up there Sunny had to take a break to watch Survivor and The Apprentice. So we ordered some food for delivery, and I am going to go to bed early tonight. November 3rd Today was our first day with Sunny. The interview with Sunny is quite a bit different than with any of the other camgirls we've visited - or will visit. Sunny is the resident expert on the world of camgirls and her book, Digital Burlesque will be the definitive work on the Internet subculture. Our online conversations have been quite extensive (I've got more than 50 pages of conversation transcriptions from Sunny alone) and I knew we'd have a lot to talk about. As opposed to spending most of our time following Sunny around and seeing what her life is like, she came down to us and we basically had one looooong interview / chat session about the camworld. Being away from home is not an easy thing for Sunny and I am so honored that she made the effort to be here for this project. Later, Steph came down and joined us again for some dinner and a chat with Sunny and Blake. The trio have been friends for a few years and have spent time together before, so it was great to hear the stories of their times together and hear Steph and Sunny talk a bit about the behind-the-scenes of the camworld. The weather here is getting colder (they say there are supposed to be wet-snow flurries tomorrow), but I'm loving it. Internet connection here in Toronto at the hotel has been frustrating, to say the least. They supposedly have wireless access (I even moved floors so I could get wireless access), but none of us - even with the assistance of the hotel IT tech, have been able to make it work (not even Stephthegeek could make it work!!). It's amazing how dependant on the Internet I've become - especially with this project. Ah well - dial-up to AOL is rescuing me now. Whatchagonnado? November 3rd We are officially halfway through the trip. It’s amazing how fast it goes by, and also how it feels like we’ve been away for much longer than that. Today was our first day with Sunny. She actually came to stay for the next few days at our hotel, which was really cool of her to do. She actually came in last night with her husband, Blake, but we didn’t start filming her until today. I got to sleep in a bit, and try to fit this cold I’m getting off. I think it worked a little bit. I then decided I should try to get some type of exercise in, so I went to the fitness room and rode the bike for about 30 minutes. Then I came back to my room, showered and met up with the crew and Sunny for lunch. We just ate downstairs in the hotel, and then came back to Sunny’s room to start filming. We needed more 9-volt batteries for our microphones, so I had to make a run for Costco. I happened to pick the best time of the day to do it, rush hour. Took me a little longer then expected, but I love driving in cars, it’s kind of meditative for me. Anyways I got to Costco and basically went up and down every aile, Costco tends to do that to me, as does Target. I got the batteries and then headed back to the hotel. Sunny was still interviewing with Jay so I worked on my computer for a bit then we decided to take a dinner break. Steph the Geek decided to join us for the evening, so after she arrived we walked down to a local pub for some food. After we finished eating Blake came to meet up since he was staying the night with Sunny. Before we could go though I had to order some desert. Steph, Jay, and I split a cookies and cream cheese cake. I said I’d only have 2 bites, but we all know that never happens. After desert I got a call from my parents. I was informed that our dog, Lady, had to be put to sleep. She was 14 years old, so we all know it would happen sometime. It still sucks though because she was the last of my dogs to go, the last physical link to my childhood. So I’m kind of sad, but we all know with life comes death. I can’t be too sad though because she had a wonderful life and left a lasting impression on everyone in my family. November 2nd Our second day with Steph went awesomely. We met up with Steph in the early afternoon to catch her at her belly dancing class and get a look at one of Steph's passions outside of the Internet. Heading back to Steph's place later we started our official grilling session and then broke off from that for a bit while Steph prepared a great Korean-barbque-like meal that was fantastic. It was our first home-cooked meal of the trip and we all were very grateful for it. Our interview session was peppered with updates from CNN on the US election as we all watched the results with definite shock and awe... Once again - leaving Steph was a lot like leaving an old friend. Our time with each of the camgirls has been far too short. My evil plan of turning Renee into a camgirl is slowly working - she got into the action tonight with a little Yahoo cam-to-cam with a friend back in Los Angeles and she's definitely already addicted. All you camwhores.com taggers will be happy to know there's a potential future for Renee the camgirl. I'll keep doing my best to turn her to the dark side ;-) The end of the evening I met Sunny for the first time. Of all the interviews and online conversations that I've done over the last fifteen months, I had the longest and most frequent talks with Sunny. She is quite an extraordinary woman and so very knowledgeable on the camworld. She has been an incredible supporter of this project and I'm quite sure that much of what we've done thus far wouldn't have been possible without Sunny's support. She and her husband, Blake, came down to Toronto for our interview and I got to meet Blake briefly as we got back to the hotel and headed off to bed. November 2, 2004 Today is Tuesday, Election Day, and we are out of the country. I was a responsible girl and I sent my absentee ballot off before I left. So today I officially woke up with an awful sore throat and stuffed up nose. So as you can imagine I didn’t really want to get out of bed. Being the dedicated producer I am I got up and we headed off to meet up with Steph for her belly dancing class. The belly dancing class was fun. I actually participated in the class for a moment. Not as easy as it looks, but I think I held my own. After class we headed to the food court for some lunch and some grocery shopping. Steph had to buy some food for the dinner that she was going to prepare for us. We went back to the hotel and packed up our equipment to take back to Steph’s for the interview. While at Steph’s I hooked up to her wireless internet and caught up on some emails and work. We started the interview with Steph and stopped about halfway through for dinner. Steph prepared the most amazing dinner. It was basically a Korean BBQ style dinner with marinated meats and vegetables. Like I said absolutely amazing!!!!!! Had some delicious sugar cookies