Tag: premiere pro cc

Seeing in Color

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I swore that I would come to Atlas Coffee to just read this morning. But alas, my laptop was in my backpack by accident. I will still read. But I have to write first.

You’d think I’d be out of creative juice by now, but no. Because today, I am seeing in color for the first time in so long. Don’t get me wrong. Over the last 5 months I have had many incredible moments in nature. I have had so many amazing experiences along the way keep myself afloat as I edited The Last Shark. And I am not done yet, but I have turned the corner. I turned in the picturelock version to the composers last night. The Director, Frankie, who will be repping at the Premiere and other South Africa screenings, just landed in Capetown this morning. It’s hitting hard that this is a reality, that we have made it.

But back to seeing in color…as I pondered what drink to order at Atlas Coffee here in Charlottesville VA, I realized I was actually looking at the world around me. There is a thing that happens to you as you begin a project of this scope. There is a massive weight that settles upon you that will not lift until the work is nearly complete. It’s a wholly unique weight and no other work I have done comes close to how awful it feels.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a wonderful guy named John Kim. John has since died, but he and I were in touch way back in my first heady days of film making. The very first project I ever did, he watched it while we were on a phone call and gave me feedback. He also shared his process of how awful it feels at the beginning of a project, how you are under this overwhelming cloud. John also worked in the big leagues. Editing for TV shows and outlets you would all recognize. He reported to me how, in his field, that he would create this beautiful and intuitively led edit…only to have it then chopped up and dumbed down by studio execs. He hated it. He felt like it was the death of creativity. But he seemed to live for the edits that he got to do and just found ways to live with how the higher ups were going to shave it down to a nub. That reminds me of how appreciative I am that on all the projects I have worked on, I have never had to do what John did. And he told me that. He told me to stay in the areas where I would not have to compromise the art for the profit. I have stayed true to that so far.

We talked about coming out of the haze, when you know you have wrangled a story out of the disparate globs. So today I am seeing in color. And I would have written to John to tell him about how glad I am to not have had to compromise. This project has been all volunteer and you get something wholly different out of a movie when profit is literally not a part of it. Everyone gives their best and they don’t feel compromised. It’s pretty fantastic. Money always has a cost. Essentially that’s at the heart of every conservation movie and lived experience.

Another thing I was reflecting upon was something Jay Siebold said to me just the other day. Jay is my sound guy for many projects. He heard about how many hours I was putting in and was like “hey man don’t underestimate how that amount of screentime will fuck you up”. In all honesty, I would say that I finished the hard parts just as I was hitting that very tipping point. I was starting to mindblank in the middle of spoken sentences, I was seeing things in my peripheral vision…it was definitely starting to impact my health. Ironically though I lost weight while working on the movie lol. I always had a standing workstation. So at the end of the day I would have stood for 12 hours while editing without a break. Mentally though, I was starting to decline for sure.

So today as I waited for my dirty hot chocolate order today I looked out and noticed birds, colors, people, cars, clouds, leaves and I realized how much, over the last 5 months that I have looked…but I wasn’t really seeing. The cloud is gone. It’s wild. I feel like running through the streets and shouting! It’s really fucking fantastic.

I am also here at Atlas this morning because I promised myself, while staying here in Charlottesville, that I would return to this coffee shop on a cool Fall morning. I made that promise to myself back in 2019. I drove by this spot my first time ever in this town. I was in the car, likely with mom and dad. I would have been driving. And we were on our way to one of the first consultations at UVA’s Cancer Clinic for mom. I recall so pristinely seeing this tiny taxi sized coffee shop off to the right. The windows fogged up from condensation so thickly I could not see inside. I only went in there once back in 2019. This place has seating for literally 6 people. That’s it! I had no place to sit back then, so I left- but vowed to rectify the situation. This morning, I literally woke up singing. Lighter. And the air was worth a hat and coat. The windows aren’t fogged but I am here to drink coffee and read a book for a while.

No more humble bragging about how much work there is to do on the timeline. I feel like I am just now realizing there is an entire world out here and wow. It’s a paradox right? You go head down into this narrow and isolated path, away from people, away from the world…in order to focus hard enough to make a movie that will impact people and the world around you. So strange. But so worth it-if you don’t take it too far. But also, you have to have a team of people around you. No movie is made alone. For me, my team was Frankie. I could never have made this movie without Frankie’s energy and enthusiasm and laughter. What also sustained me though was the 24 people who’s interviews I was editing and reading over and over and over and over. I have about 24 hours of interviews from shark conservationists locked into memory forever. And their dedication, up there on my screen, and in the pages of transcripts, kept me fired up for the project when I was struggling with the next steps…and event that happened nearly every day.

