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http://www.apple.com/pro/video/moses/

Preservation Begins at Home
By Dustin Driver

"We needed to educate the local audience and it seemed that it might be a good idea to have them participate," says conservationist and filmmaker Cynthia Moses, about raising awareness of endangered animals among the African people.

Deep in the heart of the Congo, roving troops of gorillas have been known to raid crops, ripping out whole vegetable gardens by the root. For Africans who own the farms, the majestic lowland gorilla isn't an endangered animal to be preserved at all costs - it's a threat. And more often than not, protecting their livelihood is more important than protecting the gorillas.

Nobody's in a better position to preserve and protect endangered African wildlife than Africans. Still, wildlife conservation films have traditionally been made by and for Westerners.

"We were making films for the wrong audience," says Cynthia Moses, conservationist and veteran filmmaker. "We were making films for people who had never been in Africa, people in the United States and Europe. We needed to educate the local audience and it seemed that it might be a good idea to have them participate. It just makes sense to have Africans make films about their environment because they're the people on the ground who can handle the day-to-day conservation."

Moses and fellow filmmaker David Weiner struck into the heart of Africa with a PowerBook, an iBook and four borrowed mini-DV cameras. Their goal: Teach the locals how to film and edit their own videos about wildlife conservation using Final Cut Pro, iMovie and Apple computers.

"It just makes sense to have Africans make films about their environment because they're the people on the ground who can handle the day-to-day conservation."

Africa Bound

"I remember one day we were stuck in the rain and we couldn't move camp," says Moses. It was her first expedition into the African jungle, a six-week, 250-mile trek through the Ndoki forest with writer Tim Cahill and 13 Pygmies. They were tracking scientist and explorer Mike Fay through the forest for a National Geographic documentary. "I remember being there, in the in the rain, soaking wet - raincoats don't do much in African rain - and I said to myself, ‘This is exactly where I want to be.' I decided then and there that I was going to make it my business to be in the rain forest as much as possible. And then I asked myself, ‘Why did it take me so long to get here?'"

Moses's journey began nearly 30 years earlier in a Springfield, Massachuesetts, classroom. The recent college grad was teaching junior high school English when she had the sudden urge to embark on an adventure. "I'd always wanted to go to Africa," she says. "I knew that if I didn't get out soon, I'd never leave Springfield. So I joined the Peace Corps and headed to Africa." Moses fell in love with the continent during a two-year tour in the Ivory Coast. She returned to the U.S., but teaching English had lost its appeal. Moses decided to explore a new career path. She studied media and television at Columbia University in New York, where she discovered a passion for documentary filmmaking.

That passion didn't cut a swath straight back to the jungles of Central Africa. Instead, it put Moses on another long and twisted track. She became an intern at a PBS station in New York, then a producer at a satellite news station. During it all, she managed to earn her second master's degree in journalism from Stanford. She eventually landed a job as an assignment editor on the news desk at ABC in London, where she handled news coverage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. That led to a production job with "60 Minutes," which in turn opened the gates to the Shangri-la of documentary filmmaking, National Geographic, where she became an associate producer. Moses was going back to Africa.

The Right Audience

While screening one of her films in a town in the northern Congo, Moses was approached by an elderly man. He was amazed by the footage her crew had shot of lowland gorillas in the nearby forest. "'Is that America?' he asked me," says Moses. "‘No,' I replied, ‘it's your country.' He had never seen that many gorillas in one place before. We all think that since Africans live near the forest, they know the animals, but they haven't seen the kind of behavior that we see in American and European films. That's when I knew we had the wrong audience. Local populations who live near the jungle have the greatest potential to save endangered animals, yet they've never seen most of the animals that share their habitat."

A STYLE OF THEIR OWN

Cynthia Moses and David Weiner taught 36 students at the Tayna Center for Conservation Biology in the Congo the basics of shooting video and editing with Final Cut Pro and iMovie. "The students were just falling all over themselves with ideas," says Weiner.

Moses soon realized that Africans must be involved in protecting the wild animals and environments that she filmed. She decided to start her own nonprofit organization to teach people how to make their own films. She called it the International Conservation and Education Fund, or INCEF.

Moses teamed up with longtime friend and filmmaker David Weiner, one of the original developers of the AFL-CIO's Labor Institute of Public Affairs. Weiner had been in the film business for more than 30 years, producing educational films to promote social change. He had also set up one of the first digital editing systems in Washington, DC, at the Interface post-production house. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International asked Moses and Weiner to hold a video workshop at one of Africa's leading conservation biology schools.

"With Final Cut Pro or iMovie, I believe that you can actually take somebody who may not be literate and teach them to edit a simple film. The whole Final Cut Pro system is intuitive - it's like putting one foot in front of the other."

