Return to: ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Program 2

Baird's Beaked Whale

I had recently moved to the Outer Sunset in San Francisco and I came upon all these news vans parked along the Great Highway. At the time it looked like there was an overturned boat about a quarter mile off shore, but as it got closer to shore it became evident that it was a whale of some sort. So over the course of three days I returned many times to film the changes going on. This film is a documentation of a dead whale, a rare Baird's Beaked Whale, and how the community responded to its unique and odiferous presence.

Questions with Douglas Schultz

Elizabeth Wing: Can you tell us how you started off with the project and what kinds of observations changed over the course of filming?

Douglas Schultz: I had been working with super 8 on a regular basis and recently moved to the outer sunset. I saw all the news vans on the Great Highway and went out to the dunes to see what was going on. At the time it looked like an overturned boat about a quarter mile off shore, but as it got closer to shore it became evident that it was a whale of some sort. So over the course of three days I returned many times to film the changes going on. I remembered the blue whale that washed ashore in '89, south of Sloat and photos of people hanging out and partying on it so I wasn't sure what would transpire over the next few days.

EW: Did you find out what the scientists were doing with the whale carcass?

DS: About a year later I saw a news article on Truly California about this biologist, Ray Bandar, who collected skulls and recognized him as the guy in the film. Then another year later I ran into him in the Inner Sunset with his wife and made plans to show him the film. Beth Cataldo of City College was just finishing a documentary on Ray so we presented both films one night at the Randal Museum. Evidently the whale is extremely rare with only one other grounding in 1964 near Monterey. Ray was collecting the skull for the Academy of Sciences. Several months later Ray and I got together and filmed an 'epilogue' at the Academy of Sciences documenting the cleaned skull.

EW: Sketches of Spain is a great soundtrack for the film. What led you to put them together?

DS: I used the Sketches of Spain as an homage to Bruce Conner and his film on Jay De Feo's 'White Rose'. It worked really well with the footage.

Douglas Schultz received an MFA in Sculpture from SF State in '92 and started making films as a result of super 8 parties friends and started having around 1998 a la Steve Parr. A major influence on his filmmaking activities was the fact that CALA supermarkets developed rolls of Kodachrome for $3.99. Now that Kodak stopped making Kodachrome 40 he principally works in mini dv's, but he liked the preciousness of the footage with super 8 and the hands on quality of working with it. He started an Exquisite Corpse film project in 2001 which has produced more than 30 films between 2001 and 2004 with some exciting results. He continues to make film shorts, many of which are surf films, and 'experimental' films using found footage. He has shown regularly at the Zeitgeist Film Festival.

Last updated 09/29/2008.