Okay well this is a very strange feeling. I woke up with the same mindset I have had for the last 5 months. Which, in essence, was something like this: “GO GO GO CREATE CREATE CREATE AND DON’T FORGET TO EAT NOW AND THEN” And that’s been my life while making The Last Shark. To the exclusion of all else, that’s what it took to make it. And yesterday at approximately 9 AM…I finished making it. I sent it via WeTransfer to the Premiere venue in Capetown for conversion and testing on their sound system. But I was so exhausted and worn out by then…there were still so many things to organize that I didn’t even clock that moment as significant. I sent the 9 GB file from a friend’s house because they have a fiber internet connection. My friend’s took one look at me and said “you look haggard”. Frankie and I didn’t even take the time to celebrate or talk about the fact that the finish line had been crossed. That’s how busy things have been with lining up screenings.
I took an afternoon nap because I couldn’t stay awake any longer…I woke up and worked until 10 on screenings logistics.
Now here I am. In bed. In Vermont. And I just had a call with Frankie, in South Africa where I realized that there’s really nothing left for me to create. And…now it’s hitting me. I did cross the finish line. It’s done. She has about 16 screenings that she is personally attending and speaking at there. Her work is far from done. But my work of crafting that film, of Directing and scripting and shaping and living on that timeline…it’s completely over. Wow. I have been carrying my role in this project for a year and just like that, it’s done.
I literally have no idea what to do with myself now. How strange. Making a movie has got to be one of the strangest of endeavors.
A poet once wrote “there is more truth in the ashes, than in the standing house”. They meant that only what is true remains, after something intense occurs, like a housefire. And in the case of their poem, the context was that the family remained…even though the house no longer did.
Today at around 4 PM, after tackling some unexpected website issues, instead of editing the movie The Last Shark-I just stoked the woodburning stove, laid down in front of it like a dog and slept for two hours.
I had just received the final version of the Original Sound Track (OST) emailed from California from our composers. Earlier in the day I had received a long awaited piece of footage from South Africa featuring the deployment of exclusion nets on a beach there. These were the literal last two pieces of this documentary puzzle to be fitted.
I knew I had everything I needed to finish this project that has consumed my life since June 1, 2023. I wasn’t ready to just finish it without some kind of ritual. So…sleeping in front of the fire, in this secluded log cabin in the Vermont woods, was my way of approaching that. Because…how do you just finish something you have put so much of yourself into? You know? We live in a society with so few rituals to mark the milestones. I like to build them into my life as often as I can. Writing is one of them. And taking time to breathe, be and appreciate what has come before, is important for me to do, before I finish something.
This cabin is so fricking peaceful. I am at the base of mountains. Snow is on the ground. I can sing at the top of my lungs, as badly as I want…no problem. And I have been here before. I stayed here in March of this year. Back when Frankie (my Co-Director for The Last Shark) and I still didn’t even have the files yet from South Africa. Back when we had no idea what we were in for. I love a full circle and so being here is one of them. What has happened since March, is worth thinking about. And honestly, it’s been so busy I haven’t had much time to do that.
Since I left this house, I have done housesitting gigs or stayed with friends -while working on this movie in:
Burlington VT Underhill, VT Montpelier VT Va Beach VA Charlottesville VA Chapel Hill NC Palm Harbor FL Carrboro NC Wolfeboro NH Bryson City NC
Wow. I have never made that list. No wonder I am SO tired of moving around lol. Geez. 10 locations in 8 months. Some of these locations are just a blur. All I can picture is my workstation config, where the transcripts sat on a table and the view out the window. Some places were essential. VA Beach and Palm Harbor were essentially on the ocean. I picked those places so that I could find inspiration for the movie-since it’s ocean specific. And those places really delivered it in spades. I went to the beach at least 30 times for swimming and sunset watching this summer and it was so needed.
I stayed and visited with a lot of friends. And I am more grateful for community and friendship than I ever have been. My sense of geography and spaces between places has compressed. Driving up and down the East Coast of the USA is now not even a “thing”. It’s like running to the grocery store.
