Love & Life Beyond the Glass

Documentary Filmmaker Chris Stanford joins us to discuss his film, "Love and Life Beyond the Glass". The film showcases the relationship between staff and sea lions and plays daily in the Aquarium's Honda Pacific Visions Theater.

“This film shows what we do here at the Aquarium… Our staff and animals are the heart and soul of this place,” said Dr. Peter Kareiva, Aquarium of the Pacific president and CEO.

Episode resources:

• Follow @podcific on Instagram!
• Transcript
• "Love & Life Beyond the Glass" Info
• Trailer
• Sea Turtle Release Commercial
• Loggerhead Release

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Hi, I'm Erin Lundy. And I'm Madeline Walton, and this is Aquarium of the Pod Civic, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, Southern California's largest aquarium.

SPEAKER_05 0:15

Join us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation, and more. Welcome back to Aquarium of the Pod Civic. I'm Erin Lundy, manager of Conservation Initiatives, and I'm joined by my wonderful co-host.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Hello. This is Madeline Walden. I'm the Aquarium's digital content and community manager.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

He came in real heavy with that H. Hello?

SPEAKER_03 0:35

If you got headphones on, you can hear it sounds amazing. You can hear the letters before they escape my mouth. Who do we have on today, Madeline? We have Chris Stanford. He is a documentary filmmaker. Chris made the film Love and Life Beyond the Glass that plays daily in our Honda Pacific Vision Theater. It's an amazing film. It's all about our sea lions and the relationship they have with the staff there, including Miss Aaron Lundy. And it's just it's a tearjerker. Like, if you come and see it in person, definitely bring some tissues because it'll get you good.

SPEAKER_05 1:04

I've had a couple people come up to me that they like had seen me in the movie and they're like, hey, you made me really sad earlier. And I'm just like, I'm sorry. Was it in person or did you see the one? Like, what do I need to do here? Um, but it is a beautiful documentary, and Chris did such an amazing job. He was so easy to work with his whole crew, which is unheard of, like 25 people being easy to work around animals at the same time, especially ones that are not used to being filmed every day. Um, it was a really fun process, and Chris has so much good insight. So I get to learn a little bit about him and his history and how he grew up around watermelons and how he ended up here.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yeah. It's so cool. And if you want to watch the film, you can only do so at the aquarium. You have to visit our Honda Pacific Vision Theater. Come see my face 15 feet tall.

SPEAKER_04 1:47

So big. That is the most jarring part, is being so big. I've never seen myself so large before. Never imagine yourself on the big silver screen.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

The literal big screen. It's incredible. Well, let's get into our episode. We are so lucky to have on documentary filmmaker Chris Stanford. Hi, Chris.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

We're mostly today going to talk about Chris's film that he made for the aquarium called Love and Life Beyond the Glass.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Starring.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Starring our very own Aaron Lundy, tearjerker Aaron Lundy.

SPEAKER_05 2:18

Starring most of our team here that works with our seals and sea lions. I happen to be in it, though.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

It's so scene Stealer.

SPEAKER_05 2:25

It's only the really sad part that makes people feel bad for me that I'm in it. But it was a really fun process, and we really enjoyed making that documentary. But before we get into that, we want to know a little bit more about you.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

So I was born and raised in the deep south at a little town called Cordill, Georgia. Fun fact. Watermelon capital of the world.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Georgia.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

That's right. I don't know that that has been verified, but we're sticking with it.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

We don't care about facts on this. That's what we say.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

It's on the billboard when you come into town, so um, we're sticking with it.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

I believe it. So doubted a billboard.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's truth in them. So, yeah, born and raised in the deep south, fell in love with photography in high school, had a high school teacher introduce it to me, and uh shout out to uh Altos Godfrey. We're still texting buddies, he's a great dude. And then went to college to be a documentary photographer, uh, wanted to be a war photographer, graduated. First job was at the Washington Post in DC, came up through the newspaper world and figured out pretty quickly that I didn't like getting shot at. And so, yeah, and so sort of morphed into shooting a lot of sports, and then tons of advertising, tons of magazine assignments, and then someone asked me to direct a TV commercial, and I fell in love with directing. That was about 2008, and so I, with my documentary background, I still direct a lot of TV commercials, a lot of TV commercials with athletes, but yeah, the documentary world has always been a passion of mine from my newspaper days.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Cool. How was the transition of going from photo to video?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Well, technically there's a lot lots of things to learn, but it was all storytelling. You know, it was all kind of moving an audience and making someone laugh or making someone cry or you know, inspiring someone to do something. So all of that was the same, and that was around the same time that Canon made this camera called the 5D, which shot video as well. And so that opened the doors to a lot of people that didn't have traditional film backgrounds because the barrier to entry was the equipment. Yeah, there it's very expensive, hard to get your hands on, and not not really easy to learn if you were able to borrow a fancy camera. So that little 5D sort of opened the doors to a lot of folks like myself, and then of course, just you know, learned all the systems after that. So so it was uh you asked me how the transition was. It was it was easy in some ways, difficult in others, but super joyful. Just another way to tell stories.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Yeah, I I guess I never really thought I remember the rollout of the 5D and realizing you know, you if you know how to use a DSLR already, now you can transition to video and it was pretty seamless. But I didn't even think about the fact that, yeah, back then you would have necess like you would have need to rent video camera equipment very specific to whatever you're trying to shoot.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah, just a totally different kind of um language, if you will. You know, it's like you know, you're very fluent, proficient in one language, and then someone just throws you into a foreign country and you've got to be proficient and fluent in that country's language, similar to that. So that 5D was just kind of a a gateway into understanding the other languages.

