Holy Beluga, Birdman!

Back during the production of Season 3 of Jonathan Bird's Blue World, we went to the mystic aquarium to spend a day with the Aquarists who train and care for the Sea Lions. At the end of the day we were shooting some b-roll at the Beluga tank and ended up spending about 45 minutes there, interacting with the big white mammals that were on the inside of the tank. It was so much fun that we never wanted to leave, but the day drew to a close and we had to head home.

Now that we're in production for Season 4, I was thrilled to hear that we were going back down to Mystic to shoot an entire segment on the Beluga. I was even more happy to find out that they have four Belugas in one tank!

Our day started out a little earlier than I like to wake up. We had to be on the road by 4:30 AM to meet up with our camera guy and get down to mystic with plenty of time to set up and be ready to shoot by 7:00am. It was a crazy time to wake up, but it could have been worse. Although, it would have been nice if the delay brew function worked properly on the coffee machine.

We started off right on schedule, and while Jonathan was inside with the other Tim shooting some Beluga food prep, I scored a good half hour alone outside shooting b-roll of the whales. The Mystic Aquarium is totally great and their tank has plenty of areas to look in on the whales from different perspectives. The whales are so curious and playful that they just seem to follow you around from window to window. I'm not sure if they were curious as to what that goofy looking guy with a camera was doing, or if they were such hams that to couldn't wait to pose for pictures. Either way, it made for some great footage.

A Beluga whale waiting for a snack.

The rest of the day was filled mostly with Jonathan actually interacting with the whales, helping to take blood samples and getting them to perform some tricks in exchange for some fish and squid snacks. Those aren't the kind of snacks I prefer, especially since they were raw, not breaded and deep fried.

Things went so well, we ended up running ahead of schedule. Anybody in the production world knows that being ahead of schedule is a very rare delight. So we had plenty of time to shoot more b-roll and some really awesome stand-ups. I can't wait to get back into the edit suite and start editing this segment together. It's going to be a great one.

Until next time!

- Tim