India Blog Entry - September 1, 2010

All India had been was rain and hotels for me the first two days here...

 

But today, the sun was finally shining in Bhopal, the site of our first story.

 

As some of you recall, in 1984, a major gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in the city of Bhopal killed thousands instantly. It was utter chaos for weeks in Bhopal. Many would be afflicted with permanent injuries like deformities, blindness and mental problems.

 

In the last 25+ years, not much has changed in the city of Bhopal.  The UC plant still stands, now amongst twisted weeds. The inhabitants surrounding it are still dirt poor.

 

What does this have to do with sports, you ask?  I've said that the best sports stories are not stories about sports, but human interest stories and the effect they have on the world of sports.  It can be something small or something big. But likely, anything that has happened -- calamity or success -- has some tie to sports.  Bhopal is no different.

 

Children in the neighboring slums, who cling to nothing but a shirt on their back, still dream of getting out one day. Without a viable school system, sports may be their only option. And it is a gigantic longshot. But still they dream. And they do it on the playing fields in Bhopal -- of which many in the slums are located on or around the Union Carbide plant.

 

While this image may appear romantic, it is hardly that. Because of the gas leak and the lack of cleanup throughout the last two and a half decades, these children are playing on grounds that are likely highly contaminated.

 

Today, accompanied by a reknowned testing agency, we went around to a couple smaller cricket fields to see how contaminated they were.

 

Imagine knowing that as a child you were playing your favorite sport on a ground so contaminated it's unsafe. What would you do about it? If you live in the slums, you have no choice. Either play there or don't play at all.

 

Who's to blame for this? Not an easy question to answer.. More to come on that in later entries.

Yaron Deskalo

Roberta Mancino Day 4

E:60 continues production on its feature of Italian fashion model and extreme adventure athlete, Roberta Mancino on Monday filming more Rome sights before traveling 90 minutes south to spend time with fashion photographer, Stefano Manfredini. He has been one of Mancino’s favorite photographers and has shot many of the 29 year-old’s most memorable images.

After E:60 cameras documented Manfredini’s talents up close, they turned their cameras on him, for an interview with Jeremy Schapp about Mancino’s talents and appeal as a fashion model.

Then the E:60 production team headed to the coastal town of  Anzio south of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea, where Mancino was raised. We visited some of her old stomping grounds and the Anzio train station where Mancino used to live in an upstairs apartment. The day ended with a sunset shoot in the town square, harbor, and at the beach.

Tune into E:60 this fall to see the interview with Manfredini, and more sights and sounds from our trip to Italy. And check out tomorrow’s daily blog to find out where E:60’s production team is headed next… a hint… it’s a very scary place.

T. Sean Herbert

E:60 Feature Producer
Aug 30, 2010

Roberta Mancino Day 3

The E:60 crew drove nine hours from the Dolomites in northern Italy to Rome in order to continue producing its feature on fashion model-turned-dare-devil, Roberta Mancino.  On August 29, 2010, at 11 a.m. on Day 3 of our shoot, we were in central Rome when Jeremy Schaap interviewed Mancino’s mother.  A translator was used to convert the questions into Italian and the answers into English.

By 1 p.m., the E:60 production team was scouting for a location for Schaap’s next interview. Jeb Corliss is among the top wing suit flyers in the world and Schaap was going to be asking him questions about his girlfriend, Mancino. E:60 produced a feature back in 2008 on Corliss and his pursuit of trying to jump out of an airplane in a wing suit and land safely without a parachute.  Some called him crazy, other call him a genius.  We’ll give you another chance to decide.

After the Corliss interview, the remainder of the day was spent traveling the streets of Rome capturing the best moments of Mancino’s Italian roots.  Even if you have never traveled to Rome, you will likely recognize some of the locales.

Watch E:60 this fall to see which moments from these interviews and what iconic Rome sights make the final cut. And check in tomorrow to here more behind-the-scenes tidbits from the Roberta Mancino shoot in Italy.

T. Sean Herbert, E:60 Feature Producer  

8/29/2010

Roberta Mancino Day 2

E:60 continues following Roberta Mancino in Italy this week on Day 2 of her attempt at her first helicopter proximity jump in the Dolomites.  On August 28, 2010, her day begins early, at 7:30 a.m., when she awakes to check the local weather reports with the chopper pilot.  She’s in luck…the weather is going to be very favorable.  She and her boyfriend, Jeb Corliss, start to prepare mentally and physically.  They travel with a few hundred pounds of gear, including their wing suits, helmets, some hi-tech HD camera equipment, and of course, their parachutes.

E:60 crews were dispatched to the heliport for Mancino’s 11 a.m. departure, while another camera crew headed to the area where she hoped to land, and another took a gondola to the top of Sass Pordoi, a 10,000-foot mountain top adjacent to Mancino’s jump site. That crew then had to take a perilous hike nearly a mile down to a perch on the edge of a cliff with the best vantage point for Mancino’s planned trajectory. 

