PreProduction

Reflections

Sleep hasn’t come easy in the last few weeks. Blame it on caffeine, nerves, transition... I blame it on dreaming. Our trek is a dream that has painted my mind in moments in and outside of consciousness, especially in those hours closest to sleeping.

As of late I find myself jolted and alert during tender hours of darkness. Not disturbed but with compulsion to grab a camera and start walking.

That’s how it tends to go on those days I find a good shot-- something stirs inside, I grab my camera and I start walking.

It’s Saturday morning in Winston-Salem. I’m wrapped in a throw on the front porch of our production headquarters quietly reflecting and anticipating my artistic approach. As a photographer this reflection is perhaps the most essential. It’s the simple questions after shooting: what did I do right? why didn’t that turn out the way I had hoped? is the issue a matter of knowing my tool or simply adjusting my shooting style?

On the Camino we have 40 days to shoot, adjust, and perfect our workflow… but we’ll never have the same moment twice. Though I do not expect to want for content, I do expect those golden moments that will produce the richest images will happen when least expected (and never happen the same way). For this reason, much anticipation is necessary. I think I understand this within my being even more than in my conscious. I think it’s become more important than sleep. From my experience, once the basics of imaging become second nature, finding the shot is a visceral response. It can’t quite be explained. I know and I shoot. Some might call this the Decisive Moment.

Because this is my response to the camera, I anticipate the trek will be a season of heightened visual awareness, of little speaking and more moving, pointing, squinting to assess light. Preparation has lead me to a more natural state-- watching instead of speaking, grappling with light and motion. Some may call this disengaged... for a photographer that couldn’t be further from the truth.

So instead of finding more words to say I have few words... let me show you a few images from recent moments of walking and shooting... quiet discoveries, moments precious to the wanderer.

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Anticipating The End

It's tough to believe after the long months of preproduction that the crew is about to pack the equipment and head off into the sunrise to start shooting this film. As their minds become more and more focused on the trail ahead and the literal next step of each moment on the trail, my mind is far away at the end. As the editor, I find myself in the unique position of trying to prepare technically for an experience that is outside of our control. Questions that are impossible to answer like "how much footage are we going to shoot" have come up on a regular basis, and the best I can do is estimate the worst case and advise from there. It's not an average feature film. There's no script, there's no specific plot, there's just a big wide trail lined with question marks.

This upcoming stage is still very practical, technical, and logical. While the team is in Spain, I will be on the homefrontpreparing for post. Workflows will be designed, technical details will be settled, an editing platform will be chosen (that's a blog post in and of itself for another day), and the process will be designed up through the final export into whatever format is appropriate. And yet, all this will be done without a lick'a footage.

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The crew is participating in the additive art of production. They will start with nothing, and by the end of the trail there will be something. Editing is a subtractive process. I will take their something and whittle it down to something better. All the inspirational quotes that are messily attributed to Michelangelo the sculptor totally apply here, such as, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

Right now, all I can do is sharpen my tools, prepare my workspace, and mix metaphors until the proverbial marble arrives. Like all editors, I will have to wait anxiously and patiently for the dailies. Not that I don't appreciate the technical side of things, but when I see that first flicker of raw footage on the screen, that, in my opinion, is when the real fun begins.

-Emily

From This Point On...

So here we are. The Travel Light. team departs for Spain on June 11th, and a lot is going to be changing. We’re making our first feature film, and to be honest, I get so invested in the details I forget how strange this journey really is… backpacking 500 miles across Spain to collect stories from around the world? Who does that? From this point on, the blog is going to become more of a production journal. I promise to write honestly and write often. I cannot promise that the writing will be perfect. The screenwriter inside me wants all writing to be sparse, visual, and packed in paragraphs of no more than three sentences. This blogging thing is a new animal. But if you’ll forgive me my mistakes, I’ll lay it all out, and we’ll see together what we have at the end of this journey. - Lindsay

Fellow Traveler Christina Hospodar

Hey guys! Lindsay Thompson from the Travel Light team here. It’s been a while since we’ve blogged, and we know, we should feel guilty about it. There’s been a lot happening for our team… Lauren Martinez graduated from Wake Forest University, Gabriela Quiroz graduated from UNC School of the Arts (and left right away for an internship at the Cannes Film Festival), Ron is working on a SyFy movie out in Montana, and Emily is working on her second degree with Georgia State. My sixth graders had their documentaries premiere at the HanesBrands Theater in Winston-Salem (that’s a couple of them looking dapper in the photo), and, well, I’ve been trying to get this movie made.

