Directed Study
I recently had the good fortune to land (as one of my doctoral classes) a directed study with one of my favorite professors.
More fortunate, still, was the fact that this professor, Dr. Davis Houck of Florida State University, was cool enough to let me cover the topic—the murder of Emmett Till—as a documentary.
It started out easily enough, or so I thought. After all, hadn’t I just finished a semester-long class dealing with the tragic case of the “husky Chicago lad”? And hadn’t I just written a 40-page paper on the topic? And hadn’t my 11 classmates also come up with 40-page-papers of their own?
Fiascoes Galore
The ideas came swiftly and without restriction, in such a manner that I soon began to see ties to Emmett everywhere. Perhaps this was because the 50-year-old case was being reopened, but perhaps not. For example, my first impulse was to tie Tallahatchie County (where Till was murdered) to Tallahassee, where a significant bus boycott occurred soon after the Till case.
I went with this impulse, and drew up pages and pages of notes, scribbling possible questions on every available surface (my laptop was usually MIA just when I had the best ideas!). I approached several academic and professional colleagues of mine, in the hopes that they’d agree to lend their expertise to the infant-like documentary that was slowly coming together. I even ended up shooting over six hours of interviews. This in the midst of a huge residential move that I was undertaking. This in the midst of a family emergency that ended up taking four months to solve.
Now that the editing process is over, I can amusedly share (some of) the technical mishaps that happened during production. Like the fact that half of my tripod was missing and I had to resort to taping the camera to the tripod(!), since my credit cards were missing, too—probably in the same box that the other half of the tripod was in. (Ah, the joys of moving.)
And I should probably recount the fact that an hour-long interview with Hugh Steven Whitaker—Dr. Steve to me—went on with a faulty microphone (that I’d just bought, no less). For those of you who aren’t Till scholars, you should know that Dr Whitaker wrote THE master’s thesis on the Emmett Till trial. But having such an honored guest meant nothing if the sound hadn’t recorded! Fortunately, he was kind enough to do a re-shoot the next day. (THANK God.) Finally, in yet another fiasco (I agree with you—wholeheartedly. I AM a jinx!), The file with ALL of my documentary notes was in a box that was the heaviest and most buried of all 120 boxes (special thanks to my sister, who had kindly and thoughtfully stowed it there, based on its shabby appearance).
So I got to rely on my, erm, wonderful memory for the dozens of questions I’d meticulously planned. God reminded me of a majority of questions, though, and supplied me with even better questions that ended up helping me out more than my notes could have.
After the shooting was over, I started to (manually) feed the six hours into my aging Dell. I was frustrated by the sloth of the process, especially since I had to finish the big show before a hastily-planned family trip to Egypt. Annoyed (as all get-out) with my computer, I drove a few hours north, in the hopes of using the brand new HP that my parents had just unpacked. I noted that they had Windows Movie Maker, which I didn’t, and thanked God for that. After all, wasn’t that the program that could take in a whole videotape automatically? Happiness abounded then, I tell you. Until I realized that the program of heaven saved the file in a format unreadable by the editing program I usually used. (Adobe Premiere, which rules.) Which meant that the gigabytes of files I now had were, essentially, useless. So I recaptured the video clips; it went faster, since my parents had a better and faster computer than I did. But then I started to edit.
I installed the program that I’d known and loved for years—the aforementioned Adobe Premiere—on the computer of my parents. As fate would have it, the program refused to show the edits I had made. So I, desperate, tried to use Windows Movie Maker, an elementary program with barely any snazzy features. When I went to burn the rough draft of my creation to a DVD, the DVD burner would not work, and refused to work (and still does).
So there was really only one thing to do—buy a new computer. My Dell would have taken thousands of years to finish anything, and so I hit Dell.com. Twenty-five hundred dollars later, I was the proud owner of a new Dell. It was slated to arrive in Tallahassee on a certain Wednesday in the future. (This was Thursday morning.) Then, I got an email saying that the overpriced beast would be 5 days late.
