Interview conducted by CLM
Recently SANET was privileged to have a fantastic conversation with Mr. Alan de Herrera, the maker of a recent film project about California Sea Lions. We hope SANet readers will enjoy reading about the film, and follow the links to pick up a copy of Sean's work for their enjoyment and their kids'-- and then perhaps some of you will be moved to participate in the effort to protect these wonderful animals from the hazards that threaten them as they struggle to co-exist with humankind.
SANET: Thank you for your time and your willingness to talk with us, Mr. de Herrera. I'd like to start by asking how Rio Films became interested in filming a documentary about sea lions. Is marine life a focus for your company, or do you have other areas of interest?
ALAN: Well, we didn't start our company just to make films about the ocean, but it is a primary focus now. Basically our plan was to make natural-history films about the environment and the negative effects humans are having on it. Our plan is to try and make films that are exciting and adventurous-- films that get people excited about the environment.
SANET: What is the target audience for your documentary?
ALAN: We feel lots of documentaries with an environmental focus have been very boring, particularly the narrative. Those films are more focused towards marine biology students or older viewers. We want to try to make films that make kids excited, so we write narrative with two-year-olds in mind as well as the rest of the family.
Even if they don't understand it all, children respond to sounds, imagery, and funny little jokes. That's what our focus is: to make films for the whole family, that appeal to people of all ages-- small kids, adults, teens. Everybody can get entertained and educated right now.
SANET: The description of your documentary promises "a wonderful and entertaining, visual encounter with sea lions in their natural habitat." Aside from entertainment, would you discuss any other purposes for making your documentary?
ALAN: We want to motivate and inspire the next generation to be earth keepers. Tomorrow's fishermen are kids now! We hope our documentary will teach them to grow up and have empathy with sea lions, and not to be as destructive as fishermen are today. It's easier to inspire a kid than to get an adult to change his views and perspectives.
SANET: Can you give our readers information on ordering your film?
ALAN: Absolutely. We have copies of "California Sea Lions: An Unforgettable Encounter" available right now on
Rio Films' website. We will have a video available in about three weeks that is different from the one that's there now. Right now what we have for sale is the film by itself, but we're going to add a "Making Of" feature and a director's commentary.
If you would like to order that copy, check our website soon and look for the label "Bonus Features." The director's commentary will include some discussion of Sean Astin's involvement with the project. We'll also have new photos on the website around that time, including some of Sean, and his photograph will be on the box cover. This final version of the film should be available in the second week of May, 2005.
SANET: I'll have more questions about Mr. Astin later, but right now, would you tell us about some of the special challenges California sea lions must face in their struggle to survive?
ALAN: The biggest threats to sea lions right now? First is a lack of public knowledge. Nobody else has made a documentary, believe it or not, about California sea lions. They get featured in films; you see them on the Discovery and National Geographic channels when there's a special shark week feature, but nobody had made a film about the whole story of the sea lions' ecology and the research about them, or talked about the Marine Mammal Center. A lot of people have only seen them on the rocks or on buoys, not underwater.
Underwater, sea lions are totally different animals. You can see what I mean on our website in the trailer for the film, which is linked at the bottom of the picture
here. They're skittish above the surface, but very friendly and outgoing below. We wanted to try and familiarize people with them, and make people aware that sea lions are more than just an entertaining animal. We wanted to show how amazing they are in the wild. Underwater they have a natural affinity for humans and will interact with people.
People often don't realize California sea lions are a very successful seal in terms of biodiversity and evolution. They're more efficient and smarter than other pinnipeds.
A second threat is cancer. Sea lions have the highest rate of cancer of any marine mammal; the reason they do is because they have high levels of DDT and PCBs in their blubber. DDT and PCBs are contaminants in the ocean. Though these chemicals have been banned since the 1970s, they are still present in sediment on the ocean floor. Sea lions live just offshore and feed there, so they're more susceptible to contaminants in sediment than other species who feed in deeper water and have less exposure. The toxicity of the water is very detrimental to them, and we explore the causes and effects of this problem in the film.
