Jessica Plumb’s Vision: The Fight to Save Orcas in Puget Sound

Meet the talented and passionate filmmaker Jessica Plumb.

In this episode we discuss her work and the upcoming showcasing of her film “Call of the Orcas” at the CASCADIA International Women’s Film Festival.

Join us as we dive into the world of independent filmmaking, the captivating beauty of Washington State, and the critical conservation efforts for the southern resident killer whales.

Environmental Advocacy through Filmmaking

At the heart of Jessica Plumb’s work is a dedication to environmental advocacy, with a focus on the critical issues related to southern resident killer whales and the ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest. Through her film “Call of the Orcas,” she sheds light on the threats facing these majestic creatures, including the dwindling Chinook salmon population, toxicants in their habitat, and the impact of shipping traffic. Plumb emphasizes the importance of raising awareness and inspiring action to combat these challenges, underscoring the pivotal role of storytelling in driving environmental conservation efforts.

Empowering Indigenous Perspectives and Community Engagement

Plumb’s commitment to amplifying indigenous perspectives and engaging with tribal communities is a cornerstone of her upcoming projects. By delving into the recovery of salmon and orcas from an indigenous lens, she aims to deepen the narrative surrounding environmental conservation and foster meaningful dialogue within communities. Her dedication to inclusive storytelling and honoring indigenous knowledge underscores the profound impact of centering diverse voices in environmental advocacy and filmmaking.

Navigating the Filmmaking Journey: Challenges and Triumphs

Throughout the podcast episode, Jessica candidly discusses the challenges and lessons learned from her filmmaking journey. From the complexities of funding and navigating the festival circuit to the nuances of editing and audience engagement, Plumb’s insights offer a raw and authentic portrayal of the independent filmmaking process. Her emphasis on the importance of feedback, team collaboration, and embracing the multifaceted nature of storytelling resonates with aspiring filmmakers and seasoned professionals alike.

Final Thoughts: A Journey of Filmmaking, Conservation, and Connection

As the episode draws to a close, the impactful conversation with Jessica Plumb leaves us with a deep appreciation for her dedication to filmmaking, her commitment to conservation, and her profound connection to the natural world. Her work serves as a reminder of the critical need to protect our environment and the wildlife that inhabits it.

Join us next time as we continue our journey of discovery across Washington State, uncovering inspiring stories, remarkable destinations, and the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Until then, keep exploring, keep learning, and keep unearthing the treasures that this stunning state has to offer. Thank you for joining us on Exploring Washington State.

Jessica Plumb The Fight to Save Orcas in Puget Sound Episode Transcript

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Exploring Washington State Podcast. My name is Scott Cowan, and I’m the host of the show. Each episode, I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington State. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re gonna like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. Sitting down today with Jessica Plumb, independent filmmaker out of Port Townsend whose film Call of the Orcas is gonna be at the Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival in Bellingham in later this month of April. Dates are April 25th through 28th, and then it’s gonna be online from May 2nd to 12th.

Scott Cowan [00:00:44]:

So, Jessica, welcome. I wanna

Jessica Plumb [00:00:46]:

Thank you.

Scott Cowan [00:00:47]:

I want you to kind of take over for me, but I what’s your backstory? How did you end up in Port Townsend? Were you originally from here? What’s your what’s your what’s your journey?

Jessica Plumb [00:01:00]:

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on this podcast. And I just wanna say, I’ll give you the short story, not the long story of how I landed in Port Townsend. And I think the most important thing I wanna say is how grateful I am that fate picked me up and dropped me on the Olympic Peninsula now over 2 decades ago and that I chose to stay here and make a life here. I’m originally from the coast of Maine. I grew up there and spent a lot of time on the water off the coast of Maine. I then, spent my twenties having a much more international life, and my work life took me, from Boston to Beijing. And I did a number of different jobs teaching, writing, and editing, overseas. And then a constellation of factors led me to, have to leave Beijing quickly with a lot of other Americans and I was evacuated to the Pacific Northwest, which gave me a chance to do a little exploring here.

Jessica Plumb [00:02:00]:

At the time, my partner was also considering a position here. I came out to Port Townsend and checked it out, and here we are many years later having fallen in love hook, line, and sinker with the Olympic Peninsula.

Scott Cowan [00:02:15]:

Why do you think you fell in love with the area? I mean, coast of Maine’s beautiful. Maine is a beautiful area of the United States as well. What, what drew you or what’s drawn you, I guess, and kept you here in in the Olympic Peninsula?

Jessica Plumb [00:02:32]:

You know, I think it’s really a combination of wonderful things about this place. 1st and foremost, I love the outdoors and have since I was young. And so it’s a pretty rare place in the planet where you can spend your morning on the water and then go get up to a 6000 foot peak in the afternoon and still make it home for dinner at a lovely restaurant. You know? The proximity of different places to recreate and to enjoy the outdoors was definitely a huge, huge draw for myself and my husband. And at the same time, here in Port Townsend, I found, to my absolute delight, a combination of of cultural opportunities that also gave this place depth and breadth, for me, and I’ll just shout out a couple. The first place I worked when I landed in Port Townsend by accident, was Centrum, which offers creative experiences for people from all over the world, and that really deepened my connection to the creative community of Washington Scott and beyond. And also at the time, the Port Townsend Film Festival was a fledgling young organization, now a thriving and strong film festival that has, I think, brought a lot of talent and joy to this community in collaboration with a wonderful little theater called The Rose Theater. So those are just a few snapshots of the different things that helped me make this place home.

Jessica Plumb [00:04:04]:

And what I think we found was a combination of the things that we love to do for fun along with a vibrant enough, you know, arts community and creative community for a very small town. And those things together made this for me a wonderful place to live, especially having grown up on the coast of Maine. As you can imagine, you know, I have family that visits, and they say, oh, how did you go so far to get some place that has some real similarities? And it’s true that there are. But there’s nothing like the Olympic Mountains or Cascade National Park, where I grew up. And those places are very special to me. And also the West Coast just has a different, sensibility and outlook, And I came to appreciate that as well.

Scott Cowan [00:04:51]:

Okay. How did you get your start in filmmaking? Because when we talked before, I mean, you were kind of, you’ve been a storyteller written word. So what, what was the spark that got you to think I wanna do I’m making air quotes around the word film because it’s all digital now. But but film, what got you into filmmaking?

Jessica Plumb [00:05:12]:

Well, to be totally honest, I took the most circuitous route possible to filmmaking. I am not a traditional filmmaker in any sense of the word. I do have a master’s in fine arts in MFA, but not specifically in film, in interdisciplinary art. And the way I got to filmmaking really came out of a, I would say, twin love of writing and photography. Both things I had done my whole life. And to be quite honest, I grew up in a household where media was not a big part of our experience. I was one of those rare Americans who grew up without a television. I watched few movies when I was young and so it actually took me a while as a young adult to realize that there was a medium that would bring many of my interests together creatively.

Jessica Plumb [00:06:04]:

And I found my way to filmmaking slowly as a result. I will say that as I did, I discovered that what I love about filmmaking is that it challenges me on so many different levels. I, as a filmmaker now, am both a producer and director, and that means wearing a ton of different hats, not just, like, every year, but every day.

Scott Cowan [00:06:31]:

Mhmm.

