FJ-HRN-2183

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen
Sig Hansen: Oh yeah having the extra camera man on board you know after the fact, is when I went, ‘Oh man”, I’m regretting it, because you know it’s two extra bodies and it is pretty tight quarters so it was a learning curve definitely. Not just for us but for the camera guy’s and their safety it was a pretty tough deal in the beginning.

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen
Sig Hansen: Well now a days they have a quota system and it was switched just a few years back and it was intended to make the fishery safer and it has made a bit safer because we can stop we have a quota or a an allotment, that I’m, uh, that I have earned and so we still have, we know what we are going to fish before we go out there these days, but we still have that minimum amount of time to get it in, you know, you’ve got scheduled dates that you want to hit, weather is going to slow you down, and things like that, so the race is still on, it’s just if I have to stop, if the weather is that bad and I have to stop, that’s a good feeling.

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen
Sig Hansen: Well now a days, we have, there are less boats participating, we’re down to about 70 to 80 boats out of the 250. But what’s happened is that a lot of the original crew members have now gotten better jobs. Um, you know the guys that were really in it, to stay, they’re around, they’re experienced, so for a new guy that wants to get a job it’s harder to get that job cause there’s not that many boats to choose from and uh, it’s one of those things where, yeah there’s plenty of guys to pick and choose from, but you still got the pro’s that have been there for a long time. Guy’s are sleeping in tents on the beach trying to get a job. They’re selling their cars to get a plane tickets up to Dutch Harbor, so, it’s neat to see that enthusiasm but at the same time you know there’s less boats.

Sound Bite: Edgar Hansen, Sig Hansen
Edgar Hansen: It’s flattering, I mean you know, there’s been no bad publicity about it, it’s all positive, anytime somebody recognizes you and wants comes up to you and say hi, it’s always positive. You guys are the work boat, you guys are nuts, and I love your show.
Sig Hansen: Yeah, it’s good to have that kind of influence and I think it’s done well, because now you’ve got that work ethic, that maybe a lot guys haven’t seen before, you know, to us it’s just another day you know at the office, it just goes to show, you know that, that influence is out there and the feedback and the compliments are nice. So, I enjoy it.
Edgar Hansen: And its real guys doing their real jobs, I mean we’ve been doing this, I’ve been doing this for 20 years and all of a sudden we got cameras with us. So, it’s just, you know, the routine hasn’t really changed and it probably won’t change after they’re gone either, so.

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen, Edgar Hansen
Sig Hansen: We’ve have had 2 incidents where we have actually saved their lives twice, for sure, and uh, you know, in my case there was a camera man, Doug Stanley, this guy that was filming back there and he’s on the rail, so he’s got his camera and his head sticking over a railing trying to film the outside of the boat and he is leaning there and I get on the loud haler and I yell across the deck for him to move and he takes 3 steps and there is a 900 hundred pound crab pod that just hit the railing, it would have took his head off, you know so I mean we saved his life, he came up he was just white as a ghost and he’s like, “Yeah, I think you just saved my life. Didn’t you?” You know, Edgar had one as well.
Edgar Hansen: We were setting the anchor over, we were setting to anchor up and the camera guy was filming, he had, his name was Bryan, wasn’t it? And there is a booey bag attached to the anchor for a marker well he had his foot in the coil in the middle of it, this anchor you know is 1500 pounds plus all the chain, it starts going out, in the corner of my eye I catch the line feeding out and it’s about to go around his foot so I literally reached over the anchor grabbed him by the neck and ripped him off his feet, and he’s like, “What? What are you doing man?” Dude you almost went over the side man.
Sig Hansen: But through all this, I mean, the camera guys are much more in tune with what’s going on, um, so we had that learning curve, you know and now even the camera guy’s are way into it and they understand that this is serious you know and they’re living their lives through a lens, they are just like so focused, that what make me nervous, plus my guys are at risk as well, you know, so they are watching themselves or watching out for each other plus the other 2 guys that are looking in the lens. It’s not easy, you know, but I know we have done a good job as far as keeping them safe and keeping everything together, you know. And if it gets that gnarly where you can’t barley fish, there camera guy’s, you know, we are going to tell to them to back off a little bit. They do have stationary or mounted cameras on deck so I mean we will just trust those, you know, I have the last call there. If I don’t want you on my deck you are going in your bunk.

Sound Bite: Guy #2, Sig Hansen
Guy #2: About a year and half now, I have fished with the Northwestern and I had done little pod fishing before that and salmon fishing for 12 years. So I kinda knew the dangers that were involved, I can’t believe I’m working with these guys, like he said the line to get on the boats is so huge and for me to keep my job is tough mentality on me all day long, I mean, so I will be the first one up and the last one to walk off, because I don’t know.
Sig Hansen: He’ll suck it up, now, he doesn’t want to lose his job.
Guy #2: Yeah man, I mean everyday; it’s like that, am I going to lose my job today.
Sig Hansen: No, you’re not going to lose your job.

