When we got back to New York, Maricarmen sent me a link to C3TEC’s Facebook page, where she posted several pictures and videos that she took while on the shoot with us on Saturday. You can really get a feel for the rain forest and the whole production. She also shot a great little video of the helicam moving up and down a river in El Yunque. Check it out if you have a moment!
Category Archives: videos
On Location in Puerto Rico for C3TEC_Day 4
Sunday, May 12, 2013: call time 6:00AM
Another early call, another sunny morning. Off to the Mogotes, a distinctive and dramatic feature of Puerto Rico’s northern Karst landscape. This is for the section in the video about the importance of a clean water supply. It’s an easy job for the helicam: go straight up, do a 360 panorama from above, and come straight down.
The battery lasts for seven minutes but somehow no one is paying attention to the time, until suddenly we see the little helicam come spiraling out of the sky and crash into the trees.
Luckily the camera’s okay, and so’s the little download chip, the most expensive part of the entire rig. Eric doesn’t seem worried about the heap of blades, struts and wires on the grass; he’s got three more helicams in the van if we need them, but we got our shots. It’s a wrap, and it’s not even 8AM.
We have plenty of time to get to San Juan for margaritas and lunch and a walk on the beach before heading to the airport to go home, wake up tomorrow and get to the edit room.
On Location in Puerto Rico for C3TEC_Day 3, Afternoon
Saturday, May 11, 2013: 11:45AM
It’s sunny and hot and very sticky in Caguas, as we arrive at the baseball field. Michael is directing Eric and the helicam, whose mission is to zip around over the field for aerial shots of the little league game and the surrounding neighborhood. Did you know that your breath can travel several blocks in about five minutes?
I’m working with the RED camera crew who have to get slow-motion footage of a pitcher pitching and a batter swinging. Their body positions have to match up with our graphics of how oxygen travels through the lungs into the bloodstream and then into the muscles that power the arms that pitch the ball and swing the bat.
If you’ve never been to a Puerto Rican little league baseball game, it’s a raucous event. Mothers bring panderos and other percussion instruments for their plenas, their songs of encouragement to their sons. I’ll have a little audio clip up here soon. You have to hear this!
The last shot of the day is at 4:00PM, at C3TEC itself, and it goes off without a hitch. Props to Enid, Nereidin and Maricarmen at C3TEC for all their help! Then it takes more than two hours for the RED camera digital files to be downloaded to a drive and back ups made, 460 gigabytes in all. It’s just about dark by the time we hit the bar La Verguenza, in the center of Caguas, for a few beers.
On Location in Puerto Rico for C3TEC_Day 3, Morning
Saturday May 11, 2013: call time 5:45AM
We depart from the hotel just before dawn in two production vehicles, with Maricarmen from C3TEC following in her car. After yesterday’s heavy rains and dark gray skies, it’s a huge pleasure to see the sun rising on our left. Our crew includes Carlos, Director of Photography, his assistant Alphonso, digital media wrangler Alfredo, sound man Juan, helicam operator Eric, his assistant Brad, the grip Cangri, our production coordinator, another Eric, and production assistant Gilberto.
By the time we’re climbing Mt. Cubuy sunlight is raking across the tranquil landscape of cows in fields – like a tropical version of a 17th century Dutch painting.
It’s only 6:30 when we arrive at El Yunque. I’ll direct Eric and his team after they assemble the helicam for its trip up and down the river over gentle rapids. They’ll shoot through the tops of the trees.
The helicam is really an attraction all by itself. All of us are snapping pictures as it does a few practice lift offs to check for the correct camera exposure.
Michael works with Carlos as he and his team set up for close ups of the waterfall, and hope to find some rainforest creatures for closeups. Juan, our soundman, stays away from us to immerse himself in the sounds of the El Yunque, and the rushing water. We have the forest to ourselves.
We finish here on schedule and head down the mountain a short way to the eco-lodge where we have a list of shots to get, including a closeup of a jagrumo leaf for the photosynthesis section of the video.
Michael is planning to pull off something tricky: to merge a move in Google Earth with a helicam shot of a jagrumo tree with a dissolve to our leaf and then through to a graphic about how photosynthesis works. You’ll have to see the video for yourself to see what I mean.
We also need to convincingly illustrate clean air: breezes blowing through bamboo stands, RED camera time lapse footage of clouds appearing in the blue, blue sky, moving slowly across the frame.
