Manatee Video to watch

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey All,
I have something you might be interested in watching if you need to kill 15 minutes.

Back in 1999 I did a film about the efforts to protect West Indian Manatees in Florida. I was asked to speak about the film at Our World Underwater in 2000 (I think) and so I put together a 15 minute "behind-the-scenes" film about the making of the documentary. When we released the DVD, we put the it on the DVD as a "making of" featurette. Anyway, today I was doing some work on the DVD for a new distributor and came across the featurette. I thought it might be fun to put on the website so here it is:

http://www.jonathanbird.net/making_mermaids_qt.htm

It's about 111 MB and 15 minutes long, so you will need a broadband connection. It takes a few minutes to get from the background info about manatees in the beginning to the good production stuff. Curious what ya'all think.

Jonathan

[SMNDave]

Jonathan

I enjoyed your manatee video. We're going to Crystal Springs Fl in 3 months to do an HD production on manatees. Haven't ever seen them so am quite looking forward to doing that as a side to the DEMA show.

The outfit we're using says snorkling is fine, and I hate to lug the Inspiration around, but I also don't want to miss any opportunities and dropping down.

What are your thoughts?

[David White]

Well done Jonathan. Great footage and interesting storyline. Also provides a reminder as to just how much I have to learn.

[Daniel]

Hey All,
I have something you might be interested in watching if you need to kill 15 minutes.

Back in 1999 I did a film about the efforts to protect West Indian Manatees in Florida. I was asked to speak about the film at Our World Underwater in 2000 (I think) and so I put together a 15 minute "behind-the-scenes" film about the making of the documentary. When we released the DVD, we put the it on the DVD as a "making of" featurette. Anyway, today I was doing some work on the DVD for a new distributor and came across the featurette. I thought it might be fun to put on the website so here it is:

http://www.jonathanbird.net/making_mermaids_qt.htm

It's about 111 MB and 15 minutes long, so you will need a broadband connection. It takes a few minutes to get from the background info about manatees in the beginning to the good production stuff. Curious what ya'all think.

Jonathan

Very moving and informative.

Thanks for sharing the video.

Daniel

[Jonathan Bird]

Jonathan

I enjoyed your manatee video. We're going to Crystal Springs Fl in 3 months to do an HD production on manatees. Haven't ever seen them so am quite looking forward to doing that as a side to the DEMA show.

The outfit we're using says snorkling is fine, and I hate to lug the Inspiration around, but I also don't want to miss any opportunities and dropping down.

What are your thoughts?

The rebreathers definitely allow you to get some good camera angles, but the water is so shallow that you can certainly do a great job without it. Beware that people will be very jealous if you have rebreathers and it is likely that at least one operator will report you to the U.S. Fish and Game. I had it happen to me. I was doing nothing wrong, but they put an undercover officer in the water with me to follow me all morning to see if they could bust me for something. I didn't know about it until afterwards. Fortunately, it's pretty hard to get in trouble when you are just sitting on the bottom not moving, which is the best way to get shots.

An inspiratioin is way overkill. A little O2 rebreather is all you need. The water is 6 feet deep!

Jonathan