I don’t know how long it will be until I have the inner strength to muster another movie like this. It’s going to take a while til I feel full strength again. But yeah…at the end of the day, this movie is something I am immensely proud of.

Being a Writer

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It’s really frustrating to be a writer. You know? Because it means before anything creative you want to do -that isn’t writing-can’t get done until you write first. And that’s where I am today.

This morning was a huge ball of stressors on The Last Shark movie. Last minute challenges and changes and OMG moments that were not fun. It will make for a better movie but it was one of those things where I went from soundly sleeping to jolting awake with stress chemicals injected into my brain and scrambling to edit animations, narrations, etc.

So this morning, after putting out trashcan fire #5 I knew that I needed to write before I can work. I have a meeting with the composers coming up and true picturelock on the film has to fricking happen yesterday! I have so much to do. I looked at the calendar before the premiere and studied closely how many working days I have left when I am not traveling, etc. There is wiggle room but it’s really and truly coming down to it and there is no margin for error. No pressure though lol!!!

Also, as if that wasn’t enough, life has also seen fit to throw me a few new curveballs this last week and so it’s been a lot to deal with even besides this movie. I am emotionally wrung out. Even just staring at the screens for as long as I have can melt your brain but this additive has made things much harder. Yet, the work has to continue no matter what. The November 7th Premiere date looms large!

So I was standing there in the kitchen and realizing that if I don’t go write, I won’t be able to edit. I need perspective on my situation and life in general. Then I realized that I have barely had time to really feel into the facts of my life here in Charlottesville VA. I don’t actually live here at all. I was just staying here for a month to be near my dad and check in on him. I will be leaving here in less than a week to go somewhere else that I don’t live. This whole “I don’t live anywhere” thing really started right here in Charlottesville. And indeed, in many ways it began where I am sitting right now. You wanna see?

Quality Pie in Charlottesville VA is the first place I discovered to eat at in October of 2019. It’s what anchored me in sanity. I began coming to Charlottesville for one reason only. Mom was dying. I used to drive about 4 hours a day, every day, round trip- to deliver mom to the hospital at UVA’s Cancer Clinic for treatments. I was her sole live-in caregiver, much by accident. When her diagnosis happened my whole life shut down…all of my work stopped. I closed the doors on this company, The Video Slab, and my entire life circulated around mom’s three kinds of cancer, her combative dementia. I became her nurse for a full year to the exclusion of all else. But it started here nearly 4 years ago on October 21-2019. I would come to Quality Pie to chat with the regulars, to drink coffee, to eat cookies while mom was in her appt’s and I had some time on my hands. It was here that I found some small measure of solace. I got to feel like a normal person for tiny bits of time and chat with the chef about his recipes. I am sitting here right now while writing this in 2023.

I found one Charlottesville post on my IG from October 2019 month actually…here are screenshots…

Instagram Pic October 2019

So here I am again, visiting dad in the retirement community. The toll that taking care of mom took on me, during the pandemic no less…and then taking care of dad for a year thereafter…I definitely reached a point where I thought that I would never return to film making. I was through with it. I planned on deleting this website in fact. I never cared to see a Premiere Pro timeline again. Somehow film making as a way of art found me. This month I finished the release of Season One of Salmonfolk Radio podcast. And within the next two weeks (somehow) I will finish The Last Shark. I am wrapping up these projects in the place where my creative life seemed to end-yet now I am thriving creatively. In fact literally all I work on are creative projects that matter to me. I am making $0…but I am really fulfilled. Considering how low things were with mom back then, it’s not a place I expected to be in ever again. Life is so strange.

I guess I would say this: You can’t change what your art is. It has to come through you. And so, after writing, here at the end, I get my lesson. I get to see what’s true about me. With that, I think I can get back to work. Finishing this movie is what I am here to do. It’s just a huge full circle that took me 4 years to complete.

Restorying Great White Sharks

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I simply have to clear my head before I embark on this next project, The Last Shark. Before jumping into dropping the first sequences onto that Premiere Pro timeline tomorrow, there’s just some things I need to work out-otherwise I won’t have a North Star. Come along for the ride…

The topic of this next film is so…intense. And loaded. It’s without a doubt the most public facing film I have ever worked on and the stakes feel really high. 

