Vancouver magazine profiles leap of principle and daring

Fascinating Vancouver magazine story, posted on its blog this week, about writer/videographer Kai Nagata and his determination to complete a documentary about a blind lutenist who decided to learn how to drive a motorcycle and leap it 100 feet. 

Writer Danel Wood profiles how Nagata resigned as CTV Quebec bureau chief in 2011 on a matter of personal principle; and how he went on to produce a three-part online documentary about Matt Wadsworth. 

The British musician, 38 and born sightless, took training in southern Calilfornia to learn how to ride and jump a 450cc Honda motorcycle -- and did so. 

Nagata scratched together the means to do the story and, with borrowed cameras and recording equipment and the financial help of friends, made the film which went up on YouTube last spring.

To Nagata, his widely viewed “Renaissance Man”—and the thousands of other freelance documentaries on the internet—illustrates how rigid old media is vulnerable today to independent, web-based projects. By being nimble, by embracing minimal costs and maximum uncertainty, by forming temporary alliances with audiences and crowd-sourced funders, and by using the myriad platforms the web provides, this new journalism, he believes, can be produced out of a backpack.