We’ve just completed our third round of rough cuts for all four one hour programs and have clearly identified the remaining “holes” still in need of images. The past 90 days have seen the insertion of hundreds of still images (photos, drawings, lithographs, maps), several minutes of color and black/white historic film footage (from newsreels, news programs, independent films) and animated graphics (created by our graphics guru Richard Tsai). Our sources include institutions around the country — from the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and the Theodore Roosevelt Association on Long Island to the National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington to the Society of California Pioneers, California Historical Society and National Maritime Museum in San Francisco. A full listing of all our generous image providers will be available upon completion this fall.

Additional aerial shooting was completed — some of it covering the Central Valley — although we still need to go up at least one more time. We are also working on sound design and sound effects which are being added as needed. KQED has begun testing the interfaces between our respective editing systems as we move closer to delivering edited programs for them to engineer for broadcast.

Due to the scope of the project, we are still raising completion funding so please help support completion of Saving the Bay by going to the Donate button on the left side of the navigation bar. All funds go through KQED/Northern California Public Broadcasting and are tax-deductible charitable donations.

We continue in post-production and are working to refine four hours of rough cuts completed in November. Several pieces are moving ahead at once including music scoring, animated graphics and acquisition and insertion of hundreds of still images as well as lots of historic film footage. We also recorded two more actors’ voices in Sacramento for readings of journals, diaries and book passages and have begun adding natural sound to the four programs.

The Bancroft Library in Berkeley has been heroic in helping us identify hundreds of historic images – photos, prints, paintings, drawings, maps and journals – being used in the programs. And all of this with smiles!

After a final review the script underwent some last minute tweaks: The first section of Episode 4, focusing on threats to the Bay during the post World War II boom years, is now the last section of Episode 3 (its original location). Episode 4 opens with the Bay in peril around 1960 due to seemingly unlimited development potential and increased fouling of the waters from raw sewage, expansive garbage dumps and industrial pollution. We also added a section in Episode 3 about how the Port of Oakland is largely a man-made creation going back to the late 19th century.

Among our recent film shoots the Army Corps of Engineers arranged for an excellent tour of the Port of Oakland dredging project where shipping channels are being dug to 50 feet to accommodate the latest container ships. The dredge material is then loaded onto huge barges which head up to a pumping station in the middle of San Pablo Bay. The material is then offloaded into a pipeline running seven miles to shore at the former Hamilton Field where it is being used to re-create tidal wetlands on what were recently airport runways. Completing the circle, the runways were originally built over diked wetlands.

We are still raising completion funding so please help support completion of Saving the Bay by going to the Donate button on the left side of the navigation bar. All funds go through KQED/Northern California Public Broadcasting and are tax-deductible charitable donations.

We recently completed recording the narration for all four programs of the series with Robert Redford at Skywalker Ranch. Redford generously contributed his time to the project. He was a pleasure to work with and we received great support from his staff in LA and Utah as well as the people at Skywalker Sound.

We also recorded six actors’ voices in Sacramento for readings of journals, diaries and book passages and have added all the sound tracks to the four programs.

With the narration set, we are now in full post-production with music scoring, animated graphics and the continued addition of what now looks like about 600 still images as well as lots of historic film footage. We plan to add some visuals from the programs to the website soon.

We also completed more location shoots:

– At the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco, we interviewed historian Philip Choy as well as looked through their photograph collection for images of Chinese fishermen and shrimpers.

– At the Port of Oakland, thanks to AMNAV Navigation we were out on the Bay in one of their new “tractor” tugs shooting two tugboats guiding a containership to its Oakland Estuary dock.

– At the Cargill salt ponds in Newark a big thank you to Jill Singleton, who arranged for us to capture the 2007 salt harvest as a follow up to our earlier shoot which included on-site interviews.

– In Alameda for Coastal Cleanup Day, Save the Bay arranged for us to shoot volunteers helping clean and restore Alameda Creek/Eden Landing.

– At Sutter’s Mill in Coloma we shot footage for the Gold Rush segment opening our second program.

Fundraising continued to progress as a handful of underwriters have recently contributed led by the Packard Foundation’s $100,000. We are still raising money so please support completion of Saving the Bay by going to the Donate button on the left side of the navigation bar. All funds go to KQED/Northern California Public broadcasting and are tax-deductible charitable donations.

We have been on several field shoots so the script can be finalized for the expected narration recording in August. Areas covered include:

-Port of Oakland, where we were able to shoot from the top of their largest container crane in addition to the unloading of a large container vessel.

-Native Grasses, thanks to East Bay Regional Parks for taking the time to show various native grasses in the hills east of Livermore as well as in Richmond and parts of Marin County.

-Sonoma Baylands (south of Highway 37) hay fields.

-Cargill Salt Ponds and the history and production of salt on the Bay dating back to Native American times.

-San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Treatment Plant — the largest such facility on the Bay, serving over 1.5 million people in the South Bay.

-Recycle Central, Norcal Waste’s 200,000 square foot recycling center at Pier 96 in San Francisco.

-San Francisco Estuary Institute’s Historical Ecology program where Robin Grossinger and his team evaluate how specific locations all around the Bay have changed over the past 100-200 years based on historical maps, drawings and photos down to the location of individual trees.

We also would like to thank John, Joel and Josh Garzoli at San Rafael’s Garzoli Gallery for allowing the use of several paintings from their historical California collection, one of which is shown on the Underwriters page of this website.

On the funding front, Wells Fargo Bank and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service confirmed commitments as new underwriters for the series and we are in advanced discussions with several other prospective funders but still not fully funded yet.

Welcome to our new website! Here you will find periodic updates as to progress on production, funding and distribution.  We are working to complete “picture-lock”, meaning the entire series is set except for technical adjustments such as color correction, audio sweetening and preparing the programs for broadcast.  We are in the midst of editing, dropping in music tracks and selecting from hundreds and hundreds of historic images — 400-500 will ultimately be used in the series.