Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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. ;)
Friday, January 30, 2009
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
Saturday, January 17, 2009
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
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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
Warden Doc - Rough Cut of Medal of Valor presentation from Andrew Swan on Vimeo.
- Andrew
Thursday, August 21, 2008
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:
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
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.
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
Thursday, June 19, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Report from an abalone checkpoint on 5/8/2008
Yesterday we were on a abalone patrol adventure that started with a minus low tide about 9am and swarms of people among the rocks and surf in Mendocino County. Limit is three per day, 7" or greater. 24 for year, and only red abalone. Probably more abalone in Mendocino County and Sonoma County than any other place on West Coast. Lots of people.
The wardens set up a checkpoint in Boonville on Hwy 128, one of the few roads back from the north coast to 101. They checked through about 100 cars in a couple hours, writing 33 citations -- over limits, undersized abalone, not tagged. They use a K-9 unit to search for hidden abalone -- see the dog in photo 1 waiting for command when people say they have shown all the abalone they have, then warden tells them to "search" including in the trunk of car in photo 2 to see if they are lying or not.
One group of pickers was special. They had been under surveillance for some time by the Special Operations Unit, suspected of commercialization of abalone, which is a felony conspiracy rap with jail time, large fines, forfeiture of equipment, etc. On the back market abalone go for $100 each.
Once the suspect pickers went through the checkpoint, we hopped in an unmarked car with head of the undercover Special Operations Unit. She had a team of five cars working this case and they took turns following this group for 100 miles, changing places to avoid detection and constantly chattering over the intercom. At times, this meant precision tactical driving, but with no lights, sirens, etc.
As the suspects got into the city, the SOU team switched on and off on close tail, keeping up with traffic lights, changing lanes, -- "fresh green, red stop, lane 2," etc. As people were dropped off from the suspect van in different places, at each location, one of the Special Op cars dropped off to set up surveillance. Then while waiting to see about buyers, the SOU "wolf pack" kept exchanging information constantly. We shot two and hours of tape.
We can't show faces of the Special Ops. team -- they are all incredible character actors -- soccer moms, beach bums, surfer dudes, rednecks, society folks, bubbas, etc. -- but we can shoot from behind or blot out faces of the "Wolf pack" who set it up for takedowns when a swarm of other wardens come in for the arrest. SOU only go after felony cases, which means high stakes, organized crime, usually weapons, many people with priors and convictions for other stuff, and yes, danger. Some of these folks have long criminal records. And when you go into a neighborhood to make an arrest, the whole neighborhood may get involved, which starts to get tense.
- James
The wardens set up a checkpoint in Boonville on Hwy 128, one of the few roads back from the north coast to 101. They checked through about 100 cars in a couple hours, writing 33 citations -- over limits, undersized abalone, not tagged. They use a K-9 unit to search for hidden abalone -- see the dog in photo 1 waiting for command when people say they have shown all the abalone they have, then warden tells them to "search" including in the trunk of car in photo 2 to see if they are lying or not.
One group of pickers was special. They had been under surveillance for some time by the Special Operations Unit, suspected of commercialization of abalone, which is a felony conspiracy rap with jail time, large fines, forfeiture of equipment, etc. On the back market abalone go for $100 each.
Once the suspect pickers went through the checkpoint, we hopped in an unmarked car with head of the undercover Special Operations Unit. She had a team of five cars working this case and they took turns following this group for 100 miles, changing places to avoid detection and constantly chattering over the intercom. At times, this meant precision tactical driving, but with no lights, sirens, etc.
As the suspects got into the city, the SOU team switched on and off on close tail, keeping up with traffic lights, changing lanes, -- "fresh green, red stop, lane 2," etc. As people were dropped off from the suspect van in different places, at each location, one of the Special Op cars dropped off to set up surveillance. Then while waiting to see about buyers, the SOU "wolf pack" kept exchanging information constantly. We shot two and hours of tape.
We can't show faces of the Special Ops. team -- they are all incredible character actors -- soccer moms, beach bums, surfer dudes, rednecks, society folks, bubbas, etc. -- but we can shoot from behind or blot out faces of the "Wolf pack" who set it up for takedowns when a swarm of other wardens come in for the arrest. SOU only go after felony cases, which means high stakes, organized crime, usually weapons, many people with priors and convictions for other stuff, and yes, danger. Some of these folks have long criminal records. And when you go into a neighborhood to make an arrest, the whole neighborhood may get involved, which starts to get tense.
- James
Warden Stats
Some statistics:
California Fish and Game Wardens:
• Cover 159,000 square miles of land
• 1 million acres of Fish and Game properties
• Cover 1100 miles of coastline/ 7 major ports
• Responsibilities to 200 miles at sea
• Over 300 million pounds of commercial fish landings
• Cover 30,000 miles of rivers
• Cover 66,000 fish businesses
• Cover 900,000 vessels registered
• 37 million Californians
* over 1,250,000 resident sport fishing licenses issued a year
* 6,000 resident and non-resident commercial fishing licenses issued per year
* 187 licensed fish wholesalers
* 262,000 resident hunting licenses issued per year
CAL-TIP receives over 3,000 calls a year.
California Fish and Game Wardens:
• Cover 159,000 square miles of land
• 1 million acres of Fish and Game properties
• Cover 1100 miles of coastline/ 7 major ports
• Responsibilities to 200 miles at sea
• Over 300 million pounds of commercial fish landings
• Cover 30,000 miles of rivers
• Cover 66,000 fish businesses
• Cover 900,000 vessels registered
• 37 million Californians
* over 1,250,000 resident sport fishing licenses issued a year
* 6,000 resident and non-resident commercial fishing licenses issued per year
* 187 licensed fish wholesalers
* 262,000 resident hunting licenses issued per year
CAL-TIP receives over 3,000 calls a year.
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