A third threat is commercial fishing. Fishermen hate sea lions because the sea lions interact with their catches. Some of these fishing boats haul in 20 tons of sardines at a time. Sea lions come and jump into their nets, like dolphins do with tuna fishermen. They think it's free food, but the fishermen get upset, and they club the sea lions or shoot them. Also, the sea lions can drown in fishermen's nets like dolphins drown in tuna nets. They get their flippers caught in the nets and get wrapped up.
The public's perception includes a lot of sea lions washed up on shore with gunshot wounds, but nobody seems to care about it enough to do anything. Not one organization besides the Marine Mammal Center works to support sea lions in any way. There is no campaign to stop the shooting or anything. Sea lions seem to be shunned or go unnoticed by the environmental community.
It's unfortunate. They're the most widely recognized mammal in the world, but they're not considered in same light as dolphins and sea otters. People need to get to know them, because they are amazing and beyond exploitation. They need protection. People can't protect what they don't understand, so our documentary tries to give an understanding. We hope that will lead to more respect and protection for the species.
SANET: Some parents may be concerned that their younger children could have problems with strong subject matter like clubbing or shooting. How does your film work to meet the needs of its young audience?
ALAN: We paint it lightly. The film makes a strong statement, but some of the shots that depict the most destructive practices are actually the most beautiful shots in the film. I did it on purpose. I took a shot of a fishing boat with its net in water and a sea lion in the net. There are not shots of gratuitous blood and guts, or dead animals on the beach.
There are two shots that have some strong content, but they're set up so that both kids and adults can handle them. They have minimal shock value. The film builds up the story to that point: there's a shot of a sea lion that has drowned in a net, followed by a shot of the fishing boat. The boat is juxtaposed against a beautiful orange sunset sky, just sitting on the ocean floating. I wanted to relate it that way-- that despite all this destruction, there's so much beauty there. People will really feel like something precious has been robbed; it's been diminished by the fishermen. The ocean and the boat are beautiful, but underneath that boat is the death of a beautiful animal that you've grown to love and are excited about.
Also you see a sea lion going through surgery. There is footage from a laparoscopy camera that shows big cancerous tumors growing, but kids find it very interesting to see what a sea lion looks like inside. People are excited to investigate the unknown. It's amazing to see what a sea lion looks like inside, and see what cancer really is.
However, two-year-olds won't be haunted by nightmares after watching my film. It's not a Greenpeace type film, with the shock value of seeing animals being shot and cut up and destroyed. It's a beautiful, artistic film. About 20% of it has a strong message, but audiences find it very acceptable. People have expressed amazement to me about how the film shows the message without being gratuitous. It would be a disservice to the community to hide the truth.
To measure it against something every kid is familiar with? "Roadrunner" cartoons are more violent and disgusting.
SANET: Were there any difficulties or obstacles involved in making your documentary, such as financial or political difficulties?
ALAN: Difficulties? Some of the obstacles were logistical. Making a documentary like this is difficult, because you have to travel out to eight islands offshore of the LA area. Going out is difficult, because the Pacific Ocean off southern California is not like the Bahamas or the tropics. It can get rough and dangerous and conditions change rapidly. I would take four or five guys 75 miles offshore to get shots that we needed underwater, which presented a lot of challenges.
Weather was a big one. Sometimes we went out and it was beautiful sunshine when we left, but when we got out onto the ocean it could be raining with eight-foot swells. Sometimes the guys would get sick. We had to stay on the boat 24 hours a day, with nothing around but islands, and only the food and water we brought along. Conditions were really raw.
From The Big Zoo, with
permission
Another one was the problems that go with filming underwater. Everything is constantly moving in the water. You can't set up a tripod, see something you like, focus, and then shoot. You move, the sea lions move, the crew must be looked out for, and I had to look out for me. Filming seals and sea lions is also considered dangerous because there are big sharks out there in the ocean. It's not a fear of mine particularly, but great white sharks hunt seals and sea lions. When you're filming, there's a slight chance you could run into one.