Staying with this project for free meant turning down paid work, meant running down my savings account, meant risking everything financially. One major car repair, and no housing, would have meant disaster. If I had been injured, I would have had nowhere to stay and recuperate. I just can’t say enough about how much my life had to change in order for this movie to be made.
A friend of mine died last year. She was a close enough friend that I officiated her funeral in late 2022. She died young. Glioblastoma. She died about 5 months after diagnosis. Her name was Teala and though we argued about how she had included me in her Will…I am forever grateful to her for insisting on doing so.
This entire project, my side of it as Editor and Co Director…unfunded as it has been, was only possible because of her. She literally said to me “if you are uncomfortable with the fact that I am giving you money, then donate it to a charity OR why not use it for one of those movie projects about saving the planet that you never seem to have funding for?”
For me this is really the movie that Teala made happen. Without her help it would have taken another full year for me to afford to find the free time to work on this, while working full time on other paid gigs. That being said…using Teala’s money has been difficult for me to do. I would have only used it for something that felt crucial, impactful and life changing. So I have had to reevaluate all along if this was the right project to meet that standard. It has. Also how weird is it that this project would come into my life nearly the same month that I first met Frankie when she told me that there wasn’t any money to pay an Editor. I got the check from Teala and I could hear her wishes…and here we are now, nearly done.
Yes, her name is in the credits.
I thought about her everyday that I have worked on this movie. The connectedness of all things, even really hard things, is difficult to reconcile, when they also result in something overwhelmingly positive.
Frankie and I have been making a movie. That’s a statement of fact. But the movie started making its own way in the world, as in idea, long before the film existed. After all…I am the Editor, I would know…the movie isn’t even finished yet and people are already experiencing positive vibes because of it. More than any other film I have worked on; the interest, positivity, connections, and passion for the film have been building out before the movie has been seen. A phrase that Frankie and I hear so often is “being a part of this has uplifted me”. People talk about coming out of a hard time and feeling fired up again as they have joined the effort as collaborators and supporters. It has felt more like a movement, than just a movie. It’s just been so insanely positive and we’ve had to really take a lot of deep breaths. Because working on something that isn’t technically done yet…that’s already having an impact…means you really better deliver. And in my role, that’s just been like…yeah, sometimes that’s been really a wild experience to wonder if I will get it right. What kept Frankie and I feeling like we were on that right track was back when we showed some beta viewers the very first rough cut (and I mean it was ROUGH)…they cried. That was the first time we realized we had possibly stumbled across something unique. But I can’t stress enough that it didn’t feel like we made something. It felt like we found something that was there, just waiting to be discovered.
I want to talk about fire. Sleeping next to the woodburning stove made me think about how fire is so much a part of the creative process. What burns away is as important as what remains. To create something that deals so closely with such hard topics: death, species loss, extinction, the fear of humanity…this movie has been very hard to face. To tell this truth I have had to stay close to it, really close to it. Like-method actor close. It became common for me to be on the timeline in my dreams, moving between clips, looking at footage. I have lived and breathed and put myself into the experience from the shark’s perspective, into the perspective of any poor creature caught in nets that literally only exist due to humanity’s fear. We kill animals for all sorts of reasons. But this is the first time I have spent time so close to a topic where we are eliminating a species solely due to our fear. And that’s had a huge impact on me. So for me, making the movie is the fire and what remains is a hard truth about us. We are still largely driven by our fears. And we must figure that out.
I feel like this movie is so timely for that reason. I think we have made something that doesn’t blame anyone. To me, what we have made is a different way of looking at the human story. The one where we forgot, that we live in home, where we aren’t the only one’s there.
Art wants to happen. My mom was an artist. While taking care of her as her full time nurse in 2020, when she was dying from cancer, she did a TON of art. It’s this invisible thing that needs a voice and it needs someone to listen to it and shape it into something others can see. She did that well. So yeah…I am deeply grateful that I was able to take the last 5 months (the most intense editing months out of the year since the project began anew) and just focus on what what the story was, what it was trying to say. There were times when I was laying on the floor surrounded by scattered transcripts from about 17 different interview subjects and feeling like I was never going to be able to find the story that I knew was in here somewhere. Art takes time. And patience. And listening. Mom would have really loved this movie. Anyway…yeah…I think I am ready to do this thing.
