Steve Amen is the creator of the OPB television show Oregon Field Guide, which has remained one of the highest rated shows in the PBS system for its 28 years on the air.
Amen is preparing to retire from Oregon Public Broadcasting after shepherding the show through hundreds of stories.
I’ve always enjoyed the show’s journalistic style, but I’ve wondered what film-making strategies have made it such a success. Their stories have taken on environmental issues like invasive species and wolf reintroduction but also ambitious explorations of the Mt. St. Helens crater, the little-known slot canyon nicknamed “Valhalla” and the ice caves that have formed on Mt. Hood as its glaciers melt from the inside out.
Amen said the show has won dozens of awards over the years using some basic storytelling principles, but all of the stories they tell aim to be objective and stick to the basic tenants of journalism.
Before he started working at OPB, he worked in television news.
“With my news background and OPB’s mission, I thought it wasn’t our job to tell our viewers how to think,” he said. “We have never in 28 years taken a position on something.”
His philosophy is ‘Don’t tell me. Show me.’
“We try to find people who really know what they’re talking about,” he said. “We’re not giving a report. We’re telling a story. We’re taking the viewers along with us, not talking at them. We have respect for our viewers, that they’re willing to take the time to think about these issues.”
To tell a great Oregon Field Guide story, he said, the pre-production process is critical to find great, articulate characters who can help tell the story.
“By telling their story, we can tell a bigger story,” Amen said.
One example: The story of 98-year-old Frankie Dugal, who lives without electricity in eastern Oregon and makes ropes out of horse hair.
In this story, the viewer really gets to know this woman and see her process for making horse hair. We also see her firing up her wood stove, riding a horse and talking about the unnecessary conveniences of modern life like microwaves.
Shooters for the program use a lot of sequencing to step viewers through the stories. But the show rarely uses music, Amen said.
“We’ll only use it if we don’t have any natural sound, like when a story is mostly archival or you’re spending 30 minutes in a glacial cave with dripping water sounds,” he said. “You can only take that for so long before you have to pee.”
Amen said using music runs the risk of editorializing the story, and he’d rather hear natural sound – especially outdoors.
“I won’t want music when I’m outdoors,” he said. “I’d rather hear hooves on the ground, boots in the woods, breaking twigs. Natural sound makes for better storytelling. We can take people on a journey and give them a better sense of what’s it’s like. It puts a huge amount of pressure on our shooters and producers. But it makes a huge difference.”
The show does employ narration, Amen said, because cinema verite is “really, really hard.”
“There are times when you need that transition or the interpreter who breaks down a complicated issue for you,” he said. “That’s where narration comes in.”
Ultimately, he wants the show to bridge the urban-rural divide, to find characters who can give people a better understanding of what life is like around the state.
“These are good people. You need to meet them,” he said. “And here’s what they have to say.”