Here’s where my mind is at…There’s no way to work on deeply involved environmental topics without coming to hate the stupidity of the humans that keep doing the same stupid shit to the planet over and over again. Yeah, I said it. I am just gonna be really blunt. I have made movies about deforestation, open net salmon farming, species loss…and it’s always the same story really. 

When you really look as closely at these topics as you must, in order to make a movie…you get close to the ugly stuff. And we (humans) are always the one’s making the ugly stuff. And it always comes back to the story we are creating from.

My big question whenever I start on a movie, or even a short conservation movie, is how to wrangle my deep disappointment into something positive, into compassion. Because if I allow my anger to come across in the movie, it just results in more anger, not solutions. 

The only way I don’t devolve into hate and embitterment is to dive into the historical record and find context.

I avail myself of the stories most of us have been told…at least in what we call “the Western World”. The problem is that the story we have been told is that we are superior and evolved beings, with all the exploitative privileges that comes with that bearing. 

To find compassion for this perspective, I have to remind myself that I too was raised that way, and for a time fully believed that. 

The true context is that we are technologically advanced but that is where the advancement ends. For most of us, the technological advances all around us serves as evidence of how right we must be about our superiority.

The truth is that species wise, we are still barely past the cusp of tribalism in the most negative sense.  We will fight each other at the drop of a hat or upon the hint of differences in perspective. We will still quickly fight over resources instead of sharing them.

So I like to think about what brought me into seeing the environment in a non-dominant perspective and not separated from it. What changed me was “story”.  I bumped into different stories and presentations of different contexts that showed me something different than the capitalistic love story I grew up with…the one where everyone gets to have whatever they want however they want it. The one where nature and “the environment” is this far off thing that happens in State Parks.  I started to be exposed to stories that asked me “what if it’s better to let natural things live as they wish? What if it’s better to leave something better than you found it, cleaner, more pure, more sacred?”

And so as I embark on editing my fifth feature length conservation focused film, this is what I need to remember and this is the challenge. 

I have to remember that we are crafting a story that can’t blame people for living fearfully and in this case “fear” is very specific. I ask you…is there any animal on this planet that people are more afraid of than a great white shark? Collectively it is likely the most feared creature-most would agree. Are there any blockbuster movies where Great White Sharks are the heroes? Nearly all media portrays great white sharks as aggressive, hungry, human killing, death machines.

So how do we (the filmmakers) use 18 interviews and b-roll to convince a inherently fearful audience that a living shark is more important to them than a dead shark?

I won’t lie, the pressure I feel is real. I’m aware that Frankie (the director) and I are not the last word on this topic and many are pushing back against the anti-shark narrative-and have been for decades. But still, the pressure to create something magical and life-changing, feels pretty large. Also the decimation of sharks is astounding and things have to change quickly. In the ideal world, we are hoping this movie can be a part of restorying people’s relationship with the Great White sharks. 

I came into this project skeptical, just knowing that it was about conservation was enough for me.  But honestly I still lived in fear of great white sharks because of all my cultural storytelling programming. 

When I first came into this project I really didn’t know anything about great white sharks and I know now that after watching and reading the transcripts from our 18 interviews— that my mind is absolutely made up about great white sharks. They are not at all what I thought. I feel…pretty duped by the media. And I also feel that mainstream media should stop what they are doing. The harm is just irreconcilable.

So that’s really what we’re up to here… we are now trying to craft a story that hopefully someone else will bump into, just like I did in my past.  We are hoping that someone might have their mind changed because they’re now telling themselves a true story about Great White Sharks. I think it’s restorative to believe in a story that is actually real. That’s what we need to make.

Me and Joshua Slocum

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Today’s post is written from the Starbucks in Freeport Maine. I didn’t want to come into town. My perfect perch right along the sleepy bay covered with swirls of white and black stone with hair and beard made of seaweed didn’t want me to leave. But it’s June 5th in Maine and raining constantly and…it’s only 51 degrees.

Things are getting rather damp inside of my tent! I needed to dry out and send a few emails. I also needed to update this website blog as to where things are.

Today’s post is specifically inspired by Joshua Slocum and his sailing sloop, the Spray. I knew I’d be stuck inside my tent for my whole stay, based on the weather reports. So I went to the local bookshop and picked up something, anything, to do with the ocean. I didn’t want something serious. After spending the entire last month focussing on editing 14 episodes (Spoiler Alert: I finished!!) of a podcast related to some difficult environmental topics, I just wanted something escapist to read. I also came to the coast of Maine to be near where salmon used to thrive. I wanted to put my feet in the water in a place connected to where they should be, as a reminder of why I do what I do. So a good book about the ocean seemed fitting. This terrible and good passion (Salmonfolk) has taken me over it seems and I do need time to rejuvenate and a sense of place is important. I put my feet in the cold Maine water and think “salmon need to return here” and thought about how much we don’t even know what they brought with them, when they were here: The sense of returning. The promise of the long view. The long count. All things sorely missing in modern society.