Sound Bite: Guy #2, Edgar Hansen, Sig Hansen
Guy #2: Well you never know when you’re gonna get a hole in your soda can. You don’t know, how much time your gonna run to drink your soda and it spills all over you and you’re wondering why the camera is staring at you.
Edgar Hansen: Your soda pop is not safe around me you leave it sitting down I will poke a hole right under the lip.
Guy #2: They tied me up, hog tied me at the end of Pelio and it’s icy out and they dunked me in a tank of cold water.
Edgar Hansen: That’s right we dunked his head in 35 degree water.
Sig Hansen: Doing all that is good, because, it’s like he wants to be a team player, he wants to be a part of the boat. Let’s face it Edgar can get pretty nasty if he wants to, it’s almost like you have to earn that rite of passage, you know, and if you can’t put up with a couple of jokes or whatever, get off.
Edgar Hansen: Put up or shut up.
Sig Hansen: So yeah, you have a good sense of humor about it. And then It helps you kind of form this bond, you know, and it’s a good thing, we don’t want a new guy on our boat, put him through a bunch of crap and the next thing you know he’s a threat to you, you know, we want to create something, that’s gonna be, you know, help us in the future and become a safe player with us that’s our goal. A lot of boats will trash a guy, man and they will try to break him so hard that it’s not helping them and that’s not the way I want to play the game. I want it, I want that team effort, I want to be able to go out there, cause if we have to fish hard, when it comes right down to it, you gotta pull so metal and he’s gotta have to help too.
Edgar Hansen: It’s kind of a test too, just to see what he’s made of, you know. keep needling, keep needling, and if he breaks, you know, and he cant handle it. This isn’t the right boat for you man.
Sig Hansen: Now he’s start to needle back, you know when the Kid starts needling back that’s a good thing cause that shows that his confidence is building, and so you know you’re building confidence and all that good stuff.

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen, Edgar Hansen
Sig Hansen: We put a lot of money in that boat and Edgar he’s the engineer so he’s always trying to keep it maintain but things happen, you know, it’s out of your control.
Edgar Hansen: Just keep spare parts, parts for parts and hope for the best, fix it when you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Sound Bite: Edgar Hansen, Sig Hansen
Edgar Hansen: Yeah, we don’t always get along always as much as we probably should. It’s, it’s, on board it’s not brotherly family stuff, it’s work, it’s work ethic, you know. I respect what he does and how he does it and hopefully the same back, so.
Sig Hansen: I mean. That’s the thing.
Edgar Hansen: I don’t always agree with his decisions, but you know whatever, I will grumble a little bit he won’t like me for it but whatever he’s got the last call, he’s the boss. So.
Sig Hansen: Usually, I mean its like, everybody has got their positions. And so I’ve ran the boat much longer, I’ve run the boat since I was 22 years old, he knows I’m going to do my best even if I have to grind his tits to the deck, he knows I’m doing it to make money for him and my family, that’s the bottom line, he knows that I’m programmed to do that and I know he going to keep that son of a bitch running forever, if what ever it takes, you know, so that’s just how it is, and together you have a good team.

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen, Edgar Hansen
Sig Hansen: I think, yeah the show is based on danger and fact and it does that. They kept the integrity of our industry in tact and all that. It’s done wonders. But, you know, a lot of guys they look at you and they’re like you’re crazy and you know they think are looking at a walking dead man, you know, and, and, it’s like you know that fleet is the best of the best, you know, so being able to do everything that they do and get through these situations, you know, there are going to be accidents, there’s gonna be things that happen, but the fact is, that’s about how good as it’s going to get. So a lot of people that you meet on the street or something I think that they think, for me they think that you’re crazier than you really are. To us it’s just a 9 to 5 job.
Edgar Hansen: Or a 4 to 12.
Sig Hansen: Or a 48 hour a day job.
Edgar Hansen: Crabbers clock consists of 4 numbers that’s 12 to 4 that’s the only time you sleep that’s the only time you care about

Sound Bite: Sig Hansen, Edgar Hansen
Sig Hansen: As far as the crew is concerned, yeah, you have to be careful when you’re driving them. Yeah there is a lot of sleep deprivation, um, but the thing is they will let me know when they have gotten to that point, where hey man enough is enough. We are family, we are brothers, he’s not gonna hold back. I just try to keep them motivated if I need that extra little push I gotta justify it, right. If there’s a storm coming and we got to haul X amount of gear more, I can justify it and they will suck it up and do it.
OC: Edgar Hansen: Which is usually a lie just to get us to keep going.
OC: Guy #2: Yeah. (he laughs)
Sig Hansen: Yeah, so you gotta have that incentive.
OC: Edgar: Yeah there’s a storm coming we gotta keep going.
Sig Hansen: I mean, you’re Captain, it’s like you’re not on the clock, you’re a therapist half the time, a motivator, you know, and then you got to worry about finding the crab, number 1, staying on the crab, and so it’s one of those things, the more these guys are in tune with it, the better off it is, you can always, it’s amazing what a person can do, I mean they have reached limits to where, its pretty unbelievable. There was one season that we had an 80 hour King Crab season, the boat did really well, we had a 100 thousand pounds of Crab it worth a half a million dollars in 80 hours, these guy were on deck and they’re starting to drop off and I go hey guys we got to go to bed, we need to shut down, And they looked at me and what did you say.
Edgar Hansen: We actually took out our calculators and figured out what we were making per string it would take about 2 hours to haul about 20 pod 25 pods we were making over 3 over 3 grand every two hours. So we were like naw, I don’t think so. Keep going.
Sig Hansen: Not going to bad.
Edgar Hansen: Keep goint, It was a derby fishery, when the gun, there was a start and a stop time. So we just kept going.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: I’ve been doing it for the “Deadliest Catch” for 4 years now.
OC: Tell what your thought process was.
Eric: Well, I think the first year it came up I was editing for Tom Bears and when the show came up, he had done a one hour special and you know, the word was out that it was going to be a series, I had cut for it on that first season and I had put my hat in because I’m trained as a Cinematographer so I put my hat in right away to shoot it, when word came up for that second season, I said, Wow that’s great. You know, it was everything that you hope to do as a Cameraman, you know, all the conditions all the equipment and stuff like that, and then you get up there and your like “did I really ask for this?”

