Wow. I think I could make an adventure show about making an adventure show. First off, the good news…they settled on a name for the show: Shane Untamed. It wasn’t what I would’ve picked, but it isn’t my least favorite on the list by any means. The wildest thing about that show title is the fact that my name is in it. Apparently it’s a rare thing to get your name on a Nat Geo show, so I feel very lucky. I also feel good about the direction we’re heading. NG finally got a look at the Alaska pre rough cut and they liked it! They REALLY liked it! Which is a HUGE weight off. There are some minor kinks to work out, but the operative word there is MINOR. And now for the drama…Guyana was literally on the chopping block due to a lot of logistical headaches that just weren’t working out. Actually got to the point of drafting up apology letters for those that have been working hard trying to make it happen, and had a completely new shoot set up for November. Then in the last second things started to come together. We had to push the dates back a hair (a week or so), but if things come together in the way that they are now, we should be on our way soon! I was really gonna be bummed to miss out on that expedition! Wonder what they’ll throw at me next week!

I guess I have to apologize up front for this blog…my head isn’t in it…it’s too busy spinning. Juggling these shows works when nothing goes wrong…but as we all know that’s a pipe dream. Alaska rough cut is finished (ahead of schedule!) I think it looks great and it brings me back to what I really wanted my local show to be back in the day, so I hope Nat Geo sees it the same way. Madagascar is prepped for edit and I think we have a ton of great stuff for a show…should be a bit more serious than the Alaska show (which is uber silly), but it will have some shameless “Shane O” moments peppered in for sure. Aside from those positive aspects, I am coming to terms with just how anal Nat Go is regarding annotation of any facts. For example…I mention in the Alaska show that a certain scientist goes out in a steel skiff. Well, they wanted me to find a source to confirm the fact that the was steel and if it was, in fact, referred to as a skiff. At first I thought WOW! That’s picky! But then when I dug into it, I found out it was actually made of aluminum. So I have to give them this, they definitely don’t want their talent sounding stupid…and I have to respect that! Guyana is a whole nother headache. But the kinks are ironing out…I’ll save my comment for next weeks blog on that.

Just getting over the jet lag from Madagascar (I can sleep in past 6am! Yay!!!!) and the reality has set in. I am officially juggling 4 shows at once and they’re starting to run together! Two are in the can and are being edited simultaneously (Alaska/Madagascar), and two more are being prepped (Guyana/Djibouti). All I can really do is try to keep up with my “to do” lists and stay on top of everything that pops up. Things are going as expected, though. Producing a series under such a time constraint is one thing, but when the series is based on wild life and adventure travel, then ANYTHING can happen. On the positive, the Alaska show is looking better than expected, and I’m pretty happy with the footage we shot in Mada. On the negative, Guyana is less than a month away and my fixer has dropped out due to a family emergency. Lost a night or two of sleep over that one, but his replacement, Mike Libecki ( see video below) looks to provide a seamless transition. So I feel like the roadblocks are opening up as they should be. Hoping to book our flights to Djibouti by the end of the week as well. Anyone know a good travel agent? There has to be a better way than Orbitz and Kayak!!

Mike Libecki:
http://www.mikelibecki.com/video.html

So that was a expedition in every sense of the word. I was actually hoping to blog about our progress along the way, but I never once had internet access. We started with a private charter flight looking at our journey from the air…we had a LOT of ground to cover. When we got on the ground to get our first glimpse at the road we would be traversing for the next 13 days, it was clear that we were getting very ambitious with the goals we were setting. Obviously, we made it out alive and in one piece, but it wasn’t easy. We started in the Tsingy Razor Spires, which if you aren’t familiar, check it out, http://africasafariblog.com/?p=1107 , it’s every bit as beautiful and eeirie as it looks in pictures. But what really sealed the deal was getting access to a bat cave beneath them that is closed off to tourists. When they told me we were going into a bat cave, I expected a small cave with a few bats in it. I didn’t expect cathedrals clouded with 50 to 100,000 bats scrambling in every direction. From there we crossed the most treacherous landscape to reach the forbidden forests of Kirindy Sud. These areas are controlled by the local tribes who populate them, and we actually made first contact with a tribe that had never met an outsider before. After that we made our way south to Ifaty to do some diving, which was great, but ended with a BANG! I can’t really give away what we saw in the forbidden forests and during the final dive without giving away the show, but let’s just say the bucket list is definitely a bit shorter…you’ll want to see this episode for sure! Dreading the upcoming flight with Air France back home tomorrow. Let me take this opportunity to announce my disgust for Air France very clearly…While Madagascar rules, AIR FRANCE SUCKS!
Here’s Galapagos webisode 1 of 10:
http://www.vimeo.com/12885699

I’m definitely feeling the effects of the one-man-band syndrome…I could use a few more bandmembers! I was expecting this, though. I knew coming home from Alaska, prepping all the footage for edit, writing an edit script, and cutting a rough VO track would be a tight squeeze…especially considering I leave for shoot #2 in Madagascar this Saturday (July 24). So juggling shoot #1 edit prep and shoot#2 production prep simultaneously has been, well, a challenge. But it’s amazing how much can get done in a day under that kind of pressure. My last big shoot was an independent Color Earth Production, so it didn’t have any severe deadlines attached to it. Without deadlines I move at a MUCH slower pace…technically and creatively. So moving from that project to this monster, well, I had that worry of “can I still produce things that fast!???” But I guess it’s like riding a bike. Or in this case, a steel horse.  Don’t know how much opportunity we’ll have in Madagascar to update the blog, but I’ll do my best.  Planning on climbing the Tsingy razor spires and hiking into the forbidden forests of Kirindy Sud.  Cross your fingers that we we can find a pygmy hippo!  Yeehaw!