SPEAKER_05 5:52

Aaron Powell What kind of drew you to wanting to be initially a war photographer and then you kind of getting more into sports? What was sort of your motivation to get into both of those different subjects?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Aaron Powell So I have always had growing up in the in the in the south, grew up in a pretty, you know, blue-collar, sort of poor family where everyone told stories. Now they may tell the same stories every Thanksgiving or every Christmas or whatever, but they were always great stories and they would hold your attention and by telling the same story over and over again, you learned what the core of the story was. So they would cut all the fat out of it. And so when an uncle would tell a story, or when your grandmother would tell a story, everyone would sit on the edge of their seat because it was practiced, like it was well crafted. And so I came from a family that did that really well. And the reason I was drawn to journalism is in Cordille, Georgia, there were no other writers. The only storytellers in my little hometown were from my little hometown newspaper. So maybe I would have been a different kind of storyteller, but it's what I knew. You know, we knew the folks at the uh at the newspaper, and that's what we read. And so so it was really kind of the easiest pathway, or kind of the only pathway I knew, maybe.

SPEAKER_05 7:17

It was that or watermelons. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Picking watermelons, which I did a lot of that growing up too.

SPEAKER_05 7:23

I think one of the things that I really like about your work and what makes it so like draws people in is you really do a great job of connecting that human element of every story. And even in, you know, a film that's about the aquarium in some ways, it really ended up being something that people connected to on a very human level and kind of watching all of your work, even the commercials, you know, like I feel like that's really hard to capture in that format. And I really love seeing that sort of human storytelling side of every single piece that you produce, which is amazing to see.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Definitely. It must come from that personal connection to the stories that you grew up with. You're connecting to the person, not necessarily the story. And here I think you did a great job connecting to the people who tell the story. That's wonderful. And then trimming the fat. And then trimming the fat. Yeah, trimming.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Well, when I was in college, we we all I went to Western Kentucky University, and which was the premier school for photojournalism, which that's not saying a lot. There's like six schools in the country that teach it. But of those six, Western Kentucky is uh is kind of the gold standard. But one of the weed out classes was called photojournalism. And it was your fourth class there, and the first assignment of that class was to spend two weeks with a farmer, and you had to document that farmer's life. It was always in the fall, and it was always tobacco cutting season. So you almost always found a farmer that was harvesting tobacco, which is the hardest thing to do on a farm. So long days, and one of the requirements of the assignment was you had to photograph the farmer in his or her kitchen having their first cup of coffee. So you gotta quickly get to know this family within a day or two and build trust enough so that they'll let you in their home when their kids are still in their pajamas to photograph them having their first cup of coffee is no easy task. So it was one of those things that taught you patience and understanding and being vulnerable yourself as a storyteller and sort of enduring yourself onto others and sort of sitting back and listening to what the story was. So, so yeah, I mean, we would go and everybody would do a farmer story and it was a bunch of pictures of of, you know, people farming. But for those kids that could get one layer past that and and show some sort of humanity, whether it was, you know, if their kid was a star athlete and they farmed all day and supported their kid, you know, whatever it was, like if you could find that little nugget of what made these people different, that's when the stories got really good. And so kind of learned through that class at Western Kentucky is you know, the story is is never just on the surface, it's never about a group of people working with seals and sea lions. It's always deeper than that, and that's the easy part. You just shoot your camera and listen, no pun intended, but that's like shooting fish in a barrel. Like you gotta, I mean, you gotta dig a little deeper and find out like what is the connection here and and really to talk about this film, we uh Peter, the CEO, and I started talking about what a film could look like if I did a film for the aquarium. And so he's like, Hey, listen, you can kind of do whatever you want, we'll give you the budget, you go in and f and pick what you want to do. And so the Seals and Sea Lions were the lowest hanging fruit because they're just so naturally charismatic, charismatic and curious and cute, and they're right there with us. But I knew spending I spent a couple of weeks just hanging around the aquarium and you know, meeting folks, and and it became evident that the staff really loves what they do. And so I went to uh Peter and I was like, you know, I think the film that I want to do is a love story, just a just a good old-fashioned love story. And we'll do it with the we'll do it with the team that works with the SILs and sea lines. And so, yeah, we'll see them working hard, we'll see, you know, the animals reacting and or not reacting, or you know, whatever the thing is. But what we really want to do is tell a story about the passion that these people have for these animals, and then in turn, what these animals have taught these people. And that's really what we were trying to do, which I think we did a good job of.