I digress. Sorry. I do that a lot. Slocum…that guy solo sailed around the entire globe in the late 1880s in a boat about 35 feet long. I read in my tent late into last night, sleeping back damp, my feet just wouldn’t dry out…the rain hammered, I could hear the ocean gurgling around the large blocks of stone on the shore nearby. I wondered a lot how Joshua and The Spray were probably never quite dry either. Man…what an adventure. He was also 51 years old when he set out. I am 51 and setting out on this strange adventure. I am houseless. I do petsitting currently to keep my costs super low so any money I make can go straight towards conservation work, Salmonfolk and a few other side projects. I go where the long term housesitting gigs are up and down the East Coast of the USA. It also makes it so that IF I ever get real funding to travel and interview and film then I can go.

Reading through this book made me feel a bit better. I love what I do but yeah…doing a thing you don’t see anyone else doing (living houseless to focus on saving salmon) can be a lonely thing. I will now just pretend I am at the helm of The Spray when feeling out of sorts. However I will make sure to not take Slocum’s other journey…after he returned from sailing around the globe, he later headed for the Orinoco River and never was seen from again. Noted: I will avoid the Orinoco.

So the cat is out of the bag! Yes. I finished!!!!

It feels so amazing to have hit my high water mark for the project. I gave myself one month to finish Season One and I made it with about 24 hours to spare before I had to move to my next house. What is next for me? Now I shift into the zone of seeking funding for the sound design and sound mastering that is critical to making this podcast the best it can be. I have an amazing Sound guy, Jay Siebold. And he produced the existing 5 episodes you can hear on any podcast app but if you don’t have a fave app (or any) then you can easily listen HERE So I will be now be working on securing those essential funds. I have to tell you though…these remaining 14 episodes are just…just!!! I can’t. It’s too hard to describe. You will just have to listen!

Meanwhile, in case you haven’t heard enough from me, here is one more episode from Youtube that I think will interest those of you who wonder how I do the work.

Extending Residency

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Today has been…phew…what has it been? On top of being creative in all sorts of other ways, I am, most unfortunately, also a writer. Not like a famous writer. No no. I assure you. I am the worst kind of writer. I am the kind who has to write in order to process things. It’s like a curse. Always having to write to figure things out. Grab some coffee, this is gonna take a minute.

First of all I like to listen to Kpop when I write. Also you will probably enjoy reading this more if you turn off your punctuation and grammar filter.

Right now I am listening to “EXO 엑소 ‘으르렁 (Growl)’ MV (Korean Ver.)” You are welcome for that link. Enjoy.

Okay so…the podcast. Right? The whole big thing I have set aside this month for. From April 30th-June 4th I had (notice the past tense usage there) set aside this time to finish Season One of Salmonfolk Radio. The remaining content beyond the 5 episodes already released has been languishing on hard drives. Some of that content has been dusting over since 2018…some of it newer content from 2021. I have good reasons for why so much dust but that’s not the point of this post. I am only looking forward.

I know when I am onto something good. I know when I am in possession of something that changes people’s lives. I am not bragging because I am not talking about myself. I am talking about the people who gave their time to me. To be blunt, they are brilliant human beings. These are people you need to know about. They are just looking at the intersection of the natural world and global capitalism and human nature in such relatable and unusual ways. I am so humbled that they spent time with me, a relative stranger (and my cameras and mics) towards the cause of getting fish farms out of the water.

Most of the material I have gone over since April 30th is material I have not heard since the day it was recorded-in 2018. And it’s just…GOD…it’s SO good!! I had no idea until now. I had forgotten how rich it all is. I find myself thinking “holy shit…people need to know about this!”

I have Episodes 6-8 done! I am not releasing any of the new episodes though until I have full funding for sound mastering. So done…but sorta not quite done. My side of the job at least is done there. I am working on Episode 9. I think Season One will end up having about 16 episodes. And everyone dang one of them worth your time.

I have been a veteran now of many enviro campaigns. I have interviewed so many other long haul enviro folks. They all have one thing in common: longevity. It takes years or even decades to make change happen.

I look at the calendar and see June 4th looming-and I know that’s not long enough.

