THE MESSENGER WINS BEST CONSERVATION FILM AWARD AT JACKSON HOLE

in News by SongbirdSOS October 8, 2015 0 comments

On October 1, in Jackson, Wyoming, THE MESSENGER was honored with a Best Conservation Program Award at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festivals’ Grand Teton Awards Gala. The Best Conservation Program Award is “Awarded to the program that most effectively contributes to an awareness of timely and relevant conservation issues and/or solutions.” Finalists included Racing Extinction, and I Bought A Rainforest.

THE MESSENGER is an artful investigation into the causes of songbird mass depletion and the compassionate people who are working to turn the tide, directed by award-winning filmmaker Su Rynard. The 90 minute film takes viewers on a visually stunning journey revealing how the issues facing birds also pose daunting implications for our planet and ourselves.

Producers Martin de la Fouchardiere and Diane Woods were at the ceremony to accept the award.

Directed by: Su Rynard

Producers: Joanne P. Jackson, Sally Blake, Martin de la Fouchardiere, Su Rynard and Diane Woods

Written by: Su Rynard and Sally Blake

Directors of Photography: Daniel Grant and Amar Arhab

Picture Editor: Eamonn O’Connor

Sound Design and Composer: Phil Strong

Additional Editing: Sally Blake and Carole Larson

Additional photography: Laurent Charbonnier, Christopher Romeike

and Joshua See

Sound Re-Engineering Mixer: Daniel Pellerin

Line Producer: Diane Warme

Post Production was done at Urban Post in Toronto.

THE MESSENGER is an international treaty co-production between Canada and France, produced by SongbirdSOS Productions and Films à Cinq/ARTE.

US Distribution – Kino Lorber

International Sales Agent ZED

Jackson Hole press release here

About Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival: Recognized as the premier event of its genre, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival is an unparalleled biennial industry gathering. Hosted biennially in Grand Teton National Park, over 650 international delegates participate in an exceptional slate of leading edge equipment presentations, seminars and state-of-the-art screenings.

The Festival’s international board members include: Animal Planet, BBC Natural History Unit, Discovery Channel, Disneynature, FujiFilm Optical Devices, Gorongosa Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Tangled Bank Studios, National Geographic Channel International, National Geographic WILD, National Geographic Society, National Parks Conservation Association, The Nature Conservancy, Nature/WNET, Off the Fence Productions, PBS, Sony Electronics, Terra Mater Factual Studios and UNIVERSUM/ORF, Vulcan Productions, WGBH, and World Wildlife Fund.

THE MESSENGER is currently screening at Film Festivals worldwide.

More info at www.theMessengerDoc.com

Mountains, Fjords & Films

in Director's Blog by Su Rynard October 3, 2015 0 comments

Bergen Film Festival

On Norway’s southwestern coast surrounded by mountains and fjords, is the 1000 year old city of Bergen. It’s a great mix of old and modern, brightly coloured historic wooden homes on cobble stone streets are steps away contemporary architecture and state of the art cinema’s. A renovated, full of character, waterfront sardine factory was one of the venue’s by the BIFF festival.

Old Bergen

approaching Bergen

The Messenger was part of a program called KLIMAFESTIVALEN, a group of 8 films that all, in different ways, touched on the theme of Climate Change. In addition to two very successful public screenings, The Messenger was part of the School Program and a Master Class at the University.

Hakon Tveit at Bergen Film Festival in Norway

BIFF also offers a robust School Program. Masterminded by Hakon Tveit they grouped three films; The Messenger, License to Krill and Racing Extinction and showed them in one day to a group of 500 high school kids. How amazing is that! I found myself wishing I was 17 again.

Some of these enthusiastic students also run the film magazine Kinosyndromet and Utenriksmagasinet MIR with Bergen Student Radio broadcast on Chagall 2100. They invited me to discuss The Messenger. I confess was expecting a typical Canadian college radio station in a basement with some basic equipment and all night music. Not so, the show was hosted live in front of an audience by two enterprising young women, in a technically sophisticated and crowded social venue. You can download the podcast here – originally broadcast – Tuesday Sept 29, 2015

The University of Bergen hosted a Masterclass in science communication titled “Get the Message Out”. The intent was to create a dialogue between the filmmakers, broadcasters and scientists with the goal of improving our ability to communicate science to a broader audience.