SPEAKER_05 12:03

Oh, I think you did amazing. Yeah. So good. It was beautiful. You know, someone who was part of the process and kind of saw everything happening to see sort of the finished product of it was super emotional, number one, because it felt very personal to me and to, you know, most people on my team. But in a way that it it felt like we were being seen. And I feel like that's really hard to capture. The spirit of what we do, the spirit of how much work goes into it, but the reason why we do it is because there's just so much love there. And to see that just kind of played out on a screen in front of you as a this is a story about your life is very in some ways a little bit jarring, but in other ways very vulnerable. And I watched it for the first time with my team, and we were just in tears watching it. It is very strange. It's a very strange feeling, but I loved it.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

And I think you did it right. I think, Chris, you coming in here and meeting the team and seeing how contagious that energy is. Like you can't help but not make a movie about it, I think, especially in your position. But you really let them tell their own story too, which I think is so important. You just it turned into something really, really incredible.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah, no, it was um it was a lot of fun. I mean, we'll get into the details of how we shot it if y'all want to, but I do. We shot it in five days, a Monday through a Friday. And we had uh it was a fairly big crew, and and I, you know, we all kind of came together the first morning, and I was like, look, this is what we're doing. It's just a good old-fashioned love story. All we have to do is stay out of their way, shoot the moments, and the story's gonna tell itself because these folks are so passionate, and these animals have so much charisma and sort of this uh kind of intangible, wonderful, sort of magical mysticism to them that if you just stand in the tunnel and never get a chance to meet them, they're gonna move you. But if you spend 30 seconds in their presence, they're gonna really teach you something. So all we gotta do is point the cameras and stay out of the way. It's gonna be a really beautiful story, and that's that's really it. That's what we did for five days, and we had a great time doing it. And and we couldn't have done it without, you know, everyone's participation, like everyone's buy-in, because had one person said, Hey, I don't feel comfortable with being in this, or you know what, you may scare a seal, or you know, we we there was a lot of opportunity for it to not be as good had the access not been as wonderful as it was.

SPEAKER_05 14:37

Yeah, yeah. I think it helped a lot that your crew and you were very easy to work with. Seals and sea lions are wild animals at the end of the day, and I think a lot of people think that just because they're an aquarium, they'll be used to everything. And bringing cameras in can be very nerve-wracking for them. They've never seen that equipment before. And so leading up to the days of filming, we were doing some desensitization, we were working with them, we're like, hey, just meet these people, they're fine, feed a couple fish, you know? And over time, the seals and sea lions were like, all right, you guys are all right. And they really let you in also. And that was cool to see them go from potentially nervous around a lot of equipment that they've never seen and people they've never seen to just being really chill with it. They're like, all right, I guess we're just being in film. But I think out of all of that, my first and main question for you is did you come away having a favorite seal or sea lion?

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Oh, yes. Who has it? 100%. Parker. Parker's my dude.

SPEAKER_05 15:26

You can't miss him.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Uh I mean, I love them all. Yeah. They're all like each one of them has these wonderful characteristics, but Parker just reminds me of my I have a side note. Aaron and I are neighbors. We live in the same neighborhood, and we both have golden retrievers. And so we we we bump into each other. It's a requirement for the neighborhood. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_05 15:48

Everyone has a golden retriever.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

But we didn't know that before we shot the film. And so, but of course, you know, now we bump into each other all the time. Anyway, Parker's mannerisms and behavior reminds me a lot of my dog Rooster. And so I yeah, I so I just fell in love with with Parker, and and he's just this big, you know, gentle giant. He's like a big teddy bear. He's just the sweetest guy.

SPEAKER_05 16:14

Those eyes. Oh, he's it's ridiculous. He's just so cool. They're slightly in different directions at all times.

SPEAKER_04 16:21

He sees everything, his little mohawk.

SPEAKER_05 16:23

He's got that goofy kind of like he's easy going, but he's super goofy and he's really chill with everything. Yeah. He's just the best. He's a big guy.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

And he's massive. And so that's the that was the funniest thing is I was like, oh my God, I can't wait to just meet him. I'm gonna throw my arms around him and give him a big old hug. And then we went in.

SPEAKER_04 16:43

I'm like, whoa.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

And you guys asked him to come up and meet us, and he did, and he's so big. He's really big, he's near 800 pounds, he's massive, and the presence that he brings with him out of the water, you have to have this a great amount of respect. He's not a golden retriever that you just throw your arms around. And so what I thought the experience was gonna be like was totally different than what it is. He's still wonderfully goofy and awesome, but he's a wild animal. And you know, he's not he's he's not somebody that you're gonna invite home for the weekend. You know, he's I want to so bad. Oh, I know, I know. It would be fun, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

He'd eat everything in my I I always love that. He would, he really would. I love that seeing people's faces change and realize, you know, from outside the habitat, they're they are kind of goofy, they're fun to watch when you're up close to them. You know, even the other boys, like they're still, you know, nearing 300 pounds and they're these animals, you know, you see their teeth, you see the way they move. I love seeing people have that realization, like, whoa. And then kind of over the years, I've been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in there. So now to me, it's so natural. But yeah, seeing that that change in people, it's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Yeah, it's a healthy, it's a healthy dose of respect and kind of you know, respect for the wild, you know, because it is it is such a treat and an honor to get to be that close to them, but it also it really kind of gives you this feeling of how powerful Mother Mother Nature is, which is I mean, I just love that.

