Wild Places: Revealing Wisconsin's Hidden Beauty
by Benson Gardner, Portal Wisconsin

"Wild Places" is a selection of the PBS Program Club hosted by Wisconsin Public Television and Portal Wisconsin. Chat online with other viewers beginning Nov. 26. View a clip of this program.

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The creators of a new Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) documentary, "Wild Places," weren't the first to notice the loveliness of Wisconsin's natural environment. But they may be the first to make so much of that beauty available to so many people.

WPT's Jo Garrett has been producing documentaries in the state for 17 years. She was also born and raised here. Yet, she says, she didn't realize how beautiful this chunk of land was until she did "Wild Places."

The hour-long program, debuting on WPT at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 26 (and repeating at 9 a.m. Dec. 1 and 7 p.m. Dec. 5), is about Wisconsin's State Natural Areas Program. Started 50 years ago on Aldo Leopold's suggestion, the State Natural Areas may house as much as 90 percent of the state's rare plants and three-quarters of threatened animals.

Says Garrett, "One of the sources [in the documentary] says these are the rarest of the rare and it's true. So it's a feast for the eyes; it really is."

To capture the visual delights, videographers Frank Boll and Chuck France (who recently won Midwest Emmy Awards for Cinematography and Editing) employed the latest, most whiz-bang technology, Garrett says.

"This is one of the first shows shot on a new digital camera, which leads to very crisp resolution. It's a very beautiful imageYou can see the detail, for example, on a little beetle like we have [in the program], or a wide landscape shot."

And then there's that much-overlooked partner of your eyes: your ears.

"I think what settles people into a landscape," says Garrett, "is the opportunity to hear the sounds that are part of that landscape. I think that we are unaware of how much sound places usA siren can place you immediately-immediately! And in the same way, we were very careful about recording natural sound that we used within this [documentary]."

The prominence of the natural areas' noises made creating a soundtrack a particularly interesting proposition. Music composer Brad Wray was also the sound editor. Garrett says Wray took advantage of his multifaceted position to "really create a scoreIt's not filler; it's meant to elicit particular emotional reactions."

For example, Garrett says in three sections of the program, the camera spends quite a long time in each of three Natural Areas -- Baxter's Hollow, Chiwaukee Prairie and Beulah Bog. "And the sounds are very different in those places, and to rest within those landscapes for a period of time up to two minutes or so, then requires a different kind of music coming out of that to change the pace and the tempo and tone of what's happening."

On the other hand, sometimes capturing natural beauty requires a healthy amount of what Garrett calls "good, old-fashioned grunt work." The truth of that statement becomes especially clear when you consider a couple of factors: first, the most radiant periods of every day-especially on video-are at roughly dawn and dusk.

"To get the best light often requires that you're up at sunset, or that you're there at the golden hour, about 5 o'clock to sunset time-and those wonderful conferences in a motel parking lot at 4 a.m., as you figure out whether it's going to be cloudy or clear and whether you're gonna go out there or notI spent a lot of time looking at The Weather Channel or the weather Web sites and fretting. Because in order to get a good image-not always, you can do some wonderful things with rain and clouds-but usually it's best to have that sun shining through to really light up the video."

Another grunt work factor is that viewers' experience wouldn't be complete without some winter shots-like at Frog Lake and Pines in Northern Wisconsin.

Relates Garrett, "we got there on the occasion of an 8-inch snowstorm. Frank actually had a small sled prepared for me so I could cart the gear around."

Garrett hopes all the skill, determination and high-tech equipment will add up to a show that captures the beauty and the value-both esthetic and scientific-of Wisconsin's most precious landscapes.

"I hope it generatesan appreciation of what we have. And a desire to hold on to it."

View a clip of this program.