I also know that after June 4th I currently have no idea where I will be living. Money isn’t awful. I have some small amount in savings and I have some very small side jobs trickling in. To keep my costs down, so that I can run off my savings for as long as possible, I am housesitting and petsitting. It’s how I can afford to do what I am doing this month.

I can mostly finish Season One by June 4th…(minus the sound design and mastering) but that is not what it takes to have this podcast be heard by enough change makers. What I need is time for these things to happen:

  1. How to best market and gain listenership for a podcast that has global implications. Seeking someone who has experience connecting with larger players in the world of podcasting.
  2. How to best approach companies for sponsorships, build alliances. This podcast has interviews with fisherman, eco philosophers, scientists and activists from around the world. A lot of outdoor brands I think would want to be a part of the positive messaging. Oh..and it’s also a travelogue, so lots of outdoorsy explorations.
  3. Finding fiscal sponsors for this ocean conservation work so I can attract more donations.
  4. Network with fish farm fighters around the globe.
  5. Tie in the online world wide premiere of Being Salmon Being Human the movie on 11/3/2023.

My current dedicated $$ on hand? $0

My current committment to making all this work happen? 100%

Without an investment made in time spent, Salmonfolk Radio will not be able to do the work it needs to do.

I need longer than a month to make this all happen.

My plan now is to keep this “conservationist in residency” mission going for longer. My kids are grown. I am single. I am relatively healthy (no serious health care costs currently). I have a working car that is paid off. I have nearly zero debt. I am going to continue housesitting and petsitting gigs at least until the end of August. I just locked in a gig that will last most of August. Now to fill in June 15th til July 26th somewhere on the East Coast.

It’s kind of a big deal for me to let go of applying for “real” jobs…to hope that this all works out and I don’t end up broke.

It means not having employer sponsored health care. But when I consider the opposite of this…that is how the world doesn’t change. When we are all on that wheel of having to have the job, having to pay the rent, having to live that way and have those jobs that just don’t make anything of actual value—we unmake the world that we don’t have time to value any longer. And eventually it will be gone. So I am sort of jumping off into really embracing trying to do this differently. I am, for however long that I can, trying to restory my role here.

I am not special. There are thousands of people, probably millions, who would absolutely dedicate themselves to doing similar work. But this isn’t the kind of “work” that our culture values with $$. I just happen be free enough in my life, right now, where I can attempt this approach.

Well thanks for listening to my TedTalk. #rantover.

If you would like to help me stay on this path here is my Patreon.

Here is a screenshot of Episode 8’s timeline after I was done today!

Switching Over to Conservation

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To support my podcasting for conservation work then check out my Patreon!

September 6, 2021 was the last time I published an episode of Salmonfolk Radio, my podcast that is a critical part of Salmonfolk. This was not the last episode of the podcast, but it was the last time I had the energy, space/creativity/mindset required to work on this. What happened after September 6th that has so delayed more episodes? I was a full time caregiver for my father then. In November of 2021 Dad moved into a retirement community. I was tasked with and sold the family house. I dealt with massive amounts of accumulated “stuff” my parents had in tow after 50 years of marriage. Also, I was still wrestling with my mother’s death in 2020. Before I was looking after Dad, I had been a full time live-in nurse for my mom as she died from cancer and dementia. Needless to say…I needed a break. I had been a full time caregiver for my parents for 2 years. The first 5 episodes of Salmonfolk Radio were my only creative output in all of that time. And honestly, I don’t even know how I had the energy to do that many.

By November 2021, I needed to have fun for a change. I needed recovery. Also…that’s an understatement! I desperately needed recovery time and space, and lots of fun. So that is what I did. I traveled the country starting in November 2021. I visited friends. My focus was on enjoyment, laughter, good times with good friends.

We all were just coming out of the pandemic. For most friends I was the first in house visitor that they had received in nearly 2 years. I had to relearn what normal felt like. Most of us did at that time. I eventually landed a job at the University of Vermont in Burlington VT. in Spring of 2022. I was teaching students how to become outdoor trip leaders. In my free time I could be found on the inland sea known as Lake Champlain. Crystal clear water with 20 feet of visibility. A former part of the Atlantic Ocean now marooned and freshwater. I did a lot of open water swimming and stand up paddle boarding. All the while I was aware of how there were landlocked salmon swimming in those waters. I then took a job that I had been dreaming of for about 30 years. I worked at a family owned ski resort and spent the better part of Winter 2022-23 on top of a VT mountain. I taught skiing and snowboarding, helped run the Rentals shop…I even worked as a lift operator. The season wrapped for me on April 2nd.