SPEAKER_05 18:17

So it's cool to see people go through that experience. We have encounters all the time where we one of the things I forewarn people when they were meeting Parker is like, he's a lot bigger than you think. I'm gonna bring him up. He's gonna make you a little nervous potentially. If you want me to ask him to take a couple steps back, I can. And they're always like, nah, it'll be totally fine. And then going into the encounter, I have people back all the way up against the wall the minute he comes out of the water. I'm like, he's not gonna get you, but I totally understand. And he is also very relaxed around working with lots of people and cameras and equipment. And so he was right up there in your space doing things with the film crew.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Aaron Ross Powell, do you think he enjoys do you think they in general enjoy meeting the meeting new folks, the encounters that y'all have?

SPEAKER_05 18:57

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think it's a good question. We definitely pair it with a lot of reinforcement. And so scientifically, I can imagine that they see people coming in and oftentimes are like, oh, this is gonna be worth my time. And also a lot of the times when we're doing encounters, it is the easiest session they're doing that day because people just want to be around the sea lion. Yeah. And so those sessions are just sitting, eating fish, maybe lifting a flipper and showing someone what it looks like. And it's super easy for them.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yeah, no one's getting poked or prodded or just like, all right, this is cool.

SPEAKER_05 19:25

And so I think that the encounters tend to be one of their favorite types of sessions because they are so conditioned to be around people and know that it just means something easy and relaxed.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:35

But working up to that point with some of our other boys, like you saw Chase and Kane, could be a little bit more wary of things. And so until they get to that point, it's definitely something we are conditioning and we'll tell people, hey, you're helping us train this because it is not natural for them to want to come up and be around people. And we don't want it to be natural for them to just hang out with us. And as we do encounters and as we kind of introduce them, we'll have them come in for like a 30-second hello and like a wave and then leave. And we're like, cool, you did a really good job and work up to the whole thing. So hopefully over time it becomes really positive for them. Parker does not care at all. He could have a hundred people in the habitat and he'd be like, all right, this is probably fine. That's cool. But I think Chase is still working towards it. And some of our SEALs have been doing encounters more frequently. It's been fun to see the difference in personality types where Troy doesn't matter at all. Anyone could be in there, he has no idea what's going on and he's okay with that. Whereas some of our other ones are very anxious and can be very aware of what's going on. So they're all different, just like us.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Do you still have your same favorite?

SPEAKER_05 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

We won't give it away if you haven't seen the movie yet.

SPEAKER_05 20:34

I'm pretty sure I've given away on this podcast so many times. Kane's your boy. Yeah, he's just the cutest guy here at the aquarium, for sure, of anyone. Scientific. There's yeah, it's scientifically proven that he is actually the cutest. He is our smallest sea lion, and I think that that gives him a little bit of a complex, but that's okay. It's not his fault. And he just has a really, really cute face, but he is the smartest animal I think I've ever met. Like he understands the difference between different people. He will start doing a behavior that like one person's working on the minute he sees them. He's like, ah, it's you. We work on this thing together.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:07

And just that level of differentiation is super cool to see in an animal that has no natural history of like wanting to do that for a person.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

And they're certainly not pre-wired to do that.

SPEAKER_05 21:17

No, not at all. But I think he just enjoys the process of learning so much that he's like, it's an opportunity to train and do something. And I think that's really cool to see an animal have that.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

You can see it on his face too, I feel like more than the other sea lance. You see him thinking like he's really downloading information. I want to back up a little bit and talk a little about how you got involved with the aquarium in the first place. How did this come about? How did this even start?

SPEAKER_01 21:41

That's a great question. And it's it's actually a pretty good story. I so traditionally throughout my career, I've always had a personal project or two going on, always on the back burner. And so we recently, my wife and I recently moved to Long Beach about three years ago, and I followed. In love with Long Beach and the waters here, and specifically in Long Beach. And so I started thinking, I I would love to do like a personal project on the water. Maybe there's a you know, a crusty old fisherman I should get to know, or maybe, you know, who knows what the story is. But I I, you know, so I started I started looking around, and my wife, long story, was friends with Ed Fio. Ed Fio was our last chairman of the board here at the aquarium. And so she introduced me to Ed, and we were, you know, getting to know one another, and Ed invited my wife and I to the gala last year, which would have been a year and a half ago as we were recording this podcast. And so we came to the gala and we had a wonderful time. And during the gala, they showed a couple films that the aquarium had made, and it was, you know, different subjects of folks doing stuff around the aquarium, and then, you know, and they primarily made this film for donors that night and to kind of make folks aware of what you know what the aquarium was working toward and working on at the at the time. And so as I watched it, I was like, wow, that's really good. Maybe I should reach out to Ed and like, you know, donate some time or volunteer to do something. And I've sort of been work wanting to work on a personal project. Maybe I should, maybe there's something around here I could do. And so I called Ed and said, Hey, can we go to lunch? I I want to pick your brain. And we did, and and and I kind of said, Hey, I'd love to work on a project with you guys, maybe. And he was like, Well, let me let me set up a lunch with the CEO. And that's how it all got started. So uh he set up a lunch and I met Peter, and Peter, within five minutes, Peter was like, What do you want to do? Just you tell me, and I was like, Well, you don't you guys haven't even looked at my work. Maybe I'm terrible at this. They're like, No, no, no, we're we're we believe you. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

