So you may or may not have heard the news but, we have started production on a full length Herping With Dylan film! This blog is the official production diary of our progress. We will update this with exclusive photos, videos, and information about the movie. Follow us though principal photography, pick-ups, post production, and finally the release of this film.
I guess we should probably get started with a little bit of info about this project:
As of right now the "working title" of this film is just Herping With Dylan. I played around with the idea of calling it There and Back Again: A Herper's Holiday ( a homage to Bilbo's diary in The Hobbit & LOTR) but decided to scrap the idea because it sounded tacky and lame. We are shooting this movie as if all of our videos up to this point never existed. Basically, this is a fresh take on HWD. Meaning you will see all of the familiar species from videos we have already shot as well as some new stuff that we have not had the chance to film yet. We want this film to tell the story of the seasons in southern Illinois and Missouri. How not only the weather changes, but also the landscape and the variety of wildlife that you see. The running time we are going for is approx. 80-90min, making this a full fledged "feature film" according to the American Film Institute. So what I am saying is that we have a TON of work ahead of us and we want you guys to join us on this next big step for HWD!
The original idea for this film came about 2 or 3 years ago. Actually, Jake Seals (AKA reptilewranglers) held a YouTube contest asking "What your favorite herping moment was" and so we decided that we would shoot a 15-20min HWD episode saying that "every moment is our favorite moment" and then taking you guys on one full day of herping with us by filming everything we did and saw for a full day. We spent a whole day shooting a big intro complete with music and everything and then when it came time to actually go herping we didn't see a dang thing for like weeks on end. Jake's contest ended by that time and so we just scrapped the whole thing. It sat on my hard drive for several months until I decided to cut it down and release it as is. You can see that 2 part video HERE.
The next year, still wanting to do something bigger than the normal 5min HWD videos, I took on the task of trying to make a documentary about insects in the backyard. That was a HUGE amount of work and it was only complicated by the fact that our camera was pretty smashed up so obtaining critical focus was nearly impossible. I finally did finish it and published it on YouTube as well as made it available on DVD. I am still very proud of that film and personally think it is the best thing HWD has ever done (no one else agrees).
That brings us to 2010 where, wanting to push our abilities even farther, we decided to shoot a full length movie about herping in southern IL and MO. We started production in the spring of 2010 and shot several scenes including some siren stuff and a bit about spotted salamanders. None of our footage, however, was what we wanted. We wanted a more cinematic look to our movie. We wanted it to look like a film rather than a video (if that makes any sense) and so we began looking at better cameras. That Sony HDR-SR11 was awesome for a while but it just couldn't keep up with what we wanted to do. So fast forward to the fall of 2010 and we bought a brand new camera, audio recorder, and several other things. We spent all winter planing out the film and working with friends to formulate a good way of building the experience of herping into a narrative that works on film.
Now here we are in the spring of 2011 and are finally getting to put some of this planning into action! We have already started shooting (will discuss this in more detail in another post) and are in a mad rush to keep up with the changes in weather and breeding patterns of certain species. This is a huge amount of work for only two but we are ready for anything. I know most people have probably decided tl;dr at this point (and I don't blame them) but I figured some one out there might appreciate the back story behind what will end up being a big part of HWD for the next year or so.
Dyan
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