for desert, and I was happy as a clam. After dinner I helped with the dishes, and we set up to finish off the interview with Steph. Oh I forgot I communicated for the first time through a cam with one of my friends who also has a cam. It was so addicting. I’m thinking of getting a cam now for my laptop, and Steph gave me the 411 on what kind to get :). We finished up the interview, and packed up our equipment to head back to the hotel. November 1, 2004 Today was an early morning. Yuck!!! We had to leave for the airport by 8am, so we could allow enough time to check in all our equipment. We didn’t get to bed until later because of our ghost hunting activities. Plus I had to finish packing since I basically washed all of my clothes. Anyways I woke up in the morning with a sore throat, which isn’t a good sign, since I rarely get sore throats because my tonsils are gone. A sore throat usually tells me I’m going to get a cold, but I’m going to try and fight it off. Not sure if I can since the best things I need are sleep and lots of water. I’m getting the water, but the sleep is a different story. We have a little sick kit I packed before leaving that has cold stuff and vitamin C, so worst case scenario is I will keep taking the Sudafed. I didn’t start the morning off too well; I spilt my Starbucks pumpkin latte, which sucked. We flew into Detroit for a brief lay over then headed to Buffalo, NY. We rented a car in Buffalo and then headed into Canada. We got stopped at customs where they grilled us about what we were doing. It’s funny how the people there can make you feel like you have really done something wrong when you really haven’t. Made it through ok and went to Toronto. We met up with StephtheGeek that evening, and hung out with her a bit. She’s really cool and fun to talk to. She definitely has a great personality, and lots of artistic talent. We headed back to the hotel around midnight and will meet up with Steph in the morning. November 1st Another travel day for us. We packed up everything this morning and headed out to the Indianapolis airport to fly to Buffalo, NY (Via Detroit) and then drive across the border into Canada. This is my first trip into our neighboring country to the north and we got slightly detained while crossing in. As it's supposed to be, it's a pretty intimidating process. When the immigration officer looked to me and asked, with that accusing eye as she's also eyeing her computer monitor - "Mr. Holben, have you ever been convicted of anything in your life?" - Now, of course I haven't, but her tone and way of questioning made me wonder for a moment - have I? Apparently we met her criteria, because they let us into Canada without much further ado. It was a two hour drive into Toronto and we checked into our hotel, deep in the heart of downtown Toronto, and called StephtheGeek before heading out to her place for our first meeting and half an evening of shooting. Steph is totally cool - she talks a mile-a-minute, but always has very cool things to say and she's a very open and warm individual. She gave us the tour of her house and her gear - Steph's got some pretty cool technology working for her site, including the first truly integrated phonecam that automatically and remotely updates her website with images she shoots on her cellphone. She's also a very talented artist and musician and we got to hear a bit of her music, which was very cool. It's always hard for me to describe what I'm hearing (I'm pretty musically illiterate), but I liked it! :) Toronto is pretty cool. It's a lot like an American city, with small differences. The people seem much friendlier than in Los Angeles and it's definitely colder than I'm used to - but I really like that. Driving into Canada we've got a bigger SUV (A Mercury something? - I'm horrible with cars, too) and as we're making our way out of the airport my ass was suddenly on fire! Holy crap! Seat warmers!! I do not deal well with heat and Renee was struggling to try and get the damn warmer off - but wasn't finding the controls. We could see the little icon on the dashboard that said my ass-skillet was on full-blast, but not figure out how to turn it off. It was bugging the hell out of me, so I called Avis and started to ask them how to shut the damn thing off when I finally found the button on the side of my seat... The cold of Toronto is MUCH better than the damn ass-warmers in that car. But I do like the dual-temperature controls for the air conditioning/heating. That's very handy... October 31st Halloween! Boo! We finally reached our day off. Although we had some time to catch our breath due to Anastasia's limited schedule, we're much more well rested. Although after the rather errie experiences of the night before, I'm not sure how easily we all slept - I know I had a little trouble drifting off - always expecting to open my eyes and see someone staring back at me from the shadows. Ironically, my father, who has lived for the last twenty six years in Arizona, recently moved to Indianapolis to be with his aging mother, sister and brother-in-law. Although I haven't had a chance to get back to Arizona (about a six hour drive from Los Angeles) in the last year, his recent move halfway across the country - and my day off today - affords me the opportunity to see him. Ah, life's little ironies. He met me at our hotel and we drove out twenty minutes to where his new condo is, then went out for a bite to eat. My father and I haven't always been on the best of terms, but in the last half decade or so, we've been working on forming a new relationship. It was good to see him and spend some time with him and see him much happier where he is now than where he was in Arizona. I also got to see my aunt, uncle and grandmother - none of which I've seen in more than 12 or 13 years. My grandmother is 92 years old and I was expecting to see her nearly bed-ridden, but she came zipping right out of the room when I arrived and sat with us for the short while during my visit. Although she didn't remember me, it was good to see her. October 31, 2004 Today was our day off, which meant sleep in and do laundry. We were out late again until 4am, so I didn’t get up till noon. I felt guilty about that because I don’t like wasting half my day, but in this case it was well worth it. I kind of poked around for a bit then went to lunch with Dan. After lunch it was laundry time. I had three loads to do and the hotel only had one machine, so it basically took all day. In the meantime I went to the fitness center and worked out and went for a quick swim. After that we met up with Jay and went downtown for some bar food and football. We played some pool at the bar, and since it was a Sunday the bar closed down at midnight. We decided to do one last ghost hunt before heading back to the hotel. We went back to the Indian