By: JASON BACAJ, Chronicle Staff Writer
Source: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com
Category: Film School Online
A film by Bozeman-based Grizzly Creek Films will launch the National Geographic Wild channel’s Big Cat Week tonight at 6 p.m.
The show, “Stalking the Mountain Lion with Casey Anderson” mainly follows the story of a particular litter of cubs in the Paradise Valley, said Thomas Winston, director and owner of the film company. It documents the cougar’s physical abilities and special adaptations through remote camera traps, tracking the cats and working with one mountain lion raised in captivity at the Triple D Game Farm in Kalispell.
The show will be followed by “American Cougar,” a documentary featuring work by Bozeman-based scientist Howard Quigley, a top researcher on big cats.
“Stalking the Mountain Lion” was originally filmed as one of six episodes for a series, currently titled “America the Wild,” the crew made for Nat Geo Wild. It’ll premiere in the spring of 2012, Winston said. The crew will be on hand at Pub 317 for tonight’s showing.
“It was just one of the six shows we were commissioned to do,” Winston said Friday. “Then when they saw the first cut of it, they decided to bump it up for Big Cat Week.”
The series and tonight’s show follow Montana native Casey Anderson as he and former mountain lion hunter Tyler Johnerson track the big cats with dogs and their wits in and around Yellowstone. Anderson, the show’s lead, runs the Montana Grizzly Encounter, a bear sanctuary off Interstate 90 between Bozeman and Livingston.
Winston began working with Anderson on educational bear videos — featuring Anderson and his “best friend,” a roughly 800-pound grizzly living at his sanctuary named Brutus the Bear — around 2007.
They put together some footage with the idea of pitching it to television networks as a wildlife show. At the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in 2007, they made the pitch and got a lot of interest from different production companies and networks before settling on National Geographic.
The original deal was to do a one-hour show about Yellowstone grizzlies, Anderson and Brutus, but it ended up becoming a seven-episode series. Including that first series, Grizzly Creek Films has made 13 episodes in the last three and a half years, Winston said.
Having all the shows paid for and budgeted before filming is luxury not afforded everyone in the nature filmmaking industry, said producer Anne Devereux.
Winston, Devereux and writer Eric Bendick attribute that luxury to their time in the Montana State University Science and Natural Filmmaking program. They were among the first few batches of students to go through the course, and all but one of their roughly 10 or so employees are alumni or currently in the program.
“I think it definitely primed us to be able to work. Natural history filmmaking is a very small, niche industry. It’s kind of hard to break into,” Winston said. “It kind of got us in… once you start to know the people in the community, it really gets a lot easier to break into it.”
And once they got in, basing their operations out of Bozeman led to the success they’re having now and has sustained their efforts.
“There’s something about living here where, like, the story approaches and I think the viewpoints on wildlife are just in your blood,” Devereux said. “We’re so much closer to it. I think about if I was living in New York City, I just don’t know that we would generate the same heartfelt ideas.”
Beyond the proximity to places such as Yellowstone, local outdoors companies have become fans of the film company and the shows they make, Bendick said. Mystery Ranch supplies all the packs used in the shows, Schnee’s provides boots and Simms has also contributed to the show.
Companies from outside Bozeman contribute to the show, including Custom Robotic Wildlife, a Wisconsin-based company that sent the crew an animatronic, taxidermied deer to use in an attack sequence, simulated with a captive mountain lion from the Triple D Game Farm.
The stuffed deer was used to bait the cougar for a close-up attack sequence, something the crew figured they would never get in the wild. The big cat had never attacked a deer before and didn’t quite pounce with the aggressiveness of a wild one. The crew took it in stride and made the story from the shots they got, a practice honed by working in cold environments filming elusive animals such as wolverines and polar bears.
But the shots of cougars in the wild exceeded expectations, as the kittens filmed at the beginning of the shooting schedule continued to turn up throughout the winter.
“This one was one where we probably got a story that unfolded in front of the camera better than we would have ever imagined,” Winston said.
