Description:
Hearts for Honduras was started by Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church in northern New Jersey. They started a school for poor children in La Entrada, Honduras. Every year two 1-week missionary teams travel from New Jersey to Honduras to help with building projects, teaching kids, providing dental care and eye exams, and whatever else needs to be done in reaching out to this community. The video was meant to accomplish two things: 1. To show to the volunteers on the trip and their supporters back home and 2. To help raise funds and awareness to the larger community who might be interested in investing in this school.

Obstacles:
With only five days in country, I needed to capture a large project with many facets. I don’t speak Spanish.

Solutions:
I was given a lot of flexibility to follow anyone around and see all of the unique enterprises this crew was accomplishing. I was also given a translator to help me understand and communicate with the local community and school children. I also had a friend back home who could help me create the subtitles.

Favorite Element:
This is one of my favorite trips and videos. The community where we were and the folks who traveled there from New Jersey were all phenomenal. I love the opening of the video with the operatic music—I barrowed this idea from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a moment in the movie where one of the main characters breaks into the warden’s office and blares opera music into a microphone so the whole prison stops to listen. It’s a powerful scene. I also shot my favorite style interview with one of the dental hygienists on the trip. She spoke to me while working—it really adds to the story when you can see the person being interviewed in action. The kids in this video are precious. I was especially impressed with 4th grader Heidi who said  she wants to be a preacher when she grows up.