‘The earth as a spaceship,’ argues one of the Sea Shepherd crew members, ‘and bio diversity is our life support system, especially in the ocean.’ More than a dozen Sea Shepherd volunteers voice their concerns and motivations to join the marine conservation organization in this 10-minute campaign film. Not only does it get Sea Shepherd’s environmental mission across, it also gives you a real sense of the lived experience on board one of its ships.
What started as a small campaign spot, developed into a a much more involved film once director Quentin van den Bossche and his crew boarded the MY Steve Irwin, one of Sea Shepherd’s five ships. They joined the crew for two weeks at sea to capture and recreate their life and work. Quentin then merged his documentary scenes with Sea Shepherd’s own images of direct action on the open sea as well as underwater and space stock footage to create a whole that is both informative and personal, awe inspiring and thrilling.
It was a total crash course and I came out the other end feeling like it was a really healthy experience to have with some of the crew to think about these issues.
‘By the end it realy started to really have an effect on me,’ he says about his time on board. ‘We had virtually no communication to the outside world while we were with them. I didn’t start doing the interviews until the last four or five days of the trip, so we were able to get to know each other a bit first. It was a total crash course and I came out the other end feeling like it was a really healthy experience to have with some of the crew to think about these issues. And that’s also how I approached it once I got into the edit: to try and paint that, and do that justice.’