Jessica Plumb [00:06:31]:

And I think that suited my nature of taking on different layers of challenge. And so just to give one example, in one day, I might be doing the administrative and practical challenge of raising money for a film, and yet at the same time, considering potential animators or composers to bring a film to life, and at the same time, trying to write treatment for my next project. And as a multidisciplinary person, which is what my degree is actually in, I found over time that film was a medium in which I could bring all of those different interests, challenges, and talents together. The how is a whole another question. I would say in some ways, like many other filmmakers I know I’m largely, self taught, I have learned through doing for about 20 years now. I started out like many of us do working on short projects and doing short films for nonprofits and for other artists and clients, and that was what built my little business here in Port Townsend. And then I started to grow and and try to figure out how I could take the questions that had always animated my creative life and explore them through film. That ultimately led me well, first to do, obviously, some continuing education.

Jessica Plumb [00:08:02]:

To give one example, while I was working full time at Centrum, I was taking my my brief vacations and flying to New York and doing intensive film workshops at The New School. For a while, I, commute I commuted to Seattle to take evening workshops and documentary film or classes, at a place that no longer exists in Seattle called 911 Media. I did all of that in my early years here in Washington Scott. And then at a point I felt ready to take on what would be my first very large project and it coincided with the time my daughter started kindergarten. And I took a dive into the very deep end of the pool and started to work on my first feature length documentary, which is what I’m probably best known for around here, return of the river, which covered the restoration of the Elwha River, with a colleague, John Guzman. So I went from producing essentially shorts to all the way into producing and co directing my first feature over the course of a couple of years of trying to do continuing education as well on the side.

Scott Cowan [00:09:13]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [00:09:14]:

And that is not let me just say that if you are an aspiring filmmaker, the pathway I took is definitely not the easiest pathway. If you want to go and make your 1st feature documentary film, doing so from the corner of the Olympic Peninsula as a mom with a young child is not the, you know, like, the clearest path.

Scott Cowan [00:09:32]:

I

Jessica Plumb [00:09:33]:

But it is the path that I took.

Scott Cowan [00:09:35]:

I have so many questions after that. I do what the here’s the question. I, I, I tend to like to ask this question of guests, but, you know, I think we all learn a lot from mistakes. I’ll say failure, you know, you know, there’s, there’s lessons to be learned when things don’t go as planned and you jumped very abruptly, I’ll say into doing a feature film. What went wrong and what did you learn from it? Because you did, I’m going to guess that if you would have thought about it more, you probably would have talked yourself out of this path, gone the safer route. So, but you didn’t. But what did you what was the big takeaway that you learned that you weren’t prepared for?

Jessica Plumb [00:10:22]:

Well, first, I will say that for anyone, whether you are getting your start in LA or New York or, on the Olympic Peninsula, The tackling one’s first feature is a very large undertaking, and especially doing it as we did it, which was as an independently funded project, is an enormous challenge. This will sound, of course, like, you know, the most obvious answer, but the biggest takeaway is it’s very, very hard to fund this kind of work. And, the first feature that I did, that I’m very proud of, I’m very happy how it turned out and it’s had a long life. At the same time, the actual making was a process of just constantly trying to support each little step of the way. And the truth is that that project, like so many first documentary films, was an absolute labor of love. And I was fortunate that both my colleague and I were willing to put that love into the project. And to be quite honest, you know, we went through very, let’s say, deep valleys along the way where we were years into documenting the unfolding and extraordinary story happening in our backyard on the Elwha River where we really didn’t know, how we were gonna continue. And at that point, honestly, we’re both fortunate to separately have spouses who really believed in us in the project as well, who had normal jobs, normal jobs.

Jessica Plumb [00:11:54]:

And, in both cases, encourage us not to give up Okay. And to see it through. I will say that that was the first project where I learned and I’ve continued to do this, that I was wearing far too many hats. And what that meant on the ground is that I would often pause some of my creative work to do some of the fundraising work, sometimes for, say, months at a time. And that is not a great way to keep your momentum up on a project, although we did. And I would say that when I finally had the opportunity to take our documentary film on the festival circuit, what I learned is that our experience was actually not atypical at all. And to be quite honest, I found myself fielding a question that horrified me more than once. And people would look at me kind of wonderingly and say, hey.

Jessica Plumb [00:12:51]:

You just finished your first feature documentary. Can I ask you, did you do that? And without going bankrupt or getting divorced, and I said, is that the bar I was supposed to jump? Yes. We managed to finish our 1st feature documentary with neither one of us going bankrupt or getting divorced. So we cleared that bar. It is a very long process. It’s typical for a first feature documentary and for many docs to take multiple years. You know, the average time I’ve heard is about 4 years. We actually did it in less than that, about 3 and a half.

Jessica Plumb [00:13:25]:

Okay. But in terms of lessons learned, certainly, I wish that we had been able to do more fundraising upfront, that we had had a bigger and more robust team. I learned, like many, have on, you know, on the job in the process, some of the very practical things that you have to do in terms of, you know, creating a legal framework for your documentary, creating a marketing plan before you even finish. You know, there are a lot of behind the scenes parts of filmmaking that no one ever sees. And, as a producer, I was neck deep in all of those very practical questions all the time and yet had my heart completely in creative questions simultaneously. It is both the hardest and most satisfying project I’ve ever undertaken with of course, the exception of being a mom. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:14:23]:

Yeah. Being a parent is Yeah. It’s well, you already figured this out, but the job I

Jessica Plumb [00:14:29]:

say that in the most satisfying

Scott Cowan [00:14:30]:

the job in that job, never that job never ends either. I mean, sometimes I think people, oh, the 18, the jobs now, it’s at least in my experience, it’s not over. So you, you get to wear lots and lots of hats and, and from the sounds of it at times, it’s distracting, gets you out of flow. You’re you’re you want to be creative. You’re in the middle of editing and now you’ve got to go fundraise or, you know, all of this. And so that’s got to me, me personally, I don’t do well with that. I I’m kind of like a, like a train. I build up speed and keep going.

Scott Cowan [00:15:11]:

And if I go off the tracks, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, I derail. So I’m always jealous of people who can do task shifting like that. So congratulations and kudos to you. But let’s let well, let’s keep talking about that, the feature film. So you because it’s gonna I think a lot of it’s gonna apply to Call of the Orchids too, in, in the sense of, so you get the film, I don’t want to say it’s ready, but it’s getting to be, as you said, festival season and you, you need to start. So how does one get their films in front of festivals? I mean, do they approach you? Do you approach them? Is it a, is it a combination?

Jessica Plumb [00:15:53]:

Oh, that is a subject that would be worthy of an entire separate hour long podcast. And so I I think I would be remiss if I thought I could summarize that for you in just a few short minutes. But I will say that as a first time filmmaker, that is a very challenging process. And like many things, that, you know, like many competitive processes where you want to believe that it is entirely merit based, there is a merit component to it, and there’s certainly also the challenge of just getting to know people and and getting know to be known. Right. And I was extraordinarily fortunate that our local regional festival ended up premiering Return of the River, in September of 2014 14 as the opening night film for the Port Townsend Film Festival. Simultaneously, the film opened, within days at, 2 other festivals in California. And that was a huge gift, but it was frankly a hard one Wenatchee, like many documentary films, found ourselves in an environment where we weren’t the only people pursuing a kind of shared broader topic, and there were other films out on the festival circuit that had a much larger budget and more robust, marketing team, you could say.

Jessica Plumb [00:17:21]:

And so I quickly learned that those things do matter and that when you are making a film, you need to be thinking about the process after you’re done early on. And I think many first time filmmakers learn that process the hard way that you feel like you’ve done this heroic thing. You’ve climbed the mountain. You finished your film. And I’m gonna quote another filmmaker actually, at the Port Townsend Film Festival who said, that’s when you realize that actually the starting gun has just gone off. You finished, and now you have to really start running. Mhmm. So I think a lot of what leads to success on the distribution side, and this includes festivals, is really learning to understand your core audience.

