The process is quick and precise, but not perfect. “We’ve get to shoot in high definition, but we’ve got to block it in standard definition,” says Gildrie. “Barkitecture” airs in both 16:9 widescreen and 4:3 traditional. “Our high-definition stuff looks beautiful, but every once in a while you’ll see some negative space that can’t be avoided because of the down-conversion. It’s disappointing, but it’s an obstacle we have to deal with. If we could compose in 16:9 it would be fantastic, but we’ve got to compose it for everybody.”

Going Native

The Turner South show, “Yokel,” examines America’s strange and often fascinating regional rituals. “It’s wild and unscripted,” says Gildrie. “We go to small-town America and we do what they do, whether it’s a watermelon festival or burning out motorcycles at a bar.” Gildrie and his three-man crew go on the road for four days, shedding their own customs to embrace those of the locals. Gildrie and his crew have accompanied the hosts — Storm, Skillet, and Kevin — to Franklin, Kentucky, for the Franklin Derby, to Pike County, Tennessee, for the Hatfield-McCoy reunion, and Russellville, Alabama, for a watermelon festival.

“I had plenty of time to go back to the hotel room and make short clips for the website. We would just pop into a local cyber cafe and upload QuickTime movies to the site.”

“Basically we shoot from sun-up to sundown,” says Gildrie. All the footage is shot with standard-definition Panasonic digital video cameras and captured on location with 80-gigabyte Focus Enhancements FireStore FS-4 video drives. “Then we dump the stuff onto G-RAIDs to see what we have, to make sure the exposures are working and everything’s functioning. We don’t start cutting everything down until we get back home. It takes about a week to get all the footage for one episode put together.”

Gildrie composes each show with help from an assistant editor on the G-RAIDs, pasting the disparate footage together into a cohesive episode. “It’s a different beast than ‘Barkitecture,’” he says. “With ‘Barkitecture,’ we have three shows cut at the end of four days. It takes us four days to shoot and log all the video for ’Yokel.’” Next season, Gildrie would like to do more editing on location using Final Cut Pro and PowerBook G4s, slicing down the time he needs to produce each episode.

Gildrie is no stranger to hotel-room editing. In 2001, he followed the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra through Europe, shooting its tour with a Panasonic video camera. He digitized and edited the footage using an iBook and Final Cut Pro. “They would perform maybe once a day,” he says. “I had plenty of time to go back to the hotel room and make short clips for their website. We would just pop into a local cyber cafe and upload QuickTime movies to the site.”

Looking Ahead

Gildrie would like to see “Yokel” reach more people than just the Turner South audience. Eventually, he’ll post QuickTime clips from the show on a website for viewing. “It’s not the same as producing content for broadcast, but it’s not difficult with Final Cut,” he says. The show’s site should draw both diehard fans and those who are simply curious, says the filmmaker.

Leaping Waters may also create content for the iPod. “The idea of creating mobile content really intrigues me,” says Gildrie. “We don’t have any definite deals, but it’s something I’d like to explore in the future.” The producer would also like to find the time to finish some of his independent film projects that have been in stasis since Leaping Waters really took off. He has two scripted movies planned and one documentary.

When it comes to editing, Gildrie dreams of having a worldwide team of experienced editors and effects specialists working with him — from their own homes. “I want the ability to have two editors working on one project at the same time,” he says. “I would love to be able to have a color guy correct something while I’m tweaking graphics. I’d like to have all my media on an FTP site so everyone on my crew could work with it wherever they are. That’s my ultimate goal.”