Bringing the video camera back from the dead

My name is Daniel Buckley.

For the past decade I have been documenting the youth mariachi and folklorico dance movement and its impact on the city of Tucson, Arizona for a film called The Mariachi Miracle.

In early May, while filming the Student Showcase concert of the Tucsón International Mariachi Conference for film, I tripped and fell over, bringing my camera and tripod crashing to the floor.

The camera looked to be fine. It started right up. The menus worked. But I could immediately tell that the focus was off. I switched to manual focus but the picture did not improve. And ultimately, a camera that cannot focus is an audio recorder, and not an especially good one at that.

Upon getting it home I could hear that something was loose and rattling around within the housing. The following Monday I shipped it to Canon USA for evaluation. It came as no surprise that the entire lens system had to be replaced, and the estimate came in at $1754.86.

Fortunately, I THOUGHT, I was insured. When I bought this 4K camera several years back I upped my insurance considerably. But as they say, the fine print giveth and taketh away. My insurance company found a way not to pay out. Or I should say my former insurance company.

Bottom line, I am out the major tool of my craft. I am hoping that the community will help me raise the funds to get the camera back in fully operational order and resume documenting the progress of our youth mariachi and folklorico dance communities.

I need your help.

Purchasing a new camera is out of the question. This particular model is no longer made and the model it was replaced with is around $5,500.

Anecdotally, the night after the camera gave up the ghost was the evening when the Tucsón Conventional Center Music Hall was renamed for singer Linda Ronstadt. Using an old, inferior 1K camera I was able to film, but the shortcomings of the older technology were immediately striking.

The speeches were just that, and not the kind of thing you’d beat yourself up over missing. But when Giselle Aubrey of Mariachi Aztlán de Pueblo High School sang “Blue Bayou” as Linda Ronstadt exited the stage, something magical happened. Ronstadt stopped in her tracks, turned to Aubrey and sang along in the darker wings of the hall, then hugged the young mariachi singer.

Were I using the Canon camera destroyed the night before I could have easily pulled Ronstadt’s image out of the shadows of the wings and made what happened plain as day. But with the older tech and no log footage, those details are muted and dark at best. And since Linda Ronstadt is a key figure in the film for her inspirational and broadly-selling “Canciones de Mi Padre” and “Mas Canciones” CDs, the missed opportunity was especially painful.

It was felt again at the Pueblo High graduation where three of the four graduating members ended up in the top 25 of a class of over 320. And instead of filming what was the first opportunity to do so since the pandemic, I was taking stills.

I need you help to get back to it, update footage and get on to the next films. I would greatly appreciate anything you can do to help.

Daniel Buckley