South Park - Creative COW Magazine

Cows Around the World
The “W” in COW stands for “world,”
and we really mean it.
Here are reports from Cows in Russia, India,
the Netherlands and Canada about what
they do, and what they’re working on.
George Bazhenov
Ekaterinaburg, Russia
iPro, a distributor of Apple, opened a training center in
Moscow this spring with outlets in St. Petersburg and
Ekaterinaburg, my home city. I recently gave two FCP
courses — a five-day course in a local university and a
three-day course in the iPro training facility here.
The three-day FCP course is madness, although
my students absorbed quite a lot, and even passed the
certification exam. They were a sight to look at after 90
minutes of questioning in English! Microsoft is more
generous with non-native English speakers and doubles
the certification exam time for them, I am told.
I am certified to teach FCP and Motion but editors
and their employers are not prepared to buy training
right now. Also, custom duties and fees on hi-tech
goods in Russia are so high that customers in Far Eastern
cities, such as Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, sometimes
prefer to go to South Korea, Japan and China
and shop for Apple products there.
Meanwhile, I do sales presentations with Apple
Final Cut Studio, Aperture, and using Wacom tablets.
I even went abroad with Final Cut Studio and Aperture
recently — to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. But my
most recent destination was Khabarovsk (seen here,
right), with Tomsk and Magnitogorsk before it.
On a more creative front, I am finishing a DVD project
with footage from a literary festival that took place
in Ekaterinaburg. Young writers and poets competed
among themselves and took part in writing workshops
for three days. Six miniDV cassettes were used to tape
some of these activities. My task was to edit the material
and output a 90-second
ad, a seven-minute narrative
and a 90-minute documentary.
The project is almost
finished, and this week I
plan to burn 80 DVDs that
will eventually be mailed
to every participant. The
most distant of them lives
near Lake Baikal, 2800 kilometers
east (approximately
1400 miles) in Siberia, near
the Mongolian border —
but I have made it very clear
to the client that mailing
will not be part of my job.
And of course, our
wedding season has just ended. Due to climatic conditions,
it is short and intense. Every bride wants to get
wed and not wet (and definitely not frozen on the way
to the limo). DV shooters are in high demand, and I join
their ranks with my Canon XM2.
Guess what I use as a backup and B-roll cam? A
Flip! It is excellent in semi-dark conditions and beats
the XM2 when I shoot dances. Brides don’t like dancing
before on-camera lights.
With all that, my reading focus has shifted from
Final Cut Studio to Business & Marketing and Event
Videography at the COW.
Subrato Sangupta
Mumbai, India
I have had over 18 years of experience in cinematography,
coupled with nearly 12 years as a Director of
Photography in Bollywood. To me, the best cinematography
is the kind that takes you into another world,
and makes you quickly forget that you are watching a
movie. Seamless and realistic.
(That’s me, at right.)
My favorite lighting style is to shoot with naturallooking,
motivated light sources. I enjoy working with
large soft sources and then “paint” in the shadow
areas. I work very
hard to make certain
that whatever
story is being told
is enhanced and
c o m m u n i c a t e d
with the light and
images.
Most recently,
I have finished the
research for a documentary
on child
prostitution and
sex tourism in Goa
that I hope to pro-
duce. There are few, if any, local prostitutes in the red
light districts of India’s major cities. The majority have
either migrated or been trafficked to those cities.
The daughters of migrant prostitute women are
generally expected to enter into prostitution as soon
as they reach puberty — and even before that, they
are expected to work all night performing in bars.
Prostitution involving boys tends to be less formal, but
is still quite common.
Locations like Goa can combine large numbers of
vulnerable children, and an under-resourced police
28 September / October 2008 — Creative COW Magazine
Creative COW Magazine — September / October 2008 29