November 2007 Archives

Chris Gidez - Producer
I really didn't know what to expect when I descended with my camera crew and host into the depths of the Los Angeles sewer system. Would the odor be overpowering? Would we see every conceivable variety of human waste? And most of all, would we be able to film in this dangerous environment?

Every precaution is taken. Before we enter, the safety officer makes each of us don a white, full-body, haz-mat suit, rubber wading boots, protective eyewear, hard-hats, and latex gloves. The safety briefing is short and succinct: the biggest risk while walking through a sewer pipe is slipping on wet sediment, and falling into the stream of wastewater. The solution: walk bow-legged, with the toes of each foot angled up the sides of the pipe. That way, there will be no twisted ankles, biohazard bathing, or bruised egos.

We walk down a ramp, into the tunnel entrance. From the sunny, cloudless Southern California day, we enter a dark, dank and surprisingly fascinating underworld. It is a work-site where an 80-year-old section of 10-foot diameter sewer pipe has been re-lined with new concrete and a durable, corrosion resistant PVC plastic material. The reason for all this work is invisible, but definitely evident in the form of a subtle rotten-egg aroma. It is the smell of hydrogen sulfide. Combined with the moisture inside the pipe's enclosed environment, it becomes corrosive to the concrete pipes, eating away the structure over time. Rather than dig up the entire community that had been built above, engineers have diverted the wastewater flow through smaller pipes, and are working from within. It's an innovative way to keep subterranean sewage separated from our lives above ground.

 

For more information on how to help please go to YouthAIDS official site

Scott Stoneback - Cameraman

Shooting on an aircraft carrier can be a world of opposites. Any one's first impression of the USS Ronald Reagan is that it is huge. The hangar bay is something like the size of three football fields. The deck is larger than some municipal airports. Five thousand sailors can live on board at once. There has got to be a ton of space to shoot, right?

Well, there are tons of spaces to shoot. However most of those spaces are crammed with people, bombs, planes, food, forklifts, beds, cables, wires, computers... you name it. The Naval ship designers did not have camera crews in mind when mapping out places to work (although the Navy did manage to squeeze the Reagan's fully functional television station into one room). All of which makes the ship seem very small for a camera crew.

For instance, there are passageways. To get anywhere on the Reagan, you have to walk seemingly miles of halls, ladders, and hatches. If you are over six feet tall, you are in constant danger of smacking your head on something metal protruding from above. Chris, one of the sound recordists, is about 6 foot, four inches. He hit his head daily... even though he walked hunched over with his head tilted to one side.

David Frank - Executive Producer

It was an incredible day. I had flown into San Diego from our San Francisco offices for the premiere of our two-hour "Supercarrier: USS Ronald Reagan" documentary. We were about to screen the program aboard the ship, literally on the flight deck of the US Navy's newest nuclear powered aircraft carrier. My directors and camera crews had spent about a month filming on the ship earlier in the year. The carrier was stationed off the coast of South Korea so we had to fly our crew there. For security reasons, we weren't told how long it would be until they could get off the ship nor where that would be. The good news was that they disembarked in Hawaii.

As I drove into the Naval Air Station, I realized that the carrier was indeed a huge, floating city. I had never been aboard the ship, so I was amazed to see where they filmed and how the 5000 sailors and pilots worked and lived. All I can say is that you can get lost very easily, even though the Navy has maps posted throughout the ship.

David Hamlin - Producer

Working for National Geographic, I've been lucky enough to film wild animals all over the planet including chimps, gorillas, anacondas, pythons, crocs, lions, etc. But Hog Genius this was the first time National Geographic asked me to produce a film about a domesticated animal. At the beginning, I wasn't all that excited about filming in barnyards across the planet. I preferred making movies in wild places. But by the end of this project, the amazing pig had forced me to reconsider my appreciation, understanding, and connection to ALL living creatures.

Before I left the office for the field, my team and I did a lot of research into pig intelligence: pigs were clearly one of the smartest farm animals on the planet, but what exactly did that mean? I learned a lot on our first shoot at the Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

"But working in a pig barn is hot, crowded and, yes, aromatic."

Iowa State's Dr. Anna Johnson studies pig welfare. How are these amazing animals faring in countless farms and barnyards across the planet? Anna would be my team's first portal into the wonderful world of pigs. She's the kind of person who truly loves her job. Every day for Anna is Hog Heaven.

Greg Chapman - Research

With the premiere of Lockdown: Prison Nation airing on Sunday, (Yes I am excited too!), I asked the producers of Lockdown to come together and send me some of the most outrageous facts from Sundays show and some that you all might have missed during two of our more recent episodes. These are the straight facts folks. I was a bit stunned once I hit the bottom of the list....

Lockdown: Prison Nation -

The U.S. has five percent of the world's population, it has 25% of the world's inmates.

California operates the third largest penal system in the world, right after China and the United States.

80,000 inmates are kept in isolation nationwide. - A rising suicide rate is linked to the increasing use of solitary confinement. Nearly 70 percent of inmate suicides are in isolation.

25% of all state prison beds are occupied by the mentally ill. Tops in Los Angeles county jail, followed by New York's Rikers Island.

700,000 inmates are released from prison each year - more than two-thirds of them end up back behind bars within three years.

Assaults on inmates have risen 65% in the past decade.

Shannon Malone - Supervising Producer

When put with the challenge of creating a day-long special highlighting the beauty of America, I was first a bit scared. How on earth would we be able to truly capture the variety, the grandeur and the majesty of our nation? (For those playing along at home, start humming "America The Beautiful") Fortunately, we worked with two amazing creative talents in this endeavor: Douglas Paynter, an enormously talented producer with over 20 years of experience in the non-fiction world, and Black Light Films, one of the world's foremost resources for High Definition footage. This wasn't an easy task: the National Geographic Channel has highlighted so many different areas of the American landscape.