Jessica Plumb [00:18:10]:

I think all filmmakers wanna believe, you know, I’ve made this great work and everybody will be interested in it broadly. But the truth is almost every story has a core audience. And in our particular case, of course, we get a lot of traction with environmental film festivals. I joked early in our, festival season that our festival circuit read a little bit like a Wallace Stegner novel in that that particular film resonated well in smaller communities across the American West that were renavigating their relationship with a natural resource. The return of the river was about the one of the what was at the time, the largest dam removal in history and the rebuilding of a relationship with a river and a community. And I quickly learned that when we went to film festivals that had communities with similar experiences, almost everywhere I went, especially across the American West, people would come up to me after the screening and say, can I tell you about our river? Or equally important, they would say, can I tell you about a project where our community is collaborating with a tribal community to try to make something better? And I loved hearing those stories, and I understood when those people came up and wanted to talk to me that I just reached one of the core audience circles for our film. And these were audience members who were resonating with the subject matter. They were resonating with both the environmental and cultural restoration story that was embedded in the Elwha River story.

Jessica Plumb [00:19:57]:

And so as we came to understand our audience, it helped me as a producer better target that audience, not only through festivals, but through community screenings and through other opportunities. But certainly, I think even among festivals, it’s it’s critical to start to pick out since they’re gazillions of festivals, you know, many have, you know, various wonderful attributes, And it’s important to understand how your film might resonate with the audience of that specific festival, whether it is geographic or whether it is a special interest group or whether it has a similar story that resonates with the topic of film. So I learned all those things as I went, and I was really honored that ultimately we we took the backwards path. A lot of filmmakers try to land the biggest possible festival they can first and then work from there. We didn’t even apply to Sundance. I didn’t think that we stood a chance, with our, you know, small independent film and the timing was such that it didn’t make sense. So I didn’t try starting at that highest level. I tried with the festivals first that I thought would resonate with our film.

Jessica Plumb [00:21:18]:

And for us, that turned out to be a successful process. Every film has a different journey.

Scott Cowan [00:21:26]:

Have you ever had anything shown at Sundance?

Jessica Plumb [00:21:30]:

No. No. Do you I honestly to be quite honest, have never applied to Sundance. And I part of that has to do with the way the process works with the I’ll call them highly competitive festivals. They request first screening rights or premier rights. And a lot of my work as in the film that led you to call me is short form also. And I I have come to see where those shorter films might actually get traction. And so at the end of the day, my hope is that these films, the films that I’ve had the joy of making, will find audiences that resonate with the subjects of the film.

Jessica Plumb [00:22:17]:

And would it be amazing to have a film in Sundance someday? Sure. It would be incredible. But at the end of the day, that’s not necessarily my core audience. It’s an incredible audience. It’s the elite film audience. But all of my films essentially, have been grounded in the Pacific Northwest. They all circle around similar questions. And really for me, that question that has animated my whole creative life concerns the relationship between people in the land and waters that sustain us.

Jessica Plumb [00:22:50]:

And so I have been filmmaking in what you could call a niche, following familiar questions down different pathways. And what I hope is that each one of those films then has some life that well transcends me or my exploration of that topic that will help others that are exploring those questions, that will help move the story forward, whether it’s on the restoration of rivers, and there’s no question that Return of the River has played a role there. It’s been around the world, and it was picked up by specific audiences. Like The Nature Conservancy ultimately bought the rights to show it at, like, 50 different places in a single day.

Scott Cowan [00:23:37]:

Oh, wow.

Jessica Plumb [00:23:38]:

So, which was, you know, for me no. That’s not Sundance, but it actually, for the purposes of this film, was exactly the type of opportunity I’d hoped for. And with Call of the Orcas that’s coming up at the Cascadia Film Festival, Call of the Orcas focuses very specifically on the on the plight facing southern resident killer whales here in Puget Sound in the Salish Sea. And for me, what would be the best possible outcome of that film is that it helps to strengthen or serve the efforts around recovery of an endangered subspecies. And if it does that, then from my perspective, that film has done its work. So that’s how I think of these films. Okay. And that’s where that’s how I try to match them with appropriate audiences.

Scott Cowan [00:24:32]:

How did you get started on Call of the orcas? What was the when we talked earlier, you you said you well, you you said you were approached by an organization to be involved.

Jessica Plumb [00:24:42]:

Yes. Okay. So I I should clarify that, you know, I have continued since making Return of the River, a feature that was independent. I’ve continued to make my full time living as an independent filmmaker. I don’t have a day job. This is my day job. So the vast majority of films I make are commissioned or in some way supported by a client. And that’s how I make my living.

Jessica Plumb [00:25:08]:

I also continue to do independent work where I fundraise independently to to complete those projects. So this was a commissioned film by an organization called Original Pursuit. Original Pursuit is based in, on the East Coast in New England, not here in the northwest. It was founded by someone named Brian Rossborough, who is best known actually for founding an organization called EarthWatch. And EarthWatch, for many, many decades and continues to do so today, he’s retired from the organization, sends field scientists to projects or send, sorry, volunteers to support field scientists to projects around the world. And so the founder of Earthwatch was interested in trying to showcase some of these field scientists as change makers in the fields in which they worked for years. One of those change makers in his experience was someone who’s very well known to the Pacific Northwest, and that was Ken Balcom, who passed away in 2022 late 2022, who was a founder of a critical organization here on, on San Juan Island that research researched and continues researched and continues to research southern resident killer whales. And so I was contacted by original pursuit about this specific undertaking by Ken Balcom, around Orca survey, which over the course of close to 50 years, tracked the numbers of individuals southern resident killer whales here in Puget Sound.

Jessica Plumb [00:26:50]:

And sadly, at the time that I was asked to to consider making a film, Ken himself was very unwell. And and he passed away soon thereafter. And I ultimately had the very big honor from my perspective of what would be a final interview with Ken Belkom before he died in late 2022. That interview was audio only. It was not on film, and I did that out of respect, at the time, he was in a hospice, situation. And so we spent a very memorable and kind of magical afternoon together, and I almost couldn’t make this up, at a home on the banks of the Elwha River.

Scott Cowan [00:27:37]:

Oh, wow.

Jessica Plumb [00:27:38]:

And that’s because yes. And that is because, he had with his organization purchased a ranch on the Elwha River, big salmon ranch still there, still known, and done so because of the relationship between salmon and southern resident killer whales, and that’s where he spent his final weeks months days. So we had this very memorable, wide ranging, and inspiring interview, that I recorded. And and then I went back to original pursuit and said I, you know, I’m I’m really sorry to be the bearer of this news, but we have this audio interview, and I’m I’m sorry to say I think we’re gonna lose Ken very soon, and that is what happened. And then we spoke about a different way to approach this Scott. And what I proposed was to reveal the story of this work around Southern Resident Killer Whales by bringing in a wider circle of voices as well as archival footage that was available to talk about this legacy of study of southern resident killer whales here in our region in Puget Sound and how it absolutely transformed the way the public understood orcas among us. And the result is the film that is coming to the Cascadia Film Festival soon played in Washington DC just this past weekend. And also, at Friday Harbor on ground 0 for the story late last year.

Jessica Plumb [00:29:20]:

And that is how that particular film was born. And I was very grateful that original pursuit fundraised to make a short film possible.

Scott Cowan [00:29:32]:

When when they gave you the parameters of the of the assignment, did they did they tell you, like, it it needs to be between, you know, 10 19 minutes or was it were you what defines the length? How do you is it what they, what the film ends up being is what it ends up being, or do you have to try to get it within some guidelines?

