Changes to Behind the Lens

During my week at the Digging In retreat this summer at Duke, I spent some significant time really delving into my motivations and reasons for embarking on the Filming Florida project. I can’t say I really discovered anything new per se, but I did spend some time clarifying and putting words to the motivations behind this project. Without going to deep into those motivations right now (I’ll save that for a later post), I found that my primary motivations centered on telling the story of Florida and documenting incredible natural history stories.

The next question I asked was simple. What must be included? What are the “must haves” for the project? As I spent some time evaluating each of the components I am creating for this project, I quickly realized that the Behind the Lens series actually wasn’t on that required list. This came to me as a major revelation, and I was both surprised and totally comfortable with the idea. Yes, I am fascinated by the process of filmmaking and photography and love being able to share my own process. However, this series doesn’t get at the core motivations of the project, telling the story of natural Florida.

So what does all this mean? It means that Behind the Lens will no longer be a weekly video series. I will still occasionally produce episodes for the series and will feature those on this blog. This will save me a ton of time and brainpower in the field so that I can better focus on bringing you natural history stories and producing the miniseries, book, and exhibition that are the core of this project.

I’d like to thank Elaine McMillion Sheldon who started asking me these questions and was our small group leader at Digging In. If you haven’t experienced her project, Hollow, take a half hour and explore this incredible, Peabody award winning interactive documentary.