Wildlife film panel addresses ‘bleak’ future

Nature genre threatened by disinterest, delegates
claim

American television audiences are too sad and
scared to embrace the serious, sometimes
depressing fare of many wildlife filmmakers,
especially those who deliver a "green" message,
"Wild America" producer Marty Stouffer said
Tuesday.

By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian

"We are confused, crowded, angry and – I believe
– sad," Stouffer told the opening session of the
25th International Wildlife Film Festival. "We want
to be entertained, not educated. We want Rush
Limbaugh, not Walter Cronkite. We want
cartoons, not serious natural history
programming."

"It is kind of bleak," said Cathe Neukum, whose
conservation film series was canceled by Turner Broadcasting because of low ratings. "I tried to push
back, but you can’t push when people don’t want it. I wonder where these films can even be shown."

In fact, many of the delegates at the yearly film festival – the oldest of its kind – said they came to
Missoula from the unemployment line. Over the past 10 years, networks and sponsors have dropped
dozens of wildlife and natural history programs in response to low ratings, they said.

"Marketing did not like us. For the most part, TBS did not like us," said Neukum, who is now making
a film for MTV – about the music scene in Atlanta. "At least I know it’s entertainment."

But Stouffer and others said they are developing new outlets for their work on the Internet, in
museums, in more entertainment-oriented films and in programs that take a "current affairs"
approach. And the producers of "Animal Planet" and National Geographic Television said films can be
popular and populist and still deliver a conservation message.

"Natural history films are like Rasputin," said Charles Foley, executive producer of "Animal Planet,"
the Discovery Channel’s highly rated wildlife series. "We poisoned him, stabbed him and threw him in
the dungeon, but he didn’t die."

But every film has to tell a story, cautioned Kathryn Pasternak, supervising producer for National
Geographic Television and Film. "Time and time again, films don’t get on the air because they are not
telling good stories. That’s the bottom line: You have to tell good stories."

The conservation message, she said, will come through – even when packaged as entertainment.

In fact, film producer Adrian Caddy suggested delegates rent "Dr. Doolittle II" if they doubt the
potential of entertainment to bring home a green theme. "It was 90 percent wackiness, but there was
a conservation message too," he said.

Lisa Grossman, head of production for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City,
intends to use films – long, short and interactive – in her renovation of the museum’s century-old Hall
of Ocean Life. Museum exhibits can only be updated every 30 or 35 years, she said. Films can add
currency.

Mike Gunton, an editor for the BBC’s natural history unit, said British audiences responded well to
several recent films that took a "journalistic stance, almost like current affairs programming." One, he
said, "even took on global climate change, which you’d think would be certain death."

Instead, it drew an audience of 3.1 million.

The key, he said, "was that we found intimate stories of individual people who were directly affected
by the problem. We told their stories."

Stouffer, for 15 years the host of PBS’s "Wild America," is taking his work to the Internet, through the
convergence of computers and television. "There has always been the struggle between
entertainment and education," he said. "My hope is that we can put the entertainment on TV and the
education and information online."

He is compiling a video encyclopedia of North American wildlife: moose, mockingbirds, grizzly bears.
He wants the library available online to all comers, in an interactive format. Television, he said, cannot
offer the same choices for – and interaction with – viewers.

The world has changed, Stouffer said, and filmmakers have new realities. "We live in a crazy world,"
he said. "Audiences can’t handle the truth anymore. We can’t even look out the window anymore.
We’d rather watch the weather channel."

Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at [email protected]

If you’re interested

The International Wildlife Film Festival continues Wednesday with panel discussions on "ecomedia"
and "ethical filmmaking" at the Boone and Crockett Club and film screenings at the Wilma Theater.
The full conference schedule is available online at http://www.wildlifefilms.org.

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