It’s time to load in the OST onto the timeline in Premiere Pro and adjust the sound levels. I will drop in the Exclusion Net footage. I have some additional color grading on some underwater footage. But it’s pretty much there really. By this time tomorrow the movie will be done.
Wow and woah and here we go…thanks Teala. Thanks Mom. Thanks Frankie. Let’s do this thing.
I arrived last Sunday to stay with friends in Wolfeboro. A lovely and quaint summer resort town that bills itself as America’s Original Summer Resort. On the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, this is a town with no traffic lights, no fast food restaurants and postcard classic charm. It’s also probably the least socially diverse town I have visited during my 5 month tour of the eastern USA. But still, it is a visually stunning place. Staying with friends, after so many months of doing housesitting gigs in places I did not have any friends, has been amazing. Watching parents raise kids again and hearing all the conversations I used to have with my kids was wonderful and grounding.
I had planned on having the movie done before I got here. I wasn’t going to using my guest room as The Last Shark Movie Making HQ. But that’s how it went. I would work all day while my friends and their kids did their day to day lives of work and school. I would try to stop when they were home in the evenings, which was hard to do, with so much work still to do.
Where am I on the work? Hmmm….when I arrived I had done zero work on audio levels. I had done zero work on color grading.
Normally sound and color I would farm out to someone else. I know where my strengths are and these are not mine. But with a budget of essentially zero dollars…I kind of knew that these tasks would eventually land in my lap.
I had been looking at this movie for so long in its “as is” condition…viewing the footage and audio as originally captured, for so many months that my eye and ear had become accustomed to how things looked and sounded in our selected clips. Until I reached this point of making the movie, I had no idea how much help the look and sound needed. Also I have never been one to do much with sound or color grading for video. I have never had to really. I have always captured my own and therefore was controlling the quality of both so I didn’t have to do much in post production. But also, I just never have learned color grading. This movie also is the first that I have tackled that has underwater footage-a whole different kettle of fish. So in my time here the movie has gone through a huge transformation. Here the movie hit the long awaited “picturelock” milestone. Which also means timelock. Which means that the composers can now do their work second by second for each scene. The movie also locked in all the final narration. With those two pieces finally in place, we had a movie…just with wildly divergent lighting and visual elements and sound levels all over the place. Also…no OST or music yet.
As I leave today we now have a movie that has much improved color grading. I can’t claim to be great at this task. But when I drag the opacity slider down on the adjustment layers for comparison it’s rather astonishing at how much good color was hiding in those clips. The movie looks so much better now it’s honestly hard to believe. How much you can do with any clip all depends on how it was shot. If it’s overexposed in the pre you can’t do a full rescue in post. In all of these outdoor interview shots the sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds. The interviews also lasted long enough that the sun shifted quite a lot. This would be challenging for any Director of Photography to contend with. So for me, in post…it is what it is. For a first time color grader it’s been daunting to achieve any kind of visual consistency with those conditions. The name of the game is “I can only do my best”. So it’s both satisfying to improve the looks and also there are many moments where I am just like “WTF!!!??? I can’t do this!!!” There is a reason you hire the experts lol.
I am not yet done with the full grading. I would say I am about 75% done with the first pass. Then I will rewatch the export and just keep refining over and over right up until the Premiere date on November 7th. But overall I would say the movie literally looks 60% better already. And that’s a really good place to be. It’s a 1 hour and 21 minute movie and I have probably put over 20 hours into grading.
And as for the sound….wow. I am also not a sound mixer. Never have been. In that area things were much easier. Once I got the hang of things I was able to fly. I probably did 20 hours of sound. The sound is like 90% better than it was as received on the hard drive. Sometimes the voices, once repaired, were so rich and deep that I nearly cried. I had no idea how much good audio was hiding. And the reason it’s emotional is because I have put everything into this movie- the message is so important. Hearing the voices sound so good means the message gets across so much more powerfully.