Jessica Plumb [00:29:56]:

Length is a really great question, and I think it’s a critical one for all of us who are making films because at the end of the day, we are working in a time based medium. We are asking you, our audience, to give us your time whether it’s for 5 minutes or 90 minutes. From the producer end making a film, length is determined by a combination of factors, and a really obvious one is budget, but another huge factor is really the nature of the topic. And when this film is an interesting example around that decision about length. When I was first approached by original pursuit, their vision was to do 10 minute films featuring individual change makers. And as I’ve just described, this film very quickly changed in terms of its, kind of process and story to include a wider range of voices. And we agreed that 10 minutes was too short, but we didn’t have a budget to get up to 20. So I ended up making a film, that landed at 18 minutes, and it was full of, wonderful people.

Jessica Plumb [00:31:12]:

Mhmm. And then we also revisited that idea of a 10 minute version, and we revisited it because of specific kind of opportunities that required a shorter piece. And so I ultimately did create a 10 minute version of the film as well. And a lot of that has to do with where are the places you can share your film, and is length a factor, in in those opportunities? And so we felt that it would help, also for the future of this, organization to have a 10 minute film since they had originally envisioned shorter pieces. And yet for the purpose of this story, we all agreed that an an 18 minute version was more true or more representative of the range of of voices to be ultimately featured.

Scott Cowan [00:32:08]:

Now I’m not gonna be able to be very articulate here, but I’ve watched both the 10 minute and the 18 minute. And I watched the 10 minute first Scott knowing really why, or is it 10 and an 18? So I watched the 10 and then you and I had our conversation on the phone and then I watched the 18 and Howard’s speaking again.

Jessica Plumb [00:32:29]:

Uh-huh.

Scott Cowan [00:32:30]:

Uh-huh. I can’t imagine how challenging it must have been for you to take 40% of the content of the film and leave it on the quote unquote cutting room floor. The I enjoyed both of them. They, but the S the 18 minute one moved me emotionally. I’m almost embarrassed to say how much it moved me emotionally. Very powerful, very different feeling from the 10. So I can’t, I can’t imagine I was, I was watching it. And then after I was done, I was pondering, like, I don’t know that I could have, if it was my work, sat down and said, okay.

Scott Cowan [00:33:19]:

I know I need I know I need a 10 minute version. I don’t know that I could have cut 8 minutes out. I don’t know. Kudos to you to do that. I was, that’s the thing I’ve been hooked on since I watched the full version is I warned you about rabbit holes, right? That, you know, we’re going to, we’re going to go, and this is one of them. It’s like, I’ve been fixated on the, the process that you must have under had to undertake to strategically edit what was a very tight ETA. There wasn’t a Scott, and there’s not a lot of filler in this. It’s not like there’s these long dialogues that we can shorten up.

Scott Cowan [00:34:00]:

You, you really had to surgically, edit. What was that like for you?

Jessica Plumb [00:34:10]:

I think surgical is a an apt description. First, I should say that I’m kind of a rare filmmaker or film director and that I am the primary editor on most of my films. And I also do edit as part of my business. So the editing process is one in which I feel a lot of confidence and it’s the process of filmmaking. I won’t say it’s the process that I necessarily most enjoy. It’s a ton of hard work in front of a computer, but it is certainly the one where I personally feel like I bring the most creative depth. And I think the reason for that is that I really came to filmmaking from writing, and I approach editing a film in part through skills that I learned editing writing. And as you’ve seen from both of cuts of that film, I I don’t use a narrator when I don’t have to.

Jessica Plumb [00:35:17]:

I use the voices or I feature the voices of the people who I think are the experts in this story to tell the story, and I try to weave them together as a chorus. And I would say if I have a specialty as a filmmaker, that really is my specialty, and it was the strength of return of the river as a feature as well. It was a it was a film that was told by a chorus of voices. And so in terms of process, for me, all filmmaking does actually literally begin on paper or, you know, in a word doc where I am reviewing transcripts from what I see as the key interviews that kind of drive the narrative forward. You don’t necessarily see a lot of that on screen because I actually don’t want our viewers to watch primarily talking heads. But what you hear is often a kind of carefully crafted narrative that I have pulled together out of a collection of interviews. Now your question was how did I go from 18 minutes to 10 minutes? I am gonna acknowledge that that is a painful thing to do, and and that I went back the way I started was I went back to my paper cut or on a word document cut first. Mhmm.

Jessica Plumb [00:36:37]:

Because in a way that helps me to take a step back of a little bit more distance from what’s visually on screen and try to craft a story that’s appropriate to 10 minutes with the content that I have. One of the things that I had to do and I’ve had to do this with other projects was to make a very hard choice to remove characters that I love. Mhmm. And that is a very common experience for documentary filmmakers. I think one of the things to know about documentary film is that, for better or worse, the vast majority of us who work in this medium over Scott. They’re over document. And every documentary film that I’ve made, short or long, ultimately has vast quantities of material that doesn’t get

Scott Cowan [00:37:27]:

shown Mhmm.

Jessica Plumb [00:37:28]:

In the final Scott. And that is just part of the process because unlike a narrative where from the very first minute, the narrative filmmaker is trying to realize a vision that has been usually laid out on paper in a script and is trying to get as close as possible to that initial vision. We documentary filmmakers are always an essence in a process of discovery. Right? And so each interview for me is part of that process of discovery as well. And I love that part of the process. I have to admit I’m a researcher and an interviewer to the core. I really enjoy the invisible part of filmmaking, which the, you know, the language for that would be preproduction, but what it really means is research and learning and discovery. So I’m very familiar with the underlying challenge which is I have way too much material whether it’s to fill a 75 minute film, an 18 minute film, or a 10 minute film.

Jessica Plumb [00:38:31]:

This is kind of a problem that I face most days of my work life. With Call of the Orca specifically, I was to come back to the audience question that, we talked about earlier, When I’m doing a surgical cut like this that is hard to do, the question I ask myself really concerns audience. And I knew that the 18 minute version would be more powerful, especially for viewers in the Pacific Northwest, especially for viewers who actually knew, Ken Balcom or for viewers who were immersed in the work of recovery of southern resident killer whales. And to be clear, Ken Belkom, what in case I didn’t mention earlier, was the founder of the Center For Whale Research, which continues to this day under new leadership, on San Juan Island. The 18 minute cut was very much aimed at viewers who might have some connection to some part of this story. Mhmm. When I had to reduce the film to 10 minutes, I was imagining a viewer who’s never thought about or heard of southern resident killer whales, who doesn’t understand or know that there are different groups of orcas k. Who may never have set foot in the Pacific Northwest where we around Puget Sound have this very personal relationship to southern resident killer whales.

Jessica Plumb [00:40:05]:

And so I really was trying to simplify the narrative for a viewer who was starting at a place of no information at all. And one of the ways that I forced myself to simplify the story was to limit the number of characters in the shorter cut. I am not gonna say that that’s easy. It is always painful and it often it takes me, like, several different goes at it. I’ll sit down at it. I’ll say, no. I can’t do this. And then I’ll say, okay.

Jessica Plumb [00:40:41]:

You know, may what if Hypothetically and I’ll make a, you know, a backup copy. Hypothetically, what if I just took out this one scene? And then if I took out this one scene, well, I have to take out this person because I haven’t appropriately introduced this person.

Scott Cowan [00:40:54]:

Right.

Jessica Plumb [00:40:54]:

And so I’ll do it, like, in piecemeal bits. And then I and I do this with all of my work. I step back and give it some time and come back at it. It’s always easier with the benefit of time because I’ll come back at it and I’ll try to I’ll try to force myself to watch again from the perspective of that person who knows nothing about the subject. And that’s really hard to do because any film I make as a obsessive researcher, I know way too much about the subject. Often too much, I would say. So it’s hard for me to step back and find that place of what would it be like to know nothing and enter this. But when I do that, I do find pathways to simplify the narrative and the message.

