Jackson Wild: Nature. Media. Impact.
  • Home
  • About
    • Get Involved >
      • Donate
      • Become a Partner
      • Volunteer
      • Internships
    • Board of Directors
    • Advisory Council
    • Our Team
    • News Room
    • Shop
    • Contact Us
  • Summit
    • 2022 Summit >
      • Summit Photos
      • Program & Schedule
      • Transportation >
        • Airport Transportation
      • Speakers
      • 2022 Partners
      • About Burgenland
    • Summit Archive >
      • 2021 Summit >
        • 2021 Summit Sessions
        • Program & Schedule 2021
        • Speakers
        • 2021 Partners
      • 2020 Virtual Summit >
        • Speakers 2020
        • 2020 Partners
      • 2019 Summit >
        • 2019 Program & Schedule
        • 2019 Session Recordings
        • 2019 Programming
        • 2019 Exhibitors >
          • Exhibitor Workshops
          • XR Demos
        • 2019 Partners
      • 2017 Festival & Summit
      • 2015 Festival & Summit
      • 2013 Festival & Summit
  • Awards
    • Media Awards >
      • 2022 Media Awards
      • 2021 Media Awards
      • 2020 Media Awards
      • 2019 Media Awards >
        • 2019 Judges
      • Media Awards Archive
    • Special Jury Recognitions >
      • 2022 Special Jury
      • 2021 Special Jury
    • World Wildlife Day Film Showcase >
      • Conservation Heroes
      • Recovering Species
      • Forests
      • Biodiversity >
        • Biodiversity: Final Jury
      • Living Oceans >
        • Ocean Finalists & Winners
        • Living Oceans Final Jury
      • Big Cats
      • Elephants
    • Legacy Award
    • Rising Star Award
    • On Tour >
      • Films
      • Schedule
      • Host an Event
      • Tour FAQ
  • Frontiers
    • Media Lab >
      • 2022 Media Lab Fellows
      • 2021 Media Lab >
        • 2021 Media Lab Fellows
        • 2021 Media Lab: South Africa
        • 2021 Media Lab Mentors
      • 2020 Media Lab >
        • 2020 Media Lab Fellows
        • 2020 Media Lab Contributors
      • 2019 Media Lab >
        • 2019 Media Lab Fellows
    • Summit Fellowship >
      • 2022 Summit Fellows
      • 2021 Summit Fellows
      • 2020 Summit Fellows
      • 2019 Summit Fellows
    • Cinematography Lab
    • Partner Labs >
      • African Conservation Voices >
        • Kenya
        • Rwanda
      • 2020 Wild Women Media Lab: Africa
      • 2020 Summit Kenya Lab
  • Collective
    • Narration Writing Masterclass
    • Action Coalitions >
      • 2021 Action Coalitions
      • 2020 Action Coalitions
    • Gear Hub
    • Virtual Event Details
  • Blog

Wild Talk

Five Questions for Filmmakers: Into the Amazon

9/6/2017

0 Comments

 
We reached out to our festival filmmakers to ask them five questions about the experience of making their films.

Into the Amazon- Finalist Trailer from Jackson Hole WILD on Vimeo.

Describe some of the challenges faced while making this film.
 
Producer and Director John Maggio: We knew from the start that we wanted to get as close as possible to the conditions that greeted Roosevelt and Rondon in 1913 and 1914. But, in order to bring the story to life we needed a big crew of extras and a rather big film crew.  We learned pretty quickly that the remoteness of the River of Doubt (today Rio Roosevelt) on the far western edge of the Brazilian Amazon was going to pose real logistical problems for us and our desire to realize the experience as vividly as we wanted.  But, we also knew we wanted to film in the Brazilian Amazon so we chose a tributary of the Rio Negro, the Ariau River that was geographically similar to the River of Doubt – a serpentine and swollen black river that snaked its way through the flooded forest, but was close enough to Manaus that we could ferry all of our equipment.  We had a twenty-person crew that included a second unit drone team lead by cinematographer Bryan Harvey and a first unit helmed by Tim Cragg.  We partnered with a Brazilian fixer who helped organize the transport of lights, generators, camera equipment, food supplies and personnel up the Rio Negro to the Ariau.   We spent nearly three weeks in Brazil during the Zika outbreak and were subjected to one hundred degree temperatures and crippling humidity deluged by torrential rainstorms daily. Keeping our camera and sound equipment dry and lenses from fogging up were a constant problem. During the day our equipment floated just inches above the swollen muddy river.  We often had to suspend shooting because of dangerous caimen (large powerful crocodilians) in the water or when giant pink dolphins surfaced unexpectedly.  We subsisted on local fish caught from the river augmented by rice and beans.   The conditions were brutal. 
 
In order to find the powerful rapids of the River of Doubt we also spent ten days in Jarabocoa, Dominican Republic. There we shot the dramatic gorge scene with a team of a dozen extras and expert climbers to lower the bulky canoes over the fifty-foot falls. In the DR we also had twenty-person crew and second unit drone team.  The conditions were equally as brutal as we had a fifty-foot crane perilously dangling over very powerful waterfalls while trying to navigate class 3 rapids with a full camera crew.  
Picture
Photo courtesy of Into the Amazon
Were there any surprising or meaningful experiences you want to share?
 
JM: We had a dozen extras, Brazilians (all native to the region, many of them descendants of indigenous people) who acted not only as extras in the film, but also our trusty guides through the rainforest and navigating the river, animal wranglers, and they hand-carved a dozen sixteen foot  canoes from local trees.  They provided us with traditional remedies for stomach problems, insect bites, cuts and skin infections.  They could call caimans and howler monkeys, wrangle spiders and sloths and at night steered us clear of anaconda.   The production itself was not unlike the Roosevelt’s fateful River of Doubt expedition as we were at the mercy of our indigenous hosts who lead us in and out of the jungle.   They were incredible people and truly made this film possible.

