Shell Shocked - SD

Just got back from an amazing shoot in South Dakota.  Well...Amazing might be a little sarcastic.  We filmed two episodes of a Sportsman Channel show called "Shell Shocked".  This is what we were supposed to film in Kansas, but the host, Patrick Flanagan, never showed up.  Patrick lives in this area so he had no excuse to not show up.

We stayed in the town of Deadwood and then filmed everything at a shooting range.  Jake and I had to manage eight cameras for this shoot.  We got just about every angle a person could get for a shotgun show.  Patrick challenges different people at their shooting sports and then has them try one of his shotgun challenges.  He is pretty awesome with a shotgun, but that's all he shoots, so he kind of sucks with any other gun in his hand.  

It is nice to film everything in one location and makes the filming pretty easy.  The first two days flew by and were not too bad, but then we started to run out of creativity.  There is only so much you can do from a creative standpoint at a shooting range.  There were usually a bunch of different targets so we had to set up the go pros, a Contour HD cam, a little CX camera, and then Jake and I tried to man two Sony Z7's and our big XD Cams.  It was a lot to manage and was a good experience, but four days of that was enough.

We got done early one of the days and decided to be tourists and check out Mount Rushmore.  Man, I felt like a total tourist.

Getting Some Publicity

http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/taking-off/Content?oid=1541530

Check out the Missoula Independent this month.  Alex wrote a nice article on the filmmakers of Montana and included me with the cinestar.  Pretty sweet!

Python Hunting at Night

The next morning we decided to film the cooking segment of iguanas.  Our chef has written an iguana cookbook, but while filming him it was apparent that he hasn’t really cooked that many iguanas and doesn’t know that much about cooking.  It only took us about an hour to film this part and we even got to try the iguana.  It didn’t taste that bad.  Bill, the other cameraman, wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

Later that day we drove back across the state to the everglades for some more python hunting.  We went out at night this time.  We pretty much just drove around trying to spotlight a python.  We got out and walked on the edge of the swamps for a little bit, but it was a waste of time.  No pythons were to be found.  Non-the-less, we still got our hands on one for the cooking segment.

The producers for this show didn’t do their research very well because pythons really aren’t supposed to be eaten.  Their mercury levels are extremely high due to them being on top of the food chain.  They still cooked it and ate it, but I stayed away from eating any python.

The last morning I did a photo shoot with Scott, the host.  They needed and advertisement photo for the 15 magazines that Intermedia Outdoors owns.  They were going to send their own photographer, but I had my DSLR along, so I just did it for an additional fee : )  It might also be sweet to have some photos published in a bunch of magazines.

I don’t really know my next job assignment, so I’ll just continue flying my cinestar and working on our show.

Pythons and Iguanas

Flying over the Missions in Montana

Nothing seems to go right on these "Dead Meat" shows.  Day one we rode on airboats to go pythons hunting in the everglades.  The airboats are pretty sweet because they can go anywhere due to the huge fan that pushes the boat, but they are load and expensive.  It cost $300/hour for an airboat.

I only brought my chacos and didn't quite expect to be trudging through snake infested swamp.  For some reason I thought we would be staying on the boats, but that wasn't the case.  We didn't end up finding any pythons or any snakes for that matter.  It was just an expensive boat ride through the hot and humid swamp.
                                     

   My Hotel on the Gulf of Mexico.  The host and Bill thought

      it was a dump, but I thought it was pretty sweet.

Day two - We drove across the state to the golf of mexico to go iguana hunting.  We took a boat to another island where there were supposedly huge iguanas that need to get killed.  The iguanas are non-native reptiles that are killing all the other animals, so they need to be removed.  I stood and filmed on the deck of an unoccupied mansion as we waited for iguanas to come out.  Sure enough, they appeared from their holes and we filmed one being shot.  I was filming another iguana when a wasp decided to sting my hand.  Our guide freaked out, thinking that I was attacked by an "africanized bee".  He told me to run back to the boat and we all left the island.  I guess these bees leave their scent on you, so all the other bees can find and attack you.  It turns out that it was just a wasp.

We headed back to town to hunt iguanas out of a golf cart.  The iguanas in town were more like geckos and our guide shot them with a little air gun.  It made for some pretty stupid TV.

Next up - eating iguana and night hunting pythons