burial ground and took some pictures. We got the orbs again, but this time we took pictures when we first got there and there were none. Then I called out for them to show themselves and in the next pictures then were everywhere. Kind of discounts the theory that they are dust particles, doesn’t it? We headed back to the hotel and I packed up since we were flying out early in the morning. October 30th Today was our second day with Tousled Elegance. We met up with Anastasia and dived right into the formal interview - which she was wonderful at. Her training in broadcasting gave her a truly relaxed and polished presentation! After the interview we went out to get some food at a local pub and the night took an interesting turn. Dan, our ever-silent cameraman, told us of working with another cameraman who had photographed a documentary on ghost hunting. Dan told us about a technique of using regular flash photography to capture "orbs" or - allegedly - the representation of a spirit entity. For a couple days we had been trying to find an orb in any of our digital pictures, but had no luck. Our luck took a turn in the pub. Because this whole subject gets pretty long and has nothing to do with our main focus on this trip, I'm going to make a seperate page here. It was a rather bizarre ending to our time with Anastasia, but I have a feeling we made a relatively lasting impression. :) October 29th Our first day with Tousled Elegance. We actually got another good night of sleep (woohoo!) and met up with Tousled (Anastasia) at her work before following her home for a bit. She got called away to babysit her boyfriend's daughter and, out of respect for her boyfriend and his daughter's privacy, we did not follow her there. We had the evening to ourselves and ventured out into downtown Indianapolis and had a great dinner. We'll spend some more time tomorrow with Tousled. Called to check in on my wife. She's feeling a bit better - but still taking it easy. Apparently it's raining like crazy in Los Angeles. In Indianapolis it's pretty sunny and clear. The evening is comfortably cool, but a little humid. October 29th Another day of sleeping in, which just means I got my full 8 hours of sleep. Whoopie!!!!!! This was a real treat for me, and I’m sure Jay and Dan. Anastacia (Tousled Elegance) was our next girl on the trip. She works a regular 9-5 job so we weren’t able to start hanging out with her until the afternoon. She invited us to her work where we were able to talk about things and get better acquainted. Anastacia usually takes the bus to work, so at the end of the day Jay hopped on the bus with her and we headed to her house. We had a couple hours to hang out with Anastacia in her home and her cat. She had to go babysit for the evening so we ended our night early with her. Since the evening of still young we headed to downtown Indianapolis to eat at a local restaurant. After that we decided to catch a late movie since we were right across the street from the theatre. We saw “The Grudge”. I wasn’t too impressed with it, although it did have a couple moments where I jumped. I really want to see “Saw”, so maybe I’ll do that on our day off on Sunday. Got back to the hotel and I went to bed. I was feeling really sluggish all day and had a headache, probably a result of everything catching up to me. October 28th It’s Thursday, and we checked out today to go to Indianapolis. Got to finally sleep in a bit and catch up on the must needed sleep. I don’t do well without sleep or exercise. So I got up and went running with Dan’s ipod, which I absolutely love. I’m thinking of getting one myself. We checked out and went to lunch, stopped for snacks, and finally got on the road to Indiana. It was about a 6 hour drive because we ran into traffic in Chicago when we got on the wrong freeway. So far our drives have been very interesting. Jay, Dan, and I have some interesting conversations about politics, science, and human nature. We could make a documentary on just our conversations alone. We got into Indianapolis around 11pm, and then it was to bed for me. October 28th Our travel day. We took it slow today - getting a nice night of sleep before setting out to drive from Madison, WI to Indianapolis, IN. Once again - a few wrong turns (especially around Chicago) spun us around a bit, but we eventually arrived in IN safe and sound. We're scheduled to meet with Tousled Elegance late tomorrow afternoon so we should get a chance to catch up a litte more (almost totally caught up) and get some more sleep. I got to talk to my wife again tonight. She's sick back at home and it's very tough for me not to be there to try to take care of her. Our few conversations have been good - but I'm often so tired that the conversations are more quiet than active. Now that she's been homebound for a day (had to leave work early because of a horrendous migrane), she's pretty quiet too. My father has moved from Arizona to Indianapolis and I'll get to see him while I'm here (our official day off is Halloween). Ironic that I haven't been able to get back to Arizona from LA in the last year, but he moves across the country and I actually get to see him. October 27th Today was our second day with Kat. We had a split day scheduled because she had class this afternoon so we met up with her at her apartment in the morning, stayed with her as she dressed and prepared for her day and then split ways as she went off to school. We went back to the hotel to keep working on catching up on our still behind paperwork (man this has been a tough struggle). Shortly thereafter, Kat came back to the hotel to tell us that her class was canceled and she got to spend some time with us behind-the-scenes as we worked to get more organized. After, we went out to a local park and started our interview with Kat, but as the sun went down we decided to move back to her place to finish off the interview. She went ahead to meet us there as we packed up our gear. While we were packing the gear, the car was a good 200 yards or so from our shooting spot and somewhat out of view. I had just put some gear in the car and decided to lock it while we were all away so that no one would snag our goop. Unfortunately Dan had left the key for me on the front seat and... well... crap. Now we're locked out. We put in the call to AAA and called Kat to let her know we'd be a little late as we awaited the AAA representative to let us in the car. Renee, Dan and I stood out in the rapidly cooling wind and waited, ribbing one another for whose "fault" it was... I locked the door, but Dan put the key in the car and Renee GAVE Dan the key to begin with!! :) About twenty or thirty minutes into our wait a car drove up and Kat got out. It was great to see her come back and visit us, but she didn't come empty-handed. She handed out coffee and a Chai Tea for