But never fear. There will be a flood of information and blogging from the whole Travel Light. team from this point on… and we have someone new for you to meet.

Christina Hospodar is a student from Wake Forest University who has graciously agreed to let us follow her for part of her Camino experience. She’s a passionate traveler who we’ve loved getting to know. Here is an introduction to her, and her Camino journey, in her own words:

With May coming to a close and June just around the corner, I, like most college students, have answered my fair share of the ever-popular “What are you doing this summer?”  This year, I find it difficult to answer, and not for lack of a plan, but rather lack of a brief enough response. I normally resort to “hiking in Spain” with a quick (and bad) explanation of the Camino, but I am always left unsatisfied, knowing that I have failed to convey the true spirit of the Camino or what completing it means to me, why exactly I want to do it or what I am hoping to accomplish. So let’s talk about that.

After getting back to school from Christmas break, I was thrown into the whirlwind of figuring out summer plans, surrounded by peers clamoring to secure summer internships. I knew that in a perfect world, my summer would take me back to Spain, the country that I grew to truly love after studying abroad in Salamanca. Those four months were some of the best of my life, but when I look back, what I miss most are not the luxurious stays in four-star hotels on our school-organized excursions, or the vivacious nightlife, or even the abundance of goat cheese. As silly as it may sound, I miss walking. I miss being enveloped in another culture with strands of various conversations blowing past my ears, surrounded by people with stories so different from mine. I miss having hours of time each day devoted to just getting me one place to another. I miss dwelling in my own thoughts to make those hours seem like minutes. And when I think about those things that I miss, the Camino makes sense.

That’s not to say that I am doing the Camino just to walk. If that was the case, I could spend all day on the treadmill in my basement. To me, the Camino is a concentrated version of what I miss at the very core of it – being independent and making each day a journey, both physically and personally. It means being disconnected from the world as I normally know it, with no smartphone to routinely thumb through even though nothing has changed since I last checked it half an hour ago. It means being surrounded by people I don’t know with stories that I will never know unless I make the effort. It means LOTS of alone time, despite never being truly alone.

I knew about the Camino because my friend Kyle completed a route of it after our Salamanca program ended, and when I started to think about what I wanted to do this summer, my Google searches quickly learned to fill in the “c” with search results of the Camino de Santiago. Once I started reading more about the Camino and learning about its impact on the pilgrims who walk it, it was difficult to get out of my head. I started seeing connections everywhere I went, one of the strongest being in my health psychology class. When we began discussing mindfulness, I was struck by how the elements of mindfulness, long practiced in Buddhist meditation, seemed to match perfectly with the Camino. Mindfulness is hard to define, but it is essentially a deliberate intention to nonjudgmentally pay attention to momentary experience by self-employing a distinct mode of consciousness , all while maintaining an attitude of openness, kindness and patience. Quite the mouthful, right? Basically, mindfulness means developing and engaging a distinct way of thinking where you pay attention to how you are feeling and the experiences you are presently having in order to become more in tune with your emotions, your body, and the world around you. When I first started delving into my Google searches, one of the aspects of the Camino that intrigued me the most was how despite its being a 500-mile physically demanding trek, those who completed it rarely focused on, if even mentioned at all, the physical exhaustion of it. It was somewhat odd to see such a physically demanding journey categorized so frequently as a way to “recharge your batteries,” but as I began learning more about the health benefits of mindfulness, it made complete sense.

