Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Land ho!

Today was a great day!

I was far too excited for Hawaiian landfall, and I couldn't sleep, so I ended up waking Matt up and heading up to the deck to watch the sun rise as we came upon the big island of Hawaii to port in Hilo. At 5:00am, it was pitch black, but with Matt's sun tracking app, we set up with Evan for a sunrise timelapse and waited...

Students started to flow onto the decks as the sun came up, and with the little bit of dawn, we could just make out the island in the distance. It was truly a beautiful and exhilarating sight. We went through long dark clouds and with each passing we got a sprinkle of rain that stopped as soon as it started.

Around 6:30am, we were getting really close to the island and the pilot boat came out to greet our ship. Once he passed by, a set of three humpback whales swam by blowing mist into the air. We watched them as they swam off into the distance, and all of a sudden, one after the other, they breeched. Over and over they danced in a circle.

After our whale excitement, we headed for breakfast on the ship, and with the warm 70-degree morning, we ate out on the deck. The crew was splitting up today, A-team headed to shoot the Unreasonable Rapid Ideation Workshop, B-squad went to document the company that will be, ever so sadly, leaving the institute due to some issues back home, then move on to rent a car and get b-roll around the island. And, Team-Corliss headed with the SAS students to shoot some snorkeling. They got to swim with a few sea turtles. Got some great footage.

As a camera-person of the A-team, I boarded the big yellow school bus with our driver, Uncle Ben, and rode over to the University of Hilo for the Unreasonable event. With some unforeseen changes with attendance, George and Daniel thought up a whole new plan right quick and led an amazing session with the companies and local Hawaiians.

To kick off the event, a representative from the mayor's office came and read a proclamation in which the mayor officially named today, "Unreasonable at Sea Day" for all of Hawaii. Every sentence started with "whereas" which was far more distracting than it should have been and became an ongoing joke throughout the rest of the workshop. It was a totally honoring thing for Unreasonable, though, and it was really fun to receive the official certificate of proclamation with gold signed seal.

After the event, we met up with the rest of the film crew and found ourselves a taxi to hit up the Hilo Wal-Mart and get any final supplies for our 9-day voyage to Japan (AKA - candy, goldfish and soon-to-be confiscated beef jerky...boo.)

We walked from Wal-Mart over to the Hilo Cafe where Matt and I split a Hawaiian mushroom pot pie, and I had a coconut limeade to drink. Oh, that was so ding, darn good. It was fun to eat out in a restaurant with non-ship food. The crews split up to share what we all did today.

Matt documented the most emotional moment yet, with the company who was leaving the voyage, then headed to grab b-roll around the island which led them on many an adventure of meeting ripped locals on a beach, shooting over a cliff with the jib (I wasn't there to stop them), and finally landing them at the best fish taco joint in all of Hawaii.

I'm only slightly jealous because our event was catered with awesome sticky rice, curry, pad thai, thai iced tea and taro chips. The locals were excited to share their food with us, and we got to meet the company that created all of the biodegradable eatery that we dined with.

A very busy day followed by another one tomorrow since it's our last day in Hawaii. The companies were challenged to do an experiment with their products within the next 24-hours to see how their product needs to be changed, marketed or tweaked in order to do well in Hawaii. Matt and I will be following Mouhsine of Prakti Designs to the weekly farmer's market tomorrow in downtown Hilo, where he will show off his stoves and see if there is any interest in them.

More to come!







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