me (I don't drink coffee) - which was amazingly thoughtful - then she topped it off by bringing out a bag of hats, scarves, gloves and mittens for us... It was INCREDIBLY thoughtful -- well above and beyond the call and really sums up Kat's approach to life. Once we got the key we went back to finish off our interview with Kat. It got off to a rocky re-start, both Kat and I feeling like we were stumbling through the questions and answers. I realized, as we took a break, that a big problem was that I was sitting too far away from Kat. It became much more of a formal "interogation" rather than just a conversation and it was uncomfortable for both of us. We fixed that for the last part of the interview and Kat gave us some incredibly insighful comments. After the interview we hooked back up with Immora, Dragon and Kat's friend Steven and went bowling. Renee, Dan and I joined in the fun playing against the Madison quartet in an Interviewers vs. Interviewees game. Dan took the night with a score of 126, Dragon was second and Renee came in close with a 108. Steven and I rounded out the last-place slot, me with a wimpy 76... Once again, saying goodbye was not easy. In just our short time with this gang we've become friends. Of course we'll continue to talk online - the beauty of the Internet. [In fact - a few days later (October 30th) Kat and I were once again talking online as she was demonstrating her new 24/7 cams for me. At my joking request to "Show her feet and boobies, she responded with this intimate image:] October 27th Today is Wednesday. Wow how fast time flies when your on the road. It’s hard to believe we’ve already been gone a week. Well today was a more relaxing day then the previous. We met up with Kat at her apartment around noon, before she left for her philosophy class. We were only with her for about an hour as she got ready to leave, which gave us some time to grab some lunch and then catch up on some work. So we decided to grab some subway and take it back to the hotel. Now I’m driving and I’m so hunger since it was then 2pm in the afternoon. I don’t do well when I have little sleep and haven’t eaten. I start to freak out and get very emotional. So basically we were having trouble finding the subway and I started to get very irritated, which was something new for Jay and Dan. They aren’t used to seeing that side of me. We eventually found the store and I ate and immediately I was better. Back at the hotel I had a chance to catch up on some work and send off my mom’s birthday card and email my friends. Kat’s class got cancelled so she came and met us at the hotel. We hung out for a bit then went to do the formal interview with her at the park. We only had about an hour of daylight left, so we had to pack up and move to her apartment. Well I should have known better, but I gave Jay the car keys to go get something. The next thing I know the keys have been locked in the car. Thank god for AAA because otherwise we’d be driving with a broken window. While we were waiting in the cold Kat surprised us and brought us all coffee and warm jackets. It was so nice of her to do that. Thanks Kat! So went back to her place and finished the interview then went bowling. We met up with Immora, Dragon, and Kat's friend Steven and had a fun time bowling. That ended our time in Madison, Wisconsin. October 26th Our first official day with Kat got off to a slow start. Once again - my "U-Turn" legacy lives on. We got a bit turned around trying to get out to Kat's place, but finally found her. After grabbing some lunch, we ventured out to Madison's State Street where most of the activity surrounding the University of Wisconsin and the state capitol building which cap off the two ends of the mostly pedestrian street. We did some shopping and exploring and then kicked back at a great little coffee shop and got to talk to Kat for a while. We ended the evening with Kat's friend Steven as the two discussed everything from nightmare roommate stories to philosophy and finished off the night by carving a pumpkin in celebration of the comming All Hallow's Eve. October 26th Two more days left in Madison, WI. We met with Kat today and hung out with her all day. We met Kat at her apartment and hung out briefly then left to get some lunch. We went to Tony Romas, but I wasn’t really hungry because we had stopped at Burger King on our way to Kat’s. After eating Kat wanted to show us around Madison, so our first stop was State Street near the University of Wisconsin campus. Lots of neat shops and food place down there. The only sucky thing was it was raining almost all of the day, so not the most perfect shooting conditions. We walked all the way down to the campus, which is gorgeous. Brought back memories for me because UW has similar architecture style to UCLA, which is where I went. We walked down to the beautiful lake that the campus sits on and then we headed for some nice hot coffee. Found this great coffee shop that allowed us to bring our cameras in. Had an incredible coffee with carmel and mocha. We were there for a bit, then we headed over to Kat’s friend Steven’s apartment for pumpkin carving. We ended up hanging out there talking for a while then headed for a late dinner and a beer. Came back to the apartment and carved the pumpkin. They chose to carve a moon and a star on it, and it actually turned out cool. I was a little nervous as they carved with the knife. I could just see Kat or Steven cutting themselves and we’d have it on tape. Everything turned out good and back to the hotel we went. October 25th This was our second day with Immora and Dragon. We stopped at Walmart on our way to their apartment to pick up breakfast stuff. Dragon offered to make waffles for everyone, which he did and they were awesome. After eating we left for the Halloween store to get Dragon’s costume. It’s always fun hanging out in a costume store, makes me feel like a kid again. After the Halloween store we went back to the apartment to do the formal interview with Immora before she had to go to work. Dan stayed behind while we were gone to set up the lighting in the apartment. The next couple hours we talked to Immora, and then we took her to work. We had some time to ourselves for a few hours, so I decided to catch up on some work and exercise. I went running and then came back and went swimming for a bit. We picked Immora up at work and brought her back to the hotel and waited for Dragon to get off work. We met up with Dragon at Cheeseburger in Paradise and had some dinner. Immora and I were going to karaoke, but we both chickened out. We went back to the apartment and interviewed Dragon for a bit then it was back to our hotel. October 25th We met this morning for breakfast at Immora and Dragon's place. He made us chocolate-chip waffles that were quite yummy. After breakfast