This week’s SHOOT contains our fall Directors Series, with profiles of leading helmers and a rundown of up-and-coming talent. But more importantly, this edition of SHOOT also reflects the fact that a number of spotmakers aren’t only doing good work–they’re trying to do good.
A case in point is in the Production View column below in which director Matt Ogens writes about his recent trip to the Gulf Coast. The column consists of excerpts from his notes.
Having lived in New Orleans for five years, Ogens felt the need to help those impacted by Hurricane Katrina. He volunteered at his local Red Cross chapter, where he met some other filmmakers. They came together and approached the Red Cross about going to the Gulf Coast and shooting documentary footage of the trip.
The Red Cross gave Ogens and his colleagues the green light. They visited three states–Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi–over a span of nearly three weeks. They spent time in Dallas and such Louisiana towns as Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Chalmette Covington, Gonzalez, Mandeville, New Orleans and Slidell, and Mississippi’s Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian and Waveland. Ogens was still in the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Rita recently hit, causing destruction primarily in West Louisiana and East Texas.
The documentary footage has been turned over to the Red Cross. During the trip, Ogens also took still photographs to help chronicle the stories of victims and relief workers.. Ogens recently returned to Los Angeles.
The director’s ties to Louisiana include his having attended Tulane University in New Orleans.
In May 2005, Ogens earned inclusion into SHOOT‘s third annual New Directors Showcase. At that time, he told of how he got into directing, which was in part prompted by personal misfortune when he was held up at gunpoint in New Orleans. He decided the next morning to make a documentary about violent crime and within weeks was shooting in the housing projects of New Orleans and at Louisiana State Penitentiary. “This was my first directing gig–I had no idea what I was doing. Trial by fire,” he recalled.
Meanwhile, in this issue’s Directors Series, reporter Christine Champagne profiles helmer John O’Hagan, who earlier this year came aboard bicoastal RSA USA after a lengthy tenure at bicoastal/international Hungry Man.
Champagne interviewed O’Hagan via cell phone. He was in a Taco Bell parking lot in Waveland, Mississippi, a town left in ruins in the wake of Katrina. After seeing the devastation on television, the director was moved to collect donations from friends, load the supplies onto a cargo van and make the drive from New York City to Mississippi, arriving in Waveland about a week after Katrina hit the area.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said O’Hagan. “There are parts of the town where there is nothing but splintered wood where there were houses.”
O’Hagan has been spending much of his recent days helping to prepare meals for anywhere from 150 to 200 people. “People really need to help down here–just sitting watching it on TV was frustrating,” he related. “And I was lucky enough to be in a position where I actually had some time off, so I just decided why not?”
