EOC 164: Purple Haze
Earlier this year, I got an email from a listener that stood out. It read, Listening to your podcast in college help me realize I wanted to get into filmmaking rather than field biology because I agree SO much with your viewpoints and the reasons you got into wildlife filmmaking. Holy shit! I thought. We had altered the course of someone’s life with this podcast! His name is Zach Steinhauser, and he had already begun working on his first film by the time he reached out with that email. I responded right away to set up a conversation - there was a sense of responsibility that I had never felt before - I wanted to help ensure that Zach’s project was successful. Now I’ve fielded many calls like this from aspiring filmmakers, but this one was different, and not just because Zach was crediting this podcast as his inspiration. Zach reached out at a time when we were re-assessing the strategic plan for our organization, Wild Lens. You may have heard about this on the episode we released a few months back - episode 153. In a nutshell - we had decided to re-structure the organization as a collective, and to place a heavier focus on creating a network of collaboration and support for people working at the intersection of conservation and media arts. Zach was exactly the type of person we wanted to help - so I asked if I could record our conversation for an episode of the show. Zach's film is about a topic if particular interest to me - purple martin conservation. Purple martins are cavity nesters, like the subjects of my film Bluebird Man, but unlike bluebirds they are completely reliant on man made nesting boxes for their survival throughout most of their range. Zach seeks to explore this relationship between humans and the purple martin in his new film, Purple Haze.