we ventured out to the Halloween store where Dragon picked up a pretty awesome "Lord of Darkness" mask that was very much like the Dark Lord from the movie Legend. Immora had to work today, so we had some time to start to catch up on paperwork. With the schedule the way it's been, we've been running pretty constantly and we're all getting a little tired. We've also fallen behind on our paperwork and orginization and struggling to catch up. We've got some weird confusion with the number of tapes that we've shot that they suddenly seem to be spawning... We've got more tapes accounted for than we actually came here with! We'll figure out the problem as soon as we get organized, but we've been literally going non-stop since we started so it's a little difficult to get back on our feet. October 24, 2004 Meeting Immora I spoke with Immora on the phone last night and she admitted that she's very nervous for our arrival - and who can blame her? Not only are we close to the Big Bad Media, who has so often mistreated camgirls to a disgusting degree, but we're three new people coming into your home with cameras and scrutinizing your life! Hell - it would be crazy not to be a little nervous. I tried to assure Immora that we're coming with the best of intentions and we're a pretty laid-back trio. Mostly we're like really curious house guests who want to talk all about the host. :) Our hotel here is only about 5 minutes away from Immora and Dragon's (her boyfriend) apartment - so it was a quick jaunt there. When we arrived, Immora was getting in her car and driving away!! I thought: "Uh-oh... She's changed her mind and she's out of here..." I tried to remain nonchalant - all the while panicking a bit - and got out of our car as she was driving around the parking lot. She slowed by our car and rolled down the window, "Are you Jay?" Okay... good sign... she's not just driving off... As it turned out, an emergency at work called her away and she invited us to go up to her apartment where Dragon was waiting and she would return as quickly as possible. Whew! So we went up and met Dragon, who is a very cool and laid-back guy. He walked us through the technology behind Immora's site and her new 24/7 member's cam and we spent a little time getting to know him before Immora returned and we got to officially meet and start our time with her. As it turned out she had to go back into work, but this time with us in tow and we got to see a bit of her life outside their apartment before we returned there later that night to talk more and relax. For a short while, Kat, who is our next stop on this camgirls tour, stopped by and said hello, so we got an advanced chance to meet her before we start to invade her life. I'm sure she was as curious about what was going to happen to her in a couple days as we were curious to meet her. Kat and I have had some very lively and thought-provoking conversations online over the past few months and I was anxious to meet her in person. We ended the evening with a little DDR playing and even Renee and Dan got into the action - but not this guy. I've got the rythm of a one-footed pregnant yack and I just sat back and enjoyed the show. I got to talk to my wife tonight for the first time since the day we arrived in Minneapolis. I love working, I love being able to get out there and exercise my passion: filmmaking and storytelling, but it's always hard to leave your loved ones behind. As I mentioned before, this is the longest jaunt I've ever had away from home and I definitely miss my wife and my dog, who - for all intents and purposes - is our kid. It's hard talking to her (my wife, that is, not the dog) and hearing her sadness echo my own, especially since this is just the beginning of the trip. It's also hard that our days have been so full that I can't talk to her everyday to hear about her day and tell her about mine. I'm going to have to do my best to find a good balance between the work and my "real" life so that I can talk a bit more with her. October 24, 2004 Today was our first day in Madison and with Immora. Immora had to go to work in the afternoon, so we met up in the late morning with her and her boyfriend Ryan. When we got to her apartment she had to run out and go open the ear-piercing store she works at, so we had some one on one time with Ryan before we got back home. We hung out for a bit with the both of them, and then Ryan had to go to work. Then I had a brilliant idea: I suggested Immora pierce my ears. I already have the basic two holes in my ears, but I told her she could pierce a second ear on both, and also pierce my left upper ear. So we went to the mall and I signed all the papers and such, and sat down in the wonderful chair. I was five years old when I first had my ears pierced so I was feeling a little nervous the second time around. I hate pain, and the anticipation of pain is even worse. But I sat there like a good little girl, closed my eyes, and let Immora do her work. It was real quick and only hurt for a second. They are a little sore, but that probably won’t go away for a couple weeks. After that we got some lunch and then went back to her apartment to hang out. Later that night Immora and Ryan had a DDR dance off (which is the computer game dance thing). Then I challenged Dan to a dance off. We both looked like complete idiots, but in the end I won. The problem is I accidentally pushed the wrong button, which cleared the game. So Dan claims he won, which is absolutely not true. After that we left and went back to the hotel. October 23, 2004 Today we left Minneapolis, MN to drive to Madison, WI. It was about a 5-hour drive, which wasn’t too bad. We checked out of the hotel around noon, had a great lunch, then packed the car and left. We went back to downtown Minneapolis to get some shots of the city, and then we got back on the freeway. As we were trying to leave the city Jay accidentally took a wrong turn and we ended up coming back to Minneapolis. So we had a nice tour of the city, which added another half hour to our trip. The trip was pretty mellow, except for the when I drank a little too much diet coke and had to go to the bathroom really bad. I thought I could hold it till he stopped for gas or something, but that ended up not being the case. The problem is when you need a gas station or McDonald’s there never seems to be one. So I had to hold it for ten minutes longer till we found an exit with civilization. After that the trip was so lovely. We got to Madison, WI that evening and then went to dinner. After dinner I had a brilliant idea to go down the State Street were all the college students were partying after the football team won. That was a fun experience interviewing drunken obnoxious college kids. I really glad I’m over that stage in my life. That summed up our night. October 23, 2004 Turned