Being out in the elements is really difficult for a filmmaker. Conditions in the ocean can be extremely unpredictable. The water clarity would be really crappy sometimes when we got out there to film, not like in the Bahamas where the water would be clear and warm. We would often sit on the boat for 24 hours to see if it got better. Sometimes four days on the ocean only yielded one day of shooting. Weather played a big part in the fact that our film took about three years to shoot.
I financed the film myself. I applied for grants, but the various foundations didn't care. They didn't think the film was worthy of grant money, unfortunately. I held fundraisers and invested my own money. We had to make the film ourselves without the backing of a production company like the Discovery Channel.
One benefit of this was that we could make the film the way we wanted to make it. We could take the time to do it right. When you make a film through TV, there are lots of limitations for artists and directors because the TV production company would only want to take six weeks to get all the shots. There's no way to do it the way we did in six weeks; it would be impossible to get what we have in such a short time.
Another obstacle was working around the schedules of six researchers and marine biologists. That was difficult, but exciting. We were all passionate about the movie and its subject matter. Going the extra mile and subjecting ourselves to difficulties made it a better film in the end. We wanted to protect and give a voice to the sea lions, so there was no compromise with "good enough." We could maybe have finished in half the time, but we wanted to go the extra mile and get all those perfect
shots, and in the end it paid off.
SANET: Do you have any particular incidents or anecdotes you would like to share about filming or producing your documentary?
ALAN: One of the things that some of our viewers might enjoy hearing about sea lions is that there's really no other marine animal, besides maybe some dolphins in the Bahamas, that will consistently interact with people. Every once in a while you hear about people riding sea turtles, and I had an encounter with an octopus myself once, but sea lions really have a natural affinity for people in the water.
There were times when we swam with 100 sea lions at a time, in a herd. They were gregarious and would actually literally swarm us. They would be 360 degrees around us. There were tons and tons of them, just interacting with us, blowing bubbles. Sometimes we'd play tug of war with them when they'd grab a big piece of kelp in their mouths. They would try to gnaw on and grab our flippers. They're a lot like dogs-- playful, fun animals to work with.
Sometimes we'd be up on the boat setting up our dive gear, getting ready with our cameras, and there would be a sea lion pup doing flips and splashing into the water. Then he'd come up, look at us, and bark, like he was saying "Hey, look at me, I'm a clown of the sea. I can do tricks and entertain you. Come in the water and play with me." The pups would be four or five months old, swimming in coves, learning how to swim. They'd come right up to you and chew on your ear gently, like a puppy.
We'd have big smiles on our faces at the end of day, going "Wow, that's incredible!" The sea lions had fun making the film too; you could totally tell. We want to share that in our film; share it with kids who won't get to go to the ocean and be underwater with them--maybe a kid from the Midwest— we want to let that kid get the feel of what it's like to be underwater with playful sea lions.
SANET: How did you come to choose Sean Astin to narrate your documentary?
ALAN: I had never met Sean before asking him to do the film, although I had seen him. He had a film, "The Long and Short of It," at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and he was at the opening night reception, but the crowd prevented me from going up to say hello. I wasn't considering him for voice work on the film then, but when we were finishing up, I started thinking about narrators and what sort of voice I wanted. My decision was based on two different factors.
I wanted a voice that was fun, one that kids would respond to, because the voice is important. Sound is a very powerful tool, whether in music or sound effects, or in other media. The voice is an instrument like a guitar, a drum, or a violin. In a documentary, the spoken voice has to mesh with the visuals. When I tried to think of a voice that was exciting and fun, I always just naturally started thinking about Sean's voice. It had nothing do with film festivals; he just had that voice, and he's a down-to-earth guy and an environmentalist.
