Behind the design: Ring of Fire + Island of the Dogs

The project: The digital launch of two important documentaries about Indonesia for media company SavEarth.

We’ve been fortunate to collaborate with the team at SavEarth Media as we worked towards the digital launch of the Ring of Fire series on iTunes (UK/Aus/USA/Can). Amazing to think that nearly 50 years have passed since filming began. If you'd like to watch it again here's the link.

The Ring of Fire is an epic. 5 individual journeys around Indonesia, from Sulawesi to Papua and Kalimantan. So many people have told us how it inspired them to travel to Indonesia or become filmmakers.

The Blair Brothers sailed with pirates aboard their black-sailed schooners in search of the Bird of Paradise, struggled through rapids and deep jungles searching for elusive nomadic tribes, witnessed veiled forms of human sacrifice and found themselves drawn into ten years of danger and discovery in a magical land where ancient myths still flourish.

Their intimate encounters with the vanishing masters of tribal wisdom were to lead them from a physical adventure, into a deeper, more personal quest of self-discovery. Originally cut from 80 hours of 16mm film in co-production with WGBH, Boston, RING OF FIRE was produced, directed and photographed by Lorne Blair and co-produced and written by Lawrence Blair.

For Ring of Fire, we were very excited to dive into a trove of slide photography from the film’s shoot. Some warped by time or heat (victim of a house fire) and showing the scars of the years that have gone by.

The team at Potato Head hosted a small screening to help celebrate the iTunes launch. Lawrence spoke before the first episode was shown and charmed the audience completely with his stories of Richard Attenborough wanting to buy the footage and how Ringo Starr helped make the shoot possible with his funding. Story below in the audio.

The second of Lawrence’s films has also been digitally remastered for its iTunes launch. Bali: Island of the Dogs is a film about the ancient dogs of Bali and their complicated relationships with humans.

The world’s experts on genetics, at UC Davis, California, pointed out that the dogs of Bali are the richest gene pool of genetic diversity in all of dogdom, and can trace their ancestry right back to the proto-dogs, whereas all our ‘breed’ dogs are barely a couple of centuries old.

The film’s locations include Bali, Australia, and the United States, and features interviews with Balinese high priests on the ancient roles of dogs and man, current world experts on dog genetics, ecology and rabies control, and owners of the remarkable dogs which, largely unrecognized, have such high scientific value and yet face imminent extinction. We ask the question: if we can’t get on with the dog, our closest of natural companions, what hope have we with nature herself?