Seattle International Film Festival at The Center for Wooden Boats

Seattle International Film Festival at The Center for Wooden Boats

My 16 day trip to Texas has erased some important names from this Blog. But fortunately we attended the showing of the competing films and I was able to recapture the names from those attending the event..For some reason the notes I wrote on my Iphone have also disappeared and I don't have a clue on how to recover those as well but I can recount the action part of this.  

The person in the center is the Man in charge, the director Morgan Henery. We all meet briefly on the dock to get an idea of how to best support his shoot of  The Center for Wooden Boats vessels on Lake Union.

The plan was to also get some video from this drone but one of the More experienced sailing instructors reminded everyone that Lake Union is a Federally Controlled Airspace (due to all the Seaplane traffic)  and if they did not have proper permits then they were risking fines from the FAA. The Drone Crew quickly agreed that it would be a bad idea to use the Drone. 

A few last minute comments and we divided up to three sailboats with a camera person in each.

This is Andrew, he is the camera man assigned to our Blanchard Jr. He is a Seattle Native and was very informative regarding exactly what this filming was all about and some good local info as well. 

We tried to stay close together and create a Lake Union image.

This is Nancy and she worked hard to keep our vessel in camera view in a very sporting way. 

At times the winds painted the perfect pic.

Other times we found ourselves far from each other and a bit confused  on what we were supposed to be doing.

The Herrshoff puts a perfect spin on the classic sailing vessel and was featured in the final cut.

This is Frank and Mike, instructors who actually had a few seconds n the final cut.

Nancy at the helm, she is a racer at heart so she keeps the peddle down.

Even coming into the dock she likes to keep her speed up.

Hey Nancy, ready to blow the jib?...NO Not yet!

Now!

We had a 25' space to dock this 20' boat and we were doing 4-5 knots 25 feet from the dock, Guess what happened next?

What a crowd to hang with 

1 free ticket

The Admiral and I attended the World Premier of the Fly Film Making Challenge at the Uptown Theater

Seattle International Film Festival at The Center for Wooden Boats
http://www.siff.net/

All the Volunteer Sail instructors received a email invite to participate in a film project at the Center For Wooden boats. The project was part of the Fly Film Making Challenge Film Competition http://www.siff.net/festival-2014/fly-filmmaking-challenge hosted by the Seattle International Film Festival. This could be my first and last opportunity to appear in a movie of any kind so after checking the dates for any conflicts I emailed Kristin and told her I was all in. I was to slow, all the slots were already taken so I just asked her to put me on the backup list just in case another person was needed. A few days before the filming I got a email from Kristin and one instructor had to drop out so I got the spot.
We were to show up around 5pm to find out our assignments and attend a short briefing on what we would be doing. Morgan Henry was the person running the shoot, later we find out he is the he is the Director, and a very respected one at that in the Seattle Film community: http://creativity-online.com/credits/morgan-henry/1259/1
Morgan directed his crew and the  6 members of the Staff of The Wooden Boat Center participating. There was a crew to operate a Drone to fly over and capture the action from the air but Mike, one of the Volunteer Instructors mentioned that Lake Union is a Federally protected airspace due to all the Sea Plane activity so a quick decision was made to forego the Drone so that crew quickly packed up and left. Two Blanchard Knockabouts with 2 crew + camera person and One Hershoff day sailor with 1 crew + camera person, along with Kirstin on the centers safety boat. We each had a hand held radio to communicate and basically we were to sail close to the primary camera boat (Morgan's) and look lively. The good news was that we had a fresh breeze and plenty of enthusiasm.
I was paired with Nancy a volunteer instructor and Andrew a cameraman. We all sailed about the cameras for well over an hour and Morgan even had a underwater camera that he held underwater as we passed close by the sailboat he was in. Pretty much everything we did was recorded from rigging, de-rigging the boats to all the sailing, and sailing away from the dock and docking under sail.
 We knew that the films were limited to 7 minutes by the competition., The Theme for the competition was "Love Letter To Seattle" and the films would eventually be used to promote Seattle as a destination. The film company had already included the working tugs in the Port of Seattle, the Ferry to Bainbridge Island, the Lake Washington Rowing Club, and a commercial Diver. "Sea Folk" would be the title of the film we were participating in http://www.siff.net/festival-2014/sea-folk
About three weeks later we received a email detailing on how to get a free ticket for the showing. The Admiral quickly found the theater and since it was just a few blocks away from where we live she walked down to get a ticket for herself. We arrived about 45 minutes early and there was already a line forming for the "World Premier". It was getting exciting just hanging out in line with all the film artist. All five films would be shown and afterwards a discussion with the directors and producers. Our film was the first n the menu, Yes I was actually in the film. You could see me from the backside as I was rigging the Blanchard, but if you blinked you missed me. It was even better seeing my name in the film credits and then to top it off during the discussion with the Directors and Producers they asked all those in the audience who worked on the films to stand and be recognized. So I got to Stand to a great applause by a theater full of film artist.
the Admiral and I talked about it later and we both had a lot of fun being in a huge group of right brained artist and be part of their passion and energy for the work they produce.
6/9/14/Update: The film is just been released you can see it here: http://vimeo.com/96914500