Even if we personally don’t have a desire to be in front of a camera, I believe there is a piece of wisdom inside each of each of us dying for a cameo. That’s why I like to be behind the camera to ask questions — tease out that little golden nugget. My deepest hope is that through this project, a model of good loving may emerge from a collective voice.

For years, I talked about making the Camino pilgrimage across the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela.  I cannot tell you how excited I am to embark on over 540 miles of research into matters of the heart. People come from all over the world. They travel quite literally to the “ends of the earth”: a place called Finisterra, which is one of the farthest western points of Europe on the coast of northern Spain. They press on through blisters and soak in beautiful vistas.  They have chosen to take the time to be here, in this ancient place of reflection, follow the trail, each in their own individual way.  I want to ask them — in that ripe state — about love and what makes the best parts of it successful. (And then I want to come home and ask YOU!).

In 2013, Santiago welcomed 215,880 people from the Camino trail to receive their stamp of completion — or “compostela.” That’s a whole lot of nuggets of wisdom on one trail to collect and bring back home! What better place to give free reign to my inquisitive nature? Pilgrims travel on foot, by bicycle, even horseback and last year 66 travelers did the final section in their wheelchairs! Rumor has it, the Camino has a magical way — albeit gritty — of changing people’s lives. For me, my vision meets reality May 18th, 2014. I will go. I hope to bring back a piece of the Camino for you.

The Risks and Challenges

Filming this project is going to be awesome. Every day will be a surprise of people and places that we have an opportunity to capture and share with you. Filming it will actually be less time consuming than editing it. Documentary film as a genre has a special challenge called the “shooting ratio.” When you shoot a narrative film with a shot list, the pre-planning does a lot of the editing for you. Planned scripts have low shooting ratios.

When you shoot everything to see what you’ll get (like in documentaries), you have a very high shooting ratio. That means a lot of time in the editing bay after shooting is complete. You never quite know how much time it will take to review all the footage and tie the story together. We will log our shots as we go to help with this and will have organized structures in place to reel it in along the way. The rest will be blood, sweat and tears! 🙂 A labor of love. All to be expected with documentary filmmaking. But, all our reward levels send you fun stuff from the project before the final cut of editing is completed. So, you’ll get lots of sneak peaks.