New project...

[Wayne Morellini]

bump

 

[Elsie N]

Here, here. I may be working with a project later this year into next in a number of locations around Tanzania, Mali and Malawi. Boots on the ground, dust in the lens and head low. Such a shame to even think about a World without Rhino or Elephants just because certain elements of society deem their peckers and status to be of greater consequence.

Go Jim, go WILD.
M.

while I really shouldn't be giving away story lines (I've still got plenty left '-) if you are a writer or know one, I suggest writing and shooting a movie where an eco-terrorist group is going around killing the buyers of elephant tusks and rhino horns. This would especially be a good episode for the "Black List" since the rare-species-parts-users could be killed and the killers would be not-killed themselves. The Black List has a way of not being as judgemental or as nit-picky as the law when it comes to dark behaviour. '-)

Stories like this one may make those who buy the aforementioned items think before continuing to deal in these rarities. If the money dries up there is no market... if there is no market, there is no need to kill these fellow denizens of the planet.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

A good idea Elsie, situating it in the supply network, in America and Europe (or China/Liongate type movie) as a police investigation/chase would be something with a Matt Daemon like character. Could be something that could generate big name interest, very poignant subject matter for the time. A series, whale parts next movie, something else the third, as they investigate the network to bring it down. About the tension, the drama a bit, some action, intrigue, investigation, silent hours (night action, some day hits). Very good subject matter.

Would be a real waste as an episode in a series.

 

[Marc Thorpe]

while I really shouldn't be giving away story lines (I've still got plenty left '-) if you are a writer or know one, I suggest writing and shooting a movie where an eco-terrorist group is going around killing the buyers of elephant tusks and rhino horns. This would especially be a good episode for the "Black List" since the rare-species-parts-users could be killed and the killers would be not-killed themselves. The Black List has a way of not being as judgemental or as nit-picky as the law when it comes to dark behaviour. '-)

Stories like this one may make those who buy the aforementioned items think before continuing to deal in these rarities. If the money dries up there is no market... if there is no market, there is no need to kill these fellow denizens of the planet.

There are a whole bunch of potential 'targets' in such a storyline, believe me, it is something I've often thought about, down to the point of mentally walking through the screenplay...

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Elsie N]

There are a whole bunch of potential 'targets' in such a storyline, believe me, it is something I've often thought about, down to the point of mentally walking through the screenplay...

Cheers,
Mark.

Good to hear.

Those established in the business of illegal trade may not be swayed by seeing such a movie, but perhaps it would discourage anyone new from being in the trade... especially if the movie presented the rarity of these animals and the numbers left.

It seems to strike home when a species gets close to extinction like the American Bison once did, and the small numbers left to recover means there is a small gene pool to breed from meaning there is more danger of a bad trait being endemic. Probably something like CRSPR can cut that out and perhaps restore health to a recovering species, but the costs would become so high that it would only allow for a few breeding stock to undergo such a treatment and thus decades to recover to a healthy herd, naturally.

There are other ways to protect the DNA germ but it requires educating a misguided public.

Case in point, a few years ago there was a story on one of the network magazine programs here in the U.S. about a ranch in Texas that offered exotic game hunts to wealthy hunters. There was an outcry from one group or another over allowing hunting of these threatened species from Africa.

Even when the numbers revealed that the ranch bred way more animals than were killed with the excess released back into the wild in Africa, the protesters would not be swayed. Not even when the ranch explained that without the big money paid for the hunts, the ranch would have to cease operations and the genetic diversity and increase of numbers would be gone and whatever survived in Africa would be all that is left of the species.

Maybe the easiest answer to the poaching is to make the fruits of their labor less lucrative. That is, get some keratin powder (ground up slaughtered animal hooves) and 3-d print a rhino horn or grind up teeth of various types and 3-d print an ivory elephant tusk.

Flood the market with these ersatz products and poachers can't compete with a cheap U.S. (or other country) knock-off. '-)

 

[Elsie N]

Treat it like smoking. That is,

1. continue the fight against poaching, making product more expensive. Taxes on cigarettes made them too expensive for many people and they quit.

