My First Documentary

My name is Nathan Nix, I'm a film student from Murfreesboro, TN, and I'm a big fan of traveling. I've been desperate and hopeful that one day I'll be able to use my love of videography to travel and produce films. I had once briefly left the country for a week for such an experience, and I've been desperate to go back ever since.

A mission trip opportunity came up at the collegiate ministry that I had been a part of, and I was extremely interested. The “mission;” go into the jungles of Panama, guided by two missionaries, to a tribe called the Embara, and record their worship songs in their native language for distribution (by the Embara) to other tribes sharing the same language in Columbia.

I and another friend of mine were asked to come on the trip and record what was happening in a short-subject documentary style of film.

This was exciting for me, since I had never done anything like this before. I packed up all my camera gear and headed off with the team of college students that had been my friends for the past year.

The trip was fairly simple; each morning we woke up and got all our gear ready, the RIM students would start to record the worship songs, as many as the tribe would play for us, and we would record the process (without getting in the way). We also got some footage around the small village. We helped the oldest man in the village rebuild some of his house (a second floor and a roof) and the village was extremely accommodating to us. The film did not really go anywhere, I have failed to upload it to any site, and it only got shown in one conference. The recordings of songs, however, were given to the people, and they will have that as a preservation of their language and their heritage for decades.