Steven Siegel has a “real job”. He’s a pediatrician. But he also shoots videos of birds. I’m tempted to say it’s something he does in his off-time, but what started as a hobby turned into a video production business and led to him filming birds and consulting for The Big Year, the upcoming movie about three birders doing — you guessed it — a big year. Based on the book of the same name, it’s schedule to be released on Oct 14.
Steven Siegel
Steven started birding when he was 10. A Northern Flicker is what sparked his interest. He continued birding through college, raising a family, earning a Ph.D. in biochemistry and an M.D, a stint in genetics and immunology research, and starting a private practice in pediatric medicine. His wife Wendy doesn’t keep a life list but has an uncanny ability to spot birds and mammals that no one else notices. Steven’s two children, now adults, never showed much interest, but he’s happy to report his daughter and her children have recently discovered birding thanks to a Brown Creeper.
In the mid-90s, he noticed that there were few people shooting video of wildlife, particularly close-ups of birds, but there was a small demand for this footage, so he started Seiurus Video in 1996. Regarding the choice of “Seiurus” as the name, he writes, “…because the videos were educational and the Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus) says “Teacher-teacher-teacher”. Pretty lame but it seemed a good idea at the time. For years people kept asking for “Serious Video” and couldn’t spell the name, no matter how they pronounced it. In 2010 I changed the company’s name to Raven on the Mountain Video Productions.” [He has a lot of useful tips for aspiring videographers, birding information, and other interesting stuff on his website, so check it out. You can also find his videos at YouTube andVimeo.]
Let’s get into the interview [if you’re extremely impatient and need to know about The Big Year right away, that stuff starts with the fourth question]:
John Puschock: The first time I ran into you in Florida was about 10 years ago. We were both chasing some rarity, and you stood out because you had a video camera. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a video camera. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone else chasing a bird with a video-only rig. What got you started in video?
Steven Siegel: I began in the 1980s. My initial intent was to be able to capture a Common Nighthawk at the bottom of its dive in close-up. I felt that doing it as a still would be very hard, but video, with its 30 frames per second just might work. When JVC came out with a camcorder that supported 35mm telezoom lenses, I decided to give it a try. I never did get a focused shot, but video turned out to be so much fun, and so revealing that I never gave it up.
JP: After working on the nighthawk video, did you have any other projects like that, a project where you go out and try to get something specific?
SS: I frequently go after specific subjects. Examples include lekking or booming chickens, and water-walking Western Grebes. I would love to make a project of video and sound of all the thrashers, but the desert ones sing in the winter…hard to get away.
JP: What does Raven on the Mountain Video Productions do? Do you produce your own films or create clips for stock footage purposes?
SS: I do both. I have provided video footage for numerous producers of documentaries, commercials, schools, government agencies, and TV programs. Some of Seiurus’ productions have won contests and awards. My longest video “Miles To Go Before They Sleep” has been shown at Audubon Society meetings and has been entered in The Palmetto Wildlife Film Festival in Beaufort, SC. Specializing in close-ups of small birds, and flight footage, my list of species with useable video approaches 600.
JP: How did you get involved with “The Big Year”?
SS: I had been working with James Currie on the Birding Adventures TVshow. He was contacted by The Big Year and invited me to participate.
JP: What did you do on the movie?
SS: I had many tasks with the movie. The first was as a consultant. The production staff had researched clips from stock footage studios and asked me to review them for suitability. Most were foreign birds, totally wrong for this movie. There were a few usable shots. I also reviewed shots being considered and tried to convince them that certain scenes were wrong. The hordes of Black-capped Chickadees darkening the sky. The Henslow’s Sparrow pecking at a patch of dry ground. The pair of American Woodcocks in a blue sky fly-by (from a suburban window). I think that most of these were canned, but I also believe that the Great Spotted Woodpecker in Oregon and the Pink-footed Goose in Colorado are going to make it. I still don’t understand how the screenwriter came up with this stuff.
In May, James Currie, Jeff Aderman [cameraman for Birding Adventures TV and other shows] and I went to High Island to film for the High Island part of the movie. We missed the April 28 fallout of the decade, but I think they are going to computer generate the fallout anyway. Also in May I was in Washington State and B.C. (actually near where the movie was made) getting Evening Grosbeaks and other stuff. In July I went to North Carolina to film female Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. A female Ruby-throat is a major part of the plot line in the movie. As soon as October arrived, I began shooting Wilson’s Snipe as a surrogate and model for a computer-generated Pin-tail Snipe in an Attu sequence.
In addition, they were also interested in a lot of stock footage. A family of Mottled Ducks comes to mind. I am still on call in case they need anything else, but my understanding is that the director has decided to emphasize more people, less birds.
JP: Do you think birders will be depicted favorably or can we expect to see a lot of the typical stereotypes?