2. Get govt. (china and other countries with perpetrators) to put out Public Service announcements to switch to Viagra in the case of the Rhino horn... jade in the place of ivory. Even to the extent of creating a false market for jade being valued over ivory. Make it illegal with very heavy fines to carve in or own ivory.

3. Give them a substitute product for their addiction. Much like e-cigs worked as a crutch for those addicted to smoking, as I suggested two posts back, make substitutes via 3-d printing to replace the rarities in question.

4. As for whaling, start feeding them big suckers something that is not harmful to the whale but stores in their fat and is harmful to humans. A few deaths from eating whale blubber will dry that market up really, really fast.

Or who knows... the Japanese reactor disaster may have put enough radioactivity in the ocean to taint the whale blubber already.

 

[Marc Thorpe]

Good to hear.

Those established in the business of illegal trade may not be swayed by seeing such a movie, but perhaps it would discourage anyone new from being in the trade... especially if the movie presented the rarity of these animals and the numbers left.

......

Flood the market with these ersatz products and poachers can't compete with a cheap U.S. (or other country) knock-off. '-)

That 'solution' is already on the 3D print bed, with mixed reception from the conservation communities. http://www.iflscience.com/technology/fake-rhino-horn-fight-poaching/

 

[Elsie N]

That 'solution' is already on the 3D print bed, with mixed reception from the conservation communities. http://www.iflscience.com/technology/fake-rhino-horn-fight-poaching/

Good to hear these people are using some common sense rather than just attacking the problem from an anti-poaching perspective, requiring more and more donations to implement.

The fact a private company is doing this is VERY good news. This is very heartening!

Thanks for the link. I may want to invest in this company when it eventually goes public!

EDIT: Just read the rest of the article in which they stated they are also working on a way to make elephant tusks. On my oath I had no prior knowledge of these happenings. I guess it was such an elegant solution that it just easily came to mind, a year or so after they had already begun doing what I unwittingly suggested. Just wanted to clear that up since our thinking seemed so eerily alike.

It is entirely possible I heard of this or read something to this effect in the past year, but if so, I am unaware of that connection.

 

[Marc Thorpe]

Treat it like smoking. That is,

4. As for whaling, start feeding them big suckers something that is not harmful to the whale but stores in their fat and is harmful to humans. A few deaths from eating whale blubber will dry that market up really, really fast.

Poisoning has been a very real action by conservation entities in South Africa to date. The poaching goes on unabated which is a simple reflection on the callous nature of the players at each level. They simply want to get paid and have no issues with the end user getting sick. To put it in context the end user audience potential is in the Milions, each blindingly focused on getting their own lump of fingernail. Drastic measures would have to be taken, and veiled perfectly using the medium of film could certainly go some ways to sewing seeds of new ideas and approaches in the real world (and maybe protect the writers from psychological evaluation)!

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Well hold that thought. Get the Chinese government to set up information and training in alternatives. Publish information and training on the effectiveness of the alternatives compared to.the poached items, and the placebo effect.

For sexual.health it is complex, but if you pick.the right treatment, there is probably over 99% chance it will work far many times better than the small amounts of these items. However, I would not be surprised if it had niacinamide riboside in it, but that you can get far more in capsule form far cheaper.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Just make Chinese language documentaries showing all this stuff on alternatives.

 

[Marc Thorpe]

Just make Chinese language documentaries showing all this stuff on alternatives.

A number of entities, Shark Savers comes to mind, have in the past flooded Beijing with an ad campaign where they bought billboards and bus stop ad panels for anti shark fin soup campaigns. Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars raised and spent on the issue with little to no reduction in demand. I think the Asian communities are just so used to seeing the anti campaigns that they simply get blind to it, much the same as many people throughout SE Asia no longer see plastic litter as unsightly. Hard to address, even harder to initiate change.

 

[Marc Thorpe]

No shortage of subjects for bouncing around a story line if said storyline is one that follows a number of self governing cells from one umbrella organisation

Whales / Dolphins
Sharks
Tigers
Rhino
Elephant
Pangolin
Manta Ray
Lion

The above mentioned are of course the iconic species, the plight of whom most people are aware of. Poaching is also about the whole bushmeat trade. Another contentious issue deals with rainforest clearance for Palm Oil plantations in Indonesia, Orang Utans seem to be a focal victim of that issue. Then of course you have the ethical issue with the Cat and Dog meat trades...

