SOC’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking www.environmentalfilm.org 2010 Annual Report By Chris Palmer, Director (palmer@american.edu) January 1, 2011 This report gives an overview of what the Center for Environmental Filmmaking accomplished in 2010. Dean Larry Kirkman and I founded the Center six years ago on the belief that films and new media are essential educational tools in the struggle to protect the environment. Our mission is to train filmmakers to produce films and new media that effectively strengthen the global constituency for conservation. Graduate students may now concentrate their studies in environmental and wildlife filmmaking through the Center. The world faces immense environmental challenges. We are fouling our own nest to an unprecedented degree. Powerful, emotive, and affecting images and films can play a key role in raising the importance of conservation and bringing about change. We are committed to raising awareness and empowering action through the innovative use of media. Much more information about our programs can be found on our website www.environmentalfilm.org. The Center’s work falls into four areas: 1. Forming partnerships with blue chip organizations 2. Bringing world-class filmmakers to the AU campus to teach and mentor students 3. Creating innovative and enriching programs and classes 4. Advocating for the ethical treatment of wildlife and the environment More details on our activities in these four areas follow: First, we give students the opportunity to work at a professional level with our partner organizations, including Maryland Public Television (MPT), National Oceanic and 2 Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Park Service (NPS), and many other DC-based, nationally recognized organizations that the Center has developed working partnerships with over the last six years. Associate Directors Larry Engel and Sandy Cannon-Brown have been pivotal in these efforts. A few examples: • This past April, Maryland Public Television aired the third yearly installment of the Center-produced documentary series EcoViews. Since 2007, students in Sandy Cannon-Brown's Environmental and Wildlife Production Class have been writing, producing, shooting and editing this award-winning series, which has also been picked up and broadcast by several large, regional public television stations nationwide (more on EcoViews and its success in section three below). • Last summer, the Center arranged for grad students Ted Roach and Aditi Desai to spend six paid weeks in Hawaii working for the National Park Service to make films promoting cultural conservation related to Pearl Harbor. Ted and Aditi taught and mentored a group of Hawaiian high school students through the completion of three short videos (in addition to the eight they produced themselves). One of the high school shorts was selected for the 2010 Hawaii International Film Festival. Aditi and Ted won a 2010 CINE Golden Eagle in the Professional New Media category for their work for the National Park Service. • In 2009, the Center partnered with NOAA on a major initiative called Oceans for Life, and five of our grad students were paid film mentors in that program. • Two years ago, we launched the Eco-Comedy Video Competition and the winning entry (receiving a $1,000 prize from the Center) came from Ireland. This year, the Sierra Club is joining us as the sponsor of the competition, and again the winner will receive $1,000. The goal is to encourage the use of humor in solving environmental problems. • We have another important partnership with the Environmental Film Festival (EFF) in DC. Every March at EFF we organize half a dozen events at AU with prominent leaders and films. We also participate in other prominent festivals, including Wildscreen in the UK, the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, MT, the BLUE Ocean Festival in Monterey, CA, and the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in Jackson Hole, WY. • Working with Link TV and executive producer Raisa Scriabine, our students have produced an Earth Focus Special (entitled Environmental Filmmaking: The Rising Stars) featuring the best environmentally-related 3 work of SOC students. The first broadcast will be this spring and feature the work of Brian Kelley, Yi Chen, Rebecca Howland, Danny Ledonne, Dustin Harrison-Atlas, and Kari Barber. It will become an annual program. Earth Focus is LinkTV’s original environmental news magazine and is the longest-running (seven years) program of its kind on US television. Profiled films in the Earth Focus Special include The Bay is Your Oyster by Rebecca Howland, which looks at efforts to promote oyster growth on the Chesapeake Bay; Working with Fire by Dustin Harrison-Atlas and Danny Ledonne, which plunges audiences inside a controlled burn at Nokuse Plantation in Florida; an excerpt from On The Fence by Brian Kelley about the life of a former hunter in Botswana who is bringing new life to dead wood through art; America's Energy Future by Yi Chen, which examines the potential for renewable