Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Fitz.
Hi Tom, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
In 1986 I began my career as a wildlife filmmaker. I started as an underwater cameraman and struggled through the first years of trying to find jobs when I didn’t have much work experience behind me. I convinced TV Globo in Brazil to let me film for them for two months for a salary of $0. (Negotiating being my strong point, especially in Portuguese, which I didn’t speak.) But they covered 100% expenses, and I was in heaven -filming for my first bonafide TV show. Afterward work slowly began trickling in, all fairly low budget, and then in 1994, I had my first break with the BBC’s Natural History Unit. This was fortuitous in many respects and served to finally jumpstart my career in a meaningful way.
As time passed, while growing my work, my family grew too. In the early 2000’s I began going into my kids’ science classes and showing behind-the-scenes pics and video clips from my projects. I loved chatting with the students, and they seemed to enjoy it too, as did their teachers. The kids all had such great questions and were always excited to brainstorm ideas and solutions to important issues like habitat loss and pollution. And I realized it could be a great service to create something more formal, to reach larger K-12 audiences with environmental films geared for classroom use. Films that could instill an appreciation for the natural world and the challenges it faces while promoting environmental awareness and good stewardship of the planet. In 2008, Schoolyard Films was created as a non-profit educational charity to do just that.
At our website – www.schoolyardfilms.org – you can find all 17 of our environmental films to date and links to where they can be downloaded or streamed for free via iTunes and PBS Learning Media. Most of the films come with closed captioning and descriptive tracks too, and each one is accompanied by free study guides to help teachers present the concepts in the films. Everything corresponds to state and national science standards. Part of Schoolyard’s educational mission is to offer 100% of our work at absolutely no charge to teachers, students, and schools everywhere, and in order to do so, we pursue grants from foundations and like-minded individuals to fund the charitable work.
Currently, we are producing a series of three films tackling the global problem of ocean plastic. The series will introduce the issue in film one, with albatross as our main character -birds who fly incalculably long distances at sea and who unwittingly consume much plastic. (An aside here… we went to Midway Atoll in the middle of the Pacific to film much of our story, and along the way, we encountered one who many consider to be the most famous bird in the world: “Wisdom”, a Laysan albatross who at approximately 70 years of age is the longest-banded bird on the planet. (This also makes her the oldest known wild bird on the planet.) It was an honor to make her acquaintance!) At present, we are finishing editing this first film, “Paradise Polluted” (working title), and our two follow-up films in the series will look at possible solutions to the myriad problems associated with global ocean plastic, as well as discuss the history, business, and politics of plastic.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As a freelance cameraman, my work has had a steady learning curve associated with it. One grows with each job, and without doubt, that’s true when it comes to filming wildlife for television. Skill builds from project to project, and I’m certainly a better-versed camera operator today than I was 30 years ago, and do a much better job filming for the editor’s needs, whose task ultimately it is to put my images together to tell the most robust story we can.
To give you a glimpse into some of the challenges wildlife camera folks experience, take working with whales, for example. Over the years, I’ve been assigned many cetacean -dolphin and whale- stories to film, which include humpback, sperm, killer, false killer, grey, blue, narwhal, beluga, bowhead, minke, and southern right whales. With a list like this, filming locations are global -i.e., some in warm, tropical waters, some in the icy polar regions, and the rest in between. As for the whales themselves, some appear welcoming when I’ve gotten in the water with them, and others not so pleased to have humans trying to get up close with cameras. Case in point, one of my last humpback stories to film was for a BBC series which looked at females of a variety of species around the globe that had an unusual take on mating strategies. In this case, a female humpback whale orchestrates competition amongst the males interested in fathering her young. It’s a testosterone-filled chase in which she leads up to about 20 males, and the guys show their prowess and suitability for her by battling each other during the chase -known by researchers as “the heat run”. A heat run can last for a few exhausting hours, and the whales move along at a breakneck pace. So… covering this with a camera in the water is a daunting task. I was asked to do it free diving, so I’d be the least encumbered with equipment and could swim my fastest while trying to keep up with the action. On paper, that all seems quite plausible and reasonable. In reality, in the moment, it was a bit more… tense. I’d jump in, see bubbles and blood in the water as the males knocked each other about with barnacle-edged 18’ long pectoral fins (barnacles are razor sharp), and try to get close enough to the action for my images to be clear, but not so close that I’d be in the way of what was going on and change any of the whales’ behavior. Trust me, each time I splashed in was a nerve-wracking and tense time with my mind racing between safety concerns (what moron puts himself in the way of a freight train of 40-ton battling whales?) and calm, rational thoughts of how to best get the variety of shots the film needed. As if that were not enough to sort out, then throw in the freediving part of this assignment… Logically it made sense not to be encumbered with scuba tanks, but in order to breath-hold well at depth and with a large camera in hand, one needs to be very relaxed. Ideally, you take the time before each dive to breathe up (long, slow inhalations and exhalations), slow the heart rate which will extend bottom time, and get into that zen state of calm tranquility. To do all that well and safely come home with the right footage in hand to tell the story was, well, in this case, a supreme challenge to say the least.
