June 16, 2009
NEW TV AIRING!
I recently got word that my Praire Creek production will air on SOP TV (Southern Oregon Public Television) on August 1, 2009 at 6 p.m. on Cable Channel 21 and Digital Channel 8.3. So, two or three people who live in the Jackson County region of southwestern Oregon and might actually read this in time, be sure to tune in.
I recently updated the “ABOUT THIS SITE” section to reflect changes my situation has undertaken since I graduated from college last May. I now have a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and a Minor in English Writing. The updated page has only a bit of new info, but there’s also a neat new lizard photo.
I also added two new links to the “RESEARCH LINKS” section. There are now links to the sites of the Northern Wild Sheep and Goat Council and the Pit River Watershed Alliance. The Northern Wild Sheep and Goat Council’s site is a rich source of scientific papers about bighorn sheep and mountain goats. The Pit River Watershed Alliance’s site has info about various outdoor locations near Little Hot Springs Valley, including: Fall River Valley, Big Valley, and portions of Modoc County. There are also some neat 360°scenery panoramas.
Furthermore, I added a new section to my site: “TELEVISION AIRINGS.” This section presents the stories behind my TV airings. You’ll learn how I got my airings and about how many rejections I went through. The airings page also has info about a couple Prairie Creek documentary airings of which KIXE TV never notified me. The airings were also never announced on my site. I recently learned about them because my parents have a DVR unit that is set to record my productions. The airings were on April 16 at 4:30 a.m. and on April 17 at 3:30 a.m. I feel special because I don’t think many other nature documentaries get timeslots like those.
I also added another new section: “HONORS.” My honors are fairly low-key. Still, my certificates (viewable on my new page) indicate distinction and official recognition of my work from a prestigious international film festival and a California university. Sure beats the old days when my relatives fell asleep to my footage during a family gathering.
I’ve been out in Little Hot Springs Valley’s wildlands a lot lately, which explains the lack of recent updates. Nevertheless, I’ve shot some great scenes with my HD camcorder. Within the last month, I’ve recorded: ducklings hunting insects, bullfrogs fighting and bellowing, turtles swimming underwater, lizards sprinting, and majestic thunderheads. More productions and more web updates are coming. I have plenty of material. Getting the necessary time and energy is one of the trickier aspects of completing my tasks.
May 12, 2009
I finally finished my latest production, Humboldt’s Future: The General Plan Update. It was a school assignment for my Geography of Tourism class. The new video is about eight minutes long and can be viewed for free on the “HUMBOLDT GENERAL PLAN” page. This production has a few wildlife shots, but its main focus is on community development, so it mostly has shots of people, neighborhoods, traffic, and farmland.
April 8, 2009
Back in mid-March, I finally acquired a high definition video camera: the Canon XLH1A. For the last four years, I’ve used what’s basically a standard definition precursor: the Canon XL1S. With the XLH1A, I can get high definition 16:9 widescreen footage, which will fit the new digital broadcasting format and new widescreen TVs. My new footage is so sharp, that in some shots, I’ve noticed miniscule background details, like ants on rocks and small birds standing in the distance.
Below, I posted still shots I got with the XLH1A last March. I’m still working out software issues and have yet to get full screenshots. The still shots I posted were shot onto a memory card with the XLH1A’s still photo setting, but as far as I can tell, their resolution is equivalent to screenshots.
March 16, 2009
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview made its theatrical debut yesterday at around 2:00 p.m. at the Cascade Theatre in Redding, CA. It was the first film screening on the last day of the first annual Sundial Film Festival. The event was a lot more prestigious than I’d originally anticipated.
I showed up at the festival to briefly introduce my film. A festival staff member introduced me and then I got on stage to say some brief words, but it wasn’t as simple as you might think. I was a in a ginormous theatre with a huge balcony, fancy architecture, and a bunch of people who had actually paid to be where they were (all my other screenings were free). Plus, I used a podium and microphone and the theater was almost completely dark, save for a blaring spotlight aimed at yours truly. To top it off, the movie screen behind me featured a giant live video projection of me speaking. So, yeah: not exactly my casual low-key event.