Around Today was a travel day. We had a full day to drive from Minneapolis, MN to Madison, WI and decided to take it slow and comfortable. We set out in the late afternoon (as late as the hotel would let us check out), had a comfortable meal and then headed downtown Minneapolis to shoot some flavor of the city to accompany Ana's interview (what we, in the "biz," call "B-Roll.") When we finished the B-roll footage, we hopped in the car and made our way to Madison. Now I fancy myself a pretty okay driver (although my wife would certainly not agree), and if I have a map and a chance to get to know where I am - I'm a pretty good navigator. I'm very good at reading maps and finding my way. But our mappage here is very sparce - mostly extreme overview images from MapQuest that cover hundreds of miles. We have a few AAA maps with us, but they're not covering the places that we're currently traveling to and the written directions from MapQuest are serving us well - so I haven't looked at a map. I've done most of the driving thus far, by default, I think - and also I travel a lot better behind the wheel than I do as a passanger. If I were to count it up now, I have to say that I've gone the wrong direction a dozen times thus far in the trip. Renee is our official navigator, but I'm constantly saying "I think I turned the wrong way." It's quickly becoming a trip of U-Turns. Indeed our path out of Minneapolis wound us around right back to Minneapolis! Oops. My whole sense of direction is totally wacked on this trip and we're getting to see more of the sights than we really intend to because of my "detours." :) Ah well. Whatchagonnado? We get where we're supposed to be going eventually. :) October 22, 2004 Asses on Cam... Our second day with Ana went wonderfully. Although she was feeling a little rough around the edges from our excursion out the night before, we kept it easy and relaxed and chilled at her place all day. Ana's cam is one of the few 24/7 cams on the web (and indeed she was just the second camgirl to go 24/7 and is now one of the longest running cams online, and so there was an element of documenting the documentary. Ana herself was shooting some digital stills of us, while her cam was snapping away every 30 seconds capturing us circling her with the cameras and hanging on her every word. Visitors to Anacam.com will have seen one of our three buts shoved in the camera as we were relatively oblivious to her cam being there while we were spending time with her and, invariably, about 90% of the time one of the three of us wound up standing in front of it for a few minutes before realizing that the digital audience was getting an eyefull of our full-moon. In each of these interviews that we've done - including our "test" interview long before the project was fully funded with a camgirl who was extraordinarily kind to let Renee and I in to interview her with the full agreement that the interview would never be publicly used - I've wound up on their cam. With Li, both Renee and I ended up on cam. Now with Ana, all three of us (Renee, Dan and myself) are on cam. Looks like maybe a side deal to this is we might become the few people to appear on cams all across the country. Does Guinness have a category for that? It was difficult saying goodbye to Ana as we had so much fun hanging with her. I was very honored to hear, after she has had so many camera crews interviewing her over the last seven years of her site's history, that she had a very unique, fun and comfortable experience with us. It helps to assure me that we're on the right track, with the right intentions. We're not there to be an intrusion or to be scientifically cold in our examination of each interviewee. We're looking to get to know each of them and, hopefully, get to understand them a bit more in a more comfortable and natural way. Now we move on to the next stop! October 22, 2004 Today was a much more mellow day. The night before took it’s toll on all of us, and especially Ana. So most of the day we just hung out in the apartment and watched her go through her unique website. It was neat to see her archived pictures from seven years ago. It’s kind of like going through an old family album. We did the formal interview with Ana today, and she was such a trooper. She still wasn’t feeling good from her late night before, but you would have never have known that from the interview. That basically summed up our day there. Like I said it was a pretty mellow day. October 21, 2004 Holy Crap! It's days like today that remind me why I've dedicated a year of my life to this project thus far. Spending time with Ana Voog today was extraordinary. The first few hours with her was like a 3D look at the woman we see on webcam. A great ball of nervous energy who showed us her wonderful dogs, her many collections, all the while the mannequins were staring on with their silent watchful eyes... But it was really beyond those initial hours that we got a chance to know Ana a little bit more. It further affirms my whole "agenda" here (if you can really call it that) - that camgirls are NOT just vapid airheads yearning for a buck while they flash their tits; they're real and incredibly complex and utterly fascinating real women. After spending a few hours talking with Ana in her room, we ventured out a bit on the town and saw immediately the incredible attention she gains from everyone around. Most people are respectful, like seeing a celebrity at a local diner, but some people are much more bold and we met some fascinating Minnesotans tonight. Ana is vibrant, energetic and very open and warm with the people who approach her curiously. She is a very complex woman, a deep thinker and a truly caring soul. We're looking forward to our next day with her. October 21, 2004 Today was our first official shot of the documentary. We met with Ana Voog, who I might add is a very unique person. We showed up at her apartment and received the grand tour. Ana has quite the collection of interesting things, not to mention her incredible artwork and hats. She also has 3 dogs that could keep anyone entertained for hours; they are all quite the characters. After getting better acquainted Ana informed us of her extensive music career. She has made 4 albums that are all amazing and different at the same time. I guess she used to be on Columbia Records, which did release her album, but nothing much transpired from there. Her album is amazing, if she were to release it now there is no doubt she would be on the radio right now. So we spent a good amount of time listening to her music, and then we left to get some dinner down the street. We ate at this great noodle shop, and during our dinner her boyfriend came by to say hi. We all hung out for a bit then headed back to the apartment. After some more interviewing we decided to head down to