For the entire time I was driving cross country, or teaching map and compass to sophomores at UVM, or teaching hilarious kids to snowboard at the mountain…one project was tapping on my shoulder; Salmonfolk. When would I get back to it? When would I hit the magic recharge status for creativity? I am happy to announce that I am finally there. Conservation work stretches out before me and feels more critical than ever. After years of pondering Salmonfolk what became clear to me is that having an open runway would be important. I needed to find an artist in residency program…if possible. I targeted the end of the ski season as my start point for a program and set about self designing one. My goal? An entire month of Salmonfolk Radio work.

From April 30th – May 30, 2023 I am beginning a self designed artist in residency in Montpelier VT. I will be staying in a cute cabin on the edge of town, dog sitting some cute dogs and nothing but Salmonfolk…and the occasional morning yoga or SUP outing to clear my mind. I kind of can’t believe that I am finally doing this or that life saw fit to allow me to do so many wonderful things to recover from such a difficult past. But I am filled with gratitude that I am here and about to embark on this project once more.

The month will be focused hard on editing the already recorded content from 2021. I interviewed so many important activists and thinkers back then. And their voices and perspectives need to be heard. The relevancy of these interviews is likely even more poignant today. I have also had many new listeners report back to me about how much they enjoyed the first 5 episodes that have been out there since 2021. This has also been very encouraging. I have had 18 year olds tell me that after listening…they will never eat farmed salmon again. One day I walked into the Rentals shop at my ski resort, after wrapping up an on snow lesson…and the entire staff was listening to Salmonfolk Radio over the main speakers while working! Their reaction? “I had no idea!” And that’s really the point. No one who isn’t doing the research would know the truth about how salmon is farmed. What’s also true is that once people learn how…they never want to eat farmed salmon again. As well they should not.

So it’s off to the races once more. After May I will still keep going on Salmonfolk. My goal is to find angel investors of some kind who believe in the work and the goal…so I can keep highlighting this globally important topic. This is obviously my first post in a VERY long time. I have a lot of catching up to do here in Salmonfolk world. This website, for example…woefully out of date. Old links to old Gofundme initiatives…missing information. The salmon farm map! Egads! That salmon map!!

Onwards! For Wild Salmon!!! If you would like to help me keep going on Salmonfolk 100% then at least one link still holds relevancy…you can be my patron. That’s the best way to keep me on task.

On another note, I have had a LOT of fun in general. And now I feel the imperative to do one thing…to only for work for conservation causes. From here on out my position is that conservation is where my writing, filming, podcasting and photography will be zeroing in on.

Plans

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Musings from a coffee shop sun splashed window in Lambertville NJ. I spent the night at a friend’s house here. In one week he is starting the move to Prescott, AZ. Which is wild. Because that is where we met, in 1993. He’s on the move now with his family of 4. I am on the move with…me. My camera gear. A head full of poems. A mind packed with coalescing strategies for how to make more online content and films regarding conservation issues. I just wrapped up a 30 year dream of working full time at a ski resort. It was heavenly and worth the wait. As of now I am gainfully unemployed. Roaming. Visiting friends and family up and down the east coast of the USA. That will last most of April. Then in May I embark upon an artist in residency where I will work on nothing else but editing the remaining 10 episodes of a podcast I started 1.5 years ago. Season One of Salmonfolk Radio will finally be out by June. After May, I have no idea of what I will be doing, where I will be living, what income will look like. If most knew how little I had in my bank account, they’d not think me sane for this plan. But life has plans. You know? I have been working 60 hour weeks nearly every week since May 15th. I am a tired boy. Sometimes you have to go with it. There is an open space in front of me and I need that. Everything is pointing in this direction. When that happens you won’t realize the reward unless you trust and go forward. You can’t obliquely trust. It has to be pointed or life isn’t worth it at all. A lot of this is informed by pragmatism. I have been on food stamps. I have been upper middle class. I have been handed huge sums of money. I have asked for money. I have seen fortunes come and go in my life and felt the tide ebb and flow enough to recognize when the tide is coming in. So perhaps this isn’t trusting of me at all. Perhaps I am just surfing this wave in nice and easy. 

The last time I was in this coffee shop was in December of 2021. Feels like a decade ago. When here last I had just completed taking care of my father, who has dementia and he had moved into a retirement community. I had my son with me and I was driving him to start his new post pandemic life in NYC. This was all about a year after mom had died of cancer and dementia. I had wrapped up being a full time caretaker for my parents for nearly 2.5 years when last sitting right here. 

