Birthdays and dubbing epiphanies

I expect that, since very few people have been killed as a result of the activities of the chimeres, Haiti hasn't been in the US news lately. Besides, the election is near and for those who haven't heard what the candidates have to say for the 100th time, the US media is duty bound to continue giving you the same bullshit. I am so enjoying NOT hearing all of that. We should take a lesson from the British and only allow campaigning over a specific (and short) period of time just before the election. It is beyond me that someone out there could still be undecided. Bored-?? Yes. Cynical-?? You betcha. But not being able to decide between Bush and Kerry?? If you don't know by now you probably shouldn't be voting.

I hereby encourage ALL citizens to vote for the candidate of his/her choice. I even voted absentee, despite being here in Haiti, so you have no excuse.

The Haitians would gladly elect Satan for the role of benevolent dictator is he could stop the chimeres and fix the potholes in the roads. Remember when Jacque Chirac was elected Mayor of Paris because he promised to clean up all the doggie dodo? When one doesn't have even his/her basic needs fulfilled, who cares about politics. Many here are remembering, with some fondness, the days of the Duvaliers--Papa and Baby Doc--who ran Haiti with an iron fist. Hey, you could get killed for speaking out against the government, but at least the trash was picked up and you didn't live in fear of random criminal activity. I spoke with one woman who wanted to go to Great Britain, but to get a visa she needed to Fed-Ex her passport to an office in the US for 2-3 weeks. She was fearful of doing that in case she needed to leave Haiti quickly and her passport was not in her possession. Does anybody in the US care if they'd be passport-less for 2-3 weeks? I guess if you wanted to get a quickie divorce in the Dominican Republic you'd be out of luck.

The point of all this rambling is that I'm getting first hand experience in why a fascist form of dictatorship is appealing under certain circumstances. What good does it do to have the right to vote is you are likely to get killed taking your kid to school (as one man did last week). When fear runs rampant in the citizenry, tough guy despots seem like a viable option. Plato's notion of a Philosopher King was for other, more esoteric reasons... but any philosopher king worth his salt would kick some ass if criminals were terrorizing the people.

A HAITIAN BIRTHDAY
On Sunday I achieved the ripe old age of 52. Anaise, one of the owners of the company funding our work, was also celebrating her birthday, so she invited Sacha, Regi and me to her home for a family celebration. We brought her some American champagne (excuse me....sparkling wine) to show her that it wasn't only the French who could produce quality bubbly beverages. Edner gave me a bottle of Barbancourt Rhum, Speciale du Domaine: Haiti's finest rum that is aged for 15 years. I told him that it is the dream of many middle aged men to have a 15 year old for his birthday. I don't think he got the joke.

The gathering was festive and fun. I was touched that these complete strangers are making me feel so welcome. We had lots of good food, sang Happy Birthday in both French and English. Later, over rum cocktails, we talked about politics (in both French and English). Haitians are very passionate conversationalists and the house was filled with the sounds of people having a good time. In many cultures, raised voices usually mean an argument. Haitians are loud when they're having a good time.

Haitians have a terrific, self-effacing sense of humor. They enjoy telling stories and jokes about themselves that reveal painful truths about their culture. I'll recount more of these later, but a short one is: How do you get 3 Haitians to cooperate with each other? Kill 2 of them.

ELEMENTARY DUBBING
I always took dubbing as a cheap and easy way out. I've seen few dubbed movies (from one language into another) that are very convincing. The problem is, I'd never seen a Hollywood movie that was dubbed using state-of-the-art technology, and highly skilled translators and audio technicians. Now that I have, I realize that our primitive set-up and technique, as advanced as it is for a low budget movie, leaves something to be desired. We've nailed the timing of the lines. We're even getting convincing performances from our inexperienced actors. What fails the test are the movements of the lips. But how can the lip movements be convincing if they are speaking a completely different language? Get a DVD from any Hollywood movie and check out the foreign language audio version. The lip movements look pretty damn good.

We are only about 1/3 the way through the movie and there's still time to achieve better results than we've had so far. The close-ups are especially critical. Bottom line: we don't want to pull the audience out of the movie because it is painfully obvious that the actor is speaking a different language than they are hearing. Most of our close-up scenes are yet to come, so we will still be able to salvage our dubbing work.

Yesterday we began the process of tweaking the dialog with the actors such that the lip movements more closely match those in the movie. This requires running the translation already done, then brainstorming with the actors to see what works. One advantage we have is that we can use either French or Kreyol. The language that best fits is used, except in circumstances when our character would definitely use one or the other (French in more formal circumstances, Kreyol in familiar and profane conversation). This makes things especially stressful for Sacha. He speaks French and Kreyol, but they are not his native tongues. He has a finite knowledge of the different ways to say the same thing in those languages. And, the dubbing has to be convincing to a Haitian audience. Sacha hasn't lived in Haiti for 30 years, and then it was only during high school.

We did have about 60 hours of dubbing left. Now, in order to do it right, it almost doubles the studio time we'll need. Edner agrees that it is worth the extra time and effort to achieve a higher quality result. I knew this would not be an easy process, even if we weren't in a makeshift studio.

HOME SWEET HOME
I told you about the kitty that's been meowing at us since we moved in. Now it seems that she's a Mommy kitty as we saw 2 young kittens following her around the other day. The kittens are unbelievably adorable, as are most kittens, but we still can't let them in the house. Daddy cat also made an appearance, but he's not around much. Mommy keeps a constant vigil at one of our doors or windows, singing her song in hopes that we'll let her in. That will never happen, but we do spend the time to administer scratches behind the ears and back rubs outside. The kittens don't come anywhere near us yet. I guess we don't want them to go away too much because we slip them some food from time to time. We're typical, emotionally reserved men.... but cute is cute and we just can't force them to leave.

Our maid, May Loo, cooked a Haitian dinner for us last week. It was pretty good: corn meal with black beans, tu fait des legumes and boiled plantains. We are having her cook only 3 meals per week, so yesterday she wanted to cook again. The result: rice with black beans, tu fait des legumes and boiled plantains. It was fine, but our fear is that this is all she knows how to cook. I suggested to Sacha that we tell her to go nuts and cook something exotic and spicy--something foreigners never get to taste. We'll see what she comes up with then. I just hope we don't come home to a nice meal and find out one of the cats is missing.

NEXT TIME: more on dubbing, a Haitian movie premiere, and my upcoming weekend in New Orleans.