Episode 002... Douglas Family Preserve: People, Dogs, Birds, and Bees

This second OLPA episode debuted on Monday, 16 July 2007, and showed for 2 weeks on Santa Barbara Channels, cable TV-17, under the schedule atop this website.

Synopsis

This episode features Douglas Family Preserve (DFP), a 70-acre open-space "wild" park owned and managed by City of Santa Barbara. The timeliness of this episode showing during the last half of July 2007 coincides with an art exhibit and fundraiser by SCAPE, Southern California Artists Painting for the Environment, to be held 28-29 July at La Arcada Court, the breezy paseo-arcade space between the downtown Library and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Called City Parks: Domestic & Wild, proceeds from this exhibit will benefit Friends of Douglas Family Preserve and PARC Foundation.

The video features interviews with representatives of these organizations, including a discussion with Nancy Rapp about development and funding of the Management Plan for this parkland.

• Rosalind Amorteguy, Board President of PARC Foundation
• Jean Schuyler, PARC Board member
• Susan Belloni, Friend of DFP and SCAPE member and painter
• Nancy Rapp, Director of Santa Barbara City Parks and Recreation Dept.

Editorial Notes

Often known as the Wilcox Property because of the prior property owners before the site became public land, the DFP Management Plan, completed in 2004, was one of the most lively and contentious public planning processes in the recent history of Santa Barbara. Dogs --either on- or off-leash-- dominated the public debate and environmental review, but other issues of invasive exotic plants, trail placement and access, and blufftop erosion also are substantial elements of the Plan; however, so far the City has not advanced too fast on implementing those provisions of the Plan, mainly because of a lack of funding. That is discussed in the interview by David with Nancy Rapp.

While this OLPA episode seems heavy on friendly promotion for the SCAPE art exhibit, opening reception, and art sale (for a non-profit organization, of course), this subject for a video production at this time coincided nicely with our long-standing goal for highlighting DFP and the SCAPE and PARC Foundation efforts.

A future OLPA episode will feature the Community Planting Day held in January 2006, when a demonstration plot of native plants was installed by volunteer ecological restorationists. Nearly 1.5 years later, a field interview with Brad Taggart (a leader of Friends of Douglas Family Preserve) will be included in that episode to see how the native plantings have grown after 2 seasons.

Production Notes

The video was recorded 23 June 2007, on location at DFP. Lighting was soft, thanks to the ubiquitous fog most summer mornings, but the ocean horizon was all gray. During the beginning of the show, the hemispheric mapping video that zoomed in to DFP was from the free software application Google Earth, where "Douglas Preserve" already is entered into the database of places. Future OLPA episodes with a place-based theme will feature more of such video geographic orientations, such as the episode in production, Take Back The Park XX, about the little-known public park-like space in front of Fess Parker DoubleTree Resort on Cabrillo Bl.

Video editing skills advanced in complexity for this second episode of the show, this time including cut-away still photos and video clips that were introduced over the main video timeline. Aligning the boundaries of these cut-away images had a few foibles where the top and bottom edges sometimes extended too far, but that is all part of the editing learning curve, which is flattening fast with the fine work by Cathy.


Watch the Video of this show!!
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