Chapter VI. THE END?

At the outset of this last trip, I had once again defined my working "box". I set a target date of October to complete the show if I came away from Key Largo with enough material. There were several wildlife festivals I wanted to enter in the fall, some of which, though small, might attract potential distributors.

After returning from Florida and reviewing the footage, I am confident that I have enough material to finish "Putting the Pieces Together."

So you would think that with all the frantic logging/transcribing I’ve been doing, I’m preparing to jumping headfirst into the post-production process, integrating the Florida footage with the Indonesia footage. After all, in the last two weeks I’ve transcribed a good hour plus of interviews, accounting for every stutter, um, ah and repetition -a task that takes me about 10 hours to type out for each hour of raw footage.

But I have no plans to finish this any time soon.

Truth be told, I am doing it so I can shelve all the footage for a few months in preparation for a whole new slew of coral video and interviews coming in October. There will be no festival entry this year, in all likelihood. It looks like it will be 2011 for the release.

I have repeatedly blamed serendipity for most of this interesting journey. I describe it in lucking out with underwater shots, in how I met Ken in Florida, and how other odd connections have appeared throughout this journey. I never would have reconnected with an old high school acquaintance without it. I have learned to trust it, like a guiding hand that has greater plans. The completion of Florida wasn’t the end, just another corner to turn.

There’s no way to deny it. One of the things that attract people to underwater documentaries is cinematography that exposes a naïve audience to the richness of the underwater habitat. And my one biggest complaint has been my (in my opinion) sub-par underwater video. Although the Indonesia Biorock shots are passable for, the beauty shots aren't even close to the quality of the more memorable documentaries. The camera and the housing are great for the consumer, but not up to broadcast standards in terms of clarity and colors. I hoped that the shots would work in context with the story so that the the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, and the flaws would go mostly unnoticed.

Of course, the moment I saw the video from the HVX-200, I was stunned. It looked so much better, in spite of shooting through an acrylic dome port. My gut instinct on seeing the video for the first time was a wish that I could go to the Pacific once again and shoot beauty shots of coral fields with this camera and housing. But I already knew that its weight was an issue for travel.

The new Equinox housing was a great tool in my arsenal, but its sheer size and weight made it damn near impossible to take internationally; after all, it used 40 pounds of ballast alone. In its current setup, the shipping case is 40 pounds empty. Add another 15 pounds for the housing itself and another 5 for the handles and other assorted pieces, and its 30 pounds over the limit for every airline. And shipping something of that weight internationally, without being able to use a cargo service, costs thousands of dollars.

So I figured that my fantasy of shooting Pacific coral gardens, with their depth of hues and richness of color and life, would not be possible on my budget. It was just prohibitively expensive to do in general, let alone with this housing.

Allow me to take a moment to introduce two people. The first is my cousin George, a well-known dive writer who has been published many times over and written for a variety of magazines. The second is his daughter, my cousins Hannah, who has become my latest angel. I had been planning on doing a vacation with George, Hannah and my father, who doesn’t dive. My father bowed out for health reasons relating to his ear, and the plans went up in smoke.

In the middle of my Florida trip, I get an interesting message from my cousin, asking if I was free in early October and would I be interested in maybe going to Kosrae, a remote part of Micronesia, to dive. She and George had both been invited to be part of a coral survey on the island, and the manager of the resort indicated they might need a videographer as well. I was suddenly very interested.

Over the next few days, it all began sorting itself as I got in touch with the point person in Kosrae at Kosrae Village Resorts. Karina and I spoke at length about their project, my project, and what my participation brings to the table. In the end, I was invited to come along as well. I have always been happy to lend my skills to efforts at improving the coral reefs around the globe, and Karina was happy to put my abilities to good use in exchange for putting me up and taking care of my diving requirements.

I had never heard of Kosrae before. But from what I have learned, I am in for a very, very special time as long as their reefs don’t bleach this late summer. First, its not an easy destination to get to. Total transit one-way from the east coast is nearly 40 hours thanks to a 12 hour layover in Hawaii that is inescapable. There are only three planes that make the run from Honolulu to Guam every week, and this tiny island, all of 40 square miles, is smack in the middle of that service, with more than 140 miles separating it from the nearest landmass.

That’s one reason it never caught on much as a destination. It also seems rather primitive compared to the other islands in this region, like Palau and Yap. The brochures for the resort note that AC is not available in most of the accommodations, and you sleep beneath mosquito netting. That appealed to me immediately - it brought me back to my 5 months in Koh Tao, sleeping in the tropical heat and feeling suffocated beneath the humid nets.

The reefs are supposed to be nearly untouched, relatively speaking, with a rich assortment of Pacific corals ringing this volcanic pinnacle. The main cone reaches several thousand feet into the heavens from a depth of miles below the sea. The fact that it is surrounded by deep ocean keeps the water fairly clear year-around, with visibility typical visibility in excess of 100 feet. This may well be unheard of today in most places, but Karina insists I will see for myself with their turbidity disks. I liked these people already.

The flight out is manageable in terms of cost, when there are no other expenses. But I still have to get my housing out there. Remember when I quoted the thousands it would take to ship by DHL? Fortunately, I found an alternative. Seems that being a US territory has its advantages. You are basically autonomous, but get the benefit of some US government provided services. Which includes the post office.

For $16.95, I can ship up to 70 pounds in a single-rate USPS box to and from Kosrae.

So my shipping concerns are slowly being resolved as I find innovative ways of being the weight down. Like using the USPS. Right now, it looks like I will have to ship the weights out that way and build a hard packing crate for shipping the 25 or so pounds of unweighted housing. That way it can travel on the flight with me.

So it seems like I am destined to spend two and a half weeks in paradise, diving every day and exploring a rarely seen area of the world. I will get a group of scientists I can interview as additional footage to add to the mix, and all the beauty shots I can take the time to shoot.

I will also be providing documentation for the coral survey, and plan on editing daily video blogs so people can keep track of the mission’s progress. Add to this my promise of creating a promo for the village, and you know I will be plenty busy for the entire time I am there. The program runs from October 2-15th, and I need to stay an extra few days to do mop-up work, which means not leaving the island until the 18th.

More info on the trip as it comes in…

The second serendipitous event is even more tantalizing when it comes to delaying editing. As we speak, Ken and Tom are working together on a proposal for a joint effort in Florida. It’s an ambitious project to test Toms technology as a way to increase coral size for transplantation a la Ken’s nursery model.

So think about it for a second… why would I even try to finish up a documentary when there is a good chance that both parties I followed over two years may be joining forces? Its just too good a final act to miss by rushing. This has no timeline as of right now, so who knows where it is going to go. But I will bide my time, forming paper edits and evaluating my needs in terms of other footage.

I am sure by the time I return from Kosrae I will have a better idea of when I can truly begin editing in earnest. Even if they don’t meet, I have a pretty good show, worthy of a nova episode or Nature Channel timeslot. But I need to be patient, and trust in my muse, serendipity.

And so, I wait.