Throughout my research, I was also struck by one element of the history of the Camino – the fact that when it first emerged in the 9th century, it was often offered as an alternative to serving a jail sentence. Today, however, being able to walk the Camino is a privilege, only accessible to those who can afford to leave behind their regular lives for over a month. To me, this seems to be a glaring reflection of how our values have changed in society, and not necessarily in a good way. Has our world become so engulfed by materialism and consumerism that such a bare-bones journey, a journey that was once equivalent to prison, has become a luxury? If so, what can the Camino teach us? What can we extrapolate from the privilege of walking the Camino that we could incorporate into our daily lives? After considering these questions and the application of mindfulness, I knew that I needed to personally experience the Camino in order to answer them.  I applied for a Richter travel grant to study the Camino in relation to mindfulness, and was beyond thrilled to receive a congratulatory e-mail a month later.  I know the Camino has something to teach us. There is a reason people go back year after year, a reason that the physical exhaustion of it plays an almost minor role. I’m hoping to find that reason.

I never knew the Camino existed until Kyle told me about his plans of doing it. I remember that conversation, and I remember it sounding crazy to me. “You’re doing it alone? Is that even safe? So it’s not with a tour group at all?” Now I’m answering the same bewildered questions.

And I’ve never been more excited.

Reynolda Film Festival Announcement!

More exciting news from the Travel Light team! We have just cemented a partnership with the wonderful folks of the Reynolda Film Festival. This is different from our other business sponsors thus far - as a part of our Reynolda Partnership, crew members of Travel Light. will be giving a presentation on the film followed by a Q & A on Thursday, April 4th, from 6 to 7pm. The presentation will be followed by by a meet and greet.

When complete, we'll be bringing the film-in-progress to the Reynolda Film Festival, workshopping scenes and talking about the production from the other side.

This is incredibly exciting for us as an opportunity to help give back to the film community in Winston-Salem, and opening new conversations about our film and filmmaking in general. Reynolda has been more than generous in their offer to partner with us, and we're thrilled to see where this partnership goes as production moves along. They will be one of the first venues we present a cut of the final film, and we're honored to have that opportunity.

We'll keep you all posted on when these events start happening. In the meantime, check out the

Reynolda Film Festival

this year and let them know you appreciate their support of independent film!

Meet the Team - Lauren Martinez

Friends, Your sphere of influence is enormous. In fact, I am convinced that nearly every decision made is in some way influenced (for better or worse) by others. A few examples from my personal life include decisions to travel, show compassion, share my art, learn spanish, tell bad jokes, and eat spinach. It sounds silly but these choices have been influenced by someone a little older, smarter, or simply more stylish than myself. I put value on what they were about and boom they tweaked the course of my life.

One of these people was Mr. Herman Hall.  A few of you reading this might know him. Herman was the younger hip teacher that travelled to Costa Rica in the winters and taught surf lessons on the side. During one of our lectures he told us the story of a hike that took travelers from the French Pyrenees mountains all the way to the west coast of Spain. The Camino de Santiago de Compostela crossed 500 miles of terrain taking travelers through vineyards, mountains, and beaches. The hike was about letting go and finding truth. It was about self discovery and releasing burdens. I was enchanted. That day I made a promise to my fifteen-year-old self I would hike the Camino and bring my camera to document it. 

This dream stayed packed away for four years (a short time in the life of dreams) until the night I met Lindsay Thompson. We were at the local ice cream dive with a group of mutual friends. Were both loved Jesus and were into art. A week later we ran into each other and at some point in our conversation realized we shared a dream. Travel Light Film was born. This was a little over two years ago. Today our dreams are coming true.

Travel Light has been a long time in the making. Not just ideologically but also in our own training. As a fifteen-year-old spanish student I knew little more about making a documentary than basic camera function. Slowly, I began putting my photos in shows and selling them for a little more than pocket lint at local cafes. When I was sixteen I did my first commission piece and at eighteen my first wedding. I worked under photographer David Alan Harvey who is known for his work with National Geographic and Burn Magazines as well as the prestigious Magnum photo society. Needless to say, I was in over my head but David was a patient mentor. As a college freshman I spent time in Port-au-Prince in the month following the 2010 earthquake. I volunteered in a medical clinic. A photo of the Haitian capital building was my first magazine cover shot. The next year I spent five months between Argentina and Chile landing a feature in La Noche arts and literary magazine. That fall I landed my first commissioned essay and a job under photographer Ken Bennett, a former contributor to the New York Times and Washington Post. I spent the summer of 2012 in Boulder, CO hiking, climbing, and working for the photography department at Backpacker Magazine.

