Buffalo Nation | Museum Installation for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Project Overview
Ranging from national park scientists to Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribal member activists, and large-scale ranch owners, these experts will provide a broad range of perspectives, allowing visitors to obtain a simplified yet comprehensive understanding of the complicated political and ecological situation for bison in America.
Buffalo Nation is an interactive exhibition in development which intends to simulate a close encounter with a herd of American Bison. A prominent feature of the exhibition will be interactive kiosks, featuring a large vertically-mounted video display and a touch display allowing a visitor to select a question from a list and experience a response from an expert in the future of Buffalo in the form of a short documentary.
My Role
Pre-Production
During pre-production, in the month prior to when the shoot began in Wyoming, I collaborated with the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Director of Interperetive Education, Alex Martin, and the Director of the production, Max Straub, to develop a working schedule and relationships with our interviewees. During this time I also developed SOP for managing and backing-up the media files that would make up the content of the project. I prepared to catalog and secure hundreds of gigabytes of data, and ran tests of necessary software and hardware to guarantee a smooth end-of-day media organization process.
Production
Production was four full days of action. While my primary responsibilities were to keep the schedule and conduct the interviews, I helped in every way I could to keep production running smoothly, including occasional sound recording and camera operation. Days 1 and 2 were 3:30am mornings to catch the sunrise on camera at Antlers Ranch, bison b-roll, and our first interviews. During the interview process I worked through a series of pre-composed questions developed by Alex Martin and others at the BBCW, while maintaining a real conversational flow for a natural-feeling interview.
Post-Production
During the editing process, I used the intended exhibit questions to inform my decision-making as I composed the short documentaries. With a rough cut of each interview, Alex Martin and I collaborated to construct concise sequences out of the detailed responses we received from interviewees. Over a short few weeks I developed over twenty-five individual videos, including an 8K ultra-high resolution sequence intended for display on a massive screen in the BBCW entranceway atrium.
Previews of the short docs were sent to tribal interviewees for the opportunity to review and ensure their perspective was represented accurately and fairly. The exhibit begins its opening in January 2026, with video and interactive elements debuting August 22nd, 2026.
