The Wire spotted a photo on Twitter and because it combines several great interests — fly-fishing, flying cameras and shows about fly-fishing — checked in with the subject, British Columbia-based angler and guide April Vokey (@ApriVokey on Twitter).
The fancy camerawork is for an upcoming show on World Fishing Network called Shorelines With April Vokey, scheduled to premiere in January.
The concept: Follow “Fly Gal” Vokey (whom you might remember from her 60 Minutes Sports profile or her presence in Tom Brokaw’s Buccaneers and Bones bonefishing series) as she, travels from the highland streams of Scotland to the rivers of North America’s West Coast, writing a book about fly-fishing’s evolution. She's already started blogging about it, and posting photos like the one here, from Ontario.
“It’s never been my dream to be a television host, it’s been my dream to be an author,” Vokey told The Wire from a lodge on the Dean River in British Columbia. That’s why this book concept, pitched to WFN by executive producer Nick Pujic, worked to help make her both an author and a television host simultaneously.
“This is my life-long dream,” she said, adding that she has enjoyed meeting and interviewing experts along the way, chronicling the history of the sport and pointing out that modern methods might not always be best to preserve steelhead and Atlantic salmon fishing in the future.
The sport is diminishing, she said: “People my age aren’t reading anymore. Stories of yesterday are starting to disappear. It’s time to embrace our past and remember it again.”
As for the flying cameras, Pujic, producing the series at Vantage Point Media House, said that’s part of the plan to make Shorelines look different from other fishing shows.
“We’re bringing the highest level of production quality that the fishing-show industry has seen,” Pujic said. The series is being shot on RED Epic cameras, which capture five times the detail of high-definition cameras and enable cool post-production enhancements. “For example, if you’re shooting wide, and the fish jumps, you can punch in and get a tight of that fish jumping all in one shot, and you don’t lose any quality.”
Helicopters are used along with four remote-control drones, capable of carrying cameras ranging in size from a GoPro to a RED Epic. “On our first shoot April hooked the first fish of the entire series, and we had the drone up in the air, 10 feet away from her. So it captured the whole thing, and it’s mesmerizing,” Pujic said.
Pujic also told The Wire: “I’ve been producing fishing shows for eight years and almost every single one is focused around the fish. This one is focused around an individual on a mission."
He said he had no doubts about viewers wanting to follow that mission. "April Vokey is the Tiger Woods of flyfishing," he said. "Not my opinion, that’s the fact. So people are generally interested in what April's up to.” Shorelines, he said, "gives people a glimpse into April’s character that they’ve not had in any articles previously, in any show that she’s been in previously. And at the same time it actually raises awareness about a lot of different issues and concerns that face anglers as a whole that she’s bringing to light. There are things that aren’t often discussed like they should be. So it’s thought provoking. Because of that I think it’s going to engage viewers much more so than watching people in a boat cast line.”
Thus far, the production has been to Eastern Canada and it will visit British Columbia and the United Kingdom this fall. Joining Vokey in her travels are her dog, Colby, and a professional photographer. The photos here are by Alyssa Lloyd (on Facebook). The drone pilot was Brock Tompkins of Scene Ace Aerial Photography and Videography.
‘Daily Show’ Fans Crowdsource a New CNN Schedule
Ouch! The Daily Show With Jon Stewart’s “Let’s Buy CNN” tongue-incheek Kickstarter campaign has raised $4.3 trillion to buy the news channel, according to the Daily Show sub-website devoted to the purchase — made possible because CNN would be spun off if Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox prevails in its pursuit of Time Warner Inc.
The crowdsource funding may be faux, but the mock effort has drawn a social media crowd.
The Daily Show created various hashtags and solicited Twitter posts on which new shows its viewers would like to see on the cable news channel once Jon Stewart and company have ponied up the big bucks, what amazing “gratuitous” technology the network should employ next and suggestions for catchy new slogans.
Here are some of The Wire’s printable favorites:
New shows:Outrage Nation, hosted by Marc Summers, where social-media activists out-complain rivals and the winner gets hosed down in CNN’s parking lot; CNN Sunday Sermons; 23 Hours of Apologies and Corrections For the Stuff We Said In Our 1 Hour of Daily ‘News.’
New technology: “Voting Booth Time Machine With 2016 Poll Results”; “Cloned Dinosaur Anchors”; “Fact- Checking.”
New slogans: “CNN: Move Along. Nothing to See Here”; “CNN: Where news isWAIT IS THAT THE MALAYSIAN AIRPLANE? No, just a whale? OK … back to news and courtrooms and laws and stuff ”; “CNN: The Near Beer of News.”
Then there is the Instagram submission showing an airport monitor and the slogan: “CNN: If you’re watching this, your flight’s been cancelled.”
— John Eggerton