the local pub for a beer and fries. On the way Ana noticed a briefcase lying in the middle of the street. Being such a good girl she picked it up so we could find the owner. The briefcase ended up being from the local Democratic Party, and had checks and credit card numbers in it. So I would imagine someone was definitely missing it. After the pub we met some people and headed over to another bar, which was similar to a Hooters. Hung out there till closing then went to the local after ours food place called Mickey’s, which is a train caboose with that old 50s diner feel. We ate then headed back home, and we left for our hotel. October 20, 2004 On the road... Starting before the crack of dawn, we were all at LAX at 4am, hopping a flight at 6:30am. Of course getting through security was no day in the park - with so many cases and so many pieces of odd gear that could be construed as something threatening, it took us a while. There are always the logistical problems. The rental car is a tinsy bit too small - apparently we muffed one of the hotel reservations in a city down the road and had to fix that (Renee took care of that, turns out it was my faux pas to begin with, ugh). By the time we land in Minneapolis, MN, we're all pretty beat. Shower, dinner here at the hotel - some nice local beer that I can't recall the name of to save my life (I'll check on that) - and we retire rather early. Tomorrow we meet up with Ana Voog, and I'm very excited to meet Ana in person. She has such an incredibly unique online personality that I'm so intrigued to see what Ana is like beyond the webcam. As always, there was a million things to take care of before I left LA. Didn't get to sleep Tuesday night until about 12:30am (pretty damn early for me) and was up at 3am (ugh). My very sweet wife drove me to the airport with my pup and saw me off as opposed to some gruff cab driver. Made parting LA that much sweeter. There's an odd sense of comfort for me going forward with this project. Generally speaking there's always a bit of anxiety before the start of a new job. A bit of nervousness. I'm always looking to challenge myself and push myself into something new. This project is definityly something new for me, but it's not like any other film I've ever done. I don't have a "day" to make, there are no defined setups that we have to do or script pages that we have to shoot. This is very open ended and, on one hand it makes everything that much more relaxed, but on the other hand it's that much more frightening because there IS no script or structure. We get what we get. Did we get what we need to tell the story? I won't really know until the editing room. As with anything else - one day at a time. But at the end of every day - it's all fun. October 20, 2004 So today we officially started our US tour for CamGirls. Our flight was at 6:30am, which meant we had to be at the airport by 4am since we had a lot of equipment to check in. So that meant I had to have a cab pick me up by 3:30am. Now I am somewhat of a procrastinator, so of course I waited till the last minute to take care of bills and do my packing. Thus I went to bed at 2:30am and got up an hour later when the cab called to say he was outside. I got in the cab and was off to the airport when the cab got a block from my house and suddenly had a flat tire, and to make matters worse it was pouring rain outside. Another cab came and picked me up and we finally made it to the airport. Things went fairly smoothly from there, as far as checking in baggage, etc. The security was really tight though. They inspected everyone of our carry-on baggage very thoroughly. We next got on the plane and off we went to Cincinnati, Ohio where we had a lay over for a couple hours. We boarded our connecting flight to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and now we’re here ready to start the documentary. So basically most of the day I slept on the plane, and now I have a knot in my neck, which sucks. Our hotel is pretty cool and the people are very nice. It has a neat country feel to it, most different than LA that’s for sure. We had a great dinner at the hotel and now I’m off to bed... Thank God... cus my body won’t function any longer. October 19, 2004 Ready and rearin to go! I've been a little preoccupied lately prepping everything to take off Wednesday morning that I haven't updated this little blog as I wanted to. We'll definitely do more regular updates on the road. Renee, Dan and I have been busy getting everything together - it's amazing how much crap it takes to make a project like this, cameras, sound, lights, stands, our luggage for 30 days on the road - all tightly and securely packed in travel-tough cases. Generally speaking there's usually a scramble of activity in the last hours of pre-production, but we're doing quite well and have pretty much all our ducks in a row. Tomorrow will be spent in technical prep with the cameras, Dan and I will be adjusting the internal controls to set the "looks" for CamGirls - defining the specific image quality that we'll have for this project. I realized with all the films that I've been involved with during my career either as a director, cinematographer, producer or other crew member, I've never been on-location away from home for more than two weeks. It's a little crazy, really, when you think about it. How many pairs of underwear do you pack for 30 days on the road! Hell... I don't think I own 30 pair of underwear... Of course there's also the pretty HUGE factor of missing my wife and pup. But alas, out on the road we go. October 3, 2004 So Li was gracious to come down to LA just a mere two days before moving her life 3,000 miles across the country and spend a bit more time with Renee and I. Friday night, after she arrived in LA, we joined Li for a modeling session that was quite impressive... Christopher Probst After that session, we spent a little time with Li in her hotel room and then left her for the evening. The following morning Renee and I woke the sleeping beauty and the three of us ventured out to Venice Beach where Li explored the local flavor - got her noise pierced - got a henna tatoo of her boyfriend's name on the back of her neck (sorry boys and girls, she's taken). We then sat down for a couple hours and re-did our interview with Li - and she was wonderful. There's always a fear if you do something twice that the spontaniety and reality of it is gone. That you end up with canned answers and someone who is 'putting on a show' for the cameras - but that wasn't the case with Li. The interview went wonderfully and we ended the evening kicking back with her in her hotel room watching accidental porn... I'll let Renee take the lead on that tale... September 25, 2004 OKAY! So Li's plans to move to the other side of the country have been moved up to VERY soon and