To Russia and other pictures and videos for Windsor U evaluation


 Support videos, you tube links and still photos  to back up my Windsor University Competency application - Stephen Weir producer, writer and key grip. Various TV shows and gallery mini-movies, and interviews with authors, artists and performers for our social media video site the Canadian Art Channel (100+)




Russia Trip 2000 - TV special for Outdoor Life TV

I was part of a TV expedition to travel from North America to Asia, on Sea Doos.  We were to be the first PWC (personal water craft) drivers to travel between the two continents.

We took a chase boat and three Bombardier Sea Doos to Teller, Alaska and set off on the longest day of the year across the Bering Straits. Teller is Alaska's most northerly port and 1 degree south of the Arctic Circle.

I assisted with the driving of one of the PWC, was a camera grip, mini-camera operator, the segment writer and assistant editor.

We damaged one of the Sea Doos on pack ice and ended featuring only two watercraft in the 1-hr documentary. We interviewed Eskimo (self identified) hunters in seal skin boats hunting walrus amongst the pack ice about the disappearing ice on the Bering Straits. We visited their village on Little Diomede Island.  Two miles away the Russian Navy had a base on Big Diomede Island.  We made landfall there. Our Russian translator was immediately lined up against a wall at gun point and told they didn't recognize our Russian visas. We were expelled from Russian waters 10 km from our intended Asian landfall in western Siberia.

Back in Alaska we filmed fill-in sequences for the documentary by exploring by airboat Artic Circle rivers and we camped out for a day waiting for a large herd of reindeer who annually migrate across a nearby river.  They didn't come.

The 1-hour documentary aired on a number of sports channels around the world (we sold viewing rights at an annual international independent TV show convention in Las Vegas.. It was not a success even though we did set some sort of record by making landfall on the Russian island about PWCs.

Twenty years after the trip our TV show was cut down, digitised and resold as an anniversary  show marking the adventure. After airing on Canadian TV it was edited again and posted on-line. This is the You Tube version from 2020

https://youtu.be/CVzdM7gc8Ak?si=BNbc6kr-BT7IeD_W


About Powerboat Television Show

PowerBoat TV is a weekly half-hour television show focusing on powerboats and the boating lifestyle. From fish boats to luxury cruisers, great destinations, and helpful DIY segments, we cover what’s of interest to boaters at large and have been doing so since 1990! PowerBoat Television is broadcast in HD across Canada on Global Television on Saturdays at 11:00 AM, and on Sundays at 6:30 AM in Alberta and British Columbia.

To catch the show at any time from anywhere you can also watch our episodes right here in HD, one week after they have aired. If you are looking to catch our non-current episodes, you can see all the shows from 2013 to the present online right here as well.











Cameraman Wojtek on the ice floe in Russia waters. 

Middle video, the standard 10 second opening for Boating TV. Our Russian adventure showed on a number of different networks with different openings and different names. Many not in English.

Top picture of host  Ted Rankine( the star and owner of the show) heads towards Big Diamede Island. Took this photo from the camera boat 

Production still of Stephen Weir taken on the longest day of the year 2000, Bering Strait Seas are at their flatest on that day. Or so we were told

Below: On-air credit for Power Boat TV special about boating near Orillia. Stephen Weir writer/producer




Credit for my Flying Elvis Sky High episode, and some of the at-home edits  I did prior to bringing the material into the show's Avid editing suit





Susanna Moodie with Charlie Pachter and Margarette Atwood. Movie used in gallery at McMichael Canadian Art Collection exhibition

Our Canadian Art Channel in 2009 created a short video to be used in the McMichael Canadian Art Gallery's  Susanna Moodie exhibition. Charlie and Peggy early in the career created a special edition book with Charlie's sketches and Peggy's poems about Susanna Moodie's Roughing It In The Bush.  I acted as the unseen interviewer of the pair. We shot the movie inside Charlies home/studio.  The movie was eventually posted on  the Canadian Art Channels You Tube site.


Production still - Stephen Weir is interviewing the artist and the writer while George Socka filming


Coming Next: Stephen's shark encounters. Danger.






















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