Upcoming Projects for May 2012

Upcoming Projects for May

This is a brief newsletter on the current projects that I am currently undertaking.

Japanese Festival
         On the 20th of May, the Japanese Club of Victoria will hold its annual Japanese Festival in Box Hill (Melbourne) at the Town Hall. The event has been continuing on since 2000 and it regularly attracts large numbers of visitors. The event also attracts a number of major sponsors such as Toyota, Denso and NEC. This year, the event will last from 10am to 5pm and will include many performances from local artists including Fuefukuro, which for those who have already subscribed to my youtube channel would know that I have already filmed one of their performances in March this year.
        This will be my first trip to the Japanese Festival and I hope to see some familiar faces there. I will be bringing my filming equipment along with me and hopefully I can make a report based on my journey to the festival. With any luck, I can get some interviews from participants and volunteers and see what has attracted them to the event and why they think its important.
        This will also provide me with a good opportunity to test out my sound-recording skills with the new shot-gun microphone which I have recently purchased. To be honest, I am still struggling to master the new microphone since it is quite sensitive to any knocks along the microphone's shaft.
        I'm really looking to this and I hope that the weather will be nice.

Please check out the office webpage of the Japanese Festival:
http://www.jcv-au.org/japanfestival/index.php
 



Broadford: A Documentary.
       I have recently started filming a short documentary to honour the place where I was born and raised. The original objective was to inform friends about my hometown. Owing to my international lifestyle, I often find myself having difficulty explaining to people where I come from. Most people are aware that I come from a rural town (my hometown currently has a population of just over 3,000 people), but that is often the extent of their knowledge about my upbringing.
        I started the project 10 days ago with 3 hours of footage and a whole day spent out in the field filming scenic locations and iconic Broadford landscapes. However, after the 1st day of filming, I visited a local library in order to find out more information about my hometown to give my project more historical depth. To my surprise, Broadford actually has a rich history that I was totally unaware of.

        The history of the indigenous presence in the region was particularly interesting as I learnt about their vast, inter-tribe trade networks particularly the trade in greenstone which was used to create high-quality stone hatchets (pictured) which were highly prized amongst aboriginals and early settlers (as artefacts). I was also able to find some interesting stories about some local aboriginals who were quite the characters within the community. Unfortunately, In the early 1900s, the goverment forcefully removed all remaining indigenous people living in the area and sent them to a reserve in Gippsland. I hope to retell this tragic story in the hope that others will become aware of this town's history with its traditional owners just as I have come to know about it through my research.
         I was also surprised to learn that Broadford was originally was a gold town when cold was discovered in the early 1850s during Victoria's gold rush period. Gold was discovered in several areas surrounding the township namely Reedy creek and Sunday creek. Gold is no longer mined but the remnants of the miners' exploits are apparently still visible. Broadford is littered with abandoned mines. I hope to visit some of these mines, and who knows, perhaps I might find a little mineral souvenir...
        While I started this project with the objective to inform my friends about my hometown, I have gradually noticed that I am learning a lot about my birthplace that I was previously unaware. The more I learn, it seems, the more that this project is becoming about my own journey as I learn about my own town.
This project will take a long time to complete and its already testing my reporting and journalistic skills.
Keep an eye out for further updates and short clips that I will upload as I work towards the completion of this project.

Remember to keep visiting my youtube channel for updates
http://www.youtube.com/user/rvirax?feature=guide
and visit RVIRAX's facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rvirax/418011988218290


Please feel free to comment and submit any ideas or questions you may have.