Reviews
Santa Barbara Daily Sound:
Local film explores life behind the fire lines
By ERIC LINDBERG — Feb. 5, 2010
When a mushroom cloud of smoke appeared above the Santa Ynez Mountains as the Zaca fire exploded in July 2007, local filmmaker Jennifer Reinish headed outside with her camera.
She should collect a few frames, she thought at the time, just in case she ever needed stock footage of what appeared to be a sizeable explosion.
Those few frames quickly grew into a feature film exploring the intricacies and complexities of a major firefighting operation — “Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire,” a 49-minute documentary that is being screened twice during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
“There was no preparation, there was no inkling I was going to be making a film,” Reinish said, describing how she stumbled across a fire information kiosk a few days after shooting that initial footage.
After chatting with a local fire captain at the kiosk, Reinish locked up an invite to explore the base camp at Live Oak Campground, where firefighting and support crews began gathering en masse as the Zaca fire raged out of control in Santa Barbara’s rugged backcountry.
“I was so amazed at what I saw back there,” she said. “It was nothing you would ever imagine goes on.”
From the helicopter rescue crew on 24-hour standby to weather forecasters, mapmakers and a vendor selling T-shirts, socks, boots, underwear and gum — the base camp was a buzzing hive of activity.
“You think of the men and women out there with their axes and hoses and fire engines, but there is so much more to it,” Reinish said. “It’s a massive, massive effort. It’s like a city back there.”
She began capturing interviews with fire officials and camp workers, firefighters and helicopter pilots. In addition to filming the campground, she traveled to the helicopter operation area on a ranch on Paradise Road.
After supplementing her Zaca fire footage with a trip to the incident staging area near the Winchester Canyon Gun Club during the Gap fire a year later, Reinish began cutting together various interviews and images.
She finished up a rough cut of the documentary within a year, and screened it during an adult education documentary film class.
“They kind of ripped it apart,” Reinish said. “It was hard to sit there and listen to the criticism, but it was really valuable.”
Back in the editing studio with plenty of notes, she revised the film into its current form. It premiered during a special screening in the parking lot of Samy’s Camera in June, and has since won an award at the Yosemite Film Festival.
Reinish, who evacuated during the Jesusita fire, said she drew comfort from her personal experience of the magnitude of the effort undertaken during a major firefight.
“It’s really reassuring to see what’s going on and who the people are,” she said.
She is hopeful that the documentary will also serve to dispel some myths about firefighters — including complaints from some during the Zaca fire that fire crews are paid overtime on major incidents and aren’t motivated to bring wildland blazes under control.
“They’re out there putting their life on the line, and they hate hearing that,” Reinish said. “Every single one of them would rather be at home with their families than sleeping on the ground at night.”
“Behind the Lines” screens on Monday at 9:30 p.m. at the Victoria Hall Theater and on February 14 at 4 p.m. at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Tickets are available at each venue, and minipaks and passes are available at www.sbiff.org.
Preceding each screening will be a showing of “Tea Fire: Re-Birth,” a 20-minute documentary short by local filmmaker Craig Harris that explores the lives of 10 individuals whose homes burned down during the November 2008 blaze.
7/1/09
The Ventura County Star
Fire documentary will be shown at film festival
By Gareth W. Dodd Correspondent
A documentary by a Santa Barbara filmmaker featuring behind-the-scenes interviews of firefighters battling the four-month-long Zaca wildfire during the 2007-08 fire season will screen Friday at the Ventura Film Festival.
“Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire” is the latest work of Jennie Reinish, sole owner of Tidepool Pictures. She said her invitation to join firefighters struggling to contain and extinguish the second-largest fire in California history — eclipsed only by the 2003 Cedar fire — came by chance.
“I went there and just happened to start talking with a public information captain, and he invited me to base camp,” said Reinish. “I was stunned by the size of it and everything that was going on. I had never had a clue as to what was going on behind the scenes.
“I talked to hot shots, helicopter pilots and firefighters. They were upset over rumors the public thought they were lazy, sitting around drawing overtime while letting the fire burn. I wanted to let people know who was back there in the staging area and what they were doing.”
The documentary mixes live interviews with wildfire footage by firefighters Tom Plymale of Arroyo Grande and Brian Williams of Carpinteria. The interviews were filmed by Heather Carney Shea.
“Behind the Lines” premiered three weeks ago in Santa Barbara before an audience of 300, said Reinish.
“I got great feedback, especially from the firefighters,” she said. “They want to use it to train new firefighters.”
The Zaca fire started on July 4, 2007, near Buellton from sparks generated by a metal grinder being used to repair a water pipe. By Aug. 31, it had burned through more than 240,000 acres of chaparral and woodlands in Los Padres National Forest and Santa Ynez River Recreation Area.
The state declared the wide-ranging blaze was 100 percent contained on Sept. 2 and controlled on Oct. 29.