At 11:10 a.m. the E:60 crew joining Mancino in the chopper called the other crews to let them know that they were taking off from the heliport in a few moments for the 6 minutes flight to the chosen drop site. And on schedule, with all of E:60’s cameras rolling, the helicopter quickly appeared on the horizon, climbed to about 11,000 feet, and then Mancino and Corliss stepped out onto the choppers rails in their wing suit poised to take an extreme leap of faith…

Watch E:60 this fall to see what happened next.  And check in tomorrow to find out what’s next on this incredible journey.

T. Sean Herbert, E:60 Feature Producer  

8/28/2010

Roberta Mancino Day 1

E:60 is traveling to Italy this week to shoot a feature on Roberta Mancino.  For those of you who are not familiar with Mancino, go to Youtube and check out some of her highlight reels.  Not only is she an accomplished fashion model, but she is also a world-class skydiver.  Several years ago she began base jumping off of some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, harrowing cliffs, and now has begun jumping out of planes wearing a wing suit. For the uninitiated, Mancino in flight looks more like a flying bat than anything else.

Our journey began Wednesday, August 26, with a trip to Milan, Italy before a four-hour trek north to The Dolomites in the Italian Alps to meet up with Mancino and her boyfriend, Jeb Corliss.  Together they are donning their wing suits to attempt a helicopter proximity jump…trying to fly as close to one of the tallest mountains in all of Europe without killing themselves. 

On Thursday, E:60’s cameras were rolling when Mancino and Corliss met with their helicopter pilot to check on the days conditions.  Unfortunately, they did not look promising, with strong winds and rain in the forecast.  They decided to take a site survey of the exact area where they intended to jump and their search for a suitable landing zone.

Corliss and Mancino located a small area off a road that took them to the base of the mountain no bigger than a football field and decided it would be big enough and easy enough to spot from a few thousand feet above.  By 2 p.m. the wind and rain as predicted rolled in and scrubbed their first attempt. They try again tomorrow. 

Submitted by T. Sean Herbert

8/28/2010

From Belarus with Love

When Maria Sharapova returned to Gomel, Belarus in late June, E:60’s cameras wanted to be there. Belarus was the Eastern European homeland of her parents, who fled it in 1986 after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Sharapova’s mother and father moved to Siberia, where the tennis star was born in April 1987.


But a shoot in Belarus has special logistical challenges, as you might expect of a small country that at various times belonged to the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union.

Since 1990 Belarus has been sovereign, with its very own ‘elected’ dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who did not take kindly to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling it an “outpost of tyranny.”

Amnesty International’s 2009 report on Belarus said “state control over the media increased, and restrictions on independent media continued. Some public events were banned; peaceful demonstrators were fined and detained for short periods; and civil society activists and journalists were harassed.”

Producer Matt Rissmiller’s job was to get in and out of Belarus without becoming another statistic. Napolean’s Grand Army marched through Belarus in 1812 on its way to infamy, and Rissmiller was determined to avoid the same fate. The way in to Belarus, he decided, was through Ukraine, to the south.

“Belarus is more challenging to get into than Ukraine,” Rissmiller said. “So we had contacts from Belarus meet us on the Ukraine side.”

He and his crew flew into Kiev. Customs was slow because of 10-11 cases of production equipment. Led by their Ukrainian and Belarusian guides, the crew drove two hours to the border. There, they were detained for 8 to 10 hours, even though they showed the proper paperwork and letters from government officials.

By the time they reached Gomel, a drive that should have taken 5-6 hours took 15 hours. They had flown out of New York on Saturday evening, and arrived in Gomel at 3 a.m. Monday.

The exhausted crew slept for a few hours and shot Gomel for the rest of Monday and Tuesday. Sharapova arrived on Wednesday, June 30. At

5:30 a.m. Rissmiller and his shooters – Bill Roach and Joel and Jesse Edwards – began to set up in a local “palace” for the Sharapova session scheduled at 9 a.m. But they ran into a problem.

“As we were setting up fire started shooting out of the electrical strip that the equipment was plugged into – it was jumping off the ground and cracking,” Rissmiller recalled. “Power in another country can be sketchy.”

The crew could not fix the problem, and Sharapova’s arrival drew nigh. Rissmiller scrambled.

“I called an audible,” he recalled.

The interview of Sharapova took place outside the palace, in natural lighting.

Sharapova left on Thursday, as Rissmiller’s crew made its way back to northern Ukraine to shoot desecrated Chernobyl. The crew was cautioned to walk on the pavement and avoid stirring up dust or dirt. It was warned about local food, water and air. Rissmiller had no urge to linger.

“We had our points mapped out pretty well,” he recalled. “We shot from 10 to 3 and got out of there.”

They returned July 4, touched ground on an international runway, jet propelled back home, from overseas to the USA. The fruits of their journey air tonight.



Posted by Steve Marantz, August 17, 2010

Bike Kids Tradition to be featured on E:60

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