When this project got under way, I was a one-man-band producer with a niche production model that I had some years perfecting. Little did I know how much this project would force me to grow (not only as a person, but as a production company). NG Wild asked for 4 hour-long shows to be produced within 9 months and I honestly didn’t know if could be done…but what was I going to do? Say NO!?

With such an undertaking to be accomplished in so little time, I had to assemble crew members that I could rely on, and despite the fact that everyone would be new to the team (except for my wife, Romona), there would be NO room for error. Luckily, through previous contacts, craigslist and Mandy.com I found the perfect people to pull this off…on the first try! My wife has ALWAYS been a key component to the success of any Color Earth project…and now we have added Alexander Lau, who played multiple roles from the office to the field, Richard Smith and Adam Stevens of Outermotion made the best animation graphics we could’ve ever hoped for, David Ouellette of Snap Productions was a MONSTER editor that could slap a smoking rough cut together in as little as two weeks, Elaine Nicoll kept the numbers straight, Jon Deckert was always there to help in any way he could, and all the great shooters and fixers we had the pleasure of working with were each VITAL to the success of this project. Minus one=FAILURE.

The thing I am most proud of is the learning curve that we all overcame. Sure, we had a couple shows that went relatively smooth…but then we had field disasters that we used to our advantage rather than our failure and there were edit disasters that we took as a challenge to conquer. Ultimately that gave Nat Geo the confidence in us to order one more episode. So we took everything we had learned over the past year and it all came together for quite possibly the best show yet.

Obviously the next step is to see how the world reacts to them, but whatever happens, I am very proud of every show we made and I will always think of this as one of the greatest challenges of my life. Bring on the next one!

Here’s a a scene from one of the rare “remote” shows I did with Travel Channel in 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duntGyq53wA&feature=channel

Just had the Guyana rough cut viewed for the first time up at NG, and they loved it…hallelujah. I’m pretty confident we have a good show in the can for Djibouti, so I guess that means we succeeding in the production portion of this process. Editing is proving to be a bit harder than I thought. It’s not so much the art of editing, we have a handle on that…it’s the deadlines and all the protocol that each cut has to go through. Each cut goes through two execs and a standards and practices person…separately. And when you consider that everyone is busy with their own schedules, there’s a lot of waiting around for notes to be returned. Then when someone is late returning notes, that puts us behind because we didn’t anticipate them being late. Of course there’s also the issue of opinion. If everyone sat down together and came to an agreement on the changes necessary during the first viewing, it would probably reduce the amount of re-edits we have to do by at least 50%. But such is the world of NG, and so many other networks. So I find myself in the wee hours typing up this blog while I wait for a render to finish the 5th round of the Madagascar picture lock. Oh, Guyana rough cut is due tomorrow, too! Damn…

Alaska (episode 1) officially delivers today, so that’s one down! We turned in the Madagascar fine cut last Friday so I’m waiting for notes back from the channel on that one. Guyana pre rough cut is done and looking like it will make a pretty interesting show, and we’re right in the middle of prepping Djibouti for the initial edit. Craziness. Beautiful craziness.

So here’s the belated update:
I’m just starting to get over the jetlag from the fourth and final shoot, and I’m feeling good. Djibouti was beyond my wildest expectations. As far as wildlife, it was a bit of a let down…fairly skiddish fauna. But the landscape itself took center stage, which was totally unexpected. There are areas in Djibouti that look like another planet…volcanic rock, volcanic ash, rock chimneys, salt and gypsum formations, rift valleys, canyons…it’s a geological paradise. But then comes the water! Djibouti’s gulf sits on the southern tip of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and it’s a diver’s paradise. The main attraction was the whale sharks. We had a bit of tough time finding them, but we did. I was worried for a bit when a woman who I thought was an expert told us that they were nowhere to be found this year for some unknown reason, but when she didn’t know that whale sharks were fish, I no longer worried about her assessments. They were epic, and so is the footage. One other highlights of the trip was flying a cesna a couple hundred feet below sea level. –that is not a typo. Lake Assal is the lowest point in Africa sitting over 400 feet below sea level. Pretty rad! It was nice having a trip go so well after Guyana. The only bad part of Djibouti was losing my underwater shooter on day two after he smashed his thumb in the boat door. I know the footage he would’ve shot would’ve been epic, but it was just bad luck. Luckily we had a doctor with us to keep it from getting infected.

I came home to find that my second editor David and my graphics guy Richard had been handling the grind while we were away, which was comforting. We are officially juggling 4 shows in the edit suite now. Hopefully we will sign off on ep 1 Alaska next week and only have three on our plate. But things are going well. Madagascar fine cut will be ready by Monday, Djibouti edit should be prepped by the end of next week, and just got the first look at the Guyana cut and I’m pretty excited to see it shaping up into a watchable story. I’ve got a great team. The best part about being home is now being able to concentrate on editing and not worrying about leaving again…but I will be itching to go soon, I know.