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"Rare Beasts"
"Karen Edmundson Bean and her team battled Baja desert conditions to film rare Desert Pronghorns for an upcoming
documentary"
Filming rare animals; Desert Pronghorns of Mexico's Baja Peninsula during a driving sandstorm was complicated, but "amazing,"
according to cinematographer Karen Edmundson Bean. She served as lead camera operator during a two-week location shot in Baja
to capture footage for the natural-history documentary series, "Saving the Endangered Species."
With her Super 16 Arri SR camera package, shooting on Kodak 7246 and 7246 (sic) [they didn't copy edit before printing,
we used Kodak 50D and 250D] stock, Bean captured the never-before-filmed birth of a Desert Pronghorn, among other things.
The B cameras were Super 16 and DV (Sony DSR 300). When the show hits the airwaves, she hopes it will call attention to both
the Pronghorn's plight and the issue of how to successfully shot wildlife on extremely low budgets, in her case just $10,000
for the two weeks in Baja.
On location, Bean also had to balance two opposing goals: getting accepted by the herd and keeping sand out of the cameras.
"The way (to gain acceptance) was to move very slowly, very deliberately, almost like Tai Chi," Bean says. But when
it came time to change lenses and film, the Tai Chi pacing brought a new set of problems. "We were often working in major
sandstorms, so there was a big fear that moving slowly would allow sand into the camera during the magazine or lens changes.
The challenge was to protect the camera while making slow changes. So we had to be careful to never open the camera into the
wind and to use another person or a shrub for protection."
Written by Michael Goldman
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