Normally, I wouldn’t have cared, but I had a deadline! The next morning (still at Chez Parents), I got an email from UPS, of all people, that the computer had shipped Next Day the night before, and would be in Tallahassee by 2 pm. I rushed and raced home, hoping that I would beat the deliveryman to the door, because if I didn’t, I’d have to wait all weekend for Monday, when they could re-deliver.
To make a long story short, I didn’t beat the UPS man home. And when I went to burn my first important DVD (it had worked when I burned an Arabic movie I had downloaded), it wouldn’t work (it was a software issue, though). $100 later, I had a new program for my brand brand BRAND new computer, to replace the faulty software that came with it. In a final blow to my very life, the files I’d worked on at Chez Bishai did NOT transfer over to my new PC. So I was… back to square one!
Broken, I sat, praying for strength, and imploring God to give me a plan. He did…
The New Regime
Just as I was sitting like a lump, pouting over these turns-of-events, God allowed a newspaper to drift into my vision. It HAD to be God, because I refuse to read newspapers, or even allow them into my house. Apparently, the parents had left this particular one during their last visit. The title was something to do about “We’re black, we don’t matter,” to do with Hurricane Katrina. Then, an online friend of mine sent me a song called “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” which was actually a remix of a current hit by Kanye West, “Golddigger.” And then, when AOL featured a media presentation on the “bling ban” of the NBA, I knew that my old plans were obsolete.
Not so oddly enough (I believe that God can make things happen!) things greatly improved once I finished the research on more recent bouts of racism. In fact, apart from (yet more) technical issues that arose (surprise, surprise), the actual editing only took about 3 days (instead of the normal week+ that I usually take).
I was so happy to wrap this production up, that I became inspired to take all of the footage from two of my more distinguished guests—footage that I felt would be wasted if I didn’t do anything more with it—and turn the film into half-hour-specials. Then I started thinking about the other human rights gurus that I could include in this new series.. (But that’s another story for another day. So, on to the actual message of this current documentary!)
The Documentary
The documentary starts out with a commentary on who deserves human rights. This is because, in several countries, actually, dark-skinned people have been deemed as less-than-deserving of any rights, as less than human. We then launch into several anecdotal mentions of how people ventured into civil rights, before moving into the way the civil rights movement actually got started. Then, we have a look at the events that fuelled or sparked the movement, eventually landing up at Emmett Till.
Since the eternally-adolescent Emmett isn’t a household name, I decided to touch upon his case, setting up the question of whether the murder sparked the civil rights movement. I left out a few details, both for reasons of space/time, but also because I wanted to make the point that Emmett actually wasn’t the beginning of the movement. After that, my guests informed the viewer about the racial climate in the 50s, and the ‘southern way.’
Then I went on to suggest that things actually haven’t changed for black people—that the bling ban and the treatment of Katrina victims suggest a more insidious and pervasive racism that, despite our best intentions, is still prevalent. Too, I (in an unbilled guest spot) went on about how Affirmative Action only hurts minorities.
Critiques
Technical geniosity aside (or lack thereof), I think the biggest problem is that the show drags in places, that it offers almost too much information for the casual viewer. On the other hand, the information offered is, in many cases, unique, or, at least, not something that every single American is familiar with, so that might keep the interest back on the guest. Finally, I had a few comments (from my parents, actually) suggesting that I remove the music. Unfortunately, plain talking for an hour with no music can be even more of a challenge to listen to than trying to bend the ear around a music track!
All in all, I’m glad for this experience, even if I did get 17 grey hairs per hour. Having said that, don’t forget to look for the Sally Bishai “30 Minutes With” Human Rights Series—coming soon to a DVD player near you!
sb
but for now, have a look at my old friend Tugba. lovely, isn’t she? 
i’m pretty bummed about the whole thing, merely because some of my favourite–and best–shoots were there.