While waiting for the sun’s angle on the tree canopy to be just right, I hear a roaring waterfall crashing over bolders in a river below us near enough to send the helicam scampering over it. Serendipity!
Once the shots are nailed, we make a company move down the mountain and back to Caguas to film the other stars of the video, humans, in the form of little league baseball players.
On Location in Puerto Rico for C3TEC_Day 2
Friday May 10, 2013
It’s 9:30AM and we’re at 1,800 feet, though on the ground now, having driven half way up Mt. Cubuy in El Yunque National Forest. We’ve stopped at an eco-lodge to scout the deep green views above and below us.
Tomorrow at dawn we’ll be back to film the forest with both the RED camera and the helicam, the cool little robotic helicopter camera.
Teddy Roosevelt established Luquillo Forest, now known as El Yunque, as the first national forest in the U.S. in 1906. Walking along by the river to the waterfall, then down a road through the trees, all I can think of “this is not the walk through Central Park I do everyday on my way to work!”
As we come down to sea level the road leads to the highway and we’re off to the north and west, to the northern Karst region of Puerto Rico, where the Mogotes are. The Mogotes are these amazing camel hump hills, made of limestone, and they hold a large part of the water supply for the island. They’re featured in our script because of this.
It’s an hour and a half ride and lunchtime when we get to the most famous cave, Ventana. We sit at an outdoor café, inhaling exhaust from the cars refueling at the gas station right next to us but no matter. The Mofongo – fried, mashed, refried plantains – are all good and garlicky, and it’s hot and sunny.
It only starts to rain as we head off up the trail to the cave. What’s a little tropical rain shower? Climbing down into the cave is just challenging enough for city slickers like us to make it fun. The flashlights we were handed before we left are essential for piercing the total blackness. We may be in the dark, but we’re not off the grid. Both a text message and a phone call manage to find me. I ignore them! Bats are chirping, water dripping. What’s a little mud, bat guano and moss matter when you finally get to the back of the cave, which opens on to lush, green tropical landscape far, far below.
As we slip-slide our way back through the darkness to the mouth of the cave to retrace our steps, it starts to pour. By the time we get back to the van, I look like I’ve been in a wet t-shirt contest.
We spend the rest of the afternoon, three more hours, looking for the right places to launch the helicam so we can get the shot we need to match both the Google Earth footage, and the graphic about karst water systems. All the rivers we drive by are flooding their banks as it continues to rain so hard we can barely see the road.
We found two possible locations for this shoot planned for Sunday morning. Gilberto has driven about 100 miles today, but Mission Accomplished.
On Location in Puerto Rico for C3TEC_Day 1
Thursday May 9, 2013
At 3,500 feet, the view of San Juan from the plane window looks like what you see in Google Earth. Why am I surprised?
Michael and I arrived yesterday, were picked up by Gilberto and driven straight to C3TEC, a brand new science center in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Liberty Science Center, in Jersey City, NJ, has been working with the city to bring the science center into being. It’s good to finally meet the Director of C3TEC, Enid Seneriz; the head of Education, Nereidin Feliciano, and PR/Marketing whiz, Maricarmen Reguero.
We’re here to film little league baseball players, forested slopes and big leaves in El Yunque rain forest, and the unusual karst formations known here as the Mogotes. What’s the connection?
Mother Nature. We humans live in cities but depend on clean air and water to survive. We need to protect the ecosystems that produce the oxygen we breathe and maintain the water we drink. The island ecosystems are part of the global ecosystem that keeps Planet Earth habitable for life as we know it. Even our own breath, and even our pee are part of the system.
That connection is the message of the video we’re producing that will introduce visitors to C3TEC when it opens in the fall 2013.
After C3TEC, our next stop is the baseball field where we’ll film two teams of 12 year olds on Saturday.
It’s a nice field! The outfield is as manicured as the field at Yankee Stadium and the air smells lovely, like jasmine, not hotdogs. Pigeons however, seem to be ubiquitous.
Tomorrow we’re off to scout the El Yunque rainforest and the Mogotes. Good thing we can scout our hotel now. We’ve already been up for 12 hours and it’s only 4:00PM. Looking forward to some good Puerto Rican food at Los Olivos, and a good night’s sleep.
Yellowstone Videos
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We produced these three short videos for National Geographic Television’s Explorer TV series with host Boyd Matson.
Intro to Yellowstone National Park