Consumed with Culture

From filming to rough cuts to finished program, an SIUC television producer goes the extra mile as a cultural ambassador
 

It’s ironic that in making documentaries about other countries’ foods and cultures, Jan Thompson and her crew often end their days too tired to eat.

Thompson, an independent television producer and assistant professor at SIUC, has teamed with her husband, historian Bruce Kraig, on several programs that are feasts for the senses. They’ve formed their own company, Food for Thought Productions, to explore culinary and cultural history around the globe in a series called "Hidden-Journeys."

Each program is like a love letter to a country, celebrating its contributions to world cuisine, its little-known food preferences, and its traditional customs, many of which are fast vanishing. 

"These programs are an introduction for American audiences to a culture and a people," says Thompson. Indeed, whether in a ginseng processing factory in South Korea, a one-table taco restaurant in Puebla, Mexico, or a food stall in Kerala, India, the people shine through.

A few years ago Thompson produced "Hidden China" and "Hidden Mexico," the first two documentaries in the series, with Public Broadcasting Service affiliate WTTW in Chicago. Then she landed a contract with national PBS for four more programs. "Food for the Ancestors" (about Mexico’s Days of the Dead) aired in 1999; "Hidden Korea," in 2000. "Hidden India," now in production, will probably air late this year or early in 2002. 

Thompson hoped to make the fourth program in the Philippines, but political turmoil there has meant one obstacle after another. "We’ve been trying to get to the Philippines for two years, but it’s probably not going to happen," she concedes. Instead, the fourth program will probably feature the food and people of Sicily.

As an independent producer who largely self-finances her projects (PBS kicks in about 10 percent of the costs), Thompson turns out top-drawer documentaries on a shoestring. "I’m doing these things on nickels and dimes," she says. 

The total budget for one production, including travel, is around $225,000. That’s about one-fourth the norm, and it’s possible only because she and Kraig fill so many roles.

Kraig does most of the advance research on a country. He writes the script and serves as on-camera host and narrator. Thompson serves as producer, production manager, director, and editor. She also composes the music for the shows. The rest of the crew? Just one or two cameramen and an audio engineer.

"Probably a lot of projects that could be done by independents never get made" because of lack of financial support, Thompson says. "I’m in the hole on all of these. It’s called a labor of love."

Traveling through remote areas of Third World countries takes months of preparation. Thompson handles all the logistics and negotiates with government contacts for transportation, lodging, and a translator or guide. "We don’t go blindly into a country," she says.

She also determines equipment needs, rents the equipment, and hires and directs the crew. It’s crucial that she get it right: where she films, equipment would be impossible to come by on short notice.

To keep costs down, the crew follows a punishing itinerary. In South Korea, for example, they visited 14 sites in as many days, working 10-12 hours a day. The places they filmed included rice paddies, a Buddhist temple, and private courtyards serving as pantries, with tall jars full of fiery chili sauce and kimchee—spiced, fermented cabbage.

Back home, Thompson does rough cuts in her Carbondale studio—digitizing and editing the videotape using a computer editing system, adding graphics where needed, and laying in the audio tracks of narration, ambient sounds recorded on location, and music. She creates the music in the same studio. The final technical polishing is done in Chicago.

"I’m proud of the fact that we’re creating programs with virtually no support and still getting them on national PBS broadcasts," Thompson says. "Nobody else is doing anything like this. But I’ve proved to PBS that I can deliver these programs and meet their technical requirements."

Of all her jobs, she says, "writing the music is the most difficult, but it’s what I enjoy the most." Before she composes, she researches the country’s traditional music and acquires traditional instruments—some of which, as for Korea and India, have proved difficult to obtain. She uses those instruments for "sampled" sounds—sounds recorded for manipulation on her synthesizer. She then can assign different instruments to the different parts of her score.

The music she composes can best be described as a semi-westernized version of a country’s indigenous music. Sometimes she gives a folk tune a new arrangement, but usually she starts from scratch. 

"It’s my interpretation," says Thompson. "The whole idea is to set a mood and to get you from point A to point B." Her music for "Hidden China" won a Midwest Emmy in 1994.

The Hidden-Journey programs share certain elements, including food markets, coverage of a festival or holiday celebrated in part with food, and a look at the region’s folk art, agriculture, and scenery. 

