Yesterday was a little unreal, but certainly really exhausting. The team from Middle Child Productions got their permit in the morning and marched across the street with unbelievable amounts of camera equipment to film our interview. I’d done interviews before and seen the big round thing to reflect light and the fuzzy microphone- but I’d never seen this. Two huge light stands that would have allowed for surgery in my dark victorian, and an impressively large camera on a triple reinforced tripod.
So I retold the story of our urban beavers and the challenging education process of the city council. That wasn’t different, although I was cautious about using words that wouldn’t fail to be understood in the UK or sound too ‘American’. Lots of things I had to repeat twice. Or more than twice. Like “can you say that again but lets try a different lens” kind of twice. And then you have to try to remember what you said in any shape or form. And wind up being very lost and disoriented as to your train of though.
One thing I never said enough for their liking was WATER WATER WATER. They weren’t that interested in community benefits or wildlife, because it wasn’t the focus of their program. But their eyes lit up when I talked about our creek not drying up in the summer, which is a pretty short sentence, and hard to draw out for a three hour interview.
Then they went off with Jon to film the tile bridge. They had Jon drive up on camera several times and film
ed the beaver bumper stickers with him getting out of the car thoughtfully striding to the creek. He was a good sport and obliged them twice. One fun part came when they used a ‘slider’ to film the bridge tiles slowly one by one. There were lots of passers-by interested in this mechanical wonder, and they received a hum of appreciative attention from the Christmas lunch the daycare was having at the Creek Monkey.
Afterwards we went for our own lunch at Lemon Grass Bistro and talked about their project. They had just come from Bridge Creek in Oregon where the ponds were just freezing up and had already interviewed Carol Evans in Nevada. They weren’t including any folk from the UK yet because they wanted to focus their energy on the American west and water storage. The program would have a narrator but he or she hadn’t been selected yet.
After lunch they walked Main street and did ‘vox’ interviews catching people and asking them about the beavers. They found out late in the day that their Napa permits fell through and they wouldn’t be able to film there Saturday, so they were happy Martinez had given them a good day of filming.
Who knows what the end product will be? I never got a really great feel for my director’s vision or personal charms. It was an odd day for all of us I’m sure. But hopefully some clip saying that cities can co-exist with beavers will make its way into their project, who’s working title is apparently “Beavers to the rescue.”
I was looking back through Don Bernier’s unfinished documentary about the subject and was surprised to see this, which would definitely help them with their water argument. This was taken before the flow device was installed and when our dam was 6 feet tall. I’m including the recent destabilization work for comparison. This from 2007.
And for comparison in 2015:
Even if I kept forgetting my watery lines, that should speak volumes. Here’s a recent article on the subject that is oddly missing its most relevant word.
Worsening US droughts demand alternative water protection approaches, study suggests
Alternative models of watershed protection that balance recreational use and land conservation must no longer be ignored to preserve water supplies against the effects of climate change, argues a new study. Researchers claim that the management of Salt Lake City’s Wasatch watershed in Utah provides a valuable example contradicting the dominant view presented in academic literature that informs many current conservation strategies.
“While regulatory exclusion is often thought of as the only viable alternative to market-based incentives in managing ecosystem services, the management of the Wasatch watershed provides a third, yet under-recognised, successful conservation strategy for water resources,” says Libby Blanchard, lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Geography.
Sadly no, its not the one you think. But it should be.