Fortunately, we succeeded. We travel all over from Alaska to Texas, Florida to California. We see the deserts of the Southwest and we see the snow capped hills of Wyoming. Not only in presenting a beautiful view of our land but also unique perspectives. For example, one start with a gorgeous evening shot of the Chicago skyline (my old hometown). It soars over the coastline, Lake Michigan gently lapping at the shores. The narrator talks about the Great Lakes and the way that they define that area of the country. This great lake fed by one truly spectacular wonder: Niagara Falls. We then present a show about the Falls and its history; a unique and clever perspective on a program. In doing this project, I learned so much--which is saying something considering I've traveled all over.

 

Please take the time to read the quick tip below courtesy of The Green Guide:

The Green Guide Staff

The Melanesians and other peoples fast before they feast but we do the opposite, gorging on sweets at Halloween, stuffing ourselves at Thanksgiving, then filling up again at Christmas and Hanukkah meals, with double dipping as we visit different sets of parents. None of us may get any lighter this holiday season, but with a few careful food choices that won't bust the bank, there are ways we may tread a bit more lightly on the earth.

Price is important. While organic can be expensive, our market survey (including Whole Foods, Fairway, Fresh Direct and and our local farmer's market at Union Square) shows that sometimes, as with organic wines, prices are the same or quite close. To protect your health, and especially your children's, you can pick organic for those items, like apples, pears, spinach and potatoes, which have the heaviest pesticide loads. Then you can save your money by choosing conventional versions of other items such as onions. Of course, choosing organic also helps keep pesticides out of the environment and avoids the cruel conditions animals endure in massive factory farms. And with fuel prices shooting up, picking foods from local farms can reduce costs and will save on the miles your meal travels before it reaches the dining room.

Joshua Alper - Writer/Director

From a writer's standpoint, TV shows are like people; they have strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that must be accommodated in order to have a successful relationship. Voices of 9/11 is no exception.

The strength of this show is its chorus of voices. No personal attribute, with the exception of a face, delivers emotion like a human voice. This is especially true in extraordinary circumstances like those of September 11, 2001. When Steven Manning and Joan Fleischer--who watched as the buildings tumbled down, or emergency dispatchers Russell Alston and Jimmy Raftery--who talked directly to those inside the towers, tell their stories, the six years that separate us all from September 11, 2001 dissolve away; the sense of that harrowing day is once again raw and immediate.

"Interviewees generously invited us into their experiences, and unflinchingly bared their emotions."

But voices also threatened to be the Achilles Heel of this program. TV is a visual medium; voices are not. Basically, we were creating a movie about sound. What, exactly, were we going to show our viewers?

A Hippo emerges from the water to show off its enormous jaw.

Dr. Brady Barr goes to great lengths to figure out how strong an animal's bite actually is.

Mike Sinclair - Executive Producer

It's one of those places you pass on your daily commute, but you never really see. A non-descript set of railroad tracks bending through a small ravine under a super highway. Thousands of people race by this spot every day without any idea that a man's life ended just 60 feet below them. His name was Randy Townsend and his attackers were part of a racist skinhead club called the Tacoma Skinhead Movement. Three men and a pregnant woman beat and kicked Randy to death so they could achieve a sense status within their club by earning the right to wear red bootlaces.

"They have their sights squarely set on reaching the mainstream and are using every tool at their disposal to do so."

I first saw this place when Detective Jeff Shipp of the Tacoma Police Department, who worked the murder investigation, took our camera crew there. At the time of the attack, a group of homeless men and women were living in the brush surrounding the tracks. Today the brush has been cleared, and a fence put up to keep the homeless out. Thick grey paint climbs about 20-feet up the highway supports that frame the railroad tracks. The paint hides the violent threats, racial slurs and Swastikas the Tacoma Skinhead Movement used to mark this place as their turf.

Today, years after the murder it remains an eerie and desolate place. For the past year I've been on a journey to document all I could about the racist skinheads, one of the fastest growing and most violent segments of the white supremacy movement. The journey has led me to many strange places--a concrete bunker in Warsaw, Indiana, a skinhead St. Patrick's Day celebration, fight training in a small gym in the Baltimore suburbs, the screaming hate of a band's practice session in California, but it wasn't until the moment that I stepped into the darkness of the Tacoma underpass and into the shoes of skinhead murder victim, Randy Townsend that I understood what all the screaming was about -- it was all about fear.

Greg Chapman

After last weeks attempt to fix the solar panel resulted in a disapointing ninety-foot tear in the panel, there were some good news coming out of NASA. It looks as though our system has some new neighbors, as NASA scientists have found a solar system composed of five planets. It also looks like one of the planets has some very distinct features that are similar to earth's, although the discovery of life on that planet cannot be determined at this time. Scientists say that technology that would be able to detect life on the suspected planet is decades away.

NASA has posted computer images at what they suspect the solar system to look like. Click here to take a look.

The National Geographic Channel, in conjunction with Preserve Our Planet, is looking for college students from around the world to send in a short film or PSA that will help to inspire people to take action to protect the planet. The channel understands that it only takes one individual to make a major impact in the world. Now is your chance to be that person. Click here to find out more information about rules, deadlines and what you will receive if you are the winner.

Good Luck!

A pride of lions walk with their newly born cubs.

Relentless Enemies showcases the great lions of the Tsaro pride. These lions are more powerful and fearsome then the typical lion. Watch as these unique lions go on the hunt and encounter water buffalo who have devised effective means of defense.