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Last updated on Thursday, March 29, 2012
(BLOOMFIELD) - The documentary film “Goose Pond: The Story of a Wetland & Its Neighbors” has won a national Telly Award in the nature/wildlife program category.
Nick Schneider of Greene County Daily World reports that the documentary "Goose Pond: The Story of a Wetland & Its Neighbors" was selected as a Bronze Telly Award Winner out of nearly 11,000 entries from all 50 states and 5 continents, according to the film's executive producer and Linton native, Bill Barnes, who now lives in Charlotte, NC.
The new Goose Pond documentary is also currently scheduled to air an edited version on the Bloomington PBS station, WTIU, on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22 at 2 p.m.
Barnes, who received notification of the award late last week, is pleased with the recognition the film winning the Telly Award will bring to the area of southwestern Indiana where he grew up.
"This is a great opportunity to create some buzz, not only for the Goose Pond Fish & Wildlife Area, but also for Linton, Greene County and the region. I am so proud of all of those who were involved in helping make the Goose Pond documentary project a success," Barnes said.
The Telly Awards were founded in 1979 and is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online commercials, video and films.
Winners represent the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, and corporate video departments in the world.
Barnes, a 1964 graduate of Linton-Stockton High School, has now won three Silver Telly Award and seven Bronze Telly Awards.
Barnes pointed out it took years of planning, interviewing, filming and editing to produce the film that features Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area and the struggle it took to finally get the project completed.
"It (the film) was hard to put together. We were almost a solid year editing. It's costly and it's rewarding in the fact that I think it looks good. I hope the people like it. I hope we sell a lot of DVDs to get the level of interest in Goose Pond up," Barnes commented during a Sept. 2011 pre-release showing of the film in Linton.
The film traces the history of the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area from its pre-historic beginnings as a glacier basin 125,000 years ago to its current day restoration as one of the Midwest's largest wetland areas. It also talks about the tremendous tourism and education potential that the 8,000-plus acre fish and wildlife area possesses.
Barnes is already showing some success in efforts to market the documentary to television and cable networks.
"I have given them (WTIU) permission to run the documentary in their schedule for a period of two years. They are also planning to use it for their August/September membership drive. In addition, we've edited the one-hour documentary into a 30-minute version that WTIU will also air. It's basically the documentary without the 'struggle' elements and is called 'The Four Seasons of Goose Pond'," Barnes said.
The film producer began work on the Goose Pond film project in 2005, when he was still working on the "You'll Like Linton" documentary - also a Telly award winning production.
Putting together this film was a challenge.
"The easy part was shooting the beautiful birds and everything that goes on at the Goose Pond. The hard part was putting the struggle together, the 10 year struggle that it took to tie it all together." Barnes said. "That turned around and people who were against it became for it and when Maurice Wilder sold the land it was still another 10 years before it became the fish and wildlife area."
Barnes added, "I'm quite proud of the way the Goose Pond documentary has come together. The passions of those involved really shows."
Barnes is an accomplished video professional with a diversity of experience.
He owns Bill Barnes Video Productions, LLC, that was established in 1988 with Barnes producing, directing and acting as videographer/DP on a variety of broadcast, non-broadcast & web-based projects.
His credits consist of work for The Today Show, Dateline, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, CBS Morning Show, CBS The Guiding Light, E!'s True Hollywood Stories, ABC's Discovery News, A & E's America's Castles and Biography, HGTV's Restore America, National Geographic, The History Channel, Oprah, HBO's Dennis Miller Show, Extra, Fox Sports, NASCAR Productions, ESPN, CNN and Larry King Live, QVC, Children's Television Workshop, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, GlobeCast, EBU, Australia's Channel 9 and the UK's GMTV, Network 7 and The Word.
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