we're making arrangements to bring her down to LA for the weekend to redo her interview. We also have a Los Angeles based photographer who is doing a photo session with her that weekend and we'll be able to join in on that as well - bonus! September 23, 2004 Ugh. Our first technical glitch. Reviewing the footage we recorded while we were with Li I discovered a major sound glitch during a large portion of her footage - but mainly in the formal interview, where (as fate would have it) the sound would be of the utmost importance. After a discussion with Renee and our executive producers, we've decided to bring Li down to Los Angeles and redo her interview. It's frustrating, but I suppose it's better that these things happen now while we're still close to home than 1,000 miles from LA where we can solve the problems. September 21, 2004 With our full funding finally in place, we started the official shoot with Li in Northern California. Renee and I took the jaunt up to Li's hometown and spent two days with her, hanging with the family and friends and venturing about town. Our second night with Li we spent some time tagging on camwhores with her and Renee became a big hit with the gents on the tag board. Votes were flying in for a girl-girl show with Li and Renee, but the shy duo declined. September 21, 2004 So Jay and I officially kicked off our CamGirls tour with a trip to San Francisco to see Li. It was also Jay and my first road trip together, and it's definitely not going to be our last once we start traveling around the US. It was the most boring drive, not that Jay is boring, but because there was nothing to see but yellow grass and smelly cows. It was definitely a trip you have to take with a friend otherwise I think a person would go nuts. So we got to San Francisco checked into our hotel, freshened up a bit, and then went on to meet Li at her place. Oh course things are always somewhat awkward when you're meeting people for the first time, but after a few minutes Li was telling us all about her typical day and introducing us to her family and friends. After all the fun introductions Jay and I hopped in the car with Li and her friend Stevie and we were off to meet some more of her friends and go shopping. Towards the end of the night we ended up at the popular hangout for her, which is a burger joint that allows people to bring their fancy hydraulic cars to the parking lot to show off. It was quite the experience I must tell you. I've never been around such interesting cars, so I definitely learned a lot about what it takes to make your car jump up and down. Then Li dropped us off and we headed back to our hotel for a great night sleep. The next day we joined Li around noon, and decided to go to a flea market in Oakland. It took us forever to get there because we didn't take into consideration there was a Raiders football game going on so traffic was a bitch. Anyways got to the flea market and walked around a bit, and Li found a cool clown doll she bought. After that we all went to eat some yummy sushi. Then it was back to Li's place where we did a formal sit down interview, and she showed us exactly how all her cam stuff works. The best part of the night was when the guys on the camwhores tag board were trying so hard to get Li and I to do a show. I have to admit some of those guys are hilarious. After that our two days with Li had come to a closing, and it was back to the hotel, and back to LA the next day. It was a fun experience for everyone, and I can't wait till we start traveling across the country. Sept. 18, 2004 After interviewing Li in San Francisco we later found out we had some technical problems with the sound. So to solve the situation we flew Li out to LA for the weekend so we could redo the interview. I met up with Li and Jay later in the evening during a photo shoot. Li looked awesome in her photo shoot. She’s very photogenic I have say. The next day we went to Venice Beach because Li was interested in getting another piercing or tattoo. Venice Beach was fun and it was a gorgeous day. We walked around for a bit looking at some clothes and jewelry, and then stopped at a sandwich shop for some lunch. Li decided she wanted to get her nose pierced, so we went into this first shop, but they weren’t really down with us filming Li getting her nose pierced, so we moved on. We came to this other shop that mainly sells bongs, but they also do piercings. They were nice and let us shoot Li in their shop, but they said there was a law that doesn’t allow anyone else to be in the room while the piercing is going on. So again we weren’t able to see Li go through the whole ordeal. Next Li thought it would be funny to get a fake henna tattoo of her boyfriends name on her back. So we stopped at this one place that tried to charge us twice as much for the tattoo, but I bargained and we got him down. Oh! I forgot about the personal serenade that Li and I received. As we were walking down the Venice strip a guy with a guitar came up to us saying he wanted to play us a song. His excuse was he was trying to get money to go back home to Louisiana. I’m not so sure if I believe his story, but regardless of his intentions he was pretty good and entertaining. That pretty much wrapped up our day and next we were off to do the formal interview with Li. After the interview he had some Mexican food then got some ice cream and went back to the hotel. Li wanted to order a movie off the TV, so we started to order, but we were having difficulty getting the movie. We called down to the front desk and they sent a guy up. So when the guy got there I was trying to show him how the movie wasn’t working (at this point we decided to try to watch Shrek 2), and the next thing I know this porno pops up! It was perfect timing and so hilarious just because we were trying to order Shrek and not Daddy’s Naughty Little Girl. By then it was getting late so we left Li in the hotel and went home. September 15, 2004 Production is now in full swing. We've set our travel dates and locked in our interviewees. Renee and I have been talking and we've decided - in the spirit of the camworld - to start a production blog that chronicles our ventures around the country, the interviews and keeps everyone up to date on what's happening with CamGirls. I always do some kind of production journal on each project and decided that maybe this time I would make it public from the start. This way all of you can follow what's going on and - for those of you we're coming to see - you can know what's coming. It's also a good way for you all to see that we're not exactly the Big-Bad Media, but just pretty good people looking to tell some interesting stories. We welcome feedback - but aren't fancy enough to have a comment box here, so e-mail will have to do. Just click the contact link on the side. (return)