A Congo Production

Until Moses showed up with her PowerBook, the students at the Tayna Center for Conservation Biology (TCCB) had never seen a Mac. The school, perched in the forests between the Congo Basin and the Albertine Rift in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is far from technologically advanced. Its electrical system is fueled by a single gas generator and its small computer lab isn't good for much more than word processing. Still, it's the best place in the region to learn about wildlife conservation. About 110 students from different reserves and national parks in and around the Congo Basin attend classes at the TCCB, learning how to become conservation biologists, wildlife managers and teachers. The school was the perfect setting for Moses and Weiner to teach their first video workshop. In May, 2005, the pair packed up a few PowerBooks and any equipment they could get and headed to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For six days, Moses and Weiner taught 36 students at the TCCB the basics of shooting video and editing with Final Cut Pro and iMovie. "The students were just falling all over themselves with ideas," says Weiner. "Narrative, documentary, even a kind of music video. All of them were rooted in basic issues that range from what can they do in the schools to teach the importance of conservation to how to convince people that it is risky to plant crops so close to protected areas where gorillas live."

The students had a very different notion of how to capture their audience's attention. "During one session I asked them if it was a good idea to have celebrities deliver conservation messages," says Moses. "They liked the idea, but they didn't come up with movie stars or sports figures. The first person they named was the local chief. They felt local figures of high standing would have more clout among villagers. They wanted to hear from locals who are in high or popular positions, not Western celebrities."

Soon a natural style evolved that was unlike anything that Moses or Weiner had seen in other conservation films. "They were learning on their own, they were discovering a film grammar and technique," says Weiner. "Their style, the cultural film style, is very didactic and straightforward. They realized how to intercut footage from different sources and other simple techniques. Frankly, that comes from ease of use. They could instantly put clips up against one another. That freedom of discovery was not so simple in my day. Now you can test everything and no mistakes are irredeemable. The equipment has just gotten so easy to use."

The Right System

When it came to equipment, Moses chose Apple. Any other video editing system simply wouldn't do. "Apple in general is a much clearer system than Windows or anything else," she says. "With Windows, there's always an extra step. When I was working with Pinnacle, just getting the material into the computer and then trying to find it was laborious. Everything was just more complicated."

REALITY TV

It's too early to tell whether the films that the local Congolese themselves made about conserving endangered wildlife have had any effect, Cynthia Moses says, but it's a good start.

Final Cut Pro and iMovie were simple in comparison and the students had little trouble learning the applications. "They just swallowed up everything they could learn about it," says Weiner. "The educational materials were so easy to use and learn. They could figure things out even when they weren't sitting at the machines. I have decades of experience in the business and I've never come across anything like it."

Moses and Weiner also needed an editing suite they could move. Any desktop system would've been too heavy to lug to the school and too expensive to risk damaging in transport. A 17-inch PowerBook G4 and a 12-inch iBook G4 could be easily hauled and the pair of laptops had more than enough muscle to edit DV footage.

"Everything we need - the cameras, the computers and the equipment to display the footage - fits in two backpacks."

What's in Your Backpack?"

"It's just phenomenal to have a tool like this that's so portable," says Moses. "It's not a $100,000 worth of equipment in some big room that's connected to a mainframe someplace far off. And when I first got into documentary film, we used to take 26 cases on the road with us. We'd have 500 kilos of baggage, and the film had to be kept in coolers. When you're out in the bush that's hard to do. I had to hire a van to get me from the airport. Now everything we need - the cameras, the computers and the equipment to display the footage - fits in two backpacks."

The system was also relatively inexpensive. If the TCCB were to ever hold its own workshop, it wouldn't be able to afford any equipment. Nearly everything would have to be donated or provided by another organization. "The cost of this kit makes it highly possible to get the support we need to make video a regular and sustainable part of the curriculum," says Moses. "We can build capacity and make the program feasible with just a few laptops and a DV cam."
Local Heroes

At the end of the six-day workshop, local villagers came to the TCCB to view the students' work. Moses and Weiner set up a lightweight LP70 InFocus LCD Projector, battery-powered speakers, portable DVD player and a portable screen in one of the classrooms. The result was nothing short of spectacular. "Very few people have televisions, and none of them have been on TV before," says Moses. "If you take the fact that they're seeing people they know, it's really amazing. It really is like reality television the way the films came out. The people who were watching were definitely getting the message."

It's too early to tell whether the films have had an effect on the way locals treat wildlife, says Moses, but they're a good start. Now that her students know how to use video to convey their own thoughts about conservation, they can spread the word. In the future, Moses and Weiner hope that the TCCB can make the use of video a permanent part of the school's curriculum.

Regardless of what happens at the school, Moses plans to help other African conservationists broadcast their message. INCEF has recently received funding from the United States Fish and Wildlife Services Great Ape Conservation Fund and the African Elephant Conservation Fund to help spread the word about illegal gorilla and elephant poaching in the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. She'll work with locals to make movies for the indigenous people living near the threatened animals. The locally produced films, she says, should have a greater impact than those made by any outsider.