energy development in the United States; and The Struggle for Mt. Nimba by Kari Barber, which shows the plight of an isolated group of chimps in Guinea and the efforts to enable them to survive. • The Center worked with Professor Sikina Jinnah in SIS to support the AU Climate Day Film Festival. The Center arranged for SOC grad student Ted Roach to teach two seminars to Prof. Jinnah’s undergrad honors students, give feedback on rough cuts, prepare the screening DVDs, set up the screening room in the new SIS building, judge the festival, and create their YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/AUClimateEnergyDay • Professor Sarah Menke-Fish and graduate students conducted workshops at the American Film Institute for local high schools on video and audio production, writing, editing, and voiceovers. This program, with Montgomery County Public School (MCPS), was for high school students and their teachers who were participating in the MCPS 2010 Environmental Film Festival. This joint collaboration with MCPS and the American Film Institute is now in its sixth year. Second, we regularly bring outstanding filmmakers to campus. On most Tuesday nights, we hold an event with Filmmakers for Conservation in the Wechsler Theater at which a renowned filmmaker shows clips from his or her films and talks about how and why the films were made. This past year, top executives from National Geographic and Animal Planet, as well as many other influential figures, visited campus, and talked to packed houses. Topics ranged from solar energy to online videos to Blood Dolphins. This coming spring semester, the Center is organizing over a dozen different events, including a program with National Geographic’s David Hamlin, producer of their landmark series Great Migrations. Third, we provide innovative and enriching programs like Classroom in the Wild and Environmental and Wildlife Production. 4 In Sandy Cannon-Brown’s Environmental and Wildlife Production class, students produce a half-hour film for Maryland Public Television called EcoViews (as mentioned earlier). Brigid Maher and Lisa Bream’s classes produce the motion graphics for the program. The class challenges students to work at a professional level to produce a broadcast-quality program worthy of PBS. Since its inception in 2007, the Ecoviews programs have been honored with two regional Emmys, several CINE Golden Eagle and TIVA-DC Student documentary awards, and for the first time in 2010, a National Student Academy Award nomination. The Center also arranged a connection for the SOC students with lifeonterra.com at Montana State University, where the individual segments received tens of thousands more views. Classroom in the Wild in Florida is in its sixth successful year, and Larry Engel launched Classroom in the Wild in Alaska two years ago. Classroom in the Wild, an intensive outdoor workshop held in wilderness areas, allows students to camp out and learn how to meet the challenges—sometimes extreme challenges—of natural history field production. This past year, filmmakers Wolfgang Obst and Danny Ledonne teamed up to guide students on a filmmaking adventure through Florida's Mallory Swamp and the R.O. Ranch Equestrian Park. With help from the Suwannee River Water Management District, students produced films exploring the connection between northwest Florida's history and future habitat conservation. In Alaska students spent two days in Anchorage learning the ropes, literally, of survival techniques at Learn To Return’s headquarters, then headed to the wilds of Alaska for further training and filming on rocks, glaciers, and rapids. There they produced several short documentaries for wilderness outfitter NOVA and a piece about global warming and melting ice. As director of the Discover the World of Communication Program and associate director at the Center, Professor Sarah Menke-Fish coordinated an inaugural four-week summer experience for high school students to research, travel and produce environmental films in Costa Rica. Larry Engel was on location in Costa Rica for film production with the high school students. The films premiered at the Embassy of Costa Rica on July 15, 2010 and are screened at Manuel Antonio National Park. The Center continues to create and manage the annual Student Short Film Festival with the DC Environmental Film Festival. Now in its sixth year and cosponsored by REI, we showcase the talents of emerging “green communicators” to promote environmental causes and empower individuals to make a difference. A panel discussion on how to succeed as a filmmaker accompanies the event. This year’s festival is on March 23. Professor Maggie Burnette Stogner mentors graduate students in her documentary production and writing courses, and as a thesis advisor, sharing her years of experience at National Geographic TV with students committed to conservation advocacy. At the behest of The Franklin Institute, the oldest natural history center in the U.S., Professor Stogner served as Executive Producer of the film Hawks in the City, with MFA grad student Aditi