That’s my story. I am truly so very exhausted. I am glad to be here with good friends but still…the final editing process of sound and color has been taxing and isolating and man…after 5 months of this I am definitely nearing the end of my ability to work without any kind of real breaks or time off from staring at screens. I only have to last until about November 5th.
Today I have what will be the second to last meeting with the composers and with the co director on the music being created. I am really looking forward to that. Dropping in their final OST will be a really huge and nearly final move to the work. Then it’s off to the next house. Vermont. Staying with good friends again. I probably won’t get much work done at their house unfortunately. I will mostly review the film many times and make notes of what to tweak.
And then we come to the final house. A mountain cabin in Bolton Valley VT. That’s where this I will have 5 final days, Nov 1-Nov 5, to finish everything that I can before the Premiere. My plan is to just work around the clock, once more, to march out onto the timeline and get the movie made. After that all I can say is that I did my best under the circumstances as a full time volunteer for half a year. If you can’t tell from my tone, yeah…I am beat. I can still rally and I do but yeah…wow…I am tired.
At least yesterday I did force myself to take a small break. My friend here convinced me I needed one, which obviously I do. I hopped onto a paddleboard and she in a kayak and we spent 3 hours floating around on a gorgeous NH lake. The wind would rise and a school of golden leaves would swim through the air around us, shimmering in the dappled light. At one point I just laid down on my back on the board and let it all go. It was a good time. Then I went back to the house and worked til midnight.
And because I have now color graded I have to say no…I did not color correct this snap that Julie took LOL. But yep. that’s me playing around with crossbow strokes and sculling away for fun.
Today I am able to finally have perspective on this entire process because we have passed the hurdle of “picturelock”. And wow, it’s a LOT to process. I had no idea how complex this undertaking would be.
So today as I waited for my dirty hot chocolate order 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.
I feel like I am just now realizing there is an entire world out here and wow. It’s a paradox right? As the Editor and Co-Director (but really more as the Editor) you go head down into this narrow and isolated path, away from people, away from the world. It’s you, it’s two large screens, it’s Premiere Pro, it’s an editing timeline with over a thousand cuts and multiples of layers of tiny little rectangles. You start to actually dream about the timeline. Your life, in essence IS that timeline. It’s all you think about.
It’s a strange fact that in order to focus hard enough to make a movie that will impact people and the world around you, you have to remove yourself from it for a time. So strange. But so worth it-if you don’t take it too far.
I want the reader of this post to know some of the backstory of how this movie got made…
In the beginning-Dewett Dewett is the original Director. He ran the filming and originated the idea to make a movie about the shark nets in the KZN, back in 2021. Dewett and Frankie both tried to find an editor for the project after they finished filming in 2021 but it never panned out. Why? Because it’s really hard to find funding for movies that matter. They both had to get back to work as they ran out of personal money. Also the covid pandemic affected momentum. After interviewing 24 shark conservation minded folks..they had to take an indefinite pause on the work.
Charlie Meets Frankie
Frankie is the Director and Producer. We first started talking on Facebook December of 2022. Frankie pushed hard to find a way to make the movie and mentioned to me that if an editor could be found that she would also volunteer her time to see it through. I had no idea what I was in for but the information about the demise of sharks and the involvement of shark nets was just too much to ignore. So I signed on, figuring I would just fit this in over the course of a year in my free time. I also did think that perhaps, given the topic, that money would come in so that we wouldn’t be working ourselves into being broke financially.
The Hand Off Dewett still had all the original files on hard drives in South Africa and I lived here in the USA. So he had to organize the files and then ship it over. But that’s not the hard part. He had to trust others to take all of his footage and turn it into something-while relinquishing control over the process. And I gotta say, that’s a REALLY hard thing to do. Hats off to Dewett.