He has good intuition.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah, that's how it got started. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

That I'm so glad that worked out. Had you been to the aquarium before?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

No, not before, not before being invited to that gala. Yeah, yeah, we'd not been yet.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

It's such a beautiful event. They do such a good job.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah, they really do.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Did you grow up going to any aquariums or something? No, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

No, listen, we grew I grew up in such a like remote rural part of South Georgia. No, we did not. I went to my first aquarium was in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I think I was in college. It was for someone I went to an actual aquarium. And that's still a nice aquarium. I haven't been in years, but I think it's still a pretty good one. And then, of course, we had kids. We lived in Atlanta for years and raised our children there, and the Georgia aquarium up and so we got yearly, a yearly membership, a couple years just to go to Atlanta.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Beautifully.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Yeah, it's a great aquarium. It's really they do it, they do a lovely job.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

The Tennessee Aquarium, that's in Chat and New Guys. Yeah, that's right. They have a podcast too. Oh, nice. Shout out to them.

SPEAKER_04 24:59

Shout out to Tennessee Aquarium. Shout out to Tennessee Aquarium, we see you.

SPEAKER_05 25:02

And when you first went to the aquarium for the first time, what kind of stuck out to you? What was your like wow moment of like, this exists? We could just go see this? What was that for you?

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Here at this aquarium, I I really loved how tactile many, many exhibits were. Like, you know, I mean, I don't remember being at other aquariums and and getting to touch jellies or touch a bat ray or touch a shark, or you know, we go up upstairs and all the starfish. And I just remember thinking, wow, this doesn't seem entertainment-based. This seems like they want people to walk away with a little more insight. So that was different for me. I I think that was that was the thing that stuck out the most was maybe the approach of the aquarium was was different than I knew it was here since we moved here. Matter of fact, we we chose Long Beach. We researched all over kind of Metro LA and we settled on Long Beach for a variety of reasons, but we knew there was an you know world-class aquarium here. But to be fair, I thought it was an entertainment complex. Like, you know, you go there, you get entertained for an afternoon, and you go away. I didn't realize that it was a nonprofit with a mission for conservation and education. So yeah, kind of getting a first hand view of that was uh was eye-opening.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

That's also cool. We love getting people here and kind of hooking them in with the cute oh come see this cute animal, come see. Yeah, you're gonna have such a fun day. And then you leave and you're like, I must save the ocean. That's our secret. It's true.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

I I think I've been so we started we worked on we started working on that film basically a year ago, roughly. Maybe maybe it was more like late November that we started, it all started coming together. We're approaching a year, and so my wife's parents were in town visiting last week, and we brought them here to show them the film. And then we, of course, walked around and they saw everything. And on the way out the door, my mother-in-law was like, It feels like you've gotten a master's degree in marine biology since you've been coming out coming to this aquarium. I'm like, I I kind of feel like I have.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

You I I'll I don't have a degree. I always say I have a degree in the aquarium of the Pacific. So I think you now also have a degree in the aquarium of the Pacific.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

I'll take it. I'll take it.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Exactly. Cool. Let's get back into shooting that Monday through Friday. Can you talk about your crew? Who did you have here?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah, so a good friend of mine who's a waterman, his name is Mark Williams. He was the cinematographer. And he Mark and I go way back. We've been working together for years on tons of commercial projects. And so when we shot the film, it was during the strikes, so no one was working. And so we everyone got paid, but they got it was mostly volunteer. We paid everybody just because we, you know, we had a little bit of money. But so, but generally everyone just said, hey, I'm not doing anything. This sounds like a great story and a super cool way to spend a week. So we're in the camera uh rental house on Keslo camera. Shout out to Keslo. Like every bit of that camera equipment which we had, every tool that you could imagine, Keslo donated the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yeah, we didn't pay a dime for any of the cameras, any of this the camera support. So so we had a full-on crew. I think we had 25, 25 or 30 people. So Mark was the DP. We had Bobby Settlemeyer, did he coordinated all the underwater stuff? He's an underwater guy, and then Brendan Kling is my longtime producer, he produced it for us, and then uh just you know, a host of other folks came in. It was wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