Before taking off on the Camino this summer I will graduate from Wake Forest University where I have spent the time between my photos working towards degrees in Politics and International Affairs and Studio Art with concentrations in Latin American Studies and photography. Throughout my studies and travels I have kept a portfolio and blog at Lauren-Martinez.com. Travel Light is a culmination of my art and studies thus far. It’s a dream we share with each other and with centuries of pilgrims in both directions from today. I pray our Camino is just the beginning of many journeys to come. Until then, please join us on our way, your support means the whole world. Buen camino to you my friend. May your way be filled with goodness and truth.

Happy living,

Lauren

Meet the Team - Lindsay Thompson

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

― Ernest Hemingway

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I’ve always been a wanderer. My parents can attest to it. They love to tell the story of how I, at about four years-old, went running into the woods behind my grandparents’ house. When my parents laughed and asked me where I was going, I turned, sighed a very grown-up sigh, and said “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

I’ve used that line many times since.

No matter what was happening in my life, how busy I got, how focused on school, I needed my moments of wandering, moments of running into the woods and discovering something new. I craved a journey beyond my comfort zone. I once left college at 4am to drive towards the mountains because I had writer’s block. In the outdoors I felt an inspiration I couldn’t find in my rented house near campus. I hiked about 8 miles that day and completed the first draft of the script. I guess you could say that for me, God has always lived outdoors.

I first heard about the Camino de Santiago my sophomore year of high school, and though I wasn’t Catholic, it fascinated me. Here was a modern-day quest. A God-search for hearts willing to wander out their front doors towards… new life? Revelation? Whatever they sought, it couldn’t be merely a certificate of completion handed-out at a cathedral.

It wasn’t the end result that interested me as much as the journey itself.

I went to college for filmmaking. There I discovered others compelled to wander. As I talked of future adventures with Brittni Moore and Lauren Martinez, I kept thinking about the Camino de Santiago. Why was that road always in the back of my mind? Maybe there was a film waiting to happen. Maybe we were the people meant to make it.

Meeting these friends was the beginning of my journey towards Santiago de Compostela.

There are so many preparations to go through before we can leave for Spain… fundraising and scheduling and LOTS of paperwork. The filmmaker in me knows that this is all part of the process, but the wanderer in me gets frustrated. 4am drives to the mountains can’t happen when there’s so much to do.

They say that the hardest part of the Camino de Santiago is the Meseta, this stretch of trail that seems to go on forever with nothing in sight except for flat land and sky. It’s the part of the trail where the most pilgrims give up. But it’s also the place where the most people find revelation, both personal and spiritual.

Right now fundraising feels like the Meseta of pre-production. I have to keep focused, remind myself that the fruits of this greater responsibility will be greater freedom.

All journeys require perseverance, and let me tell you, just setting foot on the Camino de Santiago for the first time will feel like a mountaintop, the reward at the end of a long journey.

I can’t wait to be there, to feel that. But I’m learning that this current place in the journey has its more immediate rewards. The feeling of accomplishment as our community surrounds us, supports our hard work as we aim for the Camino de Santiago is a greater encouragement than I think any of them know right now.

I’m learning to enjoy this part of the journey, too.

Lindsay
Lindsay

Meet the Team - Ron Nelson

Ronnie & I graduated from our university's cinematography program together. I have to note before presenting his writing that when I sat down to consider who to ask to come along as the second camera operator, it wasn't so much a decision as it was just a fact that I'd be asking Ron. Some people are born with adventure in their veins. It's just that obvious. - Brittni

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To walk is to allow oneself an opportunity at a greater awareness. There is an awareness of the self, an awareness of your surroundings, and ultimately the awareness that walking is all you really need to do. Walking days at a time, weeks even, is giving yourself away to the present, allowing yourself to become lost in the monotony, the vague, and the unexplainable. My whole life I have been conscious of my personal need for movement. I have walked across mountaintops, wandered through alleyways, and ran in countless races. But still my desire is not quenched; I am continually looking for the next path, the next challenge worth the endeavor. For me, that next path will be the Camino.