Making the Movie-No Funding Frankie and I absolutely tried to raise funds. We had every confidence we could raise around $50K. A very meager budget but better than nothing. We barely hit $1,300 with that fundraiser. Then we had a choice. Proceed as volunteers or throw in the towel. We decided to proceed.
Living on the Cheap!
I decided to dip into my savings and not work for anyone else until the movie was done. We agreed that we would give it our all, even without funding. We aimed for a release date in late 2023 instead of 2024. Why? Because there are so many sharks dying every year, to wait another year seemed wrong. Our approach was that any kind of movie would be better than no movie at all. To make it work I began long term housesitting and petsitting gigs to keep my overhead costs low so that I could stretch out what little money I had. Frankie lived very inexpensively in South America where the cost of living is incredibly low compared to the USA. We both joked a LOT about living on peanut butter. The truth though is that it really was quite difficult to focus on the work while watching the little money you had disappear.
Inspirations There were absolutely times when I felt like giving up. Just being honest. I was like “what am I doing? I am going to go broke doing this!” But for both of us it felt like the effort was worth our time. In order to do this, and not crash, you have to have a team of people around you. No movie is made alone. Speaking for myself, here is what got me through this process…
Frankie I could never have made this movie without Frankie’s energy and enthusiasm and laughter. Our mantras have been “let’s gooooo!” and “for the sharks!!!”, among others. Frankie is 26. I am 52. I’ve been around the block a few times, so to speak, but for her, this is her debut as a movie director. And she was an absolute natural and seriously blew me away with how she was able to understand the role and occupy that space like a seasoned pro. She didn’t just work with people on this project. She checks in with you. She makes sure you are doing okay. She rallies and cheers. Frankie worked hard on this project, harder than I have seen anyone work on any project. Bar none.
The Interview Subjects
What also sustained me are the 24 people whose interviews I was editing and reading over and over and over and over. I have about 24 hours of interviews from shark conservationists now locked into my memory forever. And their dedication, up there on my screens, and in the many pages of transcripts, kept me fired up for the project when I was struggling with the next steps. All of these interview subjects freely gave their time, their experiences and passion for sharks to this movie and that mattered to me.
Dewett If I was ever lacking in drive, I would think about Dewett’s swim to Dyer Island. This guy literally risked his life in order to raise awareness about the decline of the Great White Shark. So when I would be laying on the floor, surrounded by scattered transcripts, with my brain melting, I would absolutely think “If Dewett can swim to Dyer Island then surely I can do this”
Samantha Samantha is our narrator! This is her debut as a narrator. Frankie and I tried SO hard to find a narrator. I have narrated all my movies and so I was the Plan B. But we desperately wanted a South African voice, since this is a South African centric movie. Samantha stepped into the role and worked exceedingly hard at learning the ropes of recording, finding her voice, pacing, diction…it is very hard to do in fact. And she really did so well. Putting your voice out there for the world to hear is intimidating. But she stepped right up and the movie is better for it.
There are many other people I could list as inspirations but I think I will stop since we are already up to 27.
Anyway…that’s the fuller story of how The Last Shark has been made! As for me I am heading to Vermont now for my last scheduled housesitting gig til December 15. While there I will be likely editing right up til the Premiere date. Then I go visit my kids in Iowa for Christmas. After that? I am currently houseless, jobless and in need of rest. So we will just see what life has in store…
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.
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…
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.
Above is a framegrab from a movie that premieres in Capetown, South Africa exactly one month from today. I am the Co Director, Editor and script writer of said movie…The Last Shark.
I am in that liminal period of my work on this particular timeline, just like this photo…on the in between horizon.
I have been actively working on this movie since receiving the hard drive from South Africa in June of 2023. And now, given the premiere deadline of November 7th…I am most definitely in that underwater/abovewater phase. Sometimes I see the sky and the end of editing the most complicated and important story I have ever been a part of. Sometimes I am back down under the waves of revisions, wondering if it will ever be completed at all. And then in the next moment considering, once I am done, what the actual fuck will I do with my life afterwards?
In this framegrab the lens of the camera person was positioned just on the waterline. So in the actual footage the water deliciously sloshes about, dipping the camera view above and below in fits and starts. Then the title of the next chapter of the movie suddenly appears in that space, right on the horizon.