All that said, there are very different challenges to meet when wearing the non-profit educational charity hat. Never in a million years had I imagined I’d be the co-founder and Executive Director of one. Talk about starting from scratch with zero skills and the need to raise funds to do the work we wanted to do. Grant writing? I’d never. In fact, I’d never really had a desk job whatsoever, so there was a steep learning curve figuring out how to get up and running. Thankfully I’ve been able to get lots of help and advice along the way, but fundraising is still my biggest challenge. Being a wildlife cameraman is fairly physical, with elements of art thrown in and a need to be able to read animal behavior too. Little of that comes into play in the executive role I have with Schoolyard. But with each passing year I have a bit more help, and our team is growing. And as with filmmaking, I’m discovering that the best work comes from collaboration. As a young filmmaker, a colleague advised me, after seeing me struggle through my first film as producer, director, writer, editor, and cameraman, not to try to wear all the hats -or one risks ending up with a mediocre end product at best. Specialize in the part you love the most and surround yourself with professionals who also have a passion for other elements of the collaboration, and the end result will be much higher quality than if one tries to learn all the skills. I took the advice and concentrated on developing into the best cameraman I can be. And in the non-profit world, I’m finding the same… build a team with people of differing strengths and skill sets, share the same end goal, and the organization will flourish. Today we reach about 700,000 students a year with our films, and we anticipate getting into the millions as we launch our plastic series.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
COVID-19 really expanded our outreach and elevated our presence within the community of professional educators, parents, and service organizations who had to make a sudden transition for instruction and learning. The pivot from in-person learning to digital/remote learning enabled us to provide content for all and to deliver accessible instruction as well. Several (and soon to be all) of our films are available in Spanish. Schoolyard is also a part of the DCMP (Described and Captioned Media Program) for visually and hearing-impaired students. The DCMP has fully Closed Captioned, and Descriptive Narration versions of almost all Schoolyard films available. In addition to being an invaluable resource for science education, there are additional interdisciplinary lessons each film provides that cross the curriculum, like environmental economics of sustainable farming, service learning, etc. And – for ESL students or students taking Spanish as a 2nd language – our films are a wonderful tool to evaluate comprehension and fluency. Films already available in Spanish include Agua Clara, Agua Potable? and El Rescate del Arrecife de Coral. SYF staff have conducted a number of free presentations for classrooms, nature centers, aquaria, and professional conferences via virtual platform during the pandemic, and we plan to continue reaching out in this way.
Pricing:
- 100% free of charge
Contact Info:
- Website: www.schoolyardfilms.org and www.fitz-productions.com
- Instagram: @schoolyardfilms
- Facebook: @Schoolyard Films
- Twitter: @Schoolyard Films
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SchoolyardFilmsOrg
- Other: @schoolyardfilms / schoolyardfilms.tumblr.com
Image Credits
@schoolyardfilms
@KatfishBrown
@phoebefitz
@e.ranney
Randy Miller