Jessica Plumb [00:41:44]:

I say this with a major caveat. As a storyteller, whether as a writer or a filmmaker, as a person, I embrace complexity. And so that is an inherent challenge or you could say point of tension as a filmmaker. Because as we said earlier, film is a time based medium. And understanding complexity and revealing complexity takes time. Those tensions, I think, are are visible in some ways on screen in my films because I have tried, especially as an environmental filmmaker, to avoid falling into the good, bad, right, wrong, binary, villain, hero narrative because I feel strongly that in the age of the anthropocene, we all or all the voices we feature kind of hold a place in the circle of these stories and that solutions will emerge out of complexity as opposed to out of simple answers. And yet when I have to cut a film from 18 minutes to 10, I know that my job, 1st and foremost, is to simplify. That’s probably a much longer answer than you wanted, but it is the core or the heart of filmmaking for me is navigating that editing process and making the very hard choices of what does get shown on screen and where and what doesn’t get shown on screen.

Jessica Plumb [00:43:22]:

And for everything you see on screen of every film I’ve ever made, there’s at least 10 times as much material sitting on a RAID driver hard drive behind me. Sometimes a 100 times.

Scott Cowan [00:43:34]:

Do you do you ever show your daughter or your husband the rough ideas and ask for their feedback? Or do you, or do you, do you not like, like my wife never listens to my podcast. I never go, Hey, what’d you think of this? I just, if she listens to it, she’s listening to it as, you know, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And she, she hears what we produced. I don’t ever go to her and say, Hey, watch this. Tell me what you think. Not because I don’t want her to. I just don’t think about it. But in your case where you’re you’re spending days, weeks, months editing and and pruning, hundreds of gigs of hundreds of gigs of files down to an 18 minute or a 10 minute short.

Scott Cowan [00:44:22]:

Do you ever ask your husband, do you ever say, Hey, can you come here and look at this? And does this make sense to you? Do you ever do that?

Jessica Plumb [00:44:30]:

Absolutely. I mean, first and foremost, I have to a huge shout out to my family, to both my daughter and my husband. As you’re probably gathering from the description of the filmmaking process, when I’m making a film, I live and breathe that film, and I will do that either for a matter of months, for a short, or a matter of years for a feature. And for that reason, I you know, my family inevitably is part of that journey. I asked both of them for their input, but the truth is I’m gonna give a shout out right now to my daughter who’s now 17. She was in kindergarten when I started my first feature. She herself, is an excellent photographer as a high school student and a fine, storyteller and I would say even more fine editor. And she has been looking over my shoulder on and off since she was tiny right here in this office.

Jessica Plumb [00:45:26]:

And I will still remember that even as a younger child, as I batted things around and wrestled with, the long editing process of Return of the River, she would wander in sometimes in pajamas literally since I often, when she was young, edited at night. It was the time I had, and she would look over my shoulder and say, wait. When he says that, why don’t I see his gesture anymore? You added this other this other image. And she was always right.

Scott Cowan [00:46:00]:

She’s always right.

Jessica Plumb [00:46:01]:

I I mean this. Her instincts were excellent and they still are, and I have I have always showed rough cuts to my daughter, and to my husband. But the truth is he’s a very busy guy. He, he works in the medical field, was on the front line during the pandemic. Cowan so sometimes we didn’t see him at all for, extended periods periods of time. But both of them have had hugely valuable contributions to every project. And especially when, you know, I asked this question of what’s it like to be the first viewer? Although they know the content better by virtue of, you know, talking to me over the dinner table, they’re the first people who ask good hard questions. Wait.

Jessica Plumb [00:46:44]:

I didn’t understand that. Or what did that person say again? If they don’t get it, I know another viewer is not gonna get it. So that is very helpful feedback. I will say though, as part of the filmmaking process, whether you live and work alone or live and work with a big family, I also have a broader family of filmmakers with whom I routinely do share work in progress, and, I think that’s a vital part of the process for all filmmakers because getting feedback after you’ve been in your own, like, silo of working on a film is absolutely invaluable. And and here I’m gonna do a a shout out both to my own community and to our wonderful festival here in Port Townsend because they have taken under their wing a group that, I helped to start with a colleague who was also the director of photography on call of the orcas, Gabe Van Lelyweld here in Port Townsend. And, we, during the pandemic, in part to help, you know, counter the isolation, started gathering the few people we knew on the Olympic Peninsula, literally, physically around a campfire outdoors for safety to talk about our craft. We couldn’t screen, work in progress easily in that environment, so mostly we talked about our work there. As the pandemic eased, we spoke to our local film festival about that group, and they very kindly took it under their wing and and really created a home for those kind of monthly gatherings.

Jessica Plumb [00:48:14]:

And it’s grown into a much more robust and regional local filmmaker gathering focused, in part on the screening of works in progress. And I think we’re and I share this specific story because I think wherever a person is making films, here I am on the Olympic Peninsula. We do have over 20 people in this group, and we do get together and give each other feedback. You know, if we can do it here, a documentary filmmaker or filmmaker can do this really anywhere. And I think it’s a vital part of the filmmaking process to get feedback because all of us grow attached to our subjects. And by that, I mean the characters in our films, the questions that underpin our films, the the messages we wanna share. We grow deeply attached. We wouldn’t have the resilience and the patience to do this if we didn’t.

Jessica Plumb [00:49:09]:

And I think that that feedback process is just vital as we start to get to the stage of going from, you know, living personally with the project to sharing it with the public. Mhmm. And I’m gonna come back to call of the orcas. Call of the orcas as a short film absolutely benefited from the feedback of that specific group. You know, I can literally remember sharing a rough cut. It was not I said probably not quite a year ago, when I was in the kind of struggle phase of, you know, pulling together a rough cut. And in that particular case, you know, each film has its challenges. The challenge of that is that I knew I had a short film on a modest budget, and yet I had all of these potential wonderful characters that all had a connection back to Ken Balcom’s work.

Jessica Plumb [00:50:03]:

And I was wrestling with how I was going to pull that combination of voices and characters and themes together. I shared that rough cut with a group of probably a dozen people, mostly but not all filmmakers through our, you know, local group here. And what emerged was a better film. And I I thank them for that.

Scott Cowan [00:50:26]:

K.

Jessica Plumb [00:50:27]:

All of them. So, yeah, I share the I share my work in progress all the time with my husband and my daughter, but I also share it with a wider circle before it ever sees a general audience.

Scott Cowan [00:50:38]:

Okay. So the general audience, now we’ll talk film festivals, and let’s let’s shift over to the Cascadia and Bellingham. So your film is going to be, shown with some other shorts, I believe on April 27th. And it’s hopes and dreams, short films showcase 2. Now I hope I’m not putting you on the spot because there’s, I’m a little confused here by their website. It says call the orcas directed by Jessica Plumb USA. Okay. All that’s straightforward, but then there’s an asterisk next to it.

Scott Cowan [00:51:12]:

And I believe that means that, is there a director’s Q and a to follow? Are you doing a q and a with the audience? Yes. I got that

Jessica Plumb [00:51:21]:

right. I’m pretty sure that asterisk means that, there’s a filmmaker who’s present. And

Scott Cowan [00:51:27]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [00:51:27]:

I wanna say first and foremost, I am so proud to be, part of the upcoming Cascadia Film Festival in Bellingham. The Cascadia Film Festival is really special. And, you know, at this point, I’m grateful at this point in my career. I’ve probably been to close to 50 film festivals and had films and, in others, that I’ve never attended. Cascadia is one of a very small handful of film festivals that I know of that feature Cowan in film from around the world. And so as a female filmmaker in or, you know, in a in a profession where we are still an overwhelming minority no matter how you count. Mhmm. You know, I am and I’m not just talking about Hollywood and LA here because obviously my work exists way outside of that of that circle, but even more broadly.

