I very luckily have access to people who are doing (and one of whom has been doing since I was in middle school) important research on the roseate tern population of the northeast. So by the time I'm ready to really shoot the thing I should be quite the layman's expert. That's one of the things I like about documentaries, you end up knowing way more than you put into the film.
The birds are endangered. Have been since the 80s so there is a lot of research particularly since then. They have good numbers about the overall population. There was a huge dip after hurricane bob, but then a pretty good recovery over the next several years. Then there was another big dip in the early 00s and they don't know why, and the recovery since then has been very sluggish, and again they don't know why. That's what the current research is trying to figure out. Mortality among breeding adults has been shockingly constant since the 80s. Number of chicks hatching has been pretty steady as well. Between leaving the nests and being mature enough to breed is generally 3-4 years, so this extra mortality must be then. They suspect it's in the first year, they suspect it's in the first migration.
For east coast roseate terns there are about a dozen hatching sites between Long Island and Nova Scotia. They are born in the spring, they fledge and fly away from the nests in early summer. From the dozen sites where they are born 90% come to Cape Cod for the summer. The young are strong enough to fly, but not coordinated enough to fish, so they stay on the beach and the parent (only one, usually the dad) brings them fish. The Cape is a staging area where everyone spends a couple months strengthening up. Then in September they begin their big migration. They fly out into the ocean and then straight down to the Caribbean in one go, they spend a little time there recovering, and then they do one long flight down to Brazil for the winter.
So the researchers are trying to figure out if there is something happening here that is keeping the young from getting strong enough to make that first migration.
I'm thinking of making the story about that year's cohort of young. Especially if I can get permission to go to the hatching sites when they're being banded. At that point humans are in their business anyway so adding me to the mix shouldn't be any more disruptive to them. They are endangered so I don't want anything I do to be stressful to them. It would probably be impossible to actually track an individual, but I could track the group. If I show people what they do to prepare for their first migration and how important their first summer is then they might get invested in this chick, or group of chicks, making it.
The trick is to make it a story - a true story, but a story none the less - and not just propaganda. I was at the Science in the Seashore symposium yesterday and it started with a short film about the Atlantic Research and Learning Center. It was fairly well done for what it was. Though it was only a couple years old and yet presented in standard definition and I don't know why. I've been shooting high definition since 2008. So it looked older than it was. Anyway, it was very much an informational piece about the research and people at the ARLC. As I was watching it I thought, right, don't make that. Nina and I had an interesting discussion the last time I saw her about what makes something a film. It boiled down to if an advocacy organization wants to hire a videographer to make them an informational or persuasive video that's fine, but just because it's non-fiction doesn't make it a documentary. I want to make a documentary. I want to make a natural history film. If the park service wants to play it at the visitor's center that's great, but I'm not making a visitor's center instructional video.
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