RitM: Where the Buffalo Roam

We drove west to Porter this morning for three location meetings, all with varying success. This first was at Oak Meadows Buffalo Ranch. Jill, the owner, was very friendly and gave us a great tour and a heckuva lot of information about buffalo.

Read more, and see the buffalo movies...Here are some (low-res) videos of the buffalo I took with my digital camera:
Buffalo Video 1 - Running buffalo (15 sec)
Buffalo Video 2 - Pan from Lillian & Christine to the buffalo (5 sec)
Buffalo Video 3 - Walking buffalo (5 sec)

UPDATE: Videos removed due to server space limitations. Just look on Google Video.
(These should take about 2 minutes each to download on a high-speed connection. If you're still on dial-up, I don't recommend bothering. I'm also making them available on Google's brand spanking new video service. It takes a while for videos to get verified there so no telling when they'll be available. Still, if you want to try it out, go to video.google.com and search "title:buffalo".)

Apparently in August, when we'll be there to shoot, Alamo, the bull of the herd (prominent in video #3) will be in "full rut" and we may "get an unexpected nature lesson." The baby calves will have turned from the orange color you see to "chocolate." Buffalo have a strong sense of smell, and they don't like perfume or cologne. We joked about having the actors not wear deodorant that day.

We left the location agreement with Jill, to discuss with her husband. We're also going to fax them the insurance certificate (see location scouting tip #5). Chances look good.

The next stop was Porter Grocery, not far up the road. It looks like a standard highway convenience store, but there's also a fine restaurant within. The owner, Kay, is a world-class chef and raconteur. She was happy to have us shoot an exterior scene there and made us a good deal on hamburger lunches for that day's shoot. We would've like to try her gourmet organic Asian fusion cuisine, but it's not anywhere near this movie's budget. Still, Joel and I enjoyed buffalo burgers (fresh from Oak Meadows Ranch) while we were there.



Kay told us that our third stop, the Porter Creek Saloon, was the first saloon in the state of Washington. She had an eye on buying it and restoring it. But, as we found out when we got there, it had already been sold. Lillian had made a plan with the owner two weeks ago to meet today at 2 p.m. She wasn't there, and the new owner wasn't expecting us. We left a location agreement with a woman who was there (the owner's wife?) and got the owners phone number and hopefully we can get them to agree before August.

All in all, a very eventful day.