Friday was a very full day that had us up early and on a plane at 6:00 am from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Coach seats on airplanes these days aren't very conducive to computer work, so as soon as we arrived and got on the 405 toward Century City, Palaniswami was off to work on his MacBook Pro captioning photos from our last few days in New York and San Francisco for TAKA. This whole trip was in the mode of "Go! Go! Go!" from the very beginning, and our day in LA was no exception.
The year-old crystal-and-marble palace at 2000 Avenue of the Stars is the home of The Annenberg Foundation, our first stop, as well as the notorious Creative Artists Agency (the largest in LA) and other Hollywood firms. It's like nothing we have ever seen before. We learned that the elaborate marble stairway (not the one pictured) leading from the street level up to CAA's offices cost $8,000,000 alone. Certainly nothing like this exists on Kauai!
The lobby at The Annenberg Foundation is a beautiful representation of the enormous amount of resources this great organization has to do their charitable work. On their website, they define their mission: "Established in 1989 by Walter H. Annenberg, the Annenberg Foundation provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally through its headquarters in Radnor, Pennsylvania and offices in Los Angeles, California. Its major program areas are education and youth development; arts, culture and humanities; civic and community; health and human services; and animal services and the environment. In addition, the Foundation operates a number of initiatives which expand and complement these program areas. The Annenberg Foundation exists to advance the public well-being through improved communication. As the principal means of achieving this goal, the Foundation encourages the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge."
We came today to visit Douglas Thompson, who is head of production for the amazing documentaries of the foundation's Explore project, an initiative of trustee Charles Annenberg Weingarten. Douglas is an accomplished video documentary producer at the top of his field. His work is simply amazing. We came to know him through a Kauai journalist, formerly working in LA, who also has a love for making documentaries and hopes to continue her work on our tropical island. Palaniswami begins with a gift of chutney.
The Explore project is taking Charlie all around the world looking deeply into how compassion and giving manifests in various cultures. They have done documentaries about Africa, China, India, Bali, several regions of the US and Costa Rica. Now, Douglas is working on post production for a very involved piece about the Middle East. We were the first to watch his draft cut of a powerful, moving section of the documentary about a community theater for Palestinian children run by a Jewish man.
Next, Douglas took us to the conference room to watch part of their documentary about India (available in its entirety on their website, here) on a big screen. After the showing, Douglas was abundantly generous with his time as we discussed with him our next major video documentary initiative: transforming the 47 chapters of What Is Hinduism? into videos. This is a momentous project for which we need great assistance on many levels, and Douglas was full of insights, answers and expertise about all aspects of documentary making. It was a glorious and productive meeting.
Then we were off to the home and studio of Ben Patrick Johnson, Hollywood's foremost voice-over actor/narrator, as well as author, activist and commentator. We got connected with Ben when we saw en episode of his webcast, Life from the Left Coast, about religious fundamentalism. He made such a clear and concise summary of the phenomenon in many of the world's religions, we had to compliment him on it. We also loved the webcast's motion graphics so much, we wanted to find out who did them so we could get similar graphics made for our online videos (which we are now doing). Right from a professional sound studio in his Hollywood Hills home, Ben works live, via a special high-quality-audio-over-ISDN connection, throughout the day for such networks as CBS and Fox doing voice-overs for television show promos, ads, and for movie studios as the voice on many movie trailers.
While we were there, we watched Ben as he skillfully went back and forth from conversations with us to performing in the sound booth within seconds. Ben will do around a dozen of these sessions each day (once did 23 in a day), sitting before the mic as he reads, re-reads and re-reads little sound bytes, slightly varying inflection and tone of voice until the producers in the production houses on the other end of the connection feel they have just the sound they want.
All throughout our travels, Palaniswami was evangelizing a great tool he has found for taking quick notes by phone while on the go. Jott allows you to make a free call from your cell phone, say whatever you need to say, and then within a few minutes their system transcribes your voice message and e-mails or texts it to you. It's fast, easy, and often far more convenient than writing on paper. Plus, when you get back to your computer, your note is right there in your e-mail, and you can copy and paste it into a calendar or a to do list. As we had a delicious lunch at a vegan restaurant on the border of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Palaniswami demonstrated Jott to Ben. Later, back in his studio, we had fun writing a spoof advertisement voice-over for Jott. Have a listen:
Palaniswami, Ben and Senthilnathaswami pose for what Ben likes to call "our MySpace photo."
Note: Other photos from our time in the San Francisco Bay Area earlier in the trip (before we started this blog) can be viewed on our main monastery blog, Today at Kauai Aadheenam, here.