The kick-ass panelists were Thomas Wallner, Director of POLAR SEA 360. Me, Director of THE MESSENGER. Carina Bordewich, Acquisition Executive, NRK. Kaare Hersoug, Head of Development at Teddy TVand Øystein Jansen, Assistant Professor at the University Museum of Bergen – all of whom shared thier diverse, innovative and creative approaches.

On another level the topic felt especially important to me as a Canadian, as in recent years our scientists have been muzzled by the current government. For more on this listen to the great CBC podcast series Science Under Siege.

Thomas Wallner & Su Rynard

Get the Message Out

On another note entirely, I highly recommend a film I was fortunate to see at BIFF called Poached.

Directed by Timothy Wheeler, Poached reveals the bizarre underworld of illegal bird egg collecting. The film follows convicted egg offenders as they evade an army of bird lovers and wildlife crime police during “Operation Easter” in Britain. As the most notorious eggers begin to realize the destructiveness of their behavior, we wonder whether they ever can be redeemed and harnessed for good.

The festival has a wonderful hard working & talented team that made my brief visit a worth while experience.

Thanks to BirdLife Norway for helping to spread the word.

A Different Tomorrow

in Director's Blog by Su Rynard September 28, 2015 0 comments

Reykjavik International Film festival

This year, RIFF could have been called the festival of amazing women in film. Margarethe Von Trotta was the special guest, and her Q & A was moderated by the former (female) prime minister of Iceland – Vigdis Finnbogadottir. When I stepped onto the stage for The Messenger Q&A one of the many faces in the audience was that of Bjork. She was not a special guest of the festival, and did not receive any kind of VIP invite to the screening. She selected her films and simply bought her tickets on-line, just like any other Icelander.

In addition to the impressive audience and moderators, there were many great films with female directors including, Amber Fares wonderful film Speed Sisters, about a team of women street racers in Palestine and Paris based Leila Bouzid beautiful and powerful film, As I Open My Eyes, a coming of age story of a young girl pushing boundaries testing the limits in Tunisia.

I confess there was little time for anything other than the busy-ness of the film festival, however when walking through town many birds were present. Near city hall the Tjornin Pond is home to the Whooper swan, Graylag goose and the Lesser black-backed gull. But beyond Reykjavik ponds, Iceland’s seabird colonies are vanishing. Our high-carbon lifestyle is turning up the oceans’ thermostat, and seabirds are feeling the heat. The leading reasons behind this are the array of profound changes under way in the world’s oceans—their climate, their chemistry, their food webs, their loads of pollutants.

A Different Tomorrow

The task of change can sometimes feel overwhelming. Yet when at a festival like this I am inspired by other films that creatively and beautifully address many of the concerns we are facing today. RIFF featured a program called A Different Tomorrow – These films shed light on environmental and humanitarian topics because, sometimes the right film can change the world. If any of these films come your way, please watch! Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World, How to Change the World, Planetary, and Last of the Elephant Men.

The Messenger screening prompted the comment “I didn’t know this was happening” and question “What can I do?” Both of these statements I can very much identify with. Before making this film, I was in the “I didn’t know” category. As changes in bird populations from year to year can be barely perceptible, but over time, they snowball to create the shocking statistics that face us today. There is no one cause, no “smoking” gun for songbird declines, so how do we combat these multiple threats around the globe? A simple start is to – get outside, go for a walk, and listen. Then visit https://songbirdsos.com/take-action/ Every bit helps.

Les Landes and the Ortolan

in Director's Blog by Su Rynard September 16, 2015 0 comments

This fall, the illegal hunting of birds is much in the news and I am reminded of a September, two years ago when we filmed our story about the trapping of the Ortolan bunting in Les Landes, France.

The Ortolan Bunting is a beautiful little songbird that used to be common but has declined in the last 30 or 40 years. Each fall the Ortolan migrate from all over Europe to their wintering grounds in Africa. The Ortolan are largely grain eaters, and they spend the summer working on building up their fat reserves so they can survive this long migration. It is their diet and their fat that makes them particularly appealing to humans, as they are delicious to eat, and in France there is a long-standing tradition of doing just that.

Napoleon granted the right to hunt and trap small birds to the peasants. The large game was reserved for the noblemen. To this day this tradition continues. Les Landes is an important stop over site for the migrating Ortolan. It is also a battleground between Hunters who continue to trap (and eat) the bird and activists who wish to put an end to this practice. Trapping of the Ortolan bunting was banned in 1999, yet despite the fact the hunt is illegal the French authorities turn a blind eye. The stakes are high.

