Our arrangement to film with the Tae Kwon Do master and his school meant that we would meet him from work at the post office and follow him from there to the class. The class would start at 5pm. Our boat leaves at 6pm. hmm.

I wait at the post office early (sending post cards too) and it starts to rain hard. He gets ready to leave work (on a yellow post office bike) and is set to go just as the rain is dying out. We can link it to the storm stuff that Ben shot the other day. It would be good to have a stormy film in the series. Leandro gets the rush we are in, but Ben is a little slow. We really have to shoot quickly and efficiently to get this film...

The Tae Kwon Do place is bare, but great for it. Small puddles of water have formed. It could be any dilapidated old gym in the world, but it's halfway up the Amazon and the kids have to travel 3 days by boat if they want to compete.

A lone kid starts on the kick bag. They are all in their full outfits today, for us. Slowly they form rows in front of the master and start limbering up. The Bi-Campeon Amazonas (14 years old) is nearest us and puts most vigour into his head shakes.
I feel really tense about this film. Pressured with the time and pissed off from earlier in the day.

Somehow we get through it and shoot it well. We get interviews with the master and the champion and although they aren't particularly deep, they really tell the story with simplicity and pride. If we have enough stuff about the distances traveled to compete and the kid talking about how it feels to be champion of the Amazon, then maybe there will be a film. It will certainly look great. For all the tension, I am sure that Ben got some really good stuff. The location suited us and he responds well to places like that. He's also a cameraman who thinks about story and the edit. Knowing what we need to piece it together.

We pack up in record time, two always working whilst the third takes stills/ signs release forms/ thanks the kids. We jump onto awaiting moto-taxis and head to the little docks... where our boat has already left. We grab a small speedboat and head over to the Katatal.
It's pretty exhilarating and sweaty and with the tension of the shoot, I need half an hour just to re-focus my eyes. I buy the other two as many beers as I can and make my final points... Then we giggle about how glamorous the above will sound.

The next 24 hours we do nothing but sit in hammocks, take photos and hope that our boat gets into Manaus in time for our plane. It gets increasingly less likely with every hour we are on the boat.