For the past several months, I’ve been working with Rae on her upcoming documentary film, Autumn Gem. The documentary will cover the life of China’s first feminist, Qiu Jin, with scholar interviews, moving pictures, and dramatic recreations.
We recently completed our teaser trailer, which is available on the project website. Next Friday, we’ll be leaving for China for three weeks, where we’ll be filming scenes for the documentary and interviewing academic and cultural scholars. We’re excited to be moving into the production phase of the project!
The next few days are going to be supremely busy. I’ve started organizing all of my technical equipment that we’ll be bringing with us on the trip. I’m in charge of videography and photography, which means I have some tough decisions ahead of me on what to bring and what to leave behind. The weather is really bad right now in China — the worst Winter in 60 years, I’ve read — which means weather-sealed lenses are a must. I recently purchased a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS. I have a feeling that’s the lens that I’ll use primarily on the trip. For longer shots, I’ll be leaving the 70-200/2.8 IS at home since it’s too heavy. Instead, I’ll take the 135/2.0 with a 1.4x extender.
One lens that is on the fence right now is my 24 Tilt-Shift lens. We’re planning to do a bit of architectural photography in China, both indoor and outdoors. The tilt-shift is a nice lens, but I’m wondering if I can get by with the 24-105 and doing any perspective corrections afterwards in Photoshop.
Of course, I can’t forget the videocamera too! We’re shooting the film on a Sony HVR-V1U camcorder. I must admit that shooting video is at least 23.97 times harder than photography!
More about the project in the coming days! We’re T-minus 6 days away!
tow.com 
This project looks awesome. You might want to see if organizations like the Int’l Museum of Women (imow.org) would be willing promote the film or excerpt it. Best of luck!