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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Estancia Plays Plains of Dust Bowl

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
      With a storefront, a few old cars and a gust of dusty wind, Estancia was taken back to the 1930s.
    On June 13, 17 actors from Santa Fe and Albuquerque (all dressed in 1930s costumes) and a 13-person film crew took eight old cars and turned Estancia into a town on the Oklahoma panhandle on the day of the worst storm of the Dust Bowl.
    Heidi Burke, a producer for Engel Entertainment in New York, said when her company visited the small town and saw a few of the older buildings, they knew they had a good location.
    “We could picture a storm kind of looming about, over buildings in the distance,” said Burke. “We were looking for a way to get the most realistic set in a way that could fit our budget, and Estancia kind of made that possible.”
    The documentary, titled “Earth's Revenge,” will be a two-hour special on the History Channel between October and December of 2008, Burke said. It will feature interviews of those who lived through the Dust Bowl, and scientific explanations of the storms.
    “The History Channel wanted to really have viewers see what it was like,” Burke said. “To feel it, to hear it, to see it.”
    Taking Estancia back in time took just a little paint, a sign or two and a couple of window dressings.
    Burke added that the town's mayor, Marty Hibbs, was very open to the project and welcomed the crew.
    “It's pretty exciting to see what these preserved places could look like,” the mayor's wife, Margarita Hibbs, said on the day of the filming.
    Her store, across the street from the set, drew a few actors in period costume, all of them local talent.
    “I'm just a townsperson,” is how Courtney Lawton from Albuquerque described her role in the film. “It's just for fun.”
    Margarita's store wasn't just a place to shop, it was also a place to stay clean when the main event, the dust storm, rolled through town. First a light dusting then an opaque cloud blackened the street.
    It wasn't long after that special effects man Randy Moore came from behind his massive fan, his face covered in dirt. He said he got the job working on “Earth's Revenge” right after he finished work on a set where he did dust storms every day.
    Moore, who started the Santa Fe-based special effects company Great FX, said in his 25 years of experience he's found that things go in cycles, so he usually goes through long periods of doing dust, rain, explosions and fire.
    “Explosions are always the most fun,” Moore said.
    After several long days of work, Moore took some time to chat with the mayor's wife, who gave him a business card for her store, Margarita's Gallery.
    “This part sounds good,” Moore joked, holding the card so his thumb covered the word “Gallery.”
   

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