Some pics from the shoot

Game Warden reality show!

The short of it: We've been busy for the last month working on a reality show.

The long of it: When we finished Endangered Species, we showed it around to some people in the industry, and as a result, we got hooked up with Original Productions (Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers, etc.) to help put together a reality show based around California Game Wardens (which is also the title of the show). Four episodes will appear on the National Geographic Channel sometime in the next year, and based on how well those do, there's the possibility of going forward with a whole season.

The Original Productions folks have been really great, professional people to work with, and we're really glad to see the wardens finally getting the media spotlight they deserve.

James is the Co-Executive Producer and coordinates between the wardens and Original, and I've been out in the field helping with production where I can, as well as shooting B-roll footage. There's going to be one more week of shooting, then it's all up to the Original editors.

Here's a link to a Sacramento Bee article about the show

Anyways, check back with this blog soon for more info!

A Great Review

We've recieved a bunch of great reviews, but here's one of the best, from International Game Warden:

(Click the image to enlarge it)

Film fest update

Just got our submission accepted for consideration in the Conservation category of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Any finger-crossing is appreciated. ;)

Endangered Species Update

First of all, sorry for the delay between posts, we've been pretty busy for the last two weeks. Here's what's going on with the documentary:

On January 17, "Endangered Species: California Fish and Game Wardens," premiered at the International Sportsmen's Expo in Sacramento to a standing-room-only crowd, which stayed for a panel discussion hosted by KBFK radio show host Bob Simms, that included DFG Chief Nancy Foley, Warden Jerry Karnow, Judd Hanna from the CA Game Wardens Foundation, Greg Yarris from CA Waterfowl Association, Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, and San Francisco Chronicle Outdoor Columnist Tom Stienstra. (see photo) According to Tom Stienstra, it was the "biggest crowd of the day on the busiest day of ISE."

Here's some photos from the event, courtesy of Debra Hamilton from the CA DFG AV Unit:

On a personal note, we'd like to thank everybody who helped us out in the making of this documentary, from the county Fish & Game Commissions that gave us funding, to the Wardens who have shown us so much trust and support. Also, to the various agencies, foundations and groups that gave us pictures, video footage, and funding: You are in the credits, and have our sincerest thanks. A special thanks to Matt and Debra at the CA DFG AV Unit, who have been incredible helpers all along the way.

We're making a limited run of "pressed" copies for the CA Fish and Game Wardens Association, press, Fish & Game commissions, sponsors, etc. Our goal is to get the documentary out there as much as possible. We anticipate having them for sale online by Mid-February. Stay tuned.

-Andrew and James

First showing done!

Just a quick update to let you know that we had our first public screening today at the International Sportmen's Expo in Sacramento. It went very well, and we think the documentary and a great panel presentation/discussion (which happened right afterwards) helped to get the wardens' story out to a larger audience. I'll do a much longer write-up of what happened tomorrow, when I'm not quite as ready to pass out...

We have the documentary basically done at this point (as evidenced by my three successive very late nights leading up to today), and will spend this coming week making final changes and getting everything ready for an official DVD release.

The final DVD will have a slightly longer cut of the documentary, more polished graphics, several very good deleted scenes, a stills-based series of interesting facts about wardens that just wouldn't fit into the documentary (James is doing the text for that), and possibly some other goodies.

-Andrew

Status Update - Rough Cut Done

As of today, I've finished editing the final rough cut of "Endangered Species". It's been a long road getting here, and there's still a fair amount of work left to be done, but we're now very close to the finish line.

Please keep checking here for status updates and screening information as we get closer to release.

Oh, and the swan pottery in the background - it was created by Paul Rubio, who you may recognize as the two mexican mafia marijuana growers in our dramatic re-enactment of the shooting of Warden Kyle Kroll.

- Andrew

Rough Cut of Medal Presentation/Kyle Kroll shooting

Here's a rough cut of our dramatic reenactment, which is set against the backdrop of the CA 2007 Medal of Valor Ceremony. Lt. John Norres and Warden Adam Kavanaugh are recognized for their help in saving Warden Kyle Kroll. Here is their story in a little more detail:


Warden Doc - Rough Cut of Medal of Valor presentation from Andrew Swan on Vimeo.

- Andrew

Dramatic recreation on a budget

When we first got involved with working on this documentary over a year ago, we found out about the story of a warden (Kyle Kroll) working a marijuana grove eradication who got shot. The bullet went through both his legs, and he was starting to lose a lot of blood before other wardens got to him. The incredible part of the story is that the helicopter that was supposed to come pick Kyle and his buddies up didn't come for three hours, and it only came in after one of the other wardens (Adam Kavanaugh) cut a landing strip out of the surrounding brush using a machete.

When it came around to telling this story, we joked about doing a huge recreation on a Michael Bay scale. Obviously, we didn't have the money to do anything close to this. However, as it came time for the documentary to be finished, we found that we really needed some sort of visual sequence to help tell the warden's story. One of the wardens who helped save Kyle's life (John Norres) had been offering to help us do a recreation for months, so we decided to go ahead and shoot something. Our limitations were somewhat daunting:

• We couldn't use any marijuana plants.
• We could only get one warden (John).
• We couldn't pay anybody anything.

So we did what all independent film/video people do in this situation: we improvised. We got two friends to come out, and ended up with enough people to play all the wardens and one very cool guy (Paul Rubio) to play both growers. We found a place that had similar foliage, dressed up two guys in wardens outfits, and had two outfits (with guns) for the guy playing the growers.

The final product is still a few weeks away, but here's a taste of the most elaborate trick we used.

There were three wardens working on the eradication, and we realized we only had two guns. We could have just cut the scene around this, but I figured we needed at least one shot of all the wardens together. So, we tried a composite shot; first I shot John and Ryan (one of our actors) walking on the right side of the screen. Then, I shot James (CEO of Snow Goose Productions) on the left side. After the shoot was done, I put the shots together by simply splitting the image of both clips in half and putting them together to form one image:


Warden Doc Dramatic Re-enactment composite demo from Andrew Swan on Vimeo.

We ended up shooting the whole sequence in about 4 hours, and we had a lot of fun doing it. Sometimes you have some bad days shooting documentaries, but this was definitely not one of them.

The cast:




- Andrew

Marine Wardens

On today, one of our last shooting days, I went out on the Marlin. The Marlin is one of the boats that Marine Wardens use to patrol both the bays and coastal waters, checking both recreational and commercial fishermen.

Most of what I did was interview the (very small) crew, and ride along with the patrol zodiac the wardens launch from the Marlin. On the zodiac, we mainly checked fishermen, who were friendly and cooperative over 80% of the time.

Unfortunately, I ran out of tape just as we were coming up to the guy in the fourth photo (blurred to protect identity), who was already being boarded by the coast guard for a random inspection, and then we came in and found he didn't have a fishing license. Just one of those days, I guess...

He wasn't happy about getting the citation, but was otherwise friendly.

At any rate, I had a blast, and look forward to showing off the footage we shot soon.













- Andrew