(Photo by: Elizabeth Taylor)

Do you love nature, filmmaking, or nature documentaries?

The Midwest Trust Center in partnership with JCCC’s Center for Sustainability is putting on the free event, ‘Life on Our Planet’ Sustainability Presentation and Q&A with Dan Tapster, Friday, May 2 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Craig Auditorium (GEB 233). 

Dan Tapster, eight time Emmy nominee for his work as showrunner for the hit “Mythbusters” series, will bring his expert insight into the making of the ambitious 2023 Netflix docuseries, “Life on Our Planet”. 

On his website, Dan says, “From 2018-2023, I was the showrunner for ‘Life on Our Planet’ – a ground-breaking VFX project produced by Silverback Films in collaboration with Amblin Television. Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman this game-changing series tells the greatest story of them all – the story of life. From its humble beginnings in the primordial soup almost 4 billion years ago through the ages of fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs and mammals.”

Dan Tapster has facilitated a number of U.K. and U.S.-based “factual-entertainment” projects, while bringing out strong storytelling, videography, and VFX. For “Life on Our Planet”, Tapster “oversaw large-scale, photoreal CG creature work and integrated VFX across hundreds of shots per series.”

We spoke with Stacie McDaniel, Executive Director of the Midwest Trust Center Performing Arts, about the event, as well as their hosted live show that night at 7:30 p.m., “The Making of Our Planet: Life on Our Planet with Dan Tapster”. McDaniel has been Executive Director for the Midwest Trust Center since 2022, and in that time helped facilitate a great number of shows herself. McDaniel and the Midwest Trust Center present a number of shows like this. 

“What we do here at the Midwest Trust center is we present a series of national and internationally touring performances and events sort of to the JCCC community as well as to the external public at large. And so Dan Tapster and the Making of Our Planet is one of those events on that series,” McDaniel said. 

The Midwest Trust Center, with the help of the Center for Sustainability, is looking to make Dan Tapster’s visit as impactful for students as they can. 

“We are collaborating with Sustainability to bring some, what we call, outreach events. So sort of beyond that public performance, we’re going to bring Dan into a film classroom as well as doing this event with Sustainability that’s free and open to faculty and staff and sort of bringing the artist not here just to do this one sort of public performance, but to really ingratiate them in the campus community,” McDaniel said. “And Sustainability is a wonderful partner for doing that. And we just felt like it was sort of a natural fit because “The Making of Our Planet” [has these] themes of climate migration and changing environments, which is just a natural fit with the goals of sustainability here on campus. And so we were like, ‘Well, what can we do?’ […] Dan Tapster, he’s got this unique skill set and this wonderful perspective as a filmmaker, but also his work in nature. And so we were like, ‘let’s try to bridge that gap here on campus’” McDaniel declared.  

She talked about how it is important to reach “niches”.

“We work closely with Sustainability a lot, and we just felt like this was a natural opportunity to get more folks engaged in this program. […] There’s a niche of people who say, ‘I like to go to performing arts events,’ right? And that’s a group of people who might know about our series or who might naturally gravitate towards something like that,” McDaniel said. “But then there are folks who may not know that what we’re doing on our stages might be relevant to their interests beyond performing arts, right? […] There’s students interested in sustainability[,] nature and, […] dealing with biology here on campus who may not understand or who may not know, who may not naturally look at a series of performing arts events and think, ‘That’s going to be something for me.’ But if we can take this artist into those classrooms and meet those students where they’re at in their other work, then we’re able to […] make this artist’s visit here to JCCC more impactful.”

These outreach events are meant to bring something for everyone. For film students, the presentation and Q&A presents a unique opportunity. Dan Tapster, as a showrunner, oversees the whole production. The managerial role puts Tapster in close contact with every part of the production, so he can speak to a number of different career paths students might not be aware of. 

“If I’m interested in film or if I’m interested in videography, […] making film or just being a part of that industry, this is a great opportunity for those students to say, ‘Okay, well, what could that career look like?’,” McDaniel said. “It’s maybe not just making movies or just making TV shows. Maybe it’s doing what’s called showrunning, which is basically being the sort of the backstage manager of all of what happens to make a film come together or make a television show come together. Dan’s had a lot of other roles in that industry, so he can talk a little bit about what it’s like to be a producer. ‘What does that job look like?’ […] Just to use an example from my own life, when I was training to become a performer, nobody told me that arts administration was a career, right? Nobody said to me, ‘You can use these different aspects of your personality.’ Maybe your job is not going to be being on stage for the rest of your life. Maybe your job is going to be facilitating other people doing that. And so I think getting students in the room with people who’ve had these pretty unique career trajectories, they can learn, well, ‘How can I use my passion for film in a way that makes sense for these other skills that I have?’ And, ‘What do I really want to do to support the film industry? What does that look like and what could it look like?’”

Students who are passionate about the environment can also gain insight from Tapster’s career. Long before his work with Silverback Films, Tapster’s early career saw him work across a number of projects for the BBC Natural History Unit, including the David Attenborough nature documentary series “The Life of Mammals”.

Tapster can speak to the unique challenges and concerns to nature filmmaking.

“…for students who are interested more in sustainability or maybe careers in environmentalism and things like that, he can talk to sort of the overlap of, you know, ‘What is media, what is filmmaking? How does that impact these natural environments?’ And I think that can help those students think about what their career in sustainability might look like and what those different paths might be, too,” McDaniel explained.

Whether you are passionate about film or the environment, it seems like this presentation has something for you. And you can make the most of the opportunity by bringing your own questions to the Q&A. We asked Stace McDaniels what she would like to see from the discussion:

“I’d love to hear about the impact on the environment that the filmmaker saw as they were making these films and I’d love to hear about how their perspective changed over the course of filming the series,” McDaniel said. “And, you know, what do they feel like they learned? […] I really want to know what Dan’s perspective is on, […] what were the goals of creating the series and what did they hope that people would get out of it? So I hope that some of those deeper thematic questions come out of the audience as well and that we get to hear a little bit more about that. I do think that we’re going to have some great […], just straightforward questions about […] how Dan’s career started, how he ended up where he is. And I think that’s of interest to students, especially as they’re thinking about starting their careers in similar industries. But I hope that we get a little bit more to the heart of the series and what it was trying to do.”

If you think you might be interested in seeing Dan Tapster’s presentation or asking him a question yourself, you can RSVP and find more information on the event here.

After the presentation, if you would like to see more of Dan Tapster and “Our Life”, you can watch the live show. You can purchase tickets at the Box Office, located on the first floor of the Midwest Trust Center by the north-side entrance, on the phone, or online. For more information on the live show and tickets, see the Midwest Trust Center’s website.