Scott Erlinder’s gamble that there would be a national audience for his doc about Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast paid off when American Public Television (APT) picked up the program earlier this month.
Before the APT sale, the hour-long “Storm Warriors: Heroes of the Shipwreck Coast” debuted in Detroit last June and played in Milwaukee and Marquette.
Through APT, which distributes non-PBS-produced programs to PBS affiliates, “Storm Warriors” will screen in at least 17 more markets, including Chicago and stations in Florida, Washington, Utah, New York, Minnesota and throughout Michigan. Co-producer Jim Vincent of Diner Films landed the deal.
“Many people have a connection to the drama of the seas,” said Erlinder, . “The only twist here is that it happens to be the middle of the continent and a lot of people don’t realize how dangerous it can be.”
“Storm Warriors,” “an epic story of little-known people” profiles the men and women who patrolled the Lake Superior shore, rescuing victims of more than 150 shipwrecks that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Seeing how remote the area is today, I can just imagine how isolated it must have been in the 1870s,” Erlinder mused. “It must have been like the end of the world.”
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| A frozen freighter in “Storm Warriors” |
Unlike the more glamorous Titanic, which was captured on celluloid before its demise, the freighters of the time went unfilmed. “These were the truckers of the day,” said Erlinder, a cinematographer and teacher. “Nobody was taking pictures of them. So we had to go to recreation to tell the story of what happened.”
Erlinder reenacted the wreck of the Myron off White Fish Point in November 1919, in which all 16 sailors onboard met their fates and were found frozen on the shore after the spring thaw. “Only the captain was picked up, after floating in Lake Superior for 20 hours, where the surface doesn’t get above 40 degrees,” Erlinder said.
He used extensive compositing to recreate scenes, and also shot a reenactment of life-long coastal rescue worker Benjamin Trudeau.
Erlinder retained video rights in the public TV sale. Stations that carry the show will run a “subtle” promo at the end for Erlinder’s DVD sales through Buyindies.com.
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| Turn-of- the-Century rescue workers in “Storm Warriors” |
Erlinder and his wife, producer Ginger Scott-Erlinder, financed the $60,000 budget for “Storm Warriors” ? which features music by Big Dog ? through their Seiche Entertainment. “I’ve shown what I can do with very little money, which will hopefully spark somebody to give me funding for another one I’m working on now,” he said.
He’s tight-lipped about his next project, other than to say that it’s Chicago-based, national in scope, and “reflects themes in political history that we haven’t acknowledged.”
Erlinder’s 12-minute doc “The Grosse Point Light, Landmark to Great Lakes History” won the top award from the American Association for State and Local History.
He teaches cinematography at DePaul University’s less-than-a-year-old Digital Cinema Institute, after eight years teaching at Northwestern. A painter with an MFA from Columbia College, he ran the Victor Duncan rental house through the late ?80s and early ?90s before going freelance.
Among numerous feature credits, Erlinder operated a remote camera for the seminal “Fugitive” train wreck. He was shot A&E’s 1996 adaptation of the syndicated newspaper column “The Straight Dope,” and Discovery’s 1995 submarine shoot for “Shipwreck: Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” his first encounter with the Shipwreck Coast.
Seiche Entertainment is at 5310 W. School. Call 773/205-6930 or see http://www.buyindies.com/ listings/1/0/1084223122578.html.
– by Ed M. Koziarski, edk@homesickblues.com