To tell this story we filmed with the hunters and with the activists who touch down each year, at the same time as the migrating Ortolan. Their mission is to protect the birds. The activist groups unofficial leader was Andrea Rutigliano, an Investigations Officer. With CABS, Committee Against Bird Slaughter, Andrea, an Italian anthropologist has been doing this kind of work all over Europe for almost 20 years. He speaks five different languages, loves birds, knows his politics and his science. Science is key in this battle as local hunters defend their right to trap, believing that the hunt is sustainable and the numbers affected by trapping are pale in comparison to other problems the birds face. That said, in France the nesting population of Ortolan is in danger of extinction.

As a recent article in The Guardian states 25 million birds are illegally killed each year in the Mediterranean, and nearly half the killings occur in EU states where the hunting of songbirds is banned and there is a massive failure of governments and the authorities to act. In the Messenger, Andrea tells us “You cannot defend a tradition that is not sustainable anymore… a tradition is not something that must be kept alive at any cost.”

Wise words. You can see the entire scene in The Messenger.

Mixing Sound – a sensory experience of place

in Director's Blog by Su Rynard April 6, 2015 0 comments

In filming The Messenger we travelled to three different continents, and each place we went possessed a unique acoustic and auditory character. From the editing to the final mix, I felt it was imperative that we fully articulate this sensory experience of place and time.

Supervising Re-recording Mixer Daniel Pellerin with Re-recording Mixer Chris Guglick

As our final sound mix gets underway at URBAN POST in Toronto, we are very lucky to be working with the talented duo of Daniel Pellerin Supervising Re-recording Mixer and Christopher Guglick Sound Re-recording Mixer. These guys make for a super-busy team, as in the last few weeks they have mixed the films “Remember” (Atom Egoyan) and “Milk” (Noemi Weis). From a practical perspective, this takes a team. So for many months, composer and sound designer Phil Strong has been fine-tuning music, location ambiences and bird song.

Chris Guglick; “The most unique aspect of mixing this film was the scope and range of all the different sounds of birds. Phil did an amazing job organizing all the sounds which allowed me to take all of the different birds and give them a life on screen. I have worked in many different human languages, but working in the language of another species entirely was something new for me.”

Re-recording Mixer Chris Guglick at Urban Post

Because our schedule and budget are very tight, Phil was just a day or two ahead of the mixers with his work, sometimes outputting the original music just hours before it was needed in the mix theater – quite the marathon indeed. Importantly, the mix is a creative journey in its own right, as the work is both intense and intuitive. Daniel Pellerin;

“With every film you have to find the language that suits the film. The tone of the characters, quality of the voices, the sense of unfolding time and emotion of the story.”

Joanne Jackson, Producer Left. Su Rynard, Director Right.

As a director, my work is very nuanced, often contemplative, and layered in both content and context. Sound plays a pivotal role. It is often the aural experience that positions how a scene will be experienced and interpreted. In The Messenger we walk a razor sharp edge between tragedy and joy, dramatic tension and release, optimism and sobering truths. In most cases it is the sound that tips the scale to what the experience will be. This balance is not something that can easily be achieved, but with this team I knew I was in good hands. Daniel Pellerin;

“I love docs that have to do with nature, as the challenge is to make it immersive — putting the audience in the theatre yet creating the feeling that they are not in the theatre. In this film, music and birds are the lead “instruments” and a delicate balance is required.” This idea is taken a step further by Chris Guglick;

As a sound effects mixer I’m often asked to turn down the sound of birds because they can distract from the action in the film. This film gave the birds a leading role that could, if executed poorly, distract from the important information being expressed by the other characters on screen. Finding that balance was key.

Here is a taste of the mix experience. A brief pirate recording of my own film, created on my iphone. Enjoy.

THE MESSENGER WINS BEST CONSERVATION FILM AWARD AT JACKSON HOLE

Related posts:

Mountains, Fjords & Films

Bergen Film Festival

A Different Tomorrow

Reykjavik International Film festival

A Different Tomorrow

Related posts:

Les Landes and the Ortolan

Related posts:

Mixing Sound – a sensory experience of place

In filming The Messenger we travelled to three different continents, and each place we went possessed a unique acoustic and auditory character. From the editing to the final mix, I felt it was imperative that we fully articulate this sensory experience of place and time.

“With every film you have to find the language that suits the film. The tone of the characters, quality of the voices, the sense of unfolding time and emotion of the story.”

Related posts: