Getting inside Haiti was the preliminary hurdle the team anticipated. From mosquito repellents to meal replacement units, sanitation tools to technical equipment, the team members prepared themselves for all possibilities. They also arrived with a week’s supply of food. “We were very conscious of not wanting to tax the aid resources and rescue efforts. We had to be completely self-sufficient,” says Nemtin.

Mahreen also covers the extensive use of blogs and social media to increase awareness of the documentary series Inside Disaster.

Back in Toronto, McKenna was busy uploading Jolliet’s blogs, photos and video footage to the documentary website. Since Jolliet couldn’t respond to people’s comments on Facebook and Twitter, McKenna became the messenger. Under her management the Facebook fan page, Inside Disaster, grew to nearly 4,000 fans.

Social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube presented a truly multi-platform experience allowing the re-purposing of content for a larger number of viewers. After an exhausting workday in Haiti, Jolliet would bring his daily experiences to the many people following his blog. “He would leave in the morning, go out, shoot all day, come back just as the sun was going down,” says McKenna. “Occasionally he was shooting at night, and rather than sitting down before a warm meal, he would be editing and writing all night long. Some days he would be working 20 hours.” Jolliet, sandaled and scurrying in filth, mud, and rubble, got footage and shot pictures.

You can read the full article here on the Fine Cut website, or learn more about the Inside Disaster filmmakers here.

Toronto - Guy Dixon of the Globe & Mail profiled Inside Disaster and the series’ director, Nadine Pequeneza, in this weekend’s Arts section.

The wide-ranging piece describes some of the background of the documentary, and how the team managed to arrive in-country in Haiti 48 hours after the earthquake:

“Pequeneza had initially approached the Red Cross’ Geneva headquarters and Ottawa office two years ago with the idea of filming disaster response. She secured an arrangement in which the filmmakers could get information from the organization when it would be sending out a disaster assessment team immediately following a major disaster hit.

That at least was the plan. But when the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, there was no time for confirmation. “After watching the news for about half an hour, we were, like, ‘I think we should book some tickets.’ We figured that even though they don’t know whether they are going yet, they’ll know in the next couple of hours. And these tickets are going to book up, because all CNN was talking about was how they were going to get their people in there,” Pequeneza said.

She and her film crew from Toronto left the next day for Santo Domingo in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. The crew crossed into Haiti by road, seven hours with a hired car and driver, which was pure luck, Pequeneza said. They hired one of the last cars available. A second crew departed Canada two days after Pequeneza, bringing such crucial equipment as a generator and emergency meal packets.

The director is now in Toronto editing hundreds of hours of footage for Inside Disaster, a look at how the Red Cross directs aid in conditions of total calamity”.

The piece also details how Nadine’s approach differed from that of some of the other news media in Haiti after the disaster:

[...] Pequeneza, who was a news producer for CBC and CTV before becoming a filmmaker a decade ago, says she is less interested in recording the devastation and more focused on the relief effort and the kaleidoscope of survivors and their stories amid the wreckage. She and her crew, including a producer who has been generating web-based content, sought to capture the unseen sides of the crisis.

“All the news media portrays is the fighting and people jumping over each other to get food. But I saw a tremendous amount of sharing,” Pequeneza says. “Communities share everything. The women would go out during the day, and the men too, and they’d have some people designated to look after the children in the camp [as] they all went out looking for food or whatever they could bring back, and then they’d share it.”

You can read the full article here on the Globe and Mail website, or learn more about the Inside Disaster filmmakers here.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup_audio.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/toronto/ondemand/audio/jan22hd_TOR.wma