My co-director, bless her amazing heart, says I shouldn’t swear in social media postings…but I am 52 and so, you know…on my blog I get to paint with all the fucking colors. At my age, and with the things I have been through in my life I find myself in that pleasant phase of life where you truly cease to care what people think. Or if you do care, you notice that you care, but you decidedly stop changing your behavior due to that.
In a world packed with people seemingly hell bent on destroying the world that they live in…do I really care about offending some people with bright language here and there? As an old friend of mine always said, “consider the source”. I am here to be me. We all really need to be. If you think something is right and it follows basic principles like doing no further harm and respecting other’s rights then for real…when has their been a more important time than now to do something?
That is what has driven me to give up everything for this project. It’s an odd situation. And it’s also something I have wholly lost perspective on. When I ponder life after I hit that final upload button and what happens after Frankie downloads it for screenings in South Africa…it’s also then that I ponder where I have been in life that led me to this project.
I find myself asking a lot of questions about the value of work and how we, as a society at large, seem to have linked the value of work with financial compensation. These things, in reality, have nothing to do with one another. If none of us were paid for what we did, we would have a completely different society, ordered upon wildly different values. If every single thing wasn’t commoditized, including us, including animals, what would it be like to live in a world like that? That’s really what I am trying to say with my movies. I am working towards a world where everything isn’t for sale. I believe in that world because I inherently believe that until we make that a reality, we will continue to dessicate the place we call home.
If any of you readers are technical folks…we are nearly at picture lock. Besides a few footage outliers, which can all be dropped on top of interview footage as B roll…the length of the film is locked in at one hour and 19 minutes. Narration lock happened yesterday. Composers are working on the original sound track. There is still plenty to do but if you liken this process to building a house…we are the painting phase. It’s 98% percent move in ready.
It’s staggering though. Every other movie I have made was honestly so simplistic compared to this one in scope. I have never made a movie about a species that is going extinct. I have made movies about saving tracts of land from deforestation. I have made generalized movies with a strong conservation message. But the situation that exists in South Africa with the shark nets and the fear driven killing of so many sharks hits so hard for me on every level. It defines the human vs nature conflict so precisely. We are such a fearful and unintelligent species. And the most dangerous thing about is that we think we are so damn smart. We don’t recognize that so many of our fact based decisions are actually based on fears disguised as facts. How do we ever learn if we are so busy being blind? Who will read the writing on the wall?
That’s why I make movies. That’s why I make podcasts. That’s why I do conservation work for free for 6 months while living out of my car. I feel like it’s worth the effort to craft a narrative that just might shake someone new out of the old ways of thinking.
What will I do once the timeline is saved for that final revision and I export this movie? In less than a month I will be in alone in a cabin in the wintery woods of northern Vermont for 6 weeks. What will it be like to find my creative output grind to a specific halt? Will the movie take on a life of its own? Will I be contacted by someone I haven’t even met yet and offered my next project? Oh…and where the F will I live after those 6 weeks?
In my field of work, there are times when the truth can’t be talked about by those who I am interviewing. There are those who can’t even be involved on any level with a production for fear that they will lose their jobs, or that even their spouses will lose their jobs-job loss by association.
It’s happened in two of the movies that I have made: Bolin Creek Unpaved and 400 Feet Down. It has happened in the podcast series that I am currently releasing; Salmonfolk Radio. In these three instances I am helping others illuminate the truth about environmental concerns through interviews and filmmaking. The goal is always the same…bring these issues to light for an audience so that they can know the issues exists and how to do something about them.
These issues need highlighting because there are people who will do anything to make money and the Earth is, so to speak, what they use to convert their greed into cash in their bank accounts. Some people are motivated by greed. Some already have more than they could spend in a lifetime. What runs greed though, is fear. Every hoarder runs on fear. If you’ve been in the home of a true hoarder, the stacks of dross, the 30 year old newspapers, the dust, the waste…it’s the same mentality that drives some of us to just collect more and more money. Fear of not having enough, fear of letting go. The earth’s creatures, mineral deposits, are what stands in the way of the money making machinery. And the only thing that can stop this machine is when the truth becomes the monkey wrench. This requires people to talk about the truth…because those motivated by greed can’t find it on a map of the Earth any longer.