Obviously, I also wanted a celebrity with international appeal. I plan to distribute the film in over 80 countries and in different languages from all over the world. I wanted to pick somebody who was approachable, too. I thought I could convince Sean to do it, so I sent him a letter and a copy of the rough cut, and his agent said he'd love to do it.
Sean went out of his way to help. He drove down from LA to record in Orange County at our studio. He loves the film; he knows kids love it and he knows how important it will be as an educational tool. Sean is an advocate for reading and education; his wife is a teacher, so he's very serious about it. He liked that the film was a fund-raising tool to help schools raise money for themselves and to benefit the sea lions. So he came down and recorded.
We all had a great time clowning around having fun with it; it was a blast!
I don't think anyone could've narrated it better than him. We're excited we have Sean's voice and that Sean's fans are interested in the project. There are lots of Sean Astin fans out there-- he did an incredible job in
The Lord of the Rings; it raised him to a new level as a performer. It's an honor for us to follow that project.
This was actually the first time he has narrated a documentary. He's very proud of the project and his voice is a stamp of approval on it. He feels strongly about the need to protect sea lions; we have a mutual respect for each other's work.
We just finished adding his narration in the last couple of months.
SANET: What was it like working with Mr. Astin? Do you have any film of the recording sessions?
ALAN: It was lots of fun working with Sean. We joked around a lot, which is typical of our crew at Rio Films. We have a lot of fun. Of course, we're serious when we need to be. There's no clowning around underwater due to the safety factor.
We wanted Sean to have an intimate setting so he could do his thing and not feel like he was being observed, because it's distracting, so there isn't any film of his voice acting. But narration is acting, and the way he did the narrative is really amazing. He'd act out scenes, move around-- we wanted to be respectful of his process.
SANET: Are there any special incidents from Mr. Astin's voice-over work that you would like to share with SANet readers?
ALAN: When you're recording narration, you want to relax and take your time. With Sean, that meant we would joke and have fun. We teased each other. We went over each line. He would say, "What did you think about when you wrote this?" or say, "Sure, this sounds OK." Sometimes he would ask "What if we did it this way?" I would hear him out, and sometimes it was a million times better that way-- he added a lot of new stuff. But I was able to direct him. He's used to a director like Peter Jackson, but he let me direct and work with him and coach him; I could say "Nah, that's not it, let's do it my way."
Of course, he had a few lines where he'd screw up. Sometimes we'd do fourteen takes of a simple line, and he'd mess it up and beat himself up over it. I'd tease him and tell him, "We can take a break if you want to, Sean."
Sean loves to do Irish voices. Sometimes he would say his lines in an Irish accent.
SANET: Tell us about the national tour you have planned for the documentary.
ALAN: The national tour is a way for us to travel through California and eventually across the country to show the film to people all over the USA who want to use the film as fundraising tool. We'll be hooking up with schools to do screenings. We will come and show the film at the school and share the proceeds with them. Or we'll cooperate with environmental organizations; they will bring the people and we'll bring the film. It will help raise money both for them and us.
We'll be touring next fall; on our website there is a
fundraising link for schools or nonprofit organizations who want to see what the program is about. Everything you need to know is on there, if you want to have a screening at your school or organization!
SANET: Are there any other projects your company is involved with that Mr. Astin's fans might find interesting?
ALAN: We plan to do a film about sea otters next. It will be a project along the same sort of lines as this one. We'll look at sea otters in trouble, talk about their interactions with fishermen, and look at their problems with leukemia due to water contaminants from sources such as oil spills. We will look at both southern and northern sea otters, filming in California through Washington and in Alaska.
SANET: Is there any other information you'd like to share?
ALAN: I believe Sean will want to hear feedback from his fans about this project; be sure to tell him what you think. Let him know your reaction.
SANET: Thank you for your time and your insights, Mr. de Herrera! SANET and Mr. Astin's fans appreciate hearing from you. We're all looking forward to seeing California Sea Lions - An Unforgettable Encounter!
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