Desai as Producer, alum Michael Hyde as editor, her Advanced Writing for Documentary class as writers, and many other undergraduate and graduate students. This urban wildlife short documentary is about a pair of hawks that are nesting in downtown 5 Philadelphia. It will be seen by people around the world on The Franklin Institute website, as well as in the lobby of their science center. Professor Stogner continues to advise graduate students on a range of conservation and environmental thesis films, from green burials to endangered species to controversial wild horse round ups. In June 2010, I held a master class at the International Film Academy in Jackson Hole during a documentary film course. Students in this course worked under AU MFA graduate Danny Ledonne to create environmental films in their own backyard—with topic ranging from tourism and beetle infestations to local outdoor markets and a rehabilitation center for birds of prey. Fourth and finally, we advocate for the ethical treatment of wildlife and the environment, through films, articles, conferences and festivals—and we give awards, grants and sponsorships to pursue those goals. For example, the Center and Sony annually award a cash prize of $1,000 to the best environmental film in the Visions Festival at AU. My new book, Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom (Sierra Club Books), is also part of the Center’s effort to teach people about the ethics and effectiveness of environmental films. It describes an eightpoint plan to reform the wildlife film industry. I have launched a campaign to that end and have given over 100 speeches and interviews since the book came out in late May last year. Please visit http://www.american.edu/soc/cef/palmer-book.cfm to learn more. Larry Engel is dedicated to developing the “best practices” for green filmmaking and to making SOC’s film program the first in the nation to go green. He has defined standards for sustainable production for students in university film programs and among professional documentary producers. Larry and his co-author Andrew Buchanan from the UK published “The Code for Best Practices in Sustainable Filmmaking” in 2009 through the Center for Social Media and the Center for Environmental Filmmaking. The Code has been endorsed both in professional and academic circles, including the International Documentary Association and the University Film and Video Association. Further, the United Kingdom’s largest regional film commission, South Southwest, adopted the Code for use among filmmakers and production companies working on location in the region. The Code is also being translated into Spanish through the generosity of Professor EdgarSoberon Torchia from Cuba. Larry is also submitting a major production grant request through the Center and SOC to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through its “Bridging Cultures” filmmaking initiative. The project, tentatively titled Four Corners of the Earth: UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the Struggle for Preservation, is a one-hour documentary that celebrates the 40th anniversary of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites in 2012. Filming will take place in Italy, Mexico, Mali, and the Philippines. Adrian Sas, a collaborator of Larry’s from New York, is the producer/writer, while Larry will be executive producer and director. 6 Last year we launched the Center Scholars Program to recognize graduate MFA student filmmakers who produce films that matter, that make a difference, and that make the world a greener, more livable place. Last year’s Scholars were Danny Ledonne, Shanon Sparks, and Ellen Tripler. This year we selected Aditi Desai, Kai Fang, Jeremy Polk, Irene Magafan, and Sylvia Johnson. Their thesis films focus on such diverse topics as climate change, bonobos, wild horses, and dying in an environmentally responsible way. Center Scholars demonstrate tenacity, creativity, passion, diligence, and integrity. ***** I thank Dean Larry Kirkman and Prof. John Douglass for all their support. And I thank Larry Engel, Sandy Cannon-Brown, Sarah Menke-Fish, and Maggie Burnette Stogner—the four Associate Directors of the Center—for all they have done to contribute to the depth and breadth of the Center’s programs. Grad student Ted Roach says: “As someone who has spent time in and around other film schools, I know that the opportunities you present us to work in the 'real world' are what set SOC apart from the rest. I can’t thank you enough for my producing/editing jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service, both of which were incredible experiences!” The Center’s activities and programs are made possible by the generosity of the Wallace Genetic Foundation, Gil Ordway, Sally Brown, Roger and Vicki Sant, the Henry Foundation, the Mead Family Foundation, C.C. Merriam, Tom O’Malley, REI, Elizabeth Ruml, Bob Schumann, the Saint Paul Foundation, the Turner Foundation, Sony Corporation, Lucy Waletzky, Wool Henry, and other generous donors. Center for EF Annual End of Year Report Jan 1, 2011