Now it’s 2023 and that means that I have spent about 18 months free of that. I never thought I would make it out of my caretaking role. And yes, I am working on a book about it. And yes, it’s a worse reality than you are imagining if you haven’t been there yet. Indeed, surviving it and coming out on the other side of it and celebrating being alive again is better yet than anything I have experienced…besides the joy of having kids.

As I get closer to NC, where I used to live and made Bolin Creek Unpaved, the picture frame of my week there is filling in quickly. Things are heating up all over again. The town council (most of them) are hot (so hot!) to pave through Bolin Forest. Yes. In our time of runaway global heating and runaway deforestation…the self anointed environmentalists of Carrboro NC are trying to claim that paving through the forest is literally the best thing for the environment that they can imagine. It’s fucking…just fucking wild. So I have brought my mics, 3 cameras and am already storyboarding. When I am down here I will be teaming up again with old friends and non profits and creating content to help educate the locals. Which is frustrating. It’s honestly bizarre that you have to find a way to explain to your fellow human beings why paving through a forest is bad for the planet…but in this age of disconnection, that’s where we are at as a species somehow.

I will also be premiering Old School Stone while there. OMG. So stoked for that! John, the 84 year old star of that film will be with me in attendance. Or rather…I will be in attendance with him. He is the film. Though this film has conservation themes for sure, the joy of this film is that it’s all about the joy of exploring outdoors. I am not selling an idea. There is no call to action. It’s just pure outdoorsy fun told from a wise man’s perspective. This will mark my 4th feature length film premiere.

John is not young. Neither am I lol. We began filming in 2018. I am grateful that we are both alive for the premiere. Even if it only shows once in front of a live audience, I am grateful to have that chance. So excited!

Well…that’s about it. I am about to hit the road once more. More driving time means more thought time to plan sequences to film along Bolin Creek. More ways to inform the layperson about science in ways that makes them choose things that are good for themselves in this bizarre time of the disappearance of common sense and self preservation.

Yo, Where is Charlie?

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Right now I am listening to Hwa Sa “TWIT”. If you don’t currently watch Kpop, and the way that they edit and light videos in South Korea, you are really missing out. This week I was also blown away by an intro for Season 1 Episode 8, “The Widow” on Amazon. The music featured a song by Cage The Elephant. Even if you don’t watch the episode, just watch the intro until the music starts. What I appreciate about it, is that without a single word of narration, the visuals and the music show the true cost of where the materials inside of our cell phones come from. It’s ugly. It’s true. It’s powerful. It’s beautiful. It’s a good use of video.

Right now I am working and temporarily still bouncing around houses in Warren, VT. But (drumroll!) I have finally acquired housing in Plattsburgh, NY. Why? Why Plattsburgh? I admit, it’s not exactly a place people are flocking to live. It’s got an odd post industrial vibe for sure and needs a lot of work. But the rents there are so much lower than in Burlington. And Burly is where I will be mainly working on my non video stuff. From June til November I will be working at the University of Vermont full time on a very fun project. I will still be doing video work, consulting and non profit stuff. But I am very excited about finally having a place to put my feet up for a while. It also gets me closer to Saranac Lake and Mirror Lake. Two fantastic winter destinations that I adore.

The best part about living in Plattsburgh is the commute to work. I have to take a ferry to cross Lake Champlain. I like ferries almost as much as I like skiing.

Anyway, I have been busy working on making connections for my Caretaking: The Untold Story . I had a great convo today with a woman who has been working on the topic of dementia for decades.

I have also been starting to slowly envision where I want Old School Stone: A Climber Looks Back to go. I have a deadline…the Carrboro Film Festival is accepting submissions until August 1. My old mentor Bradley Bethel is the organizer. He helped me get my start in making a living by making short films and video editing. I don’t expect any special favors though lol..he’s a tough critic! But this is yet another film that has been on the backburner for far too long. John, the subject of the film, lives in Carrboro. If I can finish the film, and it gets accepted into the festival…and he can go and sit in that audience and watch it, that will be totally amazing. To be blunt, John is over 80 years old. I want to get this thing locked in while he can still totally enjoy it.