Jessica Plumb [00:52:28]:

I have been to many film festivals where, especially in the space where I work, where it’s hard to find other female directors. Cascadia, from the moment you show up, is a world of incredible female directors. So, one of the fun things about being in a collection of shorts is that you get to share the stage. And so I’ve looked at the list of films with whom I’m going to share the stage. It looks like some of the directors will be there and some of them will Scott. But I just wanna say that I’m incredibly proud to be in a group of films that features other films from Iran, from Germany, and from Canada. And then I’ll probably meet some of those directors of those shorts from other parts of the world. And as a filmmaker doing this in a fairly isolated place yet with a history of living in other parts of the world and of international work.

Jessica Plumb [00:53:27]:

This is an incredible privilege and a joy, and it’s one of the reasons why, although I can’t get often to the film festivals where my films show, especially shorts, I definitely prioritize making an effort to get to a place like the Cascadia Film Festival because having a chance to meet other female directors from other countries is just wonderful.

Scott Cowan [00:53:49]:

I’m literally on their list of 20, 24 directors. I’m not gonna try to name them, but I’m just gonna say I’m just gonna read some countries. Canada, United States, United States, Iran, Guatemala, Italy, Iran, Brazil. Brazil again, United States, United States, Canada, US, Canada, Iran, Belgium, and Switzerland that they get both credit there. Germany, the UK, more here you are, the United States. No. It’s so funny. Someone says England, one says the UK, but England, France, US, I mean, it is literally worldwide.

Scott Cowan [00:54:31]:

There is several, let’s see, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26 directors listed here. 26 women directors. That to me is an outsider. Scott don’t know. I’m not a film critic. It’s a pretty impressive list of of of attendee or not necessarily attendees, but films to to showcase, and that it’s in Bellingham. And I don’t mean to disparage Bellingham because Bellingham is a beautiful city. I have to call it a city now because it’s, you know, a 100000 100000 people live in Bellingham.

Scott Cowan [00:55:08]:

It’s crazy to me, but it’s not it’s not Vancouver. It’s not Seattle. It’s not even Portland. It’s certainly not Los Angeles or New York. And here is this film festival that up until a month ago, I was unaware of. And now it seems like everywhere I turn, I’m hearing about it possibly. Cause it’s like when you buy a car and you, you, I don’t know what you drive. It doesn’t matter.

Scott Cowan [00:55:33]:

You buy it. You, you drive, you bought a, you bought a, you know, a Lex or a Volkswagen Passat, and now you see Volkswagen Passats on the road everywhere. It’s like what happened? I never saw this car before. So this is probably that same sort of thing here that I’m aware of it. So I’m seeing it, but it’s impressive. It’s it’s interesting how they’re doing it. I, I was able to talk with Cheryl, the executive director and that episode’s the one that was released last week. So your your episode’s gonna be following hers.

Scott Cowan [00:56:03]:

And, you know, she’s given me the background and kind of her take on how the community has gathered around this film festival and how it’s been supported and embraced and the enthusiasm around it. I just think it’s very it’s very, very cool that it’s in our backyard, if you will. I mean, as the crow flies, if you were to fly to Bellingham from Port Townsend, it’s not that long of a flight. You Scott to take a ferry across or drive around, but if you could fly, it’s, it’s pretty close to home. It’s your backyard, if you will. I think it’s, I think it’s wonderful that they have found a focus, and they’re focusing on women filmmakers. I think that’s that’s great. I think it’s it’s great that they’re trying to bring an audience or or Scott well, the audience is gonna be, at least in Bellingham, is gonna be probably primarily North.

Scott Cowan [00:56:56]:

I’m gonna guess Pacific Northwest attendees watching the films. But the films are coming from around the globe, which is awesome, which gives you a chance to listen in on a different culture and community and how they view things. So that’s wonderful. What do you hope as a filmmaker that the this I’ll put you on the spot with the Cascadia Film Festival. What do you hope that your film what’s your goal for this to be there? What do you hope happens that you for your film?

Jessica Plumb [00:57:27]:

Well, 1st and foremost, I just wanna reflect back what you said. It’s an incredible opportunity to have a festival like this in our backyard. And as I think I’ve probably conveyed, being an independent female documentary director in a small town can be a very lonely and sometimes isolating experience. And the first thing I’ll say about a film festival like this that proactively tries to bring directors together is it’s just an absolute joy to meet with others who are doing this kind of work often under equally challenging circumstances. And just connecting with other filmmakers in a festival environment like this, it is it is one of the pleasures of our work and so I’m so grateful that we have that in our backyard and frankly, there are several wonderful small film festivals or small town, I should say, non small film festivals in our backyard that we are lucky to have here in Washington state. I’m gonna do one more shout out for the one in Port Townsend because it’s an excellent film festival, the Port Townsend film festival as well. So what I hope to gain for the film there, I would say as I started, I know at the end of the day, this is a film about a critical issue facing our region. It’s a microcosm of the larger story of extinction risk facing, charismatic megafauna in other parts of the world.

Jessica Plumb [00:58:59]:

But right here in our backyard, southern resident killer whales, the beloved familiar orcas that you can see on every manner of, you know, marketing in Washington Scott, you know, whether it’s a beer label or a They

Scott Cowan [00:59:16]:

they need or on the ferry. They need to unionize or something and get get get some representation to make

Jessica Plumb [00:59:21]:

sense. Right. At the end of the day, they are at grave, grave risk of not being with us for my daughter’s generation. They are a listed species threatened with an extinction. And they’re threatened with extinction, and we haven’t talked much about the orcas themselves. We’ve talked about some of the people around them. They’re threatened with extinction for a constellation of reasons. The single biggest is that southern resident killer whales eat salmon.

Jessica Plumb [00:59:51]:

They are exclusive salmon almost exclusive salmon eaters, and that’s what distinguishes them from other orcas in the sea. From the transients who eat mammals, from the offshores that are capable of taking a wide range of prey. And it’s what makes them special, and they coevolved with salmon in our region and also with the indigenous people of our region who have a salmon based, salmon centered culture. Southern residents also have a salmon centered culture. There is a reason that our indigenous native neighbors to this region see southern residents as members of their family. It’s because they have these parallel salmon cultures. And so my hope with regard to the film is that viewers see themselves, especially if in Bellingham, as part of this story and that they feel moved to be part of the solution or series of solutions to help support the recovery Scott only of southern resident killer whales, but also of the Chinook salmon they prefer as prey and also to support the very, you know, powerful efforts being made by tribal communities, in particular the Lummi Nation, which is adjacent to Bellingham to try to recover both species, southern resident killer whales and Chinook salmon, and more broadly our salmon population. These are interlinked stories, and I think that Bellingham, like Friday Harbor, which also, showed the film festival setting, really is ground 0 for where the challenges facing these different species are are most evident.

Jessica Plumb [01:01:39]:

So from my perspective, aside from me as a filmmaker and the the genuine, you know, joy I take out of meeting other female directors, the film has a role to play geographically. And I really hope that people resonate, with the range of voices that are featured in Call of the orcas, including Ellie Kinley, who’s a well respected elder of the Lummi Nation, and many scientists who work and live among us here in Western Washington. And each one brings their own perspective to what is a collective shared problem. And that is that we are looking at just a handful over 70. And I I you know, the number changes up and down. It was 75 recently. We may be back at 74. Southern resident killer whales, that is a vanishingly small number of animals to sustain a population.