You guys are so fun to work with. I I think I covered at at least one day of shooting with y'all, and it was a blast. I had so much fun. Well, it'd be so nice.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Yeah, yeah, and and you know, that's just like that's how professional Hollywood style crews are. We come together, we most of us are strangers, we come together for a week or a month or whatever, and within the first 30 minutes of the first day, we're all a family. So it's sort of like if you're a bad apple, the system kind of weeds you out early. So if you if you can make a career doing this at any part of the crew list, you're generally just a great human being. So we, you know, we had a we had a a crew of good folks, just big-hearted, sweet people who love telling stories. And so it's like, hey, we have full access to these magical sea lines, this super cool staff, and we're gonna have really good breakfast and lunch and snacks all day. And everybody's like, Yeah, I'm in. Tell me tell me where to be and what what time to be there.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

This is great. And it's cool. Uh, some of your crew was already connected to us. I know Joe has been a member for like 20 years. Like, we have these people who are aquarium fans already working on it. So that was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

And then your team was so nice about in between shoots. Do you guys want to come hang out with the sea lions? No cameras, like just come in there and and get to be around them and get to enjoy it as a person.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, it was great. Like you guys, they I'm telling you what your job is, Aaron, but you you guys feed these these uh seals and sea lions four times a day, and it felt like every feeding we weren't that we weren't shooting. At least one crew person was in there hanging out, talking to Parker, Chase, or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

So I know your stars. They're hard to resist, to be honest. They really are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I was like, hey guys, can you put the bucket of fish down? We gotta go back to work. Like somebody's gotta somebody's gotta press record on this camera. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 31:03

Official volunteers.

SPEAKER_05 31:05

Oh, it was a blast. It was so cool. Probably. We've done a lot of filming and just in general with the different animals, and that was the most painless experience of like having a crew around you. And it just felt like we could just do our jobs normally and you were just capturing that aspect of it. Like certainly there was a little bit of like, maybe I should comb my hair today. You know, like a little more than usual. I don't even know if I had brushed my hair in the actual take where I was being interviewed, but that's okay. But yeah, I think that other than you know, trying to look slightly more presentable, because we are often covered in fish and gunk and whatever else, it just didn't feel like we were being filmed. It just felt like we were doing our jobs and we had people around us, but it wasn't a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Aaron Powell Well, the cool thing about it is, and and this is one of the things about telling any stories is is sort of the trust that's built along the way. So if I do the math, which I'm not great at, you guys feed four times a day. We shot for five days. That's 20 feedings. Am I right, Madeline?

SPEAKER_03 32:01

That sounds right. You're looking at the wrong person for math, I'll tell you that. There's no right person in the world.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

So I'm sure the first feeding we probably tucked way far away. The second feeding we took a step closer. Anyway, by Friday afternoon, I mean, it felt like we should have had the buckets doing the feeding. It was such a great, sort of harmonious kind of coming of the minds. Like it was just really lovely. Like the the cooler we were at doing our job, the more relaxed y'all were, which made the animals more relaxed. And at the end, it was just like this one big family atmosphere. And, you know, I remember Mark saying to Megan, hey, Megan, if you bring him up here, I'm gonna go around you and get the and I'm like, oh my God, now we're coordinating. Like it was just really cool to be y'all really let us, you know, sort of orchestrate some of the some of the movements, which was super helpful because had we been, had we walked in with our chests puffed out and said, Let me tell you what we need. Yeah, exactly. By Thursday afternoon, we'd have been outside of the glass shooting in.

SPEAKER_05 33:12

You know, and that's so it was just a love and life from outside of the glass. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

So it was just a really beautiful experience all the way around.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Yeah, it was really it just shows you you guys fully immersed yourself into the aquarium and truly became employees for a week. And I feel like you're extending that even further now by beyond this podcast, by all the other projects you're working on.

SPEAKER_05 33:30

It's been a speaking of you know so much about the aquarium now. What other projects might you have on the horizon?

SPEAKER_01 33:37

So right now we're shooting, I'm shooting this short, short documentary film. It'll probably be just two, three minutes long about this loggerhead turtle that was rescued and brought here. The turtle had to have one of the flippers, a small bit of her flipper amputated, and then she had a bunch of sores on her. It was uh what was it? I forget, was it barnacles? Yeah, barnacles, thank you, Madeline. Yeah, she had barnacles all over her, which are I learned, quite painful. So the team have been nursing that girl back to health. And right now, total coincidence, but there's a fundraising drive to fund a new tank for rescued sea turtles. And so Ryan Ashton and his team asked me if I would make a little film about this logger head to try to get the message out that they're raising funds for this new holding tank. And as we're recording this podcast right now, we're gonna release that loggerhead tomorrow. So I'm so excited. We're super stoked. So we're all gonna get on a boat and we're gonna drive our way out to some seasick. We're gonna get real seasick. We're gonna find some warm water water and we're gonna let her go. That's gonna be great. So excited.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

