Navigating History: Egypt

By: Isaac Botkin

This project is not a feature, and not a documentary. It’s kind of an experiment.

In two weeks, a four-man video team is heading to Egypt. We will be there for two weeks. During that time, we will post a 24-minute video episode every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We will stream this video live to subscribers on the web and immediately afterwards stream live audio from the team on the ground for 30-minutes of interactive Q&A.

It’s a pretty brutal production schedule, and to make it work we’ll be relying on the blinding speed of Premiere CS5 on two high-powered laptop editing suites, the superior image quality of the Canon 5D, and the extreme flexibility of the GoPro HD Hero. We’re using a mix of shotgun mics and wireless lavs for audio, LED flashlights for lighting, and an assortment of GPS trackers and satellite pagers, not mention a huge stack of redundant eSATA hard drives that we’ll be backpacking around the desert.

It’ll be quite an adventure, but the project is more than a simple travel show. We’re hoping to cover the history and culture of Egypt in a presuppositional way, and look at the consequences of the ideas that have affected it....(read full article)