Finally I am working locally on a gig where I am helping someone do a major overhaul of all of their digital assets. They have roughly 50K images in their iCloud Photos. Yep. A lot. And they have images on various older phones and laptops and SD cards and so forth. What the mission is, is to take all of these images and organize them by year and then park them on a new 18TB NAS drive. NAS stands for “Network Attached Storage”. I have had to do so much with file storage and management during my time editing videos and photos, that I have developed a real knack for this kind of thing. I understand drives, all storage media formats, and can switch back and forth easily between Mac and Windows. It may sound like boring work, but I like it. And honestly tons of people are in my new client’s situation right? Who hasn’t lost control of where all their photos and videos are located?

Another highlight from this week was when I was interviewed for a podcast. Pic below…

Howard’s podcast is called Plant Yourself. We had a really great conversation. The interview isn’t live yet, but it’s coming! I will definitely post it here once it is ready. I think it may also be included in video format as well. He asked me a lot about process. About how and why I got into being a documentarian. It was really rad.

Soon I leave my housesitting gig here in Warren. Then I head south in early May to visit my dad. Then I will be in NC for nearly a month, visiting friends, my daughter. I will also be doing a bit of additional filming for Old School Stone.

I will also be taking a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) course with Landmark Learning. I am so so so psyched to be taking this class. The reason most of my work is centered around the outside world is because I spend so much time there. Just check out my Instagram for the proof of that. Being a WFR (again) has been a long time dream of mine. With the WFR I can be on ski patrol, lead outdoor trips, volunteer at medical relief shelters and be well informed for all my own trips, which are often in wilderness areas.

It’s hard to describe the relief of knowing that I will l finally have housing for 4 months. Yeah I am excited about having a place for only 4 months. That’s what happens to you when you are out here in this housing crisis madness…even 4 months in one apartment seems really exciting and miraculous.

20 Minutes to Write This…

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March 11th, 2022

11:21 AM-Brooklyn Kolache

“Boots” the wonder cat, checking out one of my tripods.

Snacking on kolaches in Bedstuy Brooklyn at the moment. Reading articles about Ukraine. Still pondering going over there to volunteer along the Polish border at one of the warming and food centers where they welcome refugees. In the meantime, rebuilding my own life here in the USA still…

New York. What a strange place eh? But the kolaches are to die for. My son lives just around the corner. My blue outdated Android phone’s timer is set for me to leave here soon and go get my son’s stuff out of the dryer at the laundromat. He is back in his 3rd story walk up apartment, that we painted together last night, taking a shower to be ready for work today.

Soon we will leave in an Uber and head across the Williamsburgh Bridge and into Manhattan. He works right along the view into the Rockafeller Plaza. I will be heading on into another Manhattan location though. An office building with bright windows and colored couches and my first interview of another person since before I began caretaking for my parents in August of 2019. The last time I had my cameras and mics out to interview someone was likely for my movie 400 Feet Down. I went from making a movie that sold out three local screenings in a row…to barely even turning on my cameras for 2.5 years. I had to turn down work in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Ontario…I gave up invitations to work on material in Norway. But all that is behind me currently. And today I finally get to get back to what I worked so hard to build. I am pretty damn excited about it.

This is an all volunteer project I dreamed up. The topic is dementia. I want to create a docuseries, sharing the deeply personal experiences of those who are caregivers of family members with dementia. Then I will give dementia related organizations the rights to open source share the content on their platforms. I think it will have an impact.

I have my Panasonic GH4, my Zoom H6, Rode Pro, two tripods, a backup GoPro, tons of extra batteries, my question list, my glasses…I have gone through my gear list over and over, rather obsessively, since I am so out of practice. It used to be that a client could call me and my gear bag was literally always well stocked and ready for a shoot. Hopefully I will be getting back to that. It’s been a long wait. And more than that I didn’t even know if I would get back to this point. Glad to be here though.

After the interview here today I will head back to my son’s apartment and backup all the footage from the cameras and mics. Then I will scrub through it all to make sure it’s looking and sounding good. Then tomorrow I head back up North into Vermont. And apparently there is a big old snow bomb cyclone coming through. So yeah! Glad I still have my snowshoes and skis in the car. Sounds like fun to me.

I was able to finally secure a storage unit in Burlington VT. The housing market is so strained right now that even finding a storage unit is like searching for a rental. It’s crazy out here. On Tuesday I begin my next housesitting gig in Warren VT. I have three interviews lined up related to the my video work and social media expertise. Very excited about that! I also have some other interviews popping up to help me cover the bills that look exciting, though not video related. At this point, money needs to start coming in period. It’ll all work out.

And besides all that. I have about 2.5 weeks of gap in my housesitting time…and I might go over to Ukraine to volunteer if things line up.