Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

26 September 2014

Equipment miniaturization complicates wilderness filming policy

Filming in wilderness. When Technicolor first became a viable process, it’s on-location presence included a portable laboratory housed in a huge black railcar. The TC three-strip camera used to film Becky Sharp was almost as big as half a Volkswagen Bug. Now movies are shot with iPhones.

That complicates the Forest Service’s task in writing wilderness regulations that exclude movie and television and commercial photography while not curtailing the First Amendment rights of news photographers and recreational visitors.

Hollywood’s megalomaniacal directors would never settle for a four-man shooting party, no matter how much sense it made. Working light and traveling lighter is not their way. They prefer — indeed, their psyche’s need — location camps the size of small villages. To film in wilderness, they would want to build new settlements in wilderness in violation of the Wilderness Act. Denying permits for that kind of excess is easily justified. So is denying access to television news parties that want to drive their satellite link vans into wilderness on wide trails and old roads (yes, there are grown over roads in some wilderness areas; a story for another time).

But less egocentric filmmakers have options with far less impact. Equipped with lightweight video cameras such as the Red Epic Dragon a four-person foot party practicing leave only footprints, take only photographs, backcountry travel could easily shoot a minimalist movie without damaging the land, and quite possibly without even being noticed. Using the same equipment, one man on foot, virtually indistinguishable from an ordinary hiker, and less intrusive than an amateur still photographer with an 8 x 10 view camera and a mule, could shoot footage for B-roll for and chroma key. Denying permits to these filmmakers is more difficult to justify, especially when trying to distinguish them from journalists who are protected by the First Amendment.

I’m amenable to proposals for permits allowing some B-roll and chroma key shooting — perhaps a pool arrangement with two or three shooting days a year — as long as actors and interviewees stay home. That would make wilderness scenery available for filmmakers while minimizing impacts. I’d be willing to consider proposals of that nature.

What I won’t consider are issuing permits for wilderness filming operations to Hollywood style location camps, reality shows (just the though of a reality show shot in wilderness gives me angina), television and internet commercials, and heavy on the land news documentaries.

News and movies and commercials are being made all the time. All the wilderness we’ll ever see in our lifespans has been made, and figuratively speaking, the production line has been shut down forever. What we don’t preserve now will never return.