Home from Alaska and now sifting through some truly magical footage…motherloads of salmon, Kodiak bears just a stones throw away, and so on. If the rest of our shoots go this smoothly, then we’re looking at a pretty fun series! When I worked for Travel Channel I covered mainly “popular” destinations, and I would never complain about getting paid to travel…ANYWHERE…but this is the show I tried to get them to do for almost four years! Forget the crowded tourist traps, there’s WAY more see on your own in the middle of nowhere!

On the other side of the camera, things are working as well as we could hope for. Normally I am out alone or with an assistant (typically my wife). Since the show is more expedition focused and less destination driven, we hired a dedicated DP for the first time. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hire a shooter I know and trust. Makes things much easier…but we all still wear multiple hats. I’m still shooting, lugging equipment, directing, producing…so is my shooter (Francisco Aliwalas), and my wife (Romona Robbins) is handling almost everything else. So we keep our footprint about as light as we can to maximize our ability to capture a TRUE expedition and minimize the need to stage the story. So far so good!

On the back end, I have less than two weeks to prep the Alaska episode edit, handle the initial deliverable to the channel, and prepare to leave for shoot #2 in Madagascar on July 24. When beautiful footage is captured, it really takes the stress off the table and makes it an exciting challenge. I’ll keep you posted!

Episode ONE is officially under way. I don’t want to give everything away (even if I could at this point), but I can tell you this…we have HORRIBLE karma with flights. Was should’ve taken 17 hours and three stops to Kodiak, Alaska, took 27 hours and 5 stops. Hurricane Alex did a number on us in Houston and it caused us an unanticipated evening in Anchorage. But what horrible luck we have with transit, we totally make up for with weather. Kodiak is pretty well known as having crap climate in the summer, and we landed right in the middle of it. Drizzly, cloudy, miserable. Despite the lack of sleep we didn’t want to lose any more of our shoot schedule than we already had, so we geared up the kayaks and launched in the rain. By the time we hit the open bay, let’s just say the heavens opened to some of the most beautifully dramatic lighting set to the backdrop of the second largest whales on earth popping up just 20-30 yards from our kayaks. We’ll call it a successful recovery. Today we tagged along with the only people who have the authority to chase down the whales for research purposes…and we scored again! Kodiak is proving to be more fruitful than we ever imagined so far…7 more days to go!

*since I introduced myself with my NexTV entry from last year, I’ll go ahead and show you a video that show’s a little bit more of who I am and what I do…this is a demo from a series I did with Travel Channel a couple of years ago.

http://www.vimeo.com/12903089

I think “work for National Geographic” may be up in the same category as “be a fireman” or “become a veterinarian” when it comes to those childhood dreams of what we really wanted to be when we grew up, at least for my generation. Of course, the latter have a much more defined path to success. On top of that, my life in video began in the final days of analog, and my CAREER in production began just after the digital revolution, which was a new technology to old school thought. Before digital we could only do so much, and that’s what was expected of us. If you were an editor, then you were an editor…if you were a shooter, then you were a shooter…you couldn’t be both! At least that’s what I was told a NUMEROUS job interviews. But I realized from the beginning that the multitasking possibilities of a digital world weren’t just possible, it just made more sense. Obviously whoever shot something would have more sense to edit it, and technology suddenly made it possible to handle such a workload.

That was back in late 90s. Today, one-man-band producers are a dime a dozen. And while they may have brought down the monetary value of each separate job title, I think they have raised the creative bar as a whole…which is more important to me than money any day of the week. Trust me, I produced a local travel show by myself on my own dime, and I didn’t have may dimes. The only motivation at the time was to have a fun and creative outlet. Well, that one-man-band production model led to a shot at a Travel Channel series, which led to four years of producing on and off camera for the Travel Channel and Discovery…and now it’s the big leagues…National Geographic!

I’m happy to announce that just signed a four-episode deal with National Geographic Wild. My production company , Color Earth, which consists of my wife and I, will travel the globe shooting my experiences in some of the wildest places on earth. As excited as I am, I know this is a huge experiment for us AND them…Nat Geo has never really taken the one-man-band production model seriously until now. But to their defense, it has it’s limitations, but we’re here to do our best to prove that it works. So wish us luck! Hopefully it breaks down the door to give other undiscovered talent a shot.

I’m also happy to announce that this blog will be much shorter from here on out! I will be using my company website (www.colorearth.tv/wordpress) and NexTV as the home of a weekly blog to update you on where we are the world and how production is going. Should be interesting. I thought an appropriate way to introduce you to my work would be to post the video I entered in the NexTV web series competion last year…even though it didn’t make it past the second round☹. New videos will come with most blogs, so keep up with us!
http://vimeo.com/12885415
www.natgeowild.com
Shane O…Color Earth

www.facebook.com/ColorEarth

Major updates can be found on THIS blog, but check the Color Earth fan page for frequent updates and links to Color Earth Videos you haven’t seen!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Color-Earth-with-Shane-O/376284547366?ref=mf

Every day (or every other day) I will post a link to another Color Earth video. Check it out, become a fan and tell your friends…