Launching the ‘Ceres’ in Ferrisburg

I have hired Finn Yarborough from Earth House Productions about four times now and I always chide him that he has to hire me someday. Well, he sent me an email a couple of weeks ago saying, “The day has finally come!”

Finn had made a little video about a rice farmer in Ferrisburgh who put together a Kickstarter campaign to build a small wooden sailing barge with the idea to ship non-perishable farm goods from Lake Champlain down the Hudson River to the Chelsea Piers. Erik Andrus, is the builder of this small barge, the project is called ‘The Vermont Sail Freight Project.’  Finn is gathering footage to make a documentary but he was out of town, so he hired me to get the footage of it’s launch and reception party.  The kickstarter project was successful and they built the boat in 5 months!  It is named ‘Ceres’.

Here’s Finn’s video:

Vermont Sail Freight Project from Finn Yarbrough.

I brought Audrey and we stayed at dad’s house in Bristol overnight. A great day was had by all. I got to the farm at 8, got them pulling the boat out of the barn. I got a high angle shot from the top floor of his house of it parked in the driveway. Then a shot of the boat behind tall grass, as he towed it with his tractor, looking like it was floating on grass. Audrey and I got a lot of chase shots as he drove it to the launch site.

Ceres crossing Rt. 7

The ‘Ceres’ crossing Rt. 7

For several drive-bys, I’d race ahead and setup a beautiful landscape shot just in time to have the tractor and boat drive through the shot. I recorded a lot of stuff at the launch site. Especially a low angle shot of the first time the hull hit the water.

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The Launch of the ‘Ceres’

There was a long-running shot of them poling away. Then, as I drove to the reception site, I spotted them through the woods way off in the distance as they were poling by. Finally, I got the boat as it was towed up to the beach by a passing-by motor boat, fashionably a half hour late. It was perfect. People were arriving, wondering where the boat was, and finally, ‘Is that little black speck it?’ Channel 5 was there and I recorded her interview with Erik. I left the camera running just pointed at the boat as people got on and off, possible use would be a time compression…

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Singing the Barge Song

Finally I got his speech and the barge song they wrote. The last thing I got was them raising the mast.

That was over 4 hours of footage (228 minutes) total for the day.  Two cards, 64GB, totally filled.

And that is not all, oh no, that is not all! (Do you know the Cat in the Hat?):  Audrey had my iPod touch and used its camera function to shoot some drive-bys of the boat being towed and other footage and I used it for b-roll during the speeches and the song.

After the day was done, I needed to drop off the Dionic-160 battery at Finn’s house and I had a nice time with Kate and their boys at the end of the day. Audrey read to them and I played with them. They are such a blast!

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