I articulately said my piece, exited the stage, and then watched my documentary. Talking actually wasn’t so bad because all I could see was darkness and a bright light. It almost seemed like I was alone. But, the microphone gave my voice a heck of an echo. The projection of my production looked pretty good, considering it was miniDV footage burned onto a DVD. But, the sound system and acoustics caused my narration to seem disproportionately loud with serious echoes. I felt embarrassed because I thought my narration was too loud and seemed overbearing. I care about banana slugs, but I certainly don’t want to shout to people about them.
Anyway, my first formal film festival experience went fairly well. While introducing Prairie Creek, I even managed to plug my website, The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley, and my upcoming KIXE TV airing. So, I was happy to get some publicity.
March 12, 2009
BIG NEWS ON THREE FRONTS!
The preliminary judges of the International Wildlife Film Festival have recently recognized The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley with an “Honorable Mention for Animal Behavior.” In an e-mail, festival staff told me that “the preliminary judges felt the animal behavior in The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley . . . was captivating and worthy of special attention.”
The International Wildlife Festival is one of the most prestigious wildlife film festivals in the world and is held each year in Missoula, Montana. The actual festival isn’t until this May, but some judges have already made decisions. I felt lucky to get anything from the festival, considering I’m competing with big names in the business, like National Geographic and the BBC.
In other news, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview will make its television on local PBS station, KIXE TV (Channel 9). The program will air on Saturday, April 11 at 8:00 p.m. The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley aired on KIXE three times last year and also made its television debut on that station.
As I’ve mentioned before: “KIXE . . . covers a 130 mile radius that includes ten California counties: Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity. Today, KIXE is one of the most watched TV stations in this area. The station serves more than 500,000 people with more than 74,000 television households tuning in to Channel 9 each and every week.”--Source: http://www.kixe.org/node/8
Lastly, The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview are now in the Humboldt State University Library and available to be checked out by students, faculty, and members of the local community.
March 4, 2009
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview will make its theatrical debut at the first annual Sundial Film Festival at the Cascade Theatre in Redding, CA on Sunday, March 15 at 2:00 p.m. I’ll be there for a very brief intro and I don’t think I’ll be available to talk to audience members. Prairie Creek will be the first of six different films screened on the last day of the festival. Tickets to the festival are available from the Cascade Theatre both online and in town.
March 2, 2009
I recently added a new page to the site: “SHOWREEL VIDEO.” This page provides a download link to my new showreel, which features some of my best work from the last five years. One reason I made it is so potential employers can get a quick taste of my skills. My showreel is a musical montage that’s about five minutes long. It starts out with some of my favorite wildlife shots (grizzly gnawing on carcass, elk bugling in Yellowstone, etc.) and then switches to animal fight and predation sequences and a bunch of other action-packed footage. If you’re new to my site or an old fan, I think you’ll enjoy my showreel. It has a lot of footage I’ve never posted online or presented in a commercial production, including shots of rare Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep and a shot of a great egret eating a fish.
February 22, 2009
I recently posted commentary about my Humboldt State University screening in the “PUBLIC SCREENINGS” section of my site. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos at the event, but I did include a shot of the school I got last spring (below). Don’t be fooled though; HSU is often not that sunny. I also posted my résumé as a downloadable Word document for prospective employers. I’ve decided to not go to grad school and my career hunt has begun.
February 13, 2009
Both my documentaries will be screening at Humboldt State University on Wednesday, February 18 at 6:00-8:00 p.m. in Founders Hall, Room 125. I’ll be there to introduce my productions and conduct a Q & A session after the screenings. There will be free soda and popcorn.
First off, I’m sorry about the short notice. I only recently finalized the details. Secondly, you might be wondering why I’ve been bestowed with this privilege. I have the HSU Geographic Society to thank. They’re a school club dominated by Geography Majors. They offered me the opportunity for a screening and helped with the logistics. It’s ironic that while I was a Wildlife Management Major, I labored with schoolwork all the time, but after becoming a Geography Major, I had enough time to make my wildlife filmmaking endeavors flourish. Anyway, I’d also like to thank HSU’s Geography Department and faculty. They’ve been very supportive of my efforts. And, as I’ve mentioned before, my Senior Field Research teacher, Joy Adams, was instrumental in the production of my Prairie Creek documentary. If it wasn’t for her letting me make that documentary as an assignment, it wouldn’t have happened.
