Meet the team

Two men and a woman with flower crowns smile at the camera

Teamwork was key to our time in the Marquesas.

 

Jenny talks to coconut producers
Photo by Eric Guth

While I was mostly finding people to talk to, like Nicolas Haiti and his son Naura inside their coconut oven in Taipivai, Nuku Hiva, Eric Guth (photographer) and Matt Mastrantuono (filmmaker) were never far away.

 

Man on dirt road with drone
Photo by Jennifer Kingsley

I’ll admit it: I don’t like drones. From beeping and buzzing to pulling focus from personal interactions, I think they’re a nuisance. On the other hand, I’m no photographer, and the team convinced me to give it a shot. This one proved glitchy, but you can’t argue with a bird’s eye view. Eric’s patience paid off.

 

Cameraman shields his camera from rain with an umbrella.
Photo by Eric Guth

Matt is used to working with a crew, so on this assignment he pushed himself everyday to do it all. He was our director and director of photography (Okay, he was the whole film crew). I held the umbrella.

 

Jenny stands above her cameraman and covers the camera with her umbrella while they film two men.
Photo by Eric Guth

Because I was the only person on our team who spoke French, I became very quick at simultaneous translation, often pausing to catch Matt and Eric up on what was going or speaking quietly to them in English while someone else spoke to me in French.

Language was a challenge during taped interviews, because we needed clean audio, not a mumbled simultaneous translation, but Matt could usually tell from the energy when we were getting to the good stuff.

 

Two women sit in chairs and one plays guitar, the other the ukulele.
Photo by Eric Guth

Music is, of course, its own language and one that is easily shared across cultures. Dominique helped me learn a song in the local language, which took forever and resulted in many frustrated facial expressions. But I got it in the end!

 

A cameraman films a woman as they both stand in the back of a truck that drives through a forest.
Photo by Eric Guth

Matt became expert at unconventional camera angles, and sometimes all of this teamwork really tired us out.

 

A cameraman lies on the ground in a construction site to get his shot while two people stand a few feet away in the background.
Photo by Eric Guth

 

 

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