Small American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) laying in vegetation on edge of water.

In my last post, One Becomes Eight, I explained that what was originally going to be a single, one-hour documentary has now transformed into an eight part miniseries. This will provide its own challenges, both technically and artistically, but I believe it better serves the story.  Each of the eight episodes will focus on a habitat or group of habitats.  This structure is the most natural fit and has been used by numerous natural history series, most notably the BBC’s Planet Earth.

I have decided on the breakdown of episodes and have a rough structure and outline for each episode, but I have not decided on the overall order of the episodes. I have chosen to craft each episode a little differently using a different motif to tie the various themes, ecosystems, and species together. Below is a quick synopsis of each of the eight episodes in alphabetical order.

• Beaches: The beach, likely Florida’s most iconic habitat, is home to more than just fisherman and spring breakers. Get down on the level of the sand and explore this habitat from the breaking waves of the swash to the dynamic sand dunes.
• Forests: Whether a hardwood forest or pineland, Florida’s forests, particularly those in south Florida, have a distinctly tropical influence that sets them apart from similar forests across the rest of the country.
• Freshwater: Float down a clear, spring-fed river, probe deep into the mysteries of a sinkhole lake, witness a river disappear deep into the ground, and experience the restoration of a canal back into a free flowing river.
• Prairies: Florida’s prairies and grasslands experience a very short fire cycle, constantly burning and recovering, which makes these often overlooked habitats both fascinating and unique.
• Saltwater: Journey off the coast of Florida to explore the numerous saltwater habitats.  Move from the shallow estuaries protected by barrier islands and mangrove forests to the fragile, yet diverse coral reefs and finally to the open ocean.
• Scrub: Explore Florida’s unique scrub habitat through the behavior and biology of Florida’s only endemic bird, the Florida Scrub Jay.
• Swamps: Experience the wonder and mystique of Florida’s swamps from their tea colored waters to the airy canopy and learn about the special creatures that make these incredible landscapes their home.
• Wetlands: Spend a year in Florida’s wetlands and witness the dynamic changes of the seasons as birds migrate, water levels fluctuate, and new life abounds as the breeding season begins.

Now that I have a basic structure for this series, I have started to break down each episode into topics, themes, and sequences and can start telling the story of natural Florida.  Be sure to follow the project to see how this all unfolds!

The massive pile of equipment ready to be loaded into my car for the trip south! No idea how it all is going to fit!  There are so many different facets to this project that I need equipment for each and every task!

I spent the entire day yesterday packing up all my camera, camping, tree climbing, and scuba equipment.  It is just about all organized and ready to load into the car.  I honestly have no idea how it is going to fit.  I think a couple of those big pelican cases that are buried in the back of the pile are going to have to go on the roof!  I plan to leave a week from today or tomorrow, but I’ll be in New York City starting Wednesday through the rest of this week.  That means loading commences tomorrow!

I have a quote hanging on my bulletin board on my desk in my office.  I hung it up a couple years ago and while it is always there, I hadn’t actually looked at it and read it in quite some time.  Just the other day, I decided to take a moment and read it again.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’

– W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951

The quote, or a slight variation of it, is often attributed to Goethe (as it is on my bulletin board), but after a bit of research I found that the entire quote is actually from W. H. Murray as he is quoting a “very free” translation of Goethe by John Aster.  Whoever wrote it is irrelevant to it’s meaning and impact.  Committing to something is a major step and that single action can have far reaching consequences.

Back on my 30th birthday in late October, I officially made this website public and shortly after that, I was accepted by LINC into their ArtsLINC program and they became my fiscal sponsor.  The project was out there.  It was public.  I had backing from a pretty incredible organization.  I was committed.  Just last week, I was visiting family in Orlando over the holidays and started making plans for my move from Ithaca, New York to Florida for this project.  After a lot of discussion and debate, I settled on a date and it is soon…  I will be departing Ithaca on either Monday, December 16th or Tuesday, December 17th, weather dependent.  That is less than 10 days away.  I am committed and this project is happening.  There is lots to do and plenty to prepare by January 1st, but momentum is building and I am excited!  I hope you will join me!

Over this last weekend I have been working hard on Filming Florida and planning for my upcoming start in January.  I quickly realized that I am going to become a master juggler as I work on this project.  There is so much to do and since it is just me, I am constantly working on different aspects of the project.  Just this weekend, I spent time working on a fundraising strategy, initial startup budgets, technicals for the Daily Species, sourcing parts and pieces of various photographic kits, web design and planning, and a few other things.  Having so much to do is a bit overwhelming but exciting as well.

