Duncan Edwards wrote:I guess the point of all this is that when in the wild you have to be prepared to deal with the unexpected.
I guess that's why, on occasion, producers build pits rather than rely on the capricious Mother Nature. Sometimes she doesn't feel like being nice to us!
On backup pits:
Every summer, I usually have between three and six locations that I am using. They're not always in the same place every year. Some things dry out, others flood, and others get fish kills or algae blooms.
Unfortunately, the standards for a fetish-feeding playplace are WAY lower for me than they are for a filming site. To please just me, myself and I, I just need to be able to get into it with a reasonable expectation of privacy. A little (not a lot) of water on top is okay with me, and I can be happy enough sinking in my waders (which, since I'm willing to wear them, means cleanup is very much reduced and can even, in the worst cases, be skipped...I can hose down waders at home!).
I sink from thaw 'til freeze and I don't submerge for personal pleasure.
To capture a scene, though, I need a quicksand pit with little or no water on top. Plus, it needs to be very warm weather so that I can film wearing anything I choose. Then, I need a place to put the camera, which is by far the hardest part. I've got way too many places with a boing-boing surface (could easily tip Sir Tripod right into the mud!) and very tall weeds (these often get between me and Sir Tripod).
This year I chose to do a lot of submergences on video, meaning, I NEEDED decent cleanup, since you don't wanna know what a natural peat bog will do to long hair (yes, natural peat is much worse and harder to get out than Fred's Peat)...not to mention, you get this little coating of black dirt on your face too.
I only had one truly predicably good filming pit this year. Just one. That was Poison Sumac Bog. That little pit had a handy and non-poisonous tree to hang the camera on and is near a creek.
I did do some wetlook and a short series of sinkings out at Windy Lake but Windy Lake is an extremely difficult location to get into and out of, and like most of these places...camera placement was a pain in the bog.
Nessie