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: Ah let’s see, those guys will do, depending on the fishing of course, they will do 32 hour bumps and you maybe shooting for, you always have the camera up, and you’re always looking through the lens, you may not always be recording, but you’re always ready cause anything can happen, so you always have the camera up on the shoulder all the time, so probably 80% of the time, they are on deck you are shooting or ready to shoot.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: Right, the first time you get out there. You know, as a camera man in a situation like that you make the camera part of your vision, so everywhere you’re looking the camera’s going, you don’t try to look away to much without bring the camera with you cause that’s when something happens and your fixated on it but you forget to pull the camera with you, so you’re constantly bringing the camera where your eye is. So, um, plus the camera catching wind and stuff like that so its missing with the shot and everything.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: Yeah on a show like this um, you wear many hats, you’re McGiver, you’re a shooter, you’re a producer, you do many things, and uh, you usually have two shooters on a boat, but everybody is doing the producing and shooting and a little bit of directing not too much.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: Well, that’s how it’s credited by really everyone does everything. The person in the Wheelhouse is also shooting, so he’ll shoot Sig, produces Sig in the Wheel House and I shoot the deck and produce the deck, but we also swap those hats.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: It’s huge, that’s a big thing on this show, like Tom Beers and Jeff Conroy and I work at Max Post and that’s one of Tom’s companies, so its Original Productions is the production company and Max Post is the editing facility. So Tom and Jeff’s whole plan in this is to try involve people, like editors in as many aspects of the production as possible. You know like you would on a true documentary, you would EDP it, shoot it and then in the end you figure out the edit. So that’s like how a lot of the shows are done, there are actually a couple of other people that shot and edit.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: We have on the boat 2 fixed cameras, one that faces to the aft of the boat and one that faces the sorting table so you can cover most of the action with both of those cameras. So in the times when I’m in the ready position and I’m not shooting or for some reason I’m in the middle of a battery change or tape change those cameras will cover the action to cover me, so that then I can do my follow up beats and stuff like that. But as far as my personal set up it’s just me and my chest pack that protects me.
(Phone Rings)
What was I saying, oh yeah, as far as my rig goes, um, my A camera when I’m shooting its all my support I usually try to find ways to steady the camera the best I can in those situations but when you’re moving all over the place its difficult.
OC: What do you guys shoot on?
Eric: We shoot on HDV, so we shoot on a Sony HD Z1 units.
OC: Is that straight in to a hard drive.
Eric: No it’s on to tape mini DV.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: That’s a huge dynamic on these boats. The best way to address that is when we get up there for the season and start rigging the boats is to have a couple of drinks with them, you have a couple of beers with them and get to know them and figure out where your boundaries are right away and that usually helps you out a great deal when you get on the boat. And when you are on the boat its inevitable, they are trying to do their job and you know, they are banging in to my camera constantly.
(Phone Rings)
So oh yeah, you can of do the meet and greet at a bar, you do this whole song and dance where your smoking and joking with them and then when you get on the boat inevitably your out there for 4 weeks and your working 32 hour bumps and your on little sleep people are gonna get on each others nerves and I’m banging cameras off their heads and I’m in the way stuff, but you it’s like the first 24 hours you learn the dance on the deck and you become a part of deck with them every motion they do on deck is exact so once you know that dance they doing on deck you start doing it with your camera, I know where I can go to do my pick ups and where I can go to be safe and out of the way and I know where not to be when something goes wrong and stuff like that, so you work in with them and you become a part of the boat, it’s pretty cool to see it work like that.

Sound Bite: Eric Lange
Eric: Well, a lot of times Matt Reiger who runs the show and Tom Beers they decide, every year they decide to switch up some boats cause we don’t like to get to close to the boats, inevitable its going to happen, that’s just what happens in situations like that you grow close to people in hairy situations, so every boat I’ve been on I’ve acquired really close friends, so that’s why we like to switch it up, we like to push some of the cameramen off on different boats occasionally, you know, depending on what we are trying to get story wise, that’s something that Tom was doing at the very beginning, which is good I think, but I’m always sad when I’m on a nice boat and I like the guys, I think I can get some really good story out of them, we like to change it up.