Explore the Hudson

 

Explore the Hudson Hello everyone, Josh here from Children’s Media Project in Poughkeepsie, NY working with our youth directors, Reed and Amina, on “Explore the Hudson,” our Heating Up documentary on climate change in the Hudson River Valley. We have a had a great time working on the film and have collected some really incredible material from the area: For our first shoot we were welcomed aboard the Sloop Clearwater for an educational sail. Clearwater is an environmental education organization that was started by Pete Seeger and is committed to cleaning up the Hudson River. It was a gorgeous day on the river and we interviewed Clearwater educators, crew, and staff as well as New York State Congressman Maurice Hinchey. We also went fishing, hoisted the sails, and had a great music session on the boat. Reed and Amina even got to steer the sloop! Next we interviewed Ned Sullivan, Executive Director of Scenic Hudson, one of the most active and well established environmental conservation organizations in the Hudson Valley (and in the US). Ned provided some great info about the beauty of the river as a natural resource, the effects of climate change, and steps we can take towards conservation. We filmed the interview right on the river and were lucky to see one of the crew teams practicing on the water. We also had the great opportunity to interview Dr. Stewart Findlay, a leading climate change expert at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies. Dr. Findlay offered some scientific insight from his research on climate change and lent some invaluable info about the visible effects of climate change on the Hudson River. Dr. Findlay also provided us with a perspective on the future timeline of climate change, including the steps that we must take to prevent irreversible threats to our planet. Now we’re up to our necks in the editing process and are really seeing the film take shape. Reed and Amina put together a great rough cut and received permission from Bill Staines to use his song “River” in the opening sequence and as the theme song for the film. Many thanks to everyone for the feedback on the rough cut. It’s a great help as we refine our second edit. We’ve been working on improving the B-roll, flow, and timing of everything and will have to comb our sound into shape soon too. We’ll post some stills from the film soon once we pull them and I figure out how to post them in the blog (I am a blog novice here)… Good luck to everyone on their films-they all look great so far! Thanks for watching and supporting “Explore the Hudson”. Best, Josh Baum, “Explore the Hudson” Producer