And I'm so we're the aquarium's so lucky to have you, someone who's not only able to create this amazing art, but also care about the animals just as much as we do. So we're honored.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah, well, this is awesome. It's my pleasure because these guys are all these animals are so so special.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

You also made a little short about a past sea turtle release, too.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah, so we had so the marketing department just wanted to pick my brain and said, Hey, we're getting ready to do a commercial. We bought some some some TV airtime in the Los Angeles area, greater Los Angeles area, and we are thinking about doing this little TV commercial that we've written. Would you mind having a read and giving us your feedback? And so subsequently, I just got an email a day or two previous to that, going, Hey, there's a sea turtle that we've nursed to health, and we're gonna let her go on Sill Beach next week. If you know, if you'd like to come and watch, everyone's you know, we're inviting some folks to come on the beach and just s stand in the distance and watch. And so I read the TV script, which was really good, but I thought, boy, if we did a little commercial about the release of this turtle and how powerful it is to see her returning, boy, that could be that could be a powerful little commercial. So I just pitched it, I was like, hey, what if a friend of mine and I pointed a few cameras at this sea turtle and do a little film? So they were like, oh my god, yeah, that sounds great. And so we made this little 30-second black and white commercial of this this little turtle going back home. It was great. It was a little tearjerker.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

I mean, it's and it's just so cinematic, it makes it so beautiful, and it just drives the story even more. I think people just immediately connect to it.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

Yeah, I mean, again, all you gotta do is like point the camera. I mean, it's like you know, they're putting a turtle back into the ocean. Like, it's hard to mess that up.

SPEAKER_03 37:00

True, but I think it takes a great eye to be able to create what you've created. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

It's awesome. It was fun. Yeah, yeah. So we're we're doing it again tomorrow. So it looks absolutely. This one's a different story altogether, but we're still letting we're putting another one back in the ocean tomorrow, which is super exciting.

SPEAKER_05 37:16

I will say I have taken many pictures of turtles in the ocean and they are never good. So it's more than just pointing the camera. Yeah, because my pictures are terrible. I can show you plenty of pictures of turtles that are just sort of a blur in the distance. And what kind of turtles do they have in Hawaii? Green sea turtles. Green seasons. They're I think they call them Hawaiian green sea turtles, but they are green sea turtles. I think there's a couple other species around, but the ones you'll see coming in, and that is called Honu in Hawaii is green sea turtles. They're beautiful too.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

They're probably warm water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:44

They are always so like shiny. You usually see them with like the very clean shell. I don't know what is different in Hawaii that they're not growing as much algae on them, maybe they're moving a little bit faster, but they always have that super striking coloration and pattern on their shell, and they're so beautiful to see. But we also see some in the San Gabriel River here, so they're everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

So cool. It's amazing. How would you say this work compares to your other work?

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Oh my god. It's totally different. I mean, I do all sorts of work. I mean, listen, we all do pharmaceutical commercials, we all I mean, which is great, you know, but you have you literally have when you do a pharmaceutical, I just did a big uh pharmaceutical spot uh in St. Louis. There are there are literally attorneys on set because the language, you know, I mean, for good reason, you can't say, oh my god, this this, you know, this drug's gonna do something it's not gonna do. Yeah. So there's there are attorneys there to make sure that the scripts are followed to a T. This was different. There was no client. Like, I mean Parker is the client. Parker was the client, represent me well.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

Yeah. I'm his attorney.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Because you know, the board, the CEO, the CFO, everyone that that sort of commissioned this film just said, make something beautiful, make something that makes us laugh or cry. Just we're in, whatever you want. So no one ever asked to see to see an edit. No one gave a note. They just I showed them the final edit, and they were like, Wow, when can we put that in the theater? And you know, that was the only question. So so in that regard, it was like, you know, it's what every filmmaker wants. It's like carte blanche, just go put make make something that makes you happy, and we won't bother you. So I mean, in that regard, it was it was unlike anything else we get to do unless we're paying for it ourselves. So it was great.

SPEAKER_05 39:50

That must be a really cool thing to be able to do as an artist. Just here's the art I wanted to make, and you have no notes, and I don't have to change it. Here it just goes and it's going out in the public. I think um one of my favorite things about the film that you made, this is sort of backtracking, but it's fine. I just needed to mention Megan is one of my closest friends in the world. And even seeing just how she interacts with those animals captured in film and just like that beautiful relationship and connection, I even felt like I was seeing a different side of her. And I was like, I see this person eight hours a day, every day of the week. And I felt like I was learning more about her and getting some insight into her. And I felt that way about all of my coworkers, but so specifically, this person who was like, I know you so well, and this was still something different. And it was something that felt very like intimate to her and her personality and her relationship with those animals. But she's worked here longer than I have, and she has this long-standing history of working with these guys. And it was really cool to see you be able to capture that and capture a side of this person who I've known forever that I've never seen.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

