Field Journal: Shooting the Bird Flu Story
Todd Sonflieth, Senior Videographer/ Editor
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 — Rewind 18 years to the first year of OFG. Steve Amen and I were doing one of the first stories for the show, a feature on the Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge. We stayed at the local motel that was pretty much the only choice at the time. After shooting for a couple of days, I was packing up for the trip home. I flipped my bed spread open to find not only a big rip in the sheet, but a big bloodstain as well. And no, it was not MY blood. This was to set my standard for the worst dive of a motel for OFG shoots for a long time.
Fast forward to September 2006. OFG Producer Ed Jahn and I were traveling to Summer Lake to shoot a segment about Bird Flu. For some reason I thought Ed told me we had rooms reserved in the local Bed and Breakfast. As we approached the “town” of Summer Lake, Ed said the name was the “Summer Lake Lodge”. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked, fearing the worst. “No really” was Ed’s response. I could not remember the name of the place from 18 years ago, but sure enough, as we got closer, there it was, the “Summer Lake Lodge”, the same place as before. As we drove in to the parking lot though, I spotted some relatively new cabins out back. I started breathing a little easier. As we were checking in, I was relieved to hear we indeed had one of the new cabins booked. I must say the place is much better than before. The new owners have updated the motel and restaurant very nicely. The food in the restaurant is great too.
The main goal of the shoot was to follow a bunch of biologists as they captured ducks using swamp boats and spotlights in the middle of the night. The ducks tend to sort of “freeze” when hit with a spot light. A big part of this was for “Bird Flu” research. Our day started at 9:00PM on Sunday night. The research involves swabbing the birds butt for fecal matter. How would YOU like to do be the biologist doing THIS all night long? It didn’t take too many butts for us to decide we had enough footage by about 12:30AM. We then had to be up at 5:30AM to go out to see the “rocket netting” Tulle White Fronted Geese. This involves a net attached to a set of rockets that will go up and over a group of the geese as they come into their favorite beach to get grit. The main goal here is to radio collar the birds, but the birds also get processed for the Bird Flu project. Well we sat and waited until 8:30AM when the biologists decided that our morning had ended with the wind that kicked up. Darn! That would have made some great footage, but we had another chance the next morning.
That afternoon, Ed and I drove up to Fremont Point, the 7000-foot viewpoint overlooking the refuge for some scenic shots. On the 18-mile return trip over gravel road, we hit some nasty rough road in our “soccer mom” of a mini van. “Hey, what is that weird noise” I thought to myself. It turned out to be a blown tire, and I mean blown! The tire was in shreds! Oh great, there we were, 75 miles from the nearest tire shop. It took us about 15 minutes just to FIND the spare tire. It was hidden so well under the vehicle, it even stumped the Les Schwab guys when they tried to put the spare away after installing a new tire for us.
By evening we were back at work at 9:00PM. This was our chance to actually get on board one of the swamp boats as they hunted for their ducks on a moonless night. It was fun on the swamp boat, but shooting at night always adds a challenge, especially on a boat spraying water on the lens. The driver would spotlight a duck and maneuver the boat so that one of his two netters could capture the duck. I was very limited in the number of camera angles I could get. For a couple of minutes I stood on the deck of the boat, one hand on my expensive camera, the other hang holding on for dear life to the metal cage of the propeller. I feared myself and camera going overboard in Summer Lake in the middle of the night. That would be bad, really really bad, but I needed the angle to make the sequence work. I got what I needed and quickly found my secure seat in the bow of the boat. After a couple of crates of ducks were on board, off we went to the processing station. With our footage in hand, Ed and I headed to our warm beds at Summer Lake Lodge, while the biologists had to stay several more hours processing ducks.
