Behind the Scenes Georgia Outdoors

Hello there, Georgia Outdoors fans. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of Georgia Outdoors? Ever woken up in the middle of the night and wondered to yourself, "just HOW DO they make that award winning outdoors show, anyway?" Sure you have, we all have!

Well now all your deepest questions can be answered. I'm Andrew Marshall (your friendly neighborhood Associate Producer) here to take you on your very own photographic tour of day in the life of Georgia Outdoors. Buckle up, folks. It's going to be a wild ride! (Okay...moderately wild. Well, actually, not very wild at all. But interesting. )


We'll start out at my desk...always one step away from total disaster. Notice my highly advanced and patented "sticky note" organizational system.


Production Assistant Lauren Baker and I like to print out pictures and have people around the office color them. We award prizes to the best entry.


Speaking of Lauren, there she is now, doing one of the most important jobs on the show. When tapes come back in from the field, they must be logged and transcribed. This process is basically watching the footage very carefully and entering into the computer the content of every tape. Every shot on the tape must be logged, every spoken word must be typed and filed. I'll be honest, it's a tedious process, but absolutely essential to making the show. More about that later.


Lauren also has a highly advanced sticky note filing system.


Our tape library. Every tape we've shot in the last seven year or so is here. All of these tapes are entered into the computer. If we want a shot of, say, a beaver riding a unicycle, we can search the tape directory, find the number, find the corresponding tape in the library, and then use it for a show.

This coffee machine is the grease that makes the gears of Georgia Outdoors turn smoothly. On days when there is no coffee, not a lot of work gets done. I happen to be the only member of the Georgia Outdoors crew not addicted to the stuff, but I have my own vices...


...such as the secret candy stash owned by co-worker Jenny.


If coffee is the grease that helps the gears turn, then Jenny's secret candy stash is the fuel that makes the engine run. Without this stash, there would be no Georgia Outdoors.


There is Brandon Arnold, our producer, writing a script. Script writing for documentary style television is different than writing a script for fiction. It's kind of a reverse process, like sculpting. You start out with massive amounts of material and gradually shape it into what you want it to be. This is where all the hard work done in the "logging and transcribing" phase comes in handy. Think of it as someone laying out all your sculpting tools for you so that you know exactly where they are and how to use them.


That's Clifford, the Georgia Outdoors van. Guess why we call him Clifford?


Clifford is kind of like our mascot.


Once the tapes have been shot, logged, and transcribed, and the script has been written, it's time for the editing process. Amy is one of our editors. Look at her, hard at work!


Brandon dispenses his bountiful wisdom to Amy during editing.


After the show is complete, the entire crew puts on camouflage hats and dances a jig.

Okay, not really. I'm not actually sure why this was going on when I walked in with a camera, but I took a picture of it anyway.

Well I hope you enjoyed your little tour. Come back later for some "in the field" photographs. Location shoots are the other half of what we do and I must say, they make for much better photographs!

--Andrew Marshall, Associate Producer, Georgia Outdoors

Environmental Education and Georgia Outdoors

I just got back from the Environmental Education Alliance's Annual Conference where I gave a presentation entitled "Behind the Scenes, Georgia Outdoors" to an assortment of traditional and non-traditional environmental educators. Many of us in that room got our first taste of environmental work as children by watching wonderful natural history television programming like the Jacques Cousteau programs, Nature and National Geographic and maybe, just maybe, Georgia Outdoors.

I'm lucky to work on a television program like Georgia Outdoors and I was lucky to be able to share my experiences with those at the conference. I hope to post my presentation on this blog in the very near future so check back often. In the meantime to learn more about the EEA please visit their website at www.eealliance.org.

Behind the Scenes - Suwannee River Watershed

We see some pretty amazing sights out in the field, and there is nothing quite like the Okefenokee Swamp at sunrise. While shooting last October, we were able to experience the amazing prairies of the eastern swamp at a time when the bird life and alligators were particularly active. Thanks to the drought, the water levels were several feet below average, forcing animal life to congregate more densely.

During this trip, we woke to rain, but soldiered out into the prairies of the swamp anyway and were treated to an amazing sunrise. Thanks to our guides Chip and Joy Campbell, we were able to sneak our boat right up to a family of elusive Sandhill Cranes as they were feeding by the water’s edge, quite a sight to see in the golden light of the early morning. From the stable platform of a motorized tour-boat, we saw dozens upon dozens of alligators corralled along the edges of the canals.

Several months later, the largest wildfire in recent Georgia history swept through the swamp. The Okefenokee images you’ll see on the Suwannee River Watershed episode document the swamp as it was before the burn. Today, the swamp is in a period of regeneration after the spring wildfires. Historically, the Okefenokee burned regularly, and over centuries, fire shaped the swamp into what it is today. I highly encourage a trip to the swamp to witness this amazing natural process.

For the episode, we also took a rare trip out of state. Though we are Georgia Outdoors, covering a topic like the Suwannee river watershed involved following the Suwannee to its terminus in the Gulf of Mexico. It was nice to cross state lines and experience some different scenery. Following the Suwannee via the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail, we were reminded that nature knows no such artificial borders as state lines. At the mouth of the river, we found salt marsh habitat not unlike that found on our own coast. Another reminder of how intricately connected we all are…I hope that you enjoy watching this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!

Be a Citizen Scientist

Several years ago I was driving down I-16. For anyone whose ever driven that stretch from Macon to Savannah you know it can be a trial just staying awake. It is some of the blandest highway driving in the south.

Well, on this day, like so many others driving from location to location, I looked up and saw a dark shadow coasting above. First thought-- a vulture. Maybe a turkey vulture but probably a black vulture. But as I studied the silhouette I noticed the deeply forked tail that gives no doubt to its identification-- a swallow-tailed kite! What a joy to see!

Swallow-tailed Kites are listed as rare in Georgia and so I noted the exit # and added the bird to my mental life list. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources has an ongoing survey about swallow-tailed kites and this information is used to study activity range size and migration routes among other things. So, I did my citizen scientist duty for the day and it felt good.

You can do your part too. There are many ways that your observations in the outdoors can be put to use by wildlife biologists. Check out Georgia Outdoors: Citizen Scientist for more ideas and links.

Ignore the sand gnats, look at that sunrise.

Shooting days can be long and wearing. Early mornings, long days, and late nights. In the event of a marsh shoot, those circumstances are compounded by sand gnats, mosquitoes, fire ants, and anything else that can savage the legs of an unsuspecting television crew. But a beautiful sunset and brilliant sunrise will make you forget about all those things in a hurry.

We live in a beautiful place.

Georgia Outdoors photographer Shane braves the stinging insects to shoot some pretty pictures.

I took some stills on the shoot. This is a sunset over the west edge of Skidaway Island.

Sunset over the west side of Skidaway Island, with endangered Wood Storks.

Sunrise over the eastern edge of Skidaway Island.