Jessica Plumb [01:02:41]:

And it’s going to take all of us and our different ways of of knowing and seeing and understanding a problem to turn that around. It’s going to take the voices of the Lummi Nation. It’s going to take the scientists working both in public institutions and in private organizations to help us collectively as a region solve this problem. And so ultimately, I think, you know, Ken Balcom’s legacy to this region is that he made visible to all of us that the southern residents are whales that we can know individually by name, that they are members of families, that these families are matriarchal, led by their grandmothers. And during what now feels like a long ago era, but it is very much part of the history of our region, during the capture era in the 19 sixties, in the 19 seventies, it ended in 1976 in part due to this collective work, that the young were taken from these families in Puget Sound, captured to be shown at seaquariums around the world. This scientific work, led to the end of that, era. Thank goodness. And southern resident killer whales have been in recovery ever since.

Jessica Plumb [01:04:02]:

The threats they now face aren’t captured. They’re threats that involve all of us, and they are. All 3 of them, I’m gonna list them for you. First and foremost, the dwindling numbers of their prey. Salmon with a focus on Chinook salmon. 2nd, the toxicants that concentrate in the blubber of an animal at the top of the food chain and all of us who live in, you know, urban urban or urbanized areas around Puget Sound are part of that story and can help to protect the waters of Puget Sound. And then finally, the question of underwater audio. Since whales live in an audio world, they hunt, they communicate, They stay together.

Jessica Plumb [01:04:44]:

They talk to each other, not through sight, but through audio. Pardon my cough. And that’s now audio in the podcast. And as a result, the heavy amount of shipping traffic going to Seattle and Vancouver in particular is part of their audio soundscape, and that can impact their ability to function, to to hunt, and to communicate with each other. So there have been efforts around that as well. So really there are 3 overlapping issues that the southern resident killer whales are contending with. I would say at the top of that is the goal to increase the number of their prey so that they aren’t starving. And the way in which that hunger manifests also has to do with their reproductive success.

Jessica Plumb [01:05:38]:

They get pregnant as by the way, there is a sequel, I will say, to call the orcas coming out over the coming months. I don’t know exactly when that one will be available, but takes up some of these issues and looks forward as opposed to back, which the initial film largely did. Anyway, I feel like when you ask, you know, what does a film do at a festival, I just give you a really long winded answer. The short one sentence answer is that I hope that people walk out of the film and they care. They care about the future of southern resident killer whales. They care about the salmon that they depend on, and they care about the efforts around our region to recover both. In conjunction with the Lummi Nation and many other tribal communities that have been at the forefront of this effort. So that’s what I hope.

Scott Cowan [01:06:33]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:06:33]:

At the end of the day, that audience members care.

Scott Cowan [01:06:35]:

That’s a big a big goal. I mean, it’s an important goal. Okay. Gonna abruptly shift gears on you. You kind of answered one of my questions, but what’s next? So is on your workflow flow, is is the the the follow-up is that your next project that you’re working on, or what’s the future look like for you as far as filmmaking goes?

Jessica Plumb [01:07:00]:

I have a variety of things on my plate right now. And in the interest of brevity, I’m I’m just gonna, touch on 2. I am in early development on a potential feature project that I’m it’s too soon to discuss. Okay. But right now, I am focused on the sequel to Call of the Orchids, which features, a current leading scientist, doctor Deborah Giles of Wild Cowan, and a, and Jay Julius, who is a formal former chairman of the Lummi Nation. Basically deepening into some of the topics I just raised about the film. How do you bring indigenous perspectives and values and science together to help address the issues around recovery of salmon and orcas. So that film is at the, kind of final editing stage right now, and I’m deep into that.

Jessica Plumb [01:07:58]:

I’m also gonna put out that I have a very, unusual project, for me coming, you could say in another way coming out next week here in Port Townsend. While I am known for documentary film, I said in the beginning, I’m an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary artist. And in a major departure from my environmental documentary work, I actually am doing a multimedia video installation, documentary work, I actually am doing a multimedia video installation that’s going up at Centrum next Friday, April 5th, at Fort Wharton in Port Townsend that is a totally different type of project. I’ll leave it at that. Okay. Grateful to an artist trust gap grant to bring that one to Jefferson County. It’s called Innerspace. It was made in conjunction, with 2 other, artists, one of whom is no longer with us.

Jessica Plumb [01:08:52]:

So that’s happening well, that’s the focus of my next week.

Scott Cowan [01:08:56]:

And how long is that project gonna be up? The the the installation

Jessica Plumb [01:09:01]:

be up in a gallery setting for the installation will be up in a gallery for 3 weeks here at Fort Wharton in Port Townsend. And so anyone who’s in the area can check it out at the beautiful new gallery space in building 3 305 Fort Wharton. So that’s on a very near horizon. And in the long term, I’m continuing to explore and take beyond the Pacific Northwest. The some of the topics that have emerged out of my long standing questions about the relationship between people and place. So that’s on the more distant horizon. Alright. And, yeah, I’ve got a lot going on.

Jessica Plumb [01:09:42]:

Yeah. I always have short and long term projects kind of cooking on different burners

Scott Cowan [01:09:47]:

at the

Jessica Plumb [01:09:48]:

same time.

Scott Cowan [01:09:48]:

Moving them around. Alright. As we wrap this up, I’ve got, I’ve got 4 questions for you. I lied to you earlier. Cause I just came up with the 4th one. I’m going to put you on the spot for this first one. Never really asked this of people, so I hope it goes well. So I’ve been to Port Townsend lots.

Scott Cowan [01:10:04]:

Port Townsend is a well known, you know, touristy, artsy destination for people to come and visit. Lots of places on, on the map people know about Port Townsend. I’m gonna put you on the spot. I’m gonna show up to Port Townsend. Sure. I want you to tell me someplace I should go that’s not on that proverbial popular map. What’s been overlooked in Port Townsend in your opinion?

Jessica Plumb [01:10:31]:

Well, as you can imagine, the places that immediately come to mind for me have to do with my relationship to the outdoors, which is, you know, one of the big reasons I live here. But, you know, first of all, Port Townsend has many, many, you could say, hidden gems. And I think my answer would actually maybe depend upon the time of year for you.

Scott Cowan [01:10:53]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:10:53]:

First of all, a lot of people know about the big outdoor destinations here, like Fort Wharton, which is a spectacular state park where I am since I live a mile away, I’m happy to walk many days of the week. But some of the lesser known outdoor destinations here in our region are wonderful places protected by Jefferson Land Trust, and I’m gonna, suggest if you were here in the fall, for example, being someone who’s made a lot of films about salmon, I would send you to one of the many beautiful Jefferson Land Trust, properties, which is Illyhee Preserve because it’s a place in Jefferson County where you can literally watch a salmon run up close with a walk of maybe quarter mile.

Scott Cowan [01:11:37]:

Wow.

Jessica Plumb [01:11:37]:

You walk down to a part of Chimacoom Creek. And to me, this place is very special because when I came to Port Townsend approximately 2 decades ago, the effort to restore Chimacam Creek was just getting underway. And there for a long period of time were no salmon at all in this creek. And now if you’re out here in the fall, you can, thanks to the land trust, thanks to the efforts of countless different organizations and volunteers, now go to a nature preserve where you can walk to the side of Chimacam Creek and see robust salmon runs returning, which is really, really special. So that’s what I would do if it were the fall. Okay. Now if it were the winter, I’d send you, of course, to my favorite theater, not just in Port Townsend, but literally the whole wide world. And that’s the starlight room above the Rose Theatre.

Jessica Plumb [01:12:31]:

And if you haven’t been there

Scott Cowan [01:12:32]:

I haven’t.