"Food for the Ancestors" covers, among others, artisans who paint ceramic figurines and craft sugar-candy skulls for the weeklong Days of the Dead celebration. It visits a village elder famous for her potent fruit liqueurs. It features Mexico’s most beloved dish, mole poblano, as well as the making of cazuelas—traditional clay mole pots. 

It also introduces American viewers to some very unfamiliar foods: croquettes made of ground mosquito eggs mixed into batter; grassshoppers cured in lime juice, then toasted; and a delicacy called huitlacoche— corn rust (a black fungus) sautéed with cheese and served on a blue corn tortilla. The intrepid Bruce Kraig tries it all, on camera. And there’s only one chance to catch his first reaction.

That’s true of most of the scenes in these documentaries. "We usually have one shot, one take," says Thompson. "If the cameraman has the wrong filter or isn’t in focus, we miss it." She makes sure her cameramen know what she’s looking for, and critiques their work as they’re traveling. 

"It’s taken me a couple of shows to find my style and how we want to present our ideas," she says. "There are no talking-head interviews in these programs. I think those are deadly for a show like this. To me the image is the most important thing. You see a lot of faces, a lot of kids. We’re able to catch people being natural. It’s very spontaneous."

Thompson estimates that 75 percent of each finished program consists of footage not planned in advance. "In the bus, as we drive I’m constantly looking out the window for stuff. I’m always behind schedule because we’re always finding things that come across our path, what I call gifts."

High school students tying up bundles of rice in Korea; a young girl spreading a path of marigold petals for the soul of a departed ancestor to follow in Mexico; a Hindu wedding banquet in India, with food served on banana leaves—all were gifts, says Thompson.

"I think things are constantly happening in front of people; it’s a matter of whether your eyes are open," she says, adding, "You have to trust your cameraman. There are little touches you hope your cameraman can see." 

The crew shoots 30-40 hours of footage for every finished hour-long program, Thompson says. "Every time we come back from a country, I always think, ‘Do I have enough for a show?’ I don’t know if I have a show until I do the first rough cut. A lot gets left out."

Thompson began as a TV director and producer for Chicago sports teams, including the Bulls. In 1992 her husband had a chance to travel to China to write and host a WTTW documentary. When WTTW decided not to produce the show after all, Thompson jumped in. 

"I loved sports, but I had done it for seven years, and it was extremely stressful because it was live TV," she says. "I was taking a big risk professionally in going to China. But once I did it, I was hooked."

Since then she has done only documentaries. Besides the Hidden-Journey series with Kraig, she is working with the Chicago Historical Society on a program about Lincoln’s assassination. She also has footage shot in Oaxaca, Mexico, ready to be edited into a program. 

And the project closest to her heart, which she’s been working on for 10 years, is a World War II documentary on American prisoners of war and civilian internees in the Pacific theater. She has interviewed about 60 survivors for this project and informally talked to some 200.

"There’s so much material there, it’s like a monster," says Thompson. "My father was a POW, so it’s real personal for me."

Interestingly, food figures here, too. In September 2000, Thompson presented a paper at the annual Oxford University Food Symposium about the elaborate food fantasies many of these men nourished as POWs on starvation rations. Some even collected recipes. "It was a way to get themselves through the experience," she says.

As she sits at what she calls the "cockpit" of her studio, surrounded by monitors, PC towers, videocassette recorders, sound mixers, and synthesizers, Thompson talks about her other goal: launching a documentary center at SIUC where students, faculty, and visiting artists, including independent filmmakers, could work on projects and interact in master classes. 

"The technology in our field is changing very fast," she says. "What better way to keep up than to learn from someone working in the field?"

The idea would tap expertise in SIUC’s Radio-Television Department, Cinema and Photography Department, School of Journalism, and Broadcasting Service. But Thompson would like to pull in other fields, too. "For example, you could team a historian with a faculty producer to film a documentary in lieu of or in addition to a book," she explains.

It’s an ambitious plan. But then, Thompson is already achieving ambitious things with her documentaries.

"I’d like this to be like a Tanglewood," she says, referring to the East Coast mecca for aspiring musicians. "There’s a need in the United States for this."

"Food for the Ancestors" PBS site

"Hidden Korea" PBS site

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