Making “My Backyard” Island Job video & a Hutton Vale 2000 Grenache Mataro

To be in the running for the Island caretaker job, applicants had to produce a 60 second or less video highlighting their qualifications, including why they want the job, and sharing a little about the Great Barrier Reef.

In addition to years writing the Art Predator column and now this blog, plus other journalism and creative writing experiences, I had my own TV news show in high school, I’ve written scripts for PSAs and produced 7 spoken word videos.

So as soon as I heard about the job, I got right to writing a script. And rewriting. And revising. And writing completely different scripts. I won’t tell you how many.

And I enlisted the help of a friend, Imre Juhasz, the father of my son’s best friend Shimon. Imre works on films all over the world, most recently for the Discovery channel. He knows his way around a video camera AND is skilled with final cut pro.

Once we meshed our schedules, we had to work around the weather (rain, rain and more rain). My family being under the weather meant I had to revise the script so that it required very little of the man of my life who was down with the flu, and the small boy wasn’t well either.

So there went the funny script with both of them or even including them in much of the way of anything, certainly not anything athletic or adventurous!

We started at the beach down the street from Imre’s house. While our boys played, we played too with some camera angles and ideas, and filing the sand writing sequences.  We considered going to Channel Islands NP but ended up scoping out my mom’s house as a rainy backup with expansive views.

The next day, Valentine’s Day,  we met again at sunset, this time with the whole family and our bikes to shoot the cycling scene and the closing scene with the globe beach ball. Imre drove his car with his son sleeping in the back–that was our steadycam!

The third day of shooting we did in the backyard and then hiked up to Two Trees. Marshall was too sick so we shot him close to the car then he waited for us there while we hiked up.

The fourth day we couldn’t get together until after the kid were asleep. So at 830 I came over with a bottle of Hutton Vale Vineyards 2000 Eden Valley Grenach Mataro blend I picked up for around $10 at the last Grateful Palate sale. Hutton Vale is one of those wineries GP dropped over the summer, and if this wine says anything about what they produce, it was a mistake! It came in red tissue paper with s sticker closure and the wine was sealed in red wax. Very classy presentation! I also chose it because Imre and I had some very unimpressive Coppola Tempranillo the night before (regualrly $16 on sale at Vons for $9) and I’d raved to him about how much I enjoy GSMs which he was unfamiliar with.

So the Hutton Vale Grenache Mataro I figured would be perfect for the task–something wonderful as we edited the video.

And I was right! From the first sniffs to the last sediment filled sips, the wine was quite a pleasure. The nose had that funny musky rich Mataro thing going on which at first raised Imre’s eyebrows but then he settled right into it happily and with amazement. The grenache gives the mataro a fine balance with its spicy fruitiness. It was so good that I’m practically desperate to go find more!

The wine lasted through three hours of editing, then we called it a night and I headed home with the empty bottle and a promise to get more!

On the fifth day, we worked about 12 hours on it, on and off during the day, starting afternoon, stopping to take of other business, care for kids, and have dinner. For music, I had explored a number of possibilities on Garage Band which we adapted to synch with the images, in particular finding and adding a triangle to ring as the sun glinted off our bikes. While Imre did all the Final Cut Pro magic, I was there beside him the whole time, commenting, and discussing the unfolding story, deciding where to cut more to fit the 60 seconds, and redoing some of the audio.

A little after midnight, the sixth day, we were pleased and ready to save to a disk and upload when Imre started having trouble getting it to be the rigth size without distortion. It took over 3 hours to get it right, then I headed up to post it on the site.  Unfortunately a day or so later, it was rejected –some sort of YouTube problem and they asked me to resubmit. Back to the drawing board with Imre and another 3 hours down the tube trying to get the right size without distortion. Another late night ensued for me when the site went down for maintenance when I was ready to upload it! Finally I heard the news that it was accepted and live. Because the site gets so bombarded, it is easiest to watch it on YouTube in HD:

On the seventh day I rested and waited. Now just waiting still to hear whether I make the 50 shortlist!