Editing

Dave and Harry and I spent the evening of July 30 editing the rough cut, which is looking fine. Here's a moment at the Avid machine...
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TB IN HARVARD MAGAZINE

No less esteemed a publication as Harvard Magazine in its current issue has a nine-page spread on today's global TB epidemic -- one of the themes of ON THE LAKE, and a topic that will be part of our outreach program that will accompany release of the movie. The story is actually 10 pages, if you count the sidebar about the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, himself a noted TB researcher. Read the Harvard Magazine story.
This photo of a badly emaciated TB victim is from the magazine.
We plan on showing OTL at medical schools and schools of public health, and this latest well-done exploration of TB suggests we will have an receptive audience.

-- Wayne

Is this George Barrows?

The best answer we can come up with is: It might be.

The photographic technology that produced this image dates from about the right time. The photo was found among Barrows family photographs that in all likelihood had been collected by George's sister, Hattie. And it plausibly looks like someone of Yankee-Indian-Cape Verdean ancestry.

But, the photo is unlabeled, so we can never know for sure. Plus, all of the above clues would apply to George's brother Frank, as well.

So, we probably will never know for sure, but this may be what the face of Patient Number One looked like.

Did we find George?

I traveled to Connecticut today to meet with the granddaughter of a cousin of George Sprague Barrows, known around here as Patient Number One. George's cousin was only a few years older than George, and, after George was abandoned by his father, George and the cousin were raised by George's aunt. This, of course, gave us reason to hope that descendants of George's cousin might have pictures of George.

The picture seen here is of Lavina Lovell (Sprague) Barrows, George's mother. Finding this picture is significant for two reasons.

First, her image will have a place in the movie, and we didn't have it before.

Second, because we know that she died in 1877 a few weeks after George was born, we know that the photo collection we're looking at spans all of George's lifetime -- it is not simply pictures from after he died.

Unfortunately, none of the photos in the collection are labeled as being George. All hope is not lost, though. Some of the unidentified photos have enough clues in them that we may be able to narrow some down as being George.

One unexpected find, shown below, is a postcard from George to his sister, Hattie, when he was at the sanatorium on the lake. George calls her by her nickname, Vinie, which was short for Lavina. This, of course, was their mother's name. It was also Hattie's middle name.

Unfortunately, on this occasion at least, George had a prodigious economy with words.

-Paul Parker

JOIN OUR LIST!!!

Please take a minute to join our new mailing list, through which you can keep abreast of developments with OTL and future Eagle Peak Media/Midway Pictures productiosn. The quick signup box is in the blog item below, and also at the bottom of the ON THE LAKE official movie site.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST!

Please join our brand-new mailing list, with which we will give updates of ON THE LAKE and future Eagle Peak Media productions -- of which there are many in the planning stages. Thanks!

-- Wayne

EPM North

As a thunderstorm moved in from the west and Cal joined us at my kitchen table for a delicious beef stew with fresh-baked biscuits, Dave and I met for some two hours last evening to review progress on OTL and continue planning for future Eagle Peak Media projects. Things are looking very good. We viewed Harry and Dave's work so far on the rough cut of OTL Act I, and it's awesome -- even without the soundtrack and with lots of black screen where footage and stills will be dropped in. The story line holds nicely. Dave played the role of narrator (we will of course record our real narrator, Yemi Sekoni, when we're further along), and while his voice came out weird (for reasons we cannot explain), the timing is pretty much dead-on. So much great work by so many great people have left us in the catbird seat (knock on wood).

-- Wayne