If you’re in the Arcata area, feel free to stop by. My documentaries will be projected from a DVD player onto a pull-down, white screen in a classroom. So, compared to some of my other screenings, it’s a relatively low-key event. Still, it should be fun.
January 20, 2009
I recently finished revamping about half my site to accommodate my newly finished production, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview. My new documentary is available for online or mail ordering and I posted video clips, screenshots, a script, and other information related to my Prairie Creek film. I also re-did several webpage interfaces, including that of the homepage. Plus, I improved my Little Hot Springs Valley script and its order page. Today, I finished one of the biggest updates my site’s seen for about a year, so be sure to browse around and see what’s new.
December 7, 2008
I added yet another new section to the site: “PUBLIC SCREENINGS.” There, you can find commentary and photos related to three public screenings of The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley. All the screenings profiled are the ones I personally appeared at. Mainly, the new section has slightly modified commentary material I originally posted in the “WHAT’S NEW?” section. I figured instead of letting my screening commentary drift into obscurity on my continuously updated, hierarchical news page, I should set up whole new pages chronicling my public screenings. My December 3 update about the November 29 Redding screening has been moved to the new screenings page and is now absent from my news page.
December 6, 2008
I added a new section to the site: “RESEARCH LINKS.” There, you can find links to websites loaded with reliable natural history information. I also added a new section to my “EXPEDITION GALLERIES” page: “Little Hot Springs Valley: November 23, 2007.” The new gallery is mainly birds and deer with a bit of scenery. Below is a sample photo of one of my elusive photography subjects from last year.
November 16, 2008
In case you’re wondering why this place hasn’t been updated in awhile, I’ve got a good answer. I’ve been busy at work on another production, which is nearly done. My latest documetnary is entitled: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview. It’s loosely based on a research paper I wrote for a class last semester. Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (PCRSP) is located in northwestern Humboldt County, CA and is part of a series of redwood state parks that are connected to Redwood National Park. As I mention in my narration script, PCRSP has primeval redwood forests, rocky bluffs, scenic grasslands, and a wild coastline. Due to its distinct physical regions, the park teems with biodiversity.
Highlights of my new video include: bull elk during the rut, banana slugs, and brown pelicans fishing. My PCRSP video will be about 28 minutes long and I’m working on it for my Senior Field Research geography class at Humboldt State University. It was nice doing my favorite hobby for homework, but adding that to my other classes sure kept me busy. I’ve just recently finished enough of my production to recognize its potential. I hope to have my new video for sale by late December or early January. I still have to do finishing touches with editing, re-record my narration, deal with music licensing, and deal with package design and mass production of DVD copies. Plus, my darn school semester doesn’t finish until mid-December, which keeps my occupied with other academic duties. Below are a few screenshots from Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview.
November 15, 2008
Courtesy of the Shasta County Arts Council, The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley will screen in Redding, CA at Old City Hall (1313 Market Street) on Saturday, November 29 at 6:30 p.m. Admission and popcorn will be free! I’ll be at Old City Hall to introduce my screening, answer questions, and talk to viewers. DVD copies of my documentary will also be available for sale at the showing. The screening date just happens to fall on the last weekend of my Thanksgiving Break from college.
You might be wondering why I got this opportunity. Well, due to the exposure I got from my Fall River Theatre screening, two guys affiliated with the Shasta County Arts Council (David Shepard and Frank Treadway) invited me to screen my production in their performance hall. So, I owe David and Frank a debt of gratitude. The Shasta County Arts Council is a Redding-based organization that works to promote the arts. According to their website: “The Shasta County Arts Council’s objective is to make the arts accessible to all members of our diverse community” and to “provide avenues for social exchange that promote learning and cultural understanding.”
To learn more about the Shasta County Arts Council, visit: www.shastaartscouncil.org
Once again, The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley screens in Redding at Old City Hall (1313 Market Street) on Saturday, November 29 at 6:30 p.m.
Tristan Howard
September 3, 2008
The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley will air on the local PBS station for the Redding-Chico area (KIXE TV: Channel 9), for a second time on Saturday, September 27 at 8:00 pm. It made its television debut on KIXE on May 3, 2008. As I’ve mentioned before, according to the KIXE TV website: “KIXE . . . covers a 130 mile radius that includes ten California counties: Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity. Today, KIXE is one of the most watched TV stations in this area. The station serves more than 500,000 people with more than 74,000 television households tuning in to Channel 9 each and every week.”--Source: http://www.kixe.org/node/8
KIXE TV’s broadcast zone also happens to cover Little Hot Springs Valley itself. The September 27 airing is special in that the station will be holding live pledging activity around my program and some people who make donations will even get a DVD of The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley as a thank you gift from PBS. Feel free to spread the word.