“Behind the Lines” is the 40-year-old, Chicago-born producer-director’s third documentary. Her first, “Aphrodite Project,” featured a Santa Barbara social worker who teaches cancer patients the joys of becoming artists.
Her second, “We Played Marbles,” was commissioned by the Jewish Foundation of Greater Santa Barbara County. “We Played Marbles” focused on the childhood of Holocaust survivors before and during the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.
“Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire” will be shown at 12:30 p.m. Friday, in the Elizabeth Topping Room of E.P. Foster Library, 651 E. Main St., Ventura. Tickets at the door are $10. A festival pass can be purchased for $25.
E.W. Scripps Co.
© 2009 Ventura County Star
6/2/09
The Santa Barbara Independent
Inside the Firefight
Behind the Scenes of Behind the Lines, a New Documentary on Fighting Wildfires
By Matt Kettmann
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Faced with three menacing wildfires in 10 months—and one of the state’s biggest, longest running blazes ever in 2007—Santa Barbarans have become all too familiar with what firefighting looks like. What few realize, however, is that there’s a literal army of support behind any wildfire fight, as entire tent cities are erected to house, feed, clothe, and serve the men and women on the frontlines.
This weekend, these unheralded soldiers will finally be getting their share of the limelight, thanks to a new documentary by filmmaker Jennie Reinish. Titled Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire and filmed mostly during 2007’s three-month-long Zaca Fire (save for a few shots and interviews from the Gap Fire in July 2008), the nearly one-hour film showcases the caterers, mapmakers, chaplains, weather forecasters, litter picker-uppers, and chainsaw repairpeople who work to ensure that the firefight remains strong and safe. Along the way, Reinish also interviews plenty of the firefighters themselves, from the captains and commanders who manage the attack to the chopper pilots to hot shot crews who personally tackle the fire.
“The movie was my response to, ‘Why can’t they just put this thing out?’” explained Reinish, a former teacher who owns the Santa Barbara-based film production company Tidepool Pictures and has been making documentaries since 1999. After being invited to the Zaca Fire’s base camp by S.B. City Fire Captain Gary Pitney, Reinish quickly learned that the firefighters are doing everything they can, and that there’s a whole hidden network of support behind the battle. “I hope this gives people appreciation of how much there is to it on every single level,” she said.
Although the footage comes from the Zaca and Gap fires, Reinish tried to keep her film “nonspecific” because the same level of support arises during any major disaster. “I wanted it to be as generic as I could because those roles are repeated over and over again at every incident,” she explained.
Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire
* When: Saturday, June 6, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
* Where: Samy's Camera, 614 Chapala St., Santa Barbara
* Cost: $5
* Age limit: Not available
Full event details
The Saturday, June 6, screening in the Samy’s Camera parking lot will also feature music from the Dreamtime Continuum, whose lead singer Sudama Mark Kennedy recently lost his home in the Jesusita Fire. There’ll be food from Silvergreens, coffee from Hot Spots, and money going to good causes: the $5 donation will go to the United Way’s Jesusita Fire fund and sales of the DVD will go to the Steven J. Masto Memorial Scholarship Fund, named after an S.B. firefighter who died 10 years ago on the Camusa Fire. Remember to bring your own seat, though, because you might not want to stand for the whole film.
In addition to the fundraising, Reinish hopes that the screening—which was planned months before the Jesusita Fire broke out—will draw more attention and “give a boost” to her work, thereby allowing her to focus more strictly on her documentary work. Right now, she explained, corporate and commercial video work “keeps my mortgage paid and funds my documentary habit.”
Her habit, it seems, is only growing. She’s already at work on a doc about the Habitat for Humanity homes being built on San Pascual Street. “We’re following the four families every step of the way until they move into their own home,” Reinish said. And she’s still drawn to the flames. “I swore I never would do this and revisit the same topic,” she admitted, “but the fire thing has kinda gotten under my skin.” This time, however, she’s looking at how the environment bounces back after a blaze, and hopes to parallel that with the recovery of people who have lost everything due to wildfire.
4•1•1
Behind the Lines premieres in the Samy’s Camera parking lot (614 Chapala St.) on Saturday, June 6, around sundown. Music from the Dreamtime Continuum starts at 7:30 p.m.
For more, see tinyurl.com/firefilm.
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5/23/09
As I started to view the video, I got the feeling like I was in camp again. Wow, I thought I could even smell the smoke! Great job in getting, as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story". I plan to show the video to our department Incident Management Team to show what Type 1 & 2 IMT camps can require in the terms of management infrastructure. Thanks again and wish you and the film luck ...
Aloha,
Carter Davis
Honolulu Fire
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3/16/09
From “Wildfire Today” www.wildfiretoday.com
Monday, 16 March
"Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire"
"I love to walk the gray line. It's all interpretation. You do what's right and not necessarily someone's interpretation or impression of what the rules are. I'm kind of a renegade. I always have been."
