The Filmmaker’s Journal is an ongoing series where we follow, in real time, artists, as they create the content that we all love to watch. THE COLOR EARTH was a submission to the 2009 Web Series and Short Film Competition and is now being made into a series for Nat Geo Wild!
Well…Shane O is out of reach in wild Madagascar! What a great example of someone who has made an idea a reality. He dreamed of creating a show that explores every corner of the globe in an unusual way, and he’s living that dream because he decided to take action!
Before he went off the grid he asked that I send a brief note out. He is having a blast shooting episode 2 and, I’ll quote, “Here is a demo for a second entry I made in the NexTV Series & Short Film Competition. I will release it one by one in ten parts over the next ten weeks…tune in!
The Filmmaker’s Journal is an ongoing series where we follow, in real time, artists, as they create the content that we all love to watch. THE COLOR EARTH was a submission to the 2009 Web Series and Short Film Competition and is now being made into a series for Nat Geo Wild!
SHANE O: I’m definitely feeling the effects of the one-man-band syndrome…I could use a few more bandmembers! I was expecting this, though. I knew coming home from Alaska, prepping all the footage for edit, writing an edit script, and cutting a rough VO track would be a tight squeeze…especially considering I leave for shoot #2 in Madagascar this Saturday (July 24). So juggling shoot #1 edit prep and shoot#2 production prep simultaneously has been, well, a challenge. But it’s amazing how much can get done in a day under that kind of pressure. My last big shoot was an independent Color Earth Production, so it didn’t have any severe deadlines attached to it. Without deadlines I move at a MUCH slower pace…technically and creatively. So moving from that project to this monster, well, I had that worry of “can I still produce things that fast!???” But I guess it’s like riding a bike. Or in this case, a steel horse. Don’t know how much opportunity we’ll have in Madagascar to update the blog, but I’ll do my best. Planning on climbing the Tsingy razor spires and hiking into the forbidden forests of Kirindy Sud. Cross your fingers that we we can find a pygmy hippo! Yeehaw!
The closest thing I have to Madagascar on film is the honeymoon special I did in Tanzania in 2008. It’s broken into 5 parts. Here’s part 1,
Congratulations to Zeus Quijano Jr…not only did he make an incredible documentary about a very personal U.S./Mexico Immigration story, but he will make his television debut with it on Sunday October 3 on PBS. CHECK OUT THE TRAILER…just beautiful. The full length film brought us all to tears many times over. An inspiring and humanizing look at a family’s experience with illegal immigration to the U.S. We get to see the pain and joy on both sides of the border for this family. It will change you.
Home from Alaska and now sifting through some truly magical footage…motherloads of salmon, Kodiak bears just a stones throw away, and so on. If the rest of our shoots go this smoothly, then we’re looking at a pretty fun series! When I worked for Travel Channel I covered mainly “popular” destinations, and I would never complain about getting paid to travel…ANYWHERE…but this is the show I tried to get them to do for almost four years! Forget the crowded tourist traps, there’s WAY more to see on your own in the middle of nowhere!
On the other side of the camera, things are working as well as we could hope for. Normally I am out alone or with an assistant (typically my wife). Since the show is more expedition focused and less destination driven, we hired a dedicated DP for the first time. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hire a shooter I know and trust. Makes things much easier…but we all still wear multiple hats. I’m still shooting, lugging equipment, directing, producing…so is my shooter (Francisco Aliwalas), and my wife (Romona Robbins) is handling almost everything else. So we keep our footprint about as light as we can to maximize our ability to capture a TRUE expedition and minimize the need to stage the story. So far so good!
On the back end, I have less than two weeks to prep the Alaska episode edit, handle the initial deliverable to the channel, and prepare to leave for shoot #2 in Madagascar on July 24. When beautiful footage is captured, it really takes the stress off the table and makes it an exciting challenge. I’ll keep you posted!
**I showed you a bit about me last blog, this time, let me show you the latest Color Earth shooting/editing demo on the home page:
Episode ONE is officially under way. I don’t want to give everything away (even if I could at this point), but I can tell you this…we have HORRIBLE karma with flights. What should’ve taken 17 hours and three stops to Kodiak, Alaska, took 27 hours and 5 stops. Hurricane Alex did a number on us in Houston and it caused us an unanticipated evening in Anchorage.
But what horrible luck we have with transit, we totally make up for with weather. Kodiak is pretty well known as having crap climate in the summer, and we landed right in the middle of it. Drizzly, cloudy, miserable. Despite the lack of sleep we didn’t want to lose any more of our shoot schedule than we already had, so we geared up the kayaks and launched in the rain. By the time we hit the open bay, let’s just say the heavens opened to some of the most beautifully dramatic lighting set to the backdrop of the second largest whales on earth popping up just 20-30 yards from our kayaks. We’ll call it a successful recovery. Today we tagged along with the only people who have the authority to chase down the whales for research purposes…and we scored again! Kodiak is proving to be more fruitful than we ever imagined so far…7 more days to go!
*since I introduced myself with my NexTV entry from last year, I’ll go ahead and show you a video that show’s a little bit more of who I am and what I do…this is a demo from a series I did with Travel Channel a couple of years ago.
(New installment announced each week on twitter and FB).
VIDEO BELOW…but first Shane O kicks it off for us…
I think “work for National Geographic” may be up in the same category as “be a fireman” or “become a veterinarian” when it comes to those childhood dreams of what we really wanted to be when we grew up, at least for my generation. Of course, the latter have a much more defined path to success. On top of that, my life in video began in the final days of analog, and my CAREER in production began just after the digital revolution, which was a new technology to old school thought. Before digital we could only do so much, and that’s what was expected of us. If you were an editor, then you were an editor…if you were a shooter, then you were a shooter…you couldn’t be both! At least that’s what I was told a NUMEROUS job interviews. But I realized from the beginning that the multitasking possibilities of a digital world weren’t just possible, it just made more sense. Obviously whoever shot something would have more sense to edit it, and technology suddenly made it possible to handle such a workload.
That was back in late 90s. Today, one-man-band producers are a dime a dozen. And while they may have brought down the monetary value of each separate job title, I think they have raised the creative bar as a whole…which is more important to me than money any day of the week. Trust me, I produced a local travel show by myself on my own dime, and I didn’t have may dimes. The only motivation at the time was to have a fun and creative outlet. Well, that one-man-band production model led to a shot at a Travel Channel series, which led to four years of producing on and off camera for the Travel Channel and Discovery…and now it’s the big leagues…National Geographic!
I’m happy to announce that just signed a four-episode deal with National Geographic Wild. My production company , Color Earth, which consists of my wife and I, will travel the globe shooting my experiences in some of the wildest places on earth. As excited as I am, I know this is a huge experiment for us AND them…Nat Geo has never really taken the one-man-band production model seriously until now. But to their defense, it has it’s limitations, but we’re here to do our best to prove that it works. So wish us luck! Hopefully it breaks down the door to give other undiscovered talent a shot.
I’m also happy to announce that…I will be using my company website (www.colorearth.tv/wordpress) and NexTV as the home of a weekly blog to update you on where we are in the world and how production is going. Should be interesting. I thought an appropriate way to introduce you to my work would be to post the video I entered in the NexTV web series competition last year. New videos will come with most blogs, so keep up with us!