August 31, 2008
The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley will air on local PBS channels in southern Oregon this October. Southern Oregon Public Television (SOP TV), based in Medford, will air my film on its Cable Channel 21 and its Digital Channel 8.3 on Friday, October 10 at 9:00 p.m. and on Saturday, October 18 at 6:00 p.m. Wildlife will air on both channels on both dates.
SOP TV’s Cable Channel 21 only serves Jackson County, which is located in southwestern Oregon. It’s situated between Klamath County to the east and Josephine County to the west. Jackson County is also home to the towns of Medford and Ashland. According to Nancy MacRae (SOP TV Programs and Operations Manager): “Digital 8.3 is currently a simulcast of the programming on cable channel 21, so that means that anyone in our main viewing area with digital capability is very likely picking up 8.3. Many of our viewers are served by translator, and those people do not currently receive our digital signal. Digital reception varies from television to television, depending on the quality of the antenna and the location of the television.” So, it looks like if you’re in Jackson County or have a digital receiver in southwestern Oregon, you stand a good chance of seeing my production on TV this October.
Why is SOP TV airing my program? Well, it fits their programming criteria and Nancy MacRae was kind enough to listen to me when I repeatedly contacted the station. Thank you, Nancy.
The version of my film airing on SOP TV will be about three minutes shorter than the full version I offer on DVD. I made a shorter version of my film to make it more accommodating to broadcasters. So, instead of being the full 59 minutes, 41 seconds, the current broadcast version of my documentary is about 56 minutes, 45 seconds.
Jackson County, Oregon is a beautiful region with unique topography and vegetation patterns. It’s in a transition zone between deep coastal forests and more arid lands to the east. In that regard, it reminds me of Little Hot Springs Valley. I drove through the county on Interstate 5 last June as a way to avoid wildfires that were ravaging portions of Highway 299. Below is a photo I took near the border between southern Jackson County and California.
Once again, The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley will air on:
SOP TV (Cable Channel 21) on Friday, October 10 at 9:00 P.M. & Saturday, October 18 at 6:00 P.M.
SOP TV (Digital Channel 8.3) on Friday, October 10 at 9:00 P.M. & Saturday, October 18 at 6:00 P.M.
If you’re in southwestern Oregon, you might actually see me later.
August 27, 2008
The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley DVDs and some of my photographs will be available in the commercial building at the Intermountain Fair, which will be held from August 28 through September 1, 2008 at the McArthur Fairgrounds in McArthur, CA. McArthur is one of the closest towns to Little Hot Springs Valley and is where I reluctantly attended high school. The Intermountain Fair will be located at: 44218 A Street, McArthur, CA 96056.
My photos and documentary will be for sale as part of the Gallery and Gifts booth. Gallery and Gifts is a store in Fall River Mills, CA that showcases the work of local artists and craftspeople. Both my documentary and some of my photos are currently for sale there. Gallery and Gifts is located at: 43167 Highway 299E, Fall River Mills, CA 96028. It’s got a lot of neat art from a diversity of artists, so if you’re ever in Fall River, I encourage you to stop by.
As for the Intermountain Fair, if you’re not busy observing livestock, consuming delectable artery-threatening food, or enjoying the carnival rides, be sure to check out the booth with my photos and documentary. There should a TV set up playing my documentary. So, if you hear my voice, antler rattling, or Canada goose honking, you’re probably close to the right place.
Due to my academic responsibilities on the North Coast, I won’t be attending the fair but my parents (Kathrine & Del) will be there some of the time. So, if you want to thank some of the primary financial supporters of The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley, you just might get your chance. Below are some photos of photos that will be for sale at the fair.
Most of my photos for sale are 8x10 inches and come in walnut or black wooden frames. I’ll wait and see how sales and resource acquisition goes but someday, I hope to have framed photos available on my website. If you think there’d be much of a demand, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Below are some photos that are currently for sale at Gallery and Gifts.