- Rocky Opliger, Incident Commander, Zaca Fire, 2007, being interviewed in "Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire".
Today I watched the documentary, "Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire" that Wildfire Today first told you about on March 12. This 48-minute film covers not so much the flames, smoke, and air tankers that you see in news reports, but instead zooms in on the human side... the background players... the people that are largely ignored by the media.
The film was produced and directed by Jennifer A. Reinish whose previous work includes co-directing "Aphordite Project" (2004), a documentary about eight patients who collaborate with Santa Barbara artists to illuminate their cancer experiences. She has also made other documentaries, music videos, and commercials.
In "Behind the Lines", Reinish illuminates the work that Incident Base, or "fire camp", personnel do, out of the range of most cameras, that makes it possible for the Operations section, the actual on-the-ground firefighters, to suppress a fire.
This is done through dozens of interviews with members of the Incident Management Team and contractors, with each one describing their job at the incident base and usually what their "real job" is when they are not assigned to a fire. Many of the subjects give examples of similar work they have done on "all hazard" incidents, such as Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, and other non-fire assignments.
Several members of Hot Shot crews are interviewed as well. Quite a few firefighters contributed still photographs and video footage which was used in the film.
The documentary was made at the 2007 Zaca fire on the Los Padres National Forest. This huge fire which burned 240,000 acres started on July 4 and was contained on September 2. It was divided into two zones, the Live Oak and Richardson zones, with each having their own Incident Management Team. Quite a few different Type 1 Teams rotated in and out, but the film includes an interview with Incident Commander Rocky Oplinger of California Team 4.
Bill Molumby, also the IC of a California Type 1 Team which spent a lot of time on the Zaca fire, can be briefly seen in a couple of shots. In fact in one scene, Molumby and Opliger are talking to each other while standing in front of map displays, while the person being interviewed describes them as being "like two 4-star Generals".
After watching the first few minutes of the film, realizing it mostly consisted of fire camp workers explaining their jobs, I thought I was going to be bored, having spent a lot of my life in fire camps. But it soon sucked me in. Everybody had a slightly different story, bringing the human side of fire camp to the light of day.... probably for the first time.
If I was going to nit pick, I could point out that some of the sound editing was a little distracting. In many of the scenes, the ambient noise in the background was virtually the same, sounding like a lot of people talking at the same time, even when it appeared that the person being interviewed was in a remote location with no one else visible in the shot.
For emergency management personnel, the film could be useful in training courses where the students are not very familiar with the roles and responsibilites of all incident personnel, or to introduce them to what it would be like to work at a large incident.
As we mentioned in our earlier post about the film, we learned this in an email from Reinish:
“ I am planning to do a local premiere in Santa Barbara sometime in the next few months. Proceeds of the event will be donated to a charity that Santa Barbara firefighters will choose for me.”
If you want your own copy of the film, her web site has more information.
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3/17/09
Anyone who deals with large wildland fires, especially on the Los Padres, knows that once a fire gets established in this extreme, chaparral covered, roadless country, regardless of technology and money, it is a force to be reckoned with.
One only has to look at this short historical list of fires, 1932 Matilija, 1953 Big Dalton, 1955 Refugio, 1964 Coyote, 1966 Wellman, 1977 Romero, 1985 Wheeler, 1985 Las Pilitas, to see the destructive power of fire in this country. Other smaller fires can be equally destructive, especially in the Santa Barbara front country where homes are built up into the hillsides. 1977 Sycamore, 1990 Paint, to name a few.
I can understand why residents of this area would be concerned about their property and their safety. They should do every thing they can to fire proof their homes if they live in a fire prone area. But I have heard they criticize firefighters for doing "too little" to manage a fire of this magnitude or that " they just want to make all that overtime pay" and it is not fair to the hard working men and women firefighters and support staff who sacrifice their time, and sometimes their own lives to help save the lives and natural resources of this country.
This documentary hopes to answer some questions and bring the human side to those who do this job, whether they work in base camps or on the line. Lessons from military history have long told us that troops can only fight when they are taken care of with food, water, rest and hygeine. The same philosophy works for wildland firefighting.
From conversations with Ms. Reinish, her intent with this documentary was to answer some of the public questions about "why cant they just put that fire out?". I think she did an admirable job of that and the feel of her film is that she has the utmost respect and admiration for us who are part of the fire service. This will be a good film to show to those who have little understanding of our culture.
Thanks for supporting her film
-Tom Plymale
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3/13/09
I would like to credit you for taking the time and effort to produce the film Behind the Lines... I spent most of my career so far on a southern CA hotshot crew and most people don't really begin to understand the everyday aspects of what goes on behind the scenes.
Thanks
Derek Casbon
Fire Management Specialist (Rx Fire and Fuels)