Often when I have been walking I have had a camera in hand. The camera allows the purest way to document a moment. It provides an opportunity to capture the essence of life itself, even if only in the briefest moments. I enjoy the mechanical nature of cameras, the ease in which you get lost looking through the viewfinder. I am still waiting for the perfect shot, and knowing that it is there, somewhere, drives me to keep looking. With a camera, you can capture the world in the unique way that you experience it. In this way I will capture what I see while on the Camino.

To have the opportunity to combine these two passions is an opportunity I cannot pass up. What better way to connect to the people around you than to walk among them? To share the struggles of the everyday, the aches, the exhaustion, the hunger, but in equal measure the elation and accomplishment. When walking you have little to do but enjoy your surroundings and to talk to those around you. These are the moments I am interested in capturing, the moments I want to be there for to see. What other trail draws so many cultures, ages, and personalities together? People often criticize walking as a solitary act, but walking on the Camino is walking to embrace the spirit of the people around you.

It will be a challenge no doubt. 490 miles will not come easily. And it shouldn’t. That what isn’t hard is rarely worth doing. Batteries will die. Gear will get soaked. Clothes will tear and bodies will be bruised. But you know, all of that is kinda what makes it fun for me. It gives me the chance to laugh when everything else is going wrong, and to realize at the end of the day, I are doing something worthwhile, something that will live beyond me.

My name is Ron Nelson, and I’ll see you on the trail.

Kickstarter Update!

Hello, friends! Just a quick update on our Kickstarter fundraising so far. As you well know, we started the campaign fifteen days ago, leaving us now with only 25 days until completion. We've raised just over 25% of our goal, which is fantastic! It's incredible that people are getting behind this project enough to even get us there.

But we've kind of been lingering at the 25% mark for a while now, and could really use the push to help us get over this plateau and keep climbing. Instead of focusing entirely on the large goal at hand, we're going to take today to focus on smaller bits and pieces that could really make all the difference. Today, we ask that you consider helping us with only $10 towards our Kickstarter. We're aiming to get one hundred people behind us with ten dollars each, a fantastic push that would raise a total $1,000 in a single day!

While we are incredibly grateful for the backers who have helped in large ways, today is about how far just $10 can take this project. You don't have to have gobs of money in order to support our project on the Camino. While it may feel like so little, this goal is all about realizing that what feels like a small donation can really or break this project. We need everyone who things this is a good idea, who wants to support us and help make this film. The amount of money isn't what matters. Today is about the act. If you've been waiting to join our backers, today's your day!

Thanks again to all our dear friends, and especially to those who hardly know us at all. We keep pushing towards this because of you.

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Meet the Team - Emily Maysilles

We've asked each member of our production team to write up a blog post introducing themselves to you, and here's the first one! We'll be doing this as a series of Meet the Team posts over the next couple weeks, so stay tuned to hear what all the other team members have to say. First, though, we're introducing our own lovely editor. Her name is changing in two weeks to Emily Curtin (congratulations, Em, we're all so excited for you and Ryan!) but today we introduce her as Emily Maysilles.

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The Editor.

Lindsay kept talking about this idea, to walk some trail in Spain and collect people's stories. And she kept talking about it until it became this constant theme.

Finally, one night as I was passing through Winton on my way from somewhere to somewhere and using her couch as a hotel, she popped the question: "If I can make this, do you want to cut it?"

"Well, yeah," I said with a smile. "I really really do."

I didn't know I wanted to be an editor. In high school I wandered through all the performing and visual arts convinced one week that I would be an actor, the next that I would either be a playwright or a timpanist, OR MAYBE BOTH!

Junior year I got stuck in a "media" class which basically served the function of sometimes producing school news and otherwise handing out easy A's. The very first class, I got assigned to edit a piece for school news because nobody else wanted to. It was a brilliant addition to the canon of world cinema: a story shot in echoey too-wide shots entitled "What Was Your Favorite Summer Movie." The bad sound and the too-wide shots were an aesthetic, you see.