I am making these movies and podcasts about that machinery and the people who I am interviewing become the monkey wrench.
Those who are motivated to protect, to rescue, to conserve. Somehow, they have slipped out of the monetary padlock. Yet, there are times when the truth can’t come out. In every documentary about protecting the planet I have worked on, there are moments where the camera and mic had to be turned off. And it was when the person I was interacting with said “this can’t be on the record…I could lose my job” or “I could be attacked if they knew I said this”.
Those moments and the things that were said…if they had been shared in the film or podcast, would have been silver bullets to the werewolves. When you sit down with someone for a feel good documentary about doing the right thing and they look at you and say the truth only when it’s off the record…it really shows you, so starkly-what the world of human relations is really like. It’s so recursive.
The reason I am making the documentary is the same reason that the person can’t come forward.
The documentary is needed because there are people who can’t tell the truth without facing consequences…monetarily, physically…possibly both. I am trying to tell a story about how to reverse damage to the very home we live upon but every environmental story is really a tale of people vs people.
Recursive.
Until we figure out how to escape these shackles…
I think a lot about door locks. On every house. On every car. On most doors to buildings. We say that we live in free societies. We talk about community. Every time I see a door lock I know we haven’t gotten there yet. When you are a person who needs protection from other persons…I don’t know how we call ourselves free at all. It instead only happens in small pockets, micro scale.
I am writing this due to a recent development in my work on the story of The Last Shark. It’s a documentary movie about one of the main sources of the disappearance of the Great White Shark off the coast of South Africa. Spoiler Alert: It’s people.
I am Co-Director and Editor. And for the 3rd time, since starting work on this movie, I have had to wrestle (today) with the fact, that for others to be involved in this production, they run the risk of experiencing bodily or financial harm.
And it’s because of people. People who have are driven so powerfully by fear that they would seek to crush the truth spoken by others. And that’s recursive. Because what it really shows about the oppressors is that the truth in them has been crushed already.
It’s easy to read this and think that I feel crushed under the weight of being close to these heavy topics. Beaten down and wanting to give up. That is there for sure.
But what I get to do in my work is be close to people who want to tell the truth. And that fucking matters. It matters. Whether they go on record or not isn’t important to me. The point for me is that I get the privilege of interacting with people who take the time to observe, think and care about what is happening around us.
What I also have observed, through the films I have worked on and the podcasts…is that even if the fearful many have the numbers…it doesn’t take more than a few honest voices to help dispel that fear and get people back on the right course.
In closing, the theme of this writing is fear and the word “recursive”. It just occurred to me now that recursive is an adjective that one could use to define how fear works. I think only truth can break that cycle.
The Last Shark is a movie about protecting the Great White Shark. I can’t think of a more feared creature than Great White Sharks. So dispelling and overcoming fear is truly the topic of this film.
Episode 15! I sit down with Frederik W. Mowinckel, who is related to a family that founded one of Norway’s first salmon farming companies. Though his family exited the industry many years ago, he has an insider’s view to “open net” salmon farming that is rare…Grab a cup of coffee, this is going to be good.
Episode 16! This episode is packed with goodness. Besides our meeting with Dan and Bonny, who are Tofino BC locals and the directors of the fish farm fighting org- Clayoquot Action, you will hear about:
The Salmon Guild
The new Salmon Economy
How nitrogen from Kamchatka ends up in the heartwood of BC trees
How a Paris Climate meeting connected Norway to BC
How nutrients move uphill against gravity
How the Ahousaht First Nation forced a salmon farming company to get a salmon farm out of Ahousat First Nations territory
How effective and peaceful leadership has worked for Clayoquot Action
And as if it needs repeating…how salmon literally connect everyone and everything
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.
The Video Slab 