Drew Wharton: A Day in A Seal’s Life
To narrate the film, Wharton enlisted Sylvia Earle, PhD., an oceanographer, author, and lecturer who has spent more than 50 years exploring and protecting marine environments. “I wrote the script specifically for Dr. Earle,” he explains. “I thought, ‘If Sylvia is telling this story, I know people will listen.’ I met with her and showed her rough cuts on a MacBook Pro, and within minutes she said, ‘However I can help, I’m in.’ She’s a complete pro, and a joy to work with. It was a big piece of the project to have her involved — and hopefully it will show.”
Macs on the Beach
With an HD digital workflow that makes the most of Mac OS X and Final Cut Studio, Wharton has an efficient, dependable system that extends from his MacBook Pro in the field to networked Mac Pros in the studio.
“Apple technology saves me a ton of time and money,” he observes. “Our whole workflow is based on Macs, from field acquisition to post production. A Seal’s Life was made on a Mac from start to finish — for me, it didn’t make sense to do it any other way.”
Macs are central to Wharton’s work not only as a documentary filmmaker, but as an all-around media professional and business owner. “My company, Wharton Media, keeps one foot in web production and one foot in HD video production,” he says. “For video post production, Macs are all we’ve ever used. Apple makes a suite of products that you just can’t say ‘no’ to as a professional. You don’t have to get caught up in manuals. You can use the application for as much as you need. And if you need more from the app, you know it’s there.”
During shoots for A Seal’s Life, Wharton relied on Final Cut Studio on a MacBook Pro to review footage. “I had a MacBook Pro and Final Cut under my arm every time we were out in the field,” he notes. “That’s a pretty powerful duo. Having high-definition playback capability in the field was priceless. We were constantly acquiring footage at variable frame rates, shooting high speed, slo-mo and time-lapse effects. We could scrub through video we’d just shot and make sure we had what we needed before going back to the studio.”
The collected footage was assembled on five Mac workstations. “Our post setup comprises networked Macs sitting on a gigabit Ethernet connection with our editing workstations, connected to an Xserve RAID via fiber,” he says.
In addition to Final Cut Pro, one of Wharton’s favorite video production tools is QuickTime. “We assemble everything with QuickTime, whether we’re doing motion graphics, titles, or sound,” he says. “Throughout the post process, my team is creating and sharing QuickTime H.264 window burns either to score to, or for rough comps for Motion. Whatever it happens to be, we can create, export, and then share these QuickTime window burns. It’s a great production assistant!”
Oceans of the Future
For this first-time feature documentary filmmaker, A Seal’s Life represents an ambitious challenge. Wharton succeeded through sheer persistence and the support of key scientists and institutions — plus the power and adaptability of his Mac hardware and software. He hopes the film will become the first in a series that furthers the conservation goals he and his institutional partners share.
A Seal’s Life premiered in June 2007 at California’s acclaimed Monterey Bay Aquarium. A DVD edition is available at select aquarium gift shops in the U.S. and via online merchants such as Amazon. “It will screen at essentially every aquarium on the West Coast, and then it heads to the East Coast,” Wharton says. “Many educational institutions across the country will show it as well.”
Wharton hopes his film inspires viewers to become more mindful of the Northern elephant seal and the ecosystem it represents. “If a classroom full of kids watches the film and has a discussion afterwards, maybe one will become a marine biologist, or a park ranger, or an oceanographer, or a wildlife filmmaker. But beyond that, we all have a role to play in leaving everything a little bit better tomorrow than it is today. If somebody just walks down the beach tomorrow and picks up a soda can, that’s all I can ask for.”