Even though this was a piece full of high schoolers talking about The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, it was the piece that brought my attention to editing. Here, finally, was a logical art. An art that required some technological wizardry as well as primal storytelling ability. An art that made sense and made beauty out of the chaos.

I went to UNCSA to pursue this love of filmmaking and editing. That's where I met Lindsay, in our Philosophy of Religion course. I thought she was cool, we hung out, I also met this girl Brittni who was really passionate about cinematography and also very cool. At the end of that semester, Lindsay and I pulled an all-nighter at the local Waffle House writing philosophy papers and watching the cycles of the night. After that, our friendship was cemented.

Lindsay & Emily, Summer 2010

My third year at UNCSA kicked off a period in my life when the concept of home was a bit elusive. I went to Austin and NYC to work crazy, heady weeks at rock festivals. I went to Seattle to assist and study under the renowned photographer Elaine Mayes who was putting together a documentary project about her own mentor. I went to San Francisco to do video at a music studio. I went back home to Atlanta and found a few freelance gigs, then I turned right around and went out to New Hampshire to work for Florentine Films, aka Ken Burns' studio.

When I came back to Atlanta after that, it was because I wanted to. I missed my home. I missed the sunny South and the beat of this crazy city. I also missed the man who will become my husband in just a few short weeks.

I can say with some force of certainty that Atlanta is my home, for now. That experience of finding my home and my place gives me compassion for the pilgrims on the Camino who are asking the same kinds of questions I was asking. Where do I belong? What is my place? What is my purpose?

The scope of this project is enormous. The questions are huge. It's exactly the kind of grandiose thing I like to sink my teeth into.

Emily Curtin

You can email Emily at ecurtin@travelightfilm.com, if you have any questions for her or just want to talk. Want to see more of her work? Find it at http://emilymaysilles.com/

New Business Sponsor Announcement

Ladies and gentlemen, We are thrilled to announce our first official business sponsorship with the NoDa Brewing Company of Charlotte, North Carolina.

NoDa Brewing Company
NoDa Brewing Company

NoDa is a home-grown microbrewery that crafts small-batch premium beers, sold primarily in local restaurants. They also have their own tap room, where they debut a new beer every Tuesday for anyone to come in and taste. If you're in the Charlotte area and haven't stopped by yet, we really recommend the visit.

NoDa has been full of fantastic, helpful people as we've gone through talks of sponsorship with them this past week, and their support is going to help push our fundraising once the Kickstarter campaign wraps up. Financially speaking, this is incredibly important. A successful Kickstarter campaign is our first huge milestone, but we know we're going to need help beyond that to make our total budget goal.

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On April 25th, NoDa will be hosting a fundraiser for us at their brewery. We'll start selling tickets online very soon for the event, each ticket including a pint and brewery tour, with live music and a silent auction. More details coming soon as we set up the online ticket purchase system.

We're very excited to be working with NoDa on this, and to have them on our sponsorship team. Hopefully we'll see some of you wonderful people there in April!

Kickstarter Launch!

Ladies and gentlemen,

We're officially kicking off our first public funding campaign this morning. After several months of behind-the-scenes work by our tiny, crazy team, we've got our Kickstarter campaign ready for everyone to see. It's got a video! It's got pictures! There's some writing, and a whole lot of pretty awesome backer rewards!

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We're really proud of this project so far, and we believe that using crowdfunding as a major means of support is integral to the kind of film we're making. This film doesn't belong just to the six of us making it, but rather it belongs to every person who's story touches it in any way. This includes the stories of the people helping us financially. By being a Kickstarter backer, you're becoming a necessary part of our film, and expanding its reach beyond what six individual crew members could ever hope for.

You'll notice that our Paypal donation button has disappeared, to be replaced with a link to Kickstarter. While the campaign is running, we've turned off Paypal donations to encourage anyone who wants to donate to do so through Kickstarter. Not only will that help us reach our goal, you also get great rewards, and everybody wins.