SS: Depending on how old you are, you may remember the birdwatchers of TV: Jane Hathaway, Pamela Livingstone, Mr. Peepers, all harmless eccentrics. The birders in the movie are nothing like that. Steve Martin is a hard-driving but burned out executive. Jack Black is an overworked, impecunious computer programmer. His is the love interest. Owen Wilson is a general contractor. [ed. note: the movie isn't a strict adaptation of the book. The characters are only based on the ones in the book. They aren't identified as Greg, Al, and Sandy.] What they have in common is a passion to compete…in birding, especially Wilson, and the three of them will amass huge lists by the end of the movie. We had several discussions about how birders were going into this movie expecting to see a bunch of boy-scout suited, pith-helmeted old people running around waving their hands at Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. I told them that such an approach would doom the movie. From what I have seen, there is nothing like that.
There may be a briefly embarrassing character who whistles a bird call here or there, but hey, that’s real, too. I saw part of myself and my friends in several of the scenes. There has been a genuine effort to portray birding and birders accurately. The actors were even coached in birding jargon and how to use binoculars naturally. I hope my efforts to get them to show a bird in the binoculars in a circular field instead of a figure eight was successful. Time will tell.
JP: What was it like working with the production staff? Did you have face-to-face meetings or just send them notes? And were they initially resistant to the changes you recommended?
SS: I enjoyed working with the production staff, mostly because I learned a ****load of stuff about codecs, formats, and computer animation. That was from the editing crew right here in Miami. My main contact otherwise wasJeffrey Harlacker, in charge of post production. We bantered a lot mostly by phone, once in person, about birds. I saw him go from clueless to rather facile on the subject. Jeffrey was usually receptive. It turns out that the director is Caesar in a movie. Any suggestion I made had to be run by him. There were so many wholesale changes made in this movie over time that one’s suggestions were as often as not swamped out when complete scenes were changed or cut.
One impression I was left with is that the number of employees and consultants on a movie is huge. Very often they are working on different platforms (one guy editing on Final Cut Pro, another on Avid, for example) and they can’t cross-communicate. As a result a piece of film that needs to be processed by multiple people gets hung up for lack of a cable, or “my computer can’t read this”.
They prepare painfully detailed daily schedules and instructions for the shooting crews and actors, but leave the post-production guys to their own devices. You work in a fog. Would I do this as full-time job? In a heartbeat.
JP: The editing crew was in Miami — was that a local production company or did they send a crew to be near you?
SS: The director just happens to live in Miami. That’s why the edit crew was here. They normally live in New York.
JP: I’m sure some of the readers will be interested in the technical aspects of filming. What equipment did you use, and was this your normal rig or did you get to upgrade?
SS: I shoot a Canon XLH-1. This and the Sony PMW EX-3, new to me, were the camcorders used. These are both medium-sized, professional camcorders, larger than the ones most people have at home, but smaller than the big Nightly News machines. The film people preferred the Sony, which we rented. I shot on a tripod with super telezooms (which both these cameras accept). Jeff Aderman shot wide, shoulder mounted, with the camcorder’s standard lens. Shooting birds is easy. The problems come afterward. Movie folks are used to film, and hold everything to its standard. What looks beautiful on video (where the biggest screen it will go on is maybe 50 inches across, and usually just a computer monitor) may be inadequate for a movie theater. There was much anguish over blowing up videos for a movie.
JP: Your name is going to be in the credits of a big-time movie. Have you thought about that? Did you ever think that would happen?
SS: Of course I salivate over seeing my name in the credits of a major motion picture. More, though, I want to be able to say that my name is in the credits of a major motion picture. The credits go by so fast that no one sees them, and I know they will misspell Siegel. Nice bragging rights, though. No I never thought it would happen, but with my new knowledge and updated skills, I hope it will happen again.
JP: Is there anything else you’d like to share with the readers?
SS: The producers have taken a huge gamble, in birders’ interests, in making this movie. Although everyone knows that major motion pictures can be made with video (like The Blair Witch Project), this may be the first time that one has depended extensively on video images of creatures as small as songbirds. Blowing these up to the size of the big screen and still making them look good is a technically daunting and expensive proposition. If this movie is successful, we birders may see more. If not, it’s back to obscurity.
The purists among us are going to see this movie and nitpick it apart. There are going to be errors that even an expert birder couldn’t prevent. Keep in mind that this isn’t Winged Migration. It’s a comedy. For the sake of the story, for the sake of audience interest, liberties had to be taken. They tried really hard to be authentic and for the most part I think you will find that they were. They tried really hard to be respectful to the environment, even having a consultant on site when there was any risk of damaging sensitive locations. Although I haven’t seen but a few brief clips, I believe that viewers will see people, and recognize situations they know, and get a laugh out of this film that will go right over the heads of nonbirders.
Go into this film intending to critique it like a new field guide reviewed inBirding and you will be disappointed. Go into it like you were out to have a good time with birding friends, and I think you will come out smiling.
JP: Thanks for taking time to answer my questions. I hope you get to work on some more movies like The Big Year, perhaps The Big Year 2: The Big Day.
[Editor's note: this interview first ran at John's blog, Z Bird Birding Blog in March 2011.]
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