You are here: Home / Archives for water

There’s No Place Like Home

Wave

The life of a nature and wildlife filmmaker is often a lonely one.

When I’m working on a project I’ll often head out well before sunrise and sometimes won’t be back until well after sunset. If I’m someplace like Yellowstone, this can go on day after day for weeks at a time. Usually I’m by myself. Sometimes my wife, Angi, will come along.

But even when I have someone along for company, I’m too consumed with figuring out what to shoot, how to shoot it and how it’s all going to come together. I’m in my own little world. Angi will bring a book to read since she’s learned over the years that nature filmmaking is many hours of boredom followed sometimes by a few seconds of something wonderful. Oftentimes she wouldn’t understand why I was so excited about something but was happy that I was so happy.

I’ve hiked to frozen lakes in the middle of July, waded through a canyon river where the walls were only eighteen feet apart. I’ve seen ancient ruins thousands of years old. Had bears close enough to touch, coyotes chasing a wolf,snow falling in the Utah desert.

I’ve seen and done a lot of things in the natural world pretty mush most of them I was the only witness that they ever occurred.

But I thought Hawaii would be different. I got a call about teaching at a workshop in Honolulu a while back. The way the schedule was set up, It would have been easy for Angi to come along and enjoy Waikiki Beach while I was out filming. Unfortunately, her schedule wouldn’t allow her to come along.The ironic thing is that the night before I left, her schedule cleared and she would have been able to go after all. The only problem was that now plane tickets were over $2k. So, she reluctantly accepted the fact that she was going to miss out on this opportunity.

Hawaii turned out to be everything you hear it is. I met some great people there and we had a blast filming around the island. In fact, I still keep in touch with them and hope to visit them the next time I’m in town. John Chance, one of the locals, turned me on to Loco Moko and Plate Dinners. We had a great time along with his family and another friend I met there Constantino Ferrer. We sat on Waikiki Beach at sunset and watched world class films being projected onto a 30 foot screen as part of the Hawaiian International Film Festival. There’s just something about watching a documentary film about sharks while you’re sitting on Waikiki Beach and can hear the ocean waves just feet away from you. It was truly magical!

But Angi was never far from my thoughts when I was there. I knew how disappointed she was that she couldn’t join me.

On the flight back to Iowa, I broke out the laptop and started pulling clips from the trip. Angi is a California girl and living in Iowa, she misses the ocean terribly.

As the plane touched down in Cedar Rapids, it was great to be home. I had been in paradise for two weeks but nothing was as good as walking in the front door of my house, setting down all the gear and being home.

So when she asked me how was the trip, I played her this video that I had edited on my flight home.

[flv:http://www.silverphoenixllc.com/phoenixblog/movies/Angi.flv 592 331]

Silent Kingdom

frost

Another film for the Underwater Over Land Film Challenge.

The theme for this challenge was “Animal Kingdom.”
Unfortunately this film had to be put together in just a few hours.
Family matters kept me home for most of the time period we had to complete the film. So, on the last day I headed out and spent most of the day driving around trying to find anything to film.
I knew I didn’t have enough wildlife footage to even come close to doing a film that really addressed the theme. So, I came up with the idea of doing a film about there not being any wildlife in the “Animal Kingdom in the tenth hour.

With the film due that night, I sat down about 9:00PM and started trying to put something together. My plan was to do a voice over but as the night wore on, that grew to be less likely.

The clock struck 2AM and I was still trying to put something together to beat the deadline.

Finally I just started laying down track, hoping that it would all make some kind of sense.

Although not the film I was hoping to do, I made the deadline and hopefully it has a bit of a message.
[flv:http://www.silverphoenixllc.com/phoenixblog/movies/SilentKingdom.flv 592 331]

DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge

DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge is part of a network of refuges devoted to preserving and restoring increasingly scarce habitat for migratory waterfowl and other wildlife. The refuge is comprised of 8,358 acres in Iowa and Nebraska and lies in the Missouri River Valley floodplain on a former meander of the Missouri River.

Each year, especially during the fall, spectacular flights of up to 500,000 ducks and geese mark the changing seasons along this traditional waterfowl flyway.

Once an oxbow of the Missouri River, DeSoto provides a crucial resting and feeding spot for migratory waterfowl as the flee the snow covered lands of their Arctic nesting grounds.

Filming this spectacle can be hit and miss. The drive South is fueled by Winter storms that cover their feeding grounds with snow and freeze their ponds and lakes. The largest concentration usually takes place in Fall around November and December. Flocks of 20,000 or more birds can arrive in a single day. They’ll stay at DeSoto until the Winter storms push them farther South until they reach their wintering grounds on the Gulf Coast.

As of this post, the flocks have yet to arrive.

What People are saying about “The River”

Fantastic cinematography


You are a master at the “big cinema” feel to your films, your artistry with your camera work… you are an inspiration.


Wow! This was amazingly shot.


From beginning the end, your Film was just magic.


Quite stirring.


This film moved me!


This was a true piece of art.


In simple words, a masterpiece of work.

“The River”, my latest film, is now available for viewing here.
I’d appreciate if you have the time to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the film.
I hope you enjoy it.

“The River” Rolling Along

It’s been a lot of hard work but “The River” is done! It’s even finished a couple days before the deadline.

I had originally planned on documenting the entire process here. But, once it things started to go together, I didn’t want to spoil the impact of seeing it by giving you a lot of behind the scenes info.

So, once the film is up for viewing, I’ll post a link and then I can go into some of the details on how this film came together.

I think it’s one of the best films I’ve entered in the challenge to date.

Once you have an opportunity to see it, please post a comment and let me know what you think.

The River

A strange thing happened to me this round of the UWOL challenge, I actually was able to change my mind about the subject of my film.

Normally whenever the theme is announced for a new challenge, an initial thought will pop into my head and no matter how hard I try to think of something else, my brain locks onto that first idea I had and that’s all she wrote.

Maybe at first, the idea sounded really good but upon further reflection, I realized it might be more difficult to pull off in the three week time frame that I had originally thought.

When I first heard the theme was “Habitat” for UWOL #11, my first thought was a film on vanishing forests here in Iowa.

Every year in the Cedar Rapids area, they have what the call Parade of Homes. The public is given an opportunity to tour homes built by local contractors. Homes range in price from $150k to over a million dollars.

One of the million dollar plus homes was in the middle of a great forested area. As my wife and I were being driven up the lane in a golf cart because it was tucked back so far off the road, I was saddened by the fact that such a beautiful area was being bulldozed to make way for more million dollar homes.

Oh, there were still plenty of trees and a great pond, but the natural beauty and wildness had forever vanished with the building of this development.

So, that was what my film was going to be about.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was part of a bigger story. Something that couldn’t be told in the normal span of time we have for the challenge.

Normally my brain would be so focused on this story that I wouldn’t be able to shift gears and find another story that needed to be told.

But this time was different. This time for whatever reason, a new idea popped into my head. That idea has become the focus of my UWOL #11 film, “The River.”

Stay tuned as “The River” starts to take shape.

Clip of the Week

Lower Falls, Artist Point Yellowstone National Park


One of my all time favorite spots on Earth has to be Yellowstone National Park.
I’ve been coming to Yellowstone since the mid-eighties. While Old Faithful is certainly the most famous feature in the park, one of my favorite has to be the Lower Falls.

At 308 feet, almost twice the height of Niagra, The Lower Falls is truly breathtaking to behold.

This clip was shot early one June morning before most of the people had even had breakfast.

The sun rises early that time of year and the best light is over about the same time people are just starting to arrive in large numbers.

There was only three or four other people at Artist Point that morning. Everyone was scattered enough that it felt like I had a private audience with the falls.

It’s moments like this that you can almost imagine how it was in 1872 when painter Thomas Moran first painted this scene.
Moran’s painting was the first landscape painting by an American artist bought by the American government.

Moran’s painting along with photographs by William Henry Jackson, convinced the US government to set aside this land to become America’s first national park.

Click here to view the clip.

Clip of the Week

White Dome Geyser, Yellowstone National Park

Whenever I travel to Yellowstone I can never resist stopping by White Dome geyser. It’s not a huge geyser by any means, only erupts twenty to thirty feet.

But oftentimes, I’m the only one there to watch as it puts forth its best effort.
It’s usually upstaged by its neighbor Great Fountain Geyser.

This clip was shot one cool morning around the end of May. As usual, people would stop for a few minutes and then continue on, hoping to catch a bigger geyser going off somewhere in the park.

So, I sat alone and kept White Dome company as it performed for its audience of one.

To watch White Dome in action, click on the link below.

white_dome_geyser