How do you approach storytelling?
 
JM: I like stories that shine a light on intrepid people who have near fatal flaws - Alfred Kinsey, Walter Freeman(the inventor of the pre-frontal lobotomy) and Theodore Roosevelt; all of them great men whose hubris pushed the limits of reason and self-control.  Roosevelt spent his youth a sickly boy who sought a mastery of nature as a way to take control of his own surroundings.  He became a big game hunter, spent a year on safari in Africa, and provided museums with thousands of specimens of animals and yet he met his match on the River of Doubt in the Amazon. He had reached the outer limits of man’s mastery of the environment.  He was not invincible.  That desire for discovery and control on Roosevelt’s part greatly influenced my approach to this film.
 
What impact do you hope this film will have?
 
JM: There are so few frontiers left, let’s not forget that the Amazon is one of the last and in need of preservation and respect.  We cannot control nature but we can help preserve it and hope it helps sustain us.

Next for the crew of Into the Amazon:
  • Writer/Director John Maggio is directing a feature doc for HBO on the life of legendary Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee called The Newspaperman due to premiere in 2017.
  • Producer Hannah Olson is series producing season five of Finding Your Roots on PBS and directing an independent documentary In the Wiregrass.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    July 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Categories

    All
    Astronomy
    Bajau
    Conservation
    Documentary
    Film Festival
    Filmmaking
    Fishing
    Grand Teton
    Indonesia
    Jackson Hole
    Jago
    National Park
    Nonprofit
    Observatory
    Ocean
    Oceanconservation
    Physics
    Planetarium
    Science
    Solar Eclipse
    Stargazing
    Tetons
    Tourism
    Wildlfie
    Wyoming

    RSS Feed

Subscribe to our e-newsletter
Support us with a donation
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

About Us

Board of Directors
​Shop
Get Involved
Our Team
Privacy Policy
Join our Mailing List
​News Room
​Donate
​
Code of Conduct

Summits

2022 Summit
2021 Summit

2020 Summit
2019 Summit
Become a Partner
Volunteer
​Archive

Awards

Media Awards
Special Jury Recognitions
2022 Media Awards
​2021 Media Awards
2020 Media Awards
2019 Media Awards
​Legacy Awards
​
On Tour
World Wildlife Day Film Showcase

Frontiers

Media Lab
​​African Conservation Voices
​Summit Fellowship

Contact Us

Jackson Wild
240 S. Glenwood, Suite 112
PO Box 3940
Jackson, WY 83001
307-200-3286

info@jacksonwild.org

SITEMAP

  • Home
  • About
    • Get Involved >
      • Donate
      • Become a Partner
      • Volunteer
      • Internships
    • Board of Directors
    • Advisory Council
    • Our Team
    • News Room
    • Shop
    • Contact Us
  • Summit
    • 2022 Summit >
      • Summit Photos
      • Program & Schedule
      • Transportation >
        • Airport Transportation
      • Speakers
      • 2022 Partners
      • About Burgenland
    • Summit Archive >
      • 2021 Summit >
        • 2021 Summit Sessions
        • Program & Schedule 2021
        • Speakers
        • 2021 Partners
      • 2020 Virtual Summit >
        • Speakers 2020
        • 2020 Partners
      • 2019 Summit >
        • 2019 Program & Schedule
        • 2019 Session Recordings
        • 2019 Programming
        • 2019 Exhibitors >
          • Exhibitor Workshops
          • XR Demos
        • 2019 Partners
      • 2017 Festival & Summit
      • 2015 Festival & Summit
      • 2013 Festival & Summit
  • Awards
    • Media Awards >
      • 2022 Media Awards
      • 2021 Media Awards
      • 2020 Media Awards
      • 2019 Media Awards >
        • 2019 Judges
      • Media Awards Archive
    • Special Jury Recognitions >
      • 2022 Special Jury
      • 2021 Special Jury
    • World Wildlife Day Film Showcase >
      • Conservation Heroes
      • Recovering Species
      • Forests
      • Biodiversity >
        • Biodiversity: Final Jury
      • Living Oceans >
        • Ocean Finalists & Winners
        • Living Oceans Final Jury
      • Big Cats
      • Elephants
    • Legacy Award
    • Rising Star Award
    • On Tour >
      • Films
      • Schedule
      • Host an Event
      • Tour FAQ
  • Frontiers
    • Media Lab >
      • 2022 Media Lab Fellows
      • 2021 Media Lab >
        • 2021 Media Lab Fellows
        • 2021 Media Lab: South Africa
        • 2021 Media Lab Mentors
      • 2020 Media Lab >
        • 2020 Media Lab Fellows
        • 2020 Media Lab Contributors
      • 2019 Media Lab >
        • 2019 Media Lab Fellows
    • Summit Fellowship >
      • 2022 Summit Fellows
      • 2021 Summit Fellows
      • 2020 Summit Fellows
      • 2019 Summit Fellows
    • Cinematography Lab
    • Partner Labs >
      • African Conservation Voices >
        • Kenya
        • Rwanda
      • 2020 Wild Women Media Lab: Africa
      • 2020 Summit Kenya Lab
  • Collective
    • Narration Writing Masterclass
    • Action Coalitions >
      • 2021 Action Coalitions
      • 2020 Action Coalitions
    • Gear Hub
    • Virtual Event Details
  • Blog