Source: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/wildlife/article_a7502d8c-23c0-11e1-8097-001871e3ce6c.html
Source: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com
Category: Film School Online
A film by Bozeman-based Grizzly Creek Films will launch the National Geographic Wild channel’s Big Cat Week tonight at 6 p.m.
The show, “Stalking the Mountain Lion with Casey Anderson” mainly follows the story of a particular litter of cubs in the Paradise Valley, said Thomas Winston, director and owner of the film company. It documents the cougar’s physical abilities and special adaptations through remote camera traps, tracking the cats and working with one mountain lion raised in captivity at the Triple D Game Farm in Kalispell.
The show will be followed by “American Cougar,” a documentary featuring work by Bozeman-based scientist Howard Quigley, a top researcher on big cats.
“Stalking the Mountain Lion” was originally filmed as one of six episodes for a series, currently titled “America the Wild,” the crew made for Nat Geo Wild. It’ll premiere in the spring of 2012, Winston said. The crew will be on hand at Pub 317 for tonight’s showing.
“It was just one of the six shows we were commissioned to do,” Winston said Friday. “Then when they saw the first cut of it, they decided to bump it up for Big Cat Week.”
The series and tonight’s show follow Montana native Casey Anderson as he and former mountain lion hunter Tyler Johnerson track the big cats with dogs and their wits in and around Yellowstone. Anderson, the show’s lead, runs the Montana Grizzly Encounter, a bear sanctuary off Interstate 90 between Bozeman and Livingston.
Winston began working with Anderson on educational bear videos — featuring Anderson and his “best friend,” a roughly 800-pound grizzly living at his sanctuary named Brutus the Bear — around 2007.
They put together some footage with the idea of pitching it to television networks as a wildlife show. At the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in 2007, they made the pitch and got a lot of interest from different production companies and networks before settling on National Geographic.
The original deal was to do a one-hour show about Yellowstone grizzlies, Anderson and Brutus, but it ended up becoming a seven-episode series. Including that first series, Grizzly Creek Films has made 13 episodes in the last three and a half years, Winston said.
Having all the shows paid for and budgeted before filming is luxury not afforded everyone in the nature filmmaking industry, said producer Anne Devereux.
Winston, Devereux and writer Eric Bendick attribute that luxury to their time in the Montana State University Science and Natural Filmmaking program. They were among the first few batches of students to go through the course, and all but one of their roughly 10 or so employees are alumni or currently in the program.
“I think it definitely primed us to be able to work. Natural history filmmaking is a very small, niche industry. It’s kind of hard to break into,” Winston said. “It kind of got us in… once you start to know the people in the community, it really gets a lot easier to break into it.”
And once they got in, basing their operations out of Bozeman led to the success they’re having now and has sustained their efforts.
“There’s something about living here where, like, the story approaches and I think the viewpoints on wildlife are just in your blood,” Devereux said. “We’re so much closer to it. I think about if I was living in New York City, I just don’t know that we would generate the same heartfelt ideas.”
Beyond the proximity to places such as Yellowstone, local outdoors companies have become fans of the film company and the shows they make, Bendick said. Mystery Ranch supplies all the packs used in the shows, Schnee’s provides boots and Simms has also contributed to the show.
Companies from outside Bozeman contribute to the show, including Custom Robotic Wildlife, a Wisconsin-based company that sent the crew an animatronic, taxidermied deer to use in an attack sequence, simulated with a captive mountain lion from the Triple D Game Farm.
The stuffed deer was used to bait the cougar for a close-up attack sequence, something the crew figured they would never get in the wild. The big cat had never attacked a deer before and didn’t quite pounce with the aggressiveness of a wild one. The crew took it in stride and made the story from the shots they got, a practice honed by working in cold environments filming elusive animals such as wolverines and polar bears.
But the shots of cougars in the wild exceeded expectations, as the kittens filmed at the beginning of the shooting schedule continued to turn up throughout the winter.
“This one was one where we probably got a story that unfolded in front of the camera better than we would have ever imagined,” Winston said.
Source: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/wildlife/article_a7502d8c-23c0-11e1-8097-001871e3ce6c.html