She is uh, first of all, so appropriately named. Megan's smiley. The happiest human ever, but so soulful, like like a a depth to her, and really to all of y'all. That was the thing, is when I kept trying to figure out what story we should tell first, it just kept bubbling to the top that there is this connection between the staff that is so palpable. It's love and respect, it's all that. And I'm sure you guys bicker and you know what all the stuff that a family does. You love hard, you play hard, but there is this there is this sort of depth to the entire staff that really you can feel that they want to to leave this place better than they found it. They want to push the ball up the field, you know, in the sports metaphor. There's an urgency to them. Like there's this to to all of y'all. Like, if we don't do this, who is? And and Megan sort of embodies that, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm raising my family, I'm trying to be a good mom, wife, employee, but there's also this there's you know, there's a depth to y'all that you might not find in other corporate jobs that is really just rich and inspiring.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

Agreed. I think w it's one of our strongest points. You know, we have these amazing animals here, but the people who care for them. That's really kind of the purpose of this podcast is getting to introduce and talk to the people who make the stories happen.

SPEAKER_05 42:34

Yeah. It's cool. I mean, I feel the pressure, I feel the urgency, I feel all the things of like, how do we make this place better? How do we leave our world better? And then you have these like moments where you're just sitting in front of Parker with again his eyes going in different directions, his tongue sticking slightly out, and you're just like, this brings so much levity, and it just is such a good reminder of why we're doing it, is because I want there to be a trillion parkers out in the ocean. I want every single parker out there to have as good of a life as this one does. And so it's such a solid reminder of what we're doing, and it also makes it so much easier to kind of carry that weight of like, our mission is to connect people to the Pacific Ocean, its inhabitants, and basically make this ocean and this world better. And that is a heavy burden to carry. I just work at the aquarium. It's just one ocean we're talking about. Just one of the many oceans out there. So you're stressed all the time of like, how do I make this world better? And then you just have this animal that reminds you like just a small difference every day is enough. And just teaching people about Parker is sufficient for so many more people to care about what we're doing here. So I appreciate that the pressure is definitely felt. And I think on in Megan, you can see that. Even in the film that we've captured, it's short, but it shows like you can tell there's a little bit more depth, a little bit more. This is a ton of work. But those moments she's with the animal, she is laughing, she is smiling, and she is so joyful. And that is the heart of what we're doing. And it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

Well, I'm sure at the end of the day, when y'all are washing smelly buckets that you know would make most people gag and doing all the hard stuff, you probably don't feel like you're making much impact in the world of conservation and saving and healing this planet. But collectively, all of those little moments add up. And they are adding up to a significant advancement in making these waters cleaner and bringing people closer to them and having more awareness of how we should shepherd this thing. So while it probably doesn't feel like you're doing much, you know, on a hot Friday afternoon when there's somewhere else you'd rather be, you really are.

SPEAKER_05 44:50

Yeah. It's true. And you found the crusty fisherman that you wanted to film. It was just us all along.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_05 44:57

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 44:58

This was amazing. Thank you, Chris. I guess we could talk a little bit. Well, we talked about future. We talked about is there anything else coming down that anything that you like, what's your any upcoming dream shots that you would like to get around the aquarium?

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Oh yeah. Well, we are, so we're kind of it's a little too early to announce what it is, I probably would guess. But we are working on another film. So the, you know, we have this insanely gorgeous theater. And for the last five years, there's been two films, which are great films, but they've been on a loop. And so, you know, if you've been to the aquarium two or three times, maybe you've seen the films two or three times. And so I think there's a bit of an effort to to add to that collection. So that's what this first film was about. And so we are working on the next one, and we're making some great headways, and this next one is going to be really about the heartbeat of conservation and what the aquarium is doing on the front lines of making these waters healthier than they already are, and healthier than they would be if this aquarium didn't exist, and specifically if the staff didn't work at this aquarium. So it's really gonna be it's gonna be a broader reaching film that really touches on what the you know the whole mantra of the aquarium is is about. So super excited about that. Yay! I'm so excited. So hopefully we'll get off and shooting maybe in January, February of on of next year on that one. So we're fingers crossed, we're all very excited about it.

SPEAKER_03 46:39

Yeah. Where can people find more of your work or find more out about you?

SPEAKER_01 46:44

So well, you could go to my website, which is Chrisstanford.com. You could just find me loitering outside of the aquarium, you know, a couple days a week.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

So if you see a guy walking around with a giant camera.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Yeah, there you go. It's a good possibility, it's maybe.

SPEAKER_03 47:00

Hopefully, Chris. Cool. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, this is great. Yay. Painless. Boom. Painless, done.

SPEAKER_05 47:14

Aquarium of the Podcific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

SPEAKER_03 47:20

Keep up with the Aquarium on social media at Aquarium Pacific on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_05 47:27

This podcast is produced by Aaron Lundy and Madeline Walden. Our music is by Andrew Reitzma, and our podcast art is by Brandi Kenney. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher, Anitza Viez, our audiovisual and education departments, and our amazing podcast guests for taking time out of their day to talk about the important work that they do.

SPEAKER_03 47:44

Podcific is impossible without the support of the Aquarium's donors, members, guests, and supporters. Thanks so much for listening.