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| Monday, Jun 5 2006 6:09 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Jun 7 2006 5:33 PM
Gold lured a man named Lovely Rogers to Kern County’s hills in 1860.
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The gold panner stumbled across a rich gold vein by accident, so the story goes, and his lucky find prompted a rush to the southern Sierra Mountains.
This summer Kernville is calling Chuck Barbee, but he’s not hunting precious metals. Barbee is mining for stories about original gold miners and the gunslingers who followed them.
Barbee, a long-time Hollywood film maker and instructor come home to Kernville, is beginning production on a “Wild West Country” documentary TV series about the region. The film is based on Bob Powers’ nine book-series about the history of the Kern River Valley and surrounding southern Sierra region.
It’s a history built on gold fever, John Wayne westerns, and the completion of Isabella Dam in 1953, which prompted a wholesale move of the town of Whiskey Flats, now known as Kernville, to higher ground.
Beginning June 12 Barbee will teach a digital cinematography course through Cerro Coso College in which students will play an active role in producing the documentary.
The class will focus on planning and production of a documentary film through hands on experience, Barbee said. Fundamentals of shot making, developing stories, editing, and lighting will compose the part-lecture, part in-the-field video course.
Barbee, who worked in Hollywood for 40 years, said Fieldtrips to Panavision in Hollywood, and the American Film Institute - the “Harvard of film schools,” he said - are also in the works.
Students might listen in on a live call with Barbee as he books a shoot to get a hands-on view of how Hollywood film production really works.
Barbee’s goal is to produce a documentary simila to Ken Burns’ hugely popular “Civil War.”
There is an element of urgency for this project, because the two dozen or so “real old timers” who are ancestors of the history makers are now in their 80s or 90s.
This is where the summer class will play an important role: students will conduct interviews with ancestors of Kern River Valley settlers and history makers.
“I have access to original ancestors, so the bloodlines here go back to the pioneers, the very first white people here,” Barbee said.
“And it hasn't changed. Get up into the high country, and it's still the way it was 150 years ago. Buildings burn down, but they don't go and build a Walmart, so it's possible to do this (project) with the same scenery from 150 years ago,” Barbee said.
The summer class, made possible by a private grant managed by the Kern River Valley Educational and Cultural Foundation, marks the opening of a new Digital Media Production Center at Cerro Coso’s Lake Isabella campus.
Barbee got his start in TV and documentary production at Bakersfield College, but he pointed out there are no local programs that currently teach these skills. Barbee is happy to take up the baton with this course.
“It's an hour drive three days a week, but I bet there's some people who will be interested,” he said.
Digital Cinematography course
Course begins: June 12; three days per week, eight week course
Cost: $78; no previous experience required
Registration info:
Digital Cinematography (MA C168); Cerro Coso College,
(760) 379-5501
www.cerrocoso.edu/krv/
Course overview: http://animation.cc.cc.ca.us:8080/p28348923/