As you might know, Kickstarter works on the basis that if the funding goal isn't raised by the end date, the funding fails and no money is given out. This is great for you as backers, because it means you'll only be giving away your money if we're successful in funding. On the flip side, this means that we need all the help we can get reaching towards (and hopefully beyond) our goal of $10,000.

If you want to support the project, if you're backing it and want to help us grow the Travel Light community even further, even if you can't afford a financial donation but still like the idea of the film, we would love for you to help us by spreading the word of our film and our Kickstarter. Tell your friends, your co-workers, the guy at the coffee shop or the girl at the bookstore.

We're only as strong as the people we have behind us. This is in your hands, now.

And we can't wait to see what happens.

Of Crepe Ladies & Sardines

In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, there is a fantastic little café that has become a cornerstone of the community. Customers don’t just go there for the rich coffee and pain au chocolat… they go there for the people. Welcome to Camino Bakery.

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Bakery-owner Cary walked the Camino de Santiago in 1998, hoping she would discover what she would do with her life after college. What she discovered was a simpler way of life that focused on quality, both in relationships and in food.

Despite the fact that she began the trail on her own, Cary soon found herself traveling with pilgrims from around the world. Their days were marked by lots of walking, lots of laughing, and lots of long talks in different languages.

As for the food - even the smallest villages had a bakery/coffee shop where the community gathered. Years later, when Cary would start her bakery, it was places like these that she had in mind.

“I aim for my life to be more like the Camino. I mean, I named my bakery after it.  Life is about the journey, not about the destination, and in this country we are all about the destination.”

Jack, one of Cary’s employees, also walked the Camino de Santiago after college. Jack grew up backpacking, and would go on after Spain to hike the Appalachian Trail. So what made the Camino de Santiago stick out for him?

“The Camino is different than American backpacking experiences like the AT because of the emphasis on community… because of community, going through towns, you can travel lighter. You don’t have to be so self-reliant.”

Talking with Cary and Jack about their experiences made our crew even more excited for our own journey. Check out the videos below to hear two of their funny tales from the trail.

Interview by Lindsay Thompson, Shot by Ryan Heefner.

A Journey Begins

When does a journey start? When you finish packing?

When you step out your front door?

When you start a blog about the journey, thus sharing it with the world (whether the world wants to hear about it or not)?

Well, world, I guess this is at least the beginning of our journey together. In June I will be directing a film on the Camino de Santiago, backpacking almost 500 miles from  the Pyrenees Mountains to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, documenting the stories of the pilgrims I meet along the way. I won’t be going alone, though… I have a small yet amazing crew accompanying me: Brittni Moore, Emily Maysilles, Ron Nelson, Jasmine Luoma, and Lauren Martinez (you can find out more about them here).

This will be my first feature film. My first time in Europe.  My first time backpacking 500 MILES!  To be honest, I feel a lot like Bilbo Baggins being called to a great adventure: very excited, very curious, and maybe a little bit scared.

(But mostly excited.)

This blog is a chronicle of the film. A director’s log. A bit of a personal journal. There will be posts by other crew members, interviews with former pilgrims, production photos and videos…  a veritable smörgåsbord of Camino tales.

I can’t believe this story is actually starting.

I hope you enjoy the journey.

- Lindsay Thompson

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Start Here. (blog coming soon)

We're a small team of filmmakers, photographers, technicians, and artists from the United States, coming together in local North Carolina to make a film about a road that continually changes the world in small ways. Together, the six of us are going to walk the Camino de Santiago as pilgrims, but with a twist. Along with our gear, we'll be carrying our cameras.

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We've got to start somewhere, so this blog post is our first official start on the web. First blog posts are always awkward, really, so to combat that we'll follow this one up pretty quickly with some posts on our preproduction so far, to keep everything up-to-date.

There's a lot to catch up on. We have the story so far, the crew we've gathered, and the ways in which we could use your help. Independent documentary is not at all an easy route, but neither is the road itself. Stick with us! As we go along we'll be posting from the road as we walk, telling the stories of other travelers and our crew, and mostly just doing our best to do something almost - but not quite - impossible.

Travel Light.