Sundial Film Festival 2009 – Day 3
Today’s event was MC’d by Peggy O’Lay, and she opened with a quote from one of the filmmakers:
“When a community provides art, it creates artists.”
This really captured the spirit of the event, and it spoke to the dedication and generosity of all the volunteers and event sponsors.
The lead-off film was “Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park” by Tristan Howard. This 30-minute documentary did an excellent job of describing and showing the ecology of this area on California’s northern coast. This film was shot between September of 2008 and January of 2009, and produced from more than 6 hours of footage.
I was impressed with the excellent cinematography and natural sound, particularly of the elk. It was obvious that it took a great deal of painstaking work to get this footage. “Prairie Creek” showed us the spectacular males, which have razor-sharp antlers and can weigh up to 1, 100 pounds. These are not animals you want to annoy. Yet Howard was able to capture the natural activities. Impressive. The film also also covered the area’s bird and plant life equally well.
Howard is a filmmaker and a scientist, and his narration did justice to his striking images. This film is more than a visual treat, it is a substantial nature documentary. For those of you who didn’t catch this fine film, or would like to see it again, it is scheduled to air on our own PBS station on April 11, 2009 at 8 pm. You also can visit his website for a DVD of this and other films. It’s worth marking your calendar. A footnote for my students, you might want to look at his collection of documentary scripts to get an idea of how you write for a documentary. Read more…
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