I am finding that if I can focus on one piece of the project at a time, when my mind gets tired or burnt out on that subject, I can move to a totally different subject and be able to continue working.  For example, yesterday I spent about 6 hours staring at spreadsheets dealing with budgets as well as complete lists of vertebrate species found in Florida.  When my eyes started going cross-eyed after staring at the grids and small text of these massive spreadsheets, I was able to move to a different task,  sourcing fish tanks and butterfly nets, which engaged a different part of my brain and allowed me to keep working.  There may be a lot for me to do on this project but at least it is a diverse range of things so moving between tasks results in a refreshing change of pace or thought.

Beetles from a Costa Rican cloud forest

Back in 2008, I was in Costa Rica working on what would become Canopy in the Clouds and one night while sitting around the dinner table with my collaborators, Greg Goldsmith and Colin Witherill, we got talking about how to showcase all of the crazy bugs we were finding.  After a long discussion, we ended up deciding to try shooting them on white or black background, isolated from their environments and thereby emphasizing their crazy shapes, colors, and forms.  This was in no way a new or original idea, but something we decided to do on the spur of the moment in the field.

Weevil species from Costa Rican cloud forest

The next day during a rainstorm, I spent the afternoon figuring out how to build the setup and eventually came up with a very makeshift studio that was based around a piece of white poster board with a bunch of flashes set up around me with a diffuser.  Not very convenient but it seemed to work.  For the next few weeks and during our next field season in early 2009, we would spend all day in the field doing our normal field work and whenever we would see an interesting bug, we would grab it and stick it in a plastic bag to take back to the house to shoot in my little makeshift studio.  There were a couple very memorable nights when we were up shooting well past midnight trying to get through everything we had caught that day.  I vividly remember Greg, who was acting as “bug wrangler” chasing a moth all around our little living room as it kept flying away whenever we tried to photograph it.

The project was a lot of fun and we ended up with a couple cool galleries of images that are now available on our site.  However, our technique was pretty primitive and the results were decent but not spectacular.  In 2009, a couple of photographers, Clay Bolt and Niall Benvie, founded an international collaborative project called Meet Your Neighbours.  The basic idea was to create a set protocol for shooting local species in a white field studio and get photographers from all around the world to participate.  This would highlight the biodiversity of local communities and work towards “reconnecting people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps.”  It is a really amazing project with a bunch of very talented photographers participating.  As part of Filming Florida, not only will I be participating in Meet Your Neighbours, but I will be publishing a new species every single day.  This means that in the three years of the project, I’ll be posting well over 1,000 species from all across Florida.  It is a monumental and daunting task but it should be a ton of fun and a great learning experience.  Stay tuned over the next few weeks as I work on perfecting my own techniques for this process!

Keeping a low footprint while traveling alone is much easier. Here, I am sleeping under a nearly full moon just above the beach on Getullai Island in the Torres Strait, Australia before photographing a tern colony the next morning.

One of the constraints that I have placed on myself for this project is to operate primarily as a one man crew.  What does this mean exactly?  Well, basically it means that I get to do everything.  The means I will be operating the camera, recording the audio, writing the scripts, doing the editing, color grading the final videos, cooking dinner, driving the vehicle, repairing and cleaning gear, hauling the gear into the field, etc, etc, etc.  You name it, I’ll be doing it.

Why would I want to take all this on myself?  Quite simply, for four reasons.

1. I want the experience of doing all of these things and sharing that experience through the Behind the Lens series.  Part of the goal of this project is showcase all the different roles that go into making a film.
2. I want to operate with a very low footprint on the landscape where I am working.  I don’t want to have a large crew with me while working in sensitive environments where we might damage the ecosystem, scare the wildlife, or cause harm to wherever we are filming.
3. My third reason is simply practical and logistical.  Because of the full time commitment of this project over a minimum of two years, its hard to find someone that is willing to join me for that entire period and that is before I even have to find additional funding to pay someone’s salary full time for multiple years.
4. Finally, my fourth reason is simply control.  I relish the idea of having full creative control over every aspect of the production and I love learning new skills in order to make my creative ideas a reality.

What about the whole “jack of all trades, master of none” concept?  This is something that I have to acknowledge and realize that I will be working within my own limitations.  I realize that some aspects of the production might suffer, particularly early, because I am not an expert at all things.  That is a reality that I will have to deal with, but it is also part of the journey of Filming Florida.  It is the story of my experience, what I learn, where I succeed, and even where I fall short.  It’s a tall order but it is all part of the story and I look forward to learning if a single individual can actually pull off all of these roles.

I will also state that I do plan to work with other people in the field.  I have already had several individuals offer to help out in various capacities throughout the project.  My wife may even be able to join me for some portion of the project and she will take over some of the roles in the project if she is available.  However, for the majority of the project, I will be working alone in the field and be performing all of the various tasks as a crew of one.  It is a bit overwhelming but I am actively forging ahead and building my skill set so that Filming Florida is the high quality production I have envisioned.