Crimes against the natural environment and the species we share this planet with fuel a multi-Billion dollar industry, a natural target for subversive elements, and a great focal issue for a hard hitting film subject for sure.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

A number of entities, Shark Savers comes to mind, have in the past flooded Beijing with an ad campaign where they bought billboards and bus stop ad panels for anti shark fin soup campaigns. Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars raised and spent on the issue with little to no reduction in demand. I think the Asian communities are just so used to seeing the anti campaigns that they simply get blind to it, much the same as many people throughout SE Asia no longer see plastic litter as unsightly. Hard to address, even harder to initiate change.

It can't come off as biased, or increase the appetite (can you imagine what they will be thinking of eating after they keep seeing biased campaigning over food stuffs).

Also, you have to constrict such a documentary down to viable targets, and the alternative health and practitioner training programs. You present the personal advantage of these things. Advantageous people are interested in how it advantages them, and they may even feel disadvantaged with the oiached item. Not that you should at all push the disadvantaged angle and give people something to get riled up against. The problem with presenting these messages is the people presenting them, the dishonesty on both sides trying to con people. I hope for reasoned debates and an acceptable result.

 

[Marc Thorpe]

Not that I am in any way condoning the potential fanatic views in this or any other scenario I think the best vehicle to convey the message of the film is controversy, with a capital C.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

You're something else Egon. I've was yes to make such a thing for decades I think. I could have done it before the me crowd did it, simply by changing over to a very low alternative processing architecture and limiting things to more low power and practical applications. Not like those power hungry ARM processors in low end non smart phones and watches of those days, but like 10 to 100 times lower minium energy consumption, but looking for 50,000th of a milliwatt idle mode (but even sleep mode was many times that). i cone from an area where 500k instructions a sevond was a luxury, looking at embedded applications far less than that. Beautiful stuff. Arm has caught up enough to be viable these days, but the competition could far exceed them if they had access to the right chip making processes. A lot of the augmented features they figured out in this wave I wanted to implement before.

It definitely is useful, and uses where you wear it for long times. In matter of fact, hokokens is the sort of thing I was discussing with a display manufacturer like 4 years ago. It should he complementarity tech for normal all day consumer use, no t dominating tech, except when your doing something practical or chilling out. The Pokémon go stuff is like one of the types of games use I was planning.

The things to look for is eye tracking in VR, around since the 80's used in a Canon camcorder I think for control selections. I worked out it was rather simple to do. Much better than relying on audio only. But there is so much more I was planning. I'm still planning something pretty unique in this space.

But as ussual, all these bullshit artists are implementing ideas without coming to the source to help them, and f'ing them up. So disheartening. Not saying Nintendo is, they are one of the companies who's work ethics I respect. I've got three virtual boys I wanted to use the mechanisms to make a HD color projector with years ago. Unfortunately it was in that period where the technology had been less. The Virtual boy could have been done differently and be a success.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Not that I am in any way condoning the potential fanatic views in this or any other scenario I think the best vehicle to convey the message of the film is controversy, with a capital C.

I agree Marc. I prefer to keep away from the notion of going after end users of product in the fictional work. Too close to home, in reference to what fanatics watching it might think, and I think any of this is too much for real life, but as a movie it is about fanaticism and remote from everyday life and people, to pose much less threat, but thought. All about balance, which many don't get.

Your idea about controversy sounds interesting, what sort of controversy are you thinking Marc?

 

[Elsie N]

Oh, this must be it... with the Oakley connection. '-)

 

[Marc Thorpe]

And give the plot away? Lightly, it needs to have elements that show the fanatics accomplish their goals, at least to an extent. Ultimately they may be stopped or they may force change. Irrespective, their methods however deeply counter to the accepted norms of a social mindset they may be, need to contain a shocking impact factor.

 

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

Oh, this must be it... with the Oakley connection. '-)

ha! i came here to post exactly that! matches with that photo posted we all thought was taken from a drone.