Jessica Plumb [01:12:32]:

Taken someone you care about there, please do. It, it’s on the top floor of the building that houses, the Rose Theatre. It is like a collection of comfy couches that seat together less than 50 with a bar and food. K. And I have watched films in a lot of venues. The starlight is still literally my favorite place in the planet to go watch a great film.

Scott Cowan [01:12:58]:

Alright. No.

Jessica Plumb [01:12:59]:

So that’s what I would do in winter. And there are others. I I will I could go online. I won’t. But, you know, depending on the time of year, I’d send you to other, you know, outdoor locations. There are other great places, that K. They’re on, for example, the land trust maps.

Scott Cowan [01:13:14]:

Awesome. Alright. I’m a coffee guy. I know you you heard my disappointment when I asked you, and you’re not a fan of coffee, but I gotta put you on the spot. Where’s a great place for coffee in Port Townsend?

Jessica Plumb [01:13:27]:

Alright. So you did call me out. I am a lone and rare tea drinker in the Pacific Northwest, and I know that makes me in yet one other way a rare bird. However, there are fantastic places to get coffee in port towns in, and I’ve spent a lot of time in all of them. Because I love our waterfront and our relationship to the ocean, I’m gonna send you to 3. Okay. They’re all in different parts of the waterfront. The first option is Sunrise Coffee where the coffee is selected and roasted by Sue Olson right here in our community.

Jessica Plumb [01:14:04]:

It is housed in the boatyard, which is like the, you know, heart of our working waterfront. It is a great place to meet incredible locals, and, of course, they have extraordinary coffee, everyone tells me. And, yes, I do try it on occasion. By the way, it is now co run by a former National Geographic photographer. I have his book on my desk. Bill Kurtzinger, Sue’s Okay. Partner who was an extraordinary National Geographic photographer. And he might be there behind the counter if you show up.

Scott Cowan [01:14:33]:

Oh, okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:14:33]:

Local secret. So the next place I would send you, aptly named for someone who loves coffee like you, is Better Living True Coffee, which is right on the waterfront, right in heart of downtown. If you come to our town off the ferry, it’s probably your easiest walk for coffee, and you can sit there with a gorgeous view of the water and watch the next ferry come and go.

Scott Cowan [01:14:54]:

Mhmm.

Jessica Plumb [01:14:54]:

So Better Living Through Coffee would be the 3rd place I’d send you. But because I’m gonna send you all the way down our beautiful waterfront, I’m gonna send you to a third third, coffee spot on the waterfront I wouldn’t miss is Velocity. And Velocity Coffee is housed at the Northwest Maritime Center, which if you’re visiting Port Townsend is a really great place to also learn about our present day maritime life and past maritime history. So all of those coffee shops come with, 1st and foremost, fantastic coffee according to everyone I know. And second, they come with a little, like, window into the waterfront life of Port Townsend, which is a huge part of the community of our Cowan. From the boat yard to downtown to the maritime.

Scott Cowan [01:15:43]:

Now we’re gonna turn this around on you, though. You’re a tea drinker, and that’s okay. That’s okay. It’s I’m

Jessica Plumb [01:15:48]:

a tea drinker.

Scott Cowan [01:15:49]:

It’s it’s you’re a tea. Where’s a great place in Port Townsend for tea?

Jessica Plumb [01:15:55]:

You know, I go to all of those places in Port Townsend for tea because as I’ve said, I love our waterfront. We do have or did have a place that was specifically devoted to tea that sadly actually closed in recent years. We had a wonderful place that was, Pippa’s Tea, and it’s no longer here. So I can’t do a shout out to it.

Scott Cowan [01:16:16]:

So all 3 of those places serve Because most All 3 of these coffee shops do okay with tea? They they give you a passable cup of tea?

Jessica Plumb [01:16:23]:

Heck yeah. Because I Alright. Heck yeah. I’ve I’ve spent a lot of time at all of them. And to be fair, since everyone I know is a coffee drinker, I’m gonna meet them in a place

Scott Cowan [01:16:32]:

where I kind of you’re kind of forced into that as a tea drinker. Okay. Now you you sent me you sent me the 3 different coffee shops, which for me is perfect because I’ll go drink coffee at all 3 of them, but then I’m gonna be hungry. So where’s an interesting lunch spot?

Jessica Plumb [01:16:49]:

Well, I have to say that’s a really hard one to choose. Our town is blessed with eateries, and I’m happy to report that even after the pandemic, which was hard on our eateries, that many of them continue to survive and thrive. I am, however, gonna send you to the place that helped bring me to Port Townsend.

Scott Cowan [01:17:10]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:17:11]:

It’s the first restaurant I ever ate at here before I even lived here, And it’s still open and run by the same family, which is quite a record. Yeah. And that is the Silverwater Cafe. It is also on a corner right next to the Rose Theatre and critically right underneath that other theater I told you about, the Starlight Room.

Scott Cowan [01:17:31]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:17:32]:

So together, that is possibly my favorite corner in Port Townsend. The Silver Waters serves great Pacific Northwest food of all kinds. Okay. And, you can’t go wrong.

Scott Cowan [01:17:42]:

Alright. My last question of you, which I warned you about, but here it is. You have to answer it, and you you have to give me the reason why also. Okay? Cake or pie?

Jessica Plumb [01:17:59]:

Actually, that one’s really easy for me.

Scott Cowan [01:18:00]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:18:01]:

I am a pie person.

Scott Cowan [01:18:03]:

Okay.

Jessica Plumb [01:18:03]:

I’m a pie person because I grew up on the coast of Maine with an extended family who, for Thanksgiving, I would say amongst my aunts, pie baking was a bit of a competitive Scott, you would say. It isn’t for me. I still have cousins who are excellent pie makers. Happily, one of them relocated to the Seattle area. So, I’ve got a pie maker in the family on our Cowan, and I love fresh fruit. And, of course, pie is really a vehicle for good fruit. Right? I grew up in a place where blueberries ruled the state. How could I not love pie?

Scott Cowan [01:18:34]:

So what’s your go to pie? What’s the go to? Oh,

Jessica Plumb [01:18:40]:

it would have to be strawberry rhubarb. I I love rhubarb in every form. And it’s also as we all know in the northwest, if you grow a garden, it’s one of the first things that actually you can eat out of your garden every year and like to add something a little sweet with it. So really anything with a rhubarb pie, but strawberry rhubarb is probably my favorite.

Scott Cowan [01:19:00]:

See, some people really struggle with that question and others and it’s becoming more and more people are like you. They’re just, Nope. I’m firmly on board with I’m Camp Pie or Camp Cake, you know, and

Jessica Plumb [01:19:11]:

Camp Pie right here.

Scott Cowan [01:19:12]:

Camp Pie.

Jessica Plumb [01:19:13]:

All right.

Scott Cowan [01:19:14]:

As we wrap this up, where can people find out more about your film, about you, where online can they go?

Jessica Plumb [01:19:24]:

I am pretty easy to find online at this point. My website is Plum Productions. That’s Plum like a plum line, not like the fruit despite our pie Cowan of community project work and a trailer for my feature and for other films we’ve discussed. And, my feature films on Amazon Prime, I’m not trying to do a shout out to, Amazon, but it is available there. And I am I guess, just put my name in, Jessica Plumb. I’m easy to find that that link. And as you said, the Cascadia film

Scott Cowan [01:20:05]:

Yeah. We’ll put a link. So Cascadia Film Festival, you can be

Jessica Plumb [01:20:08]:

there. Cascadia Film Festival, since they list their directors, you know, I would definitely, you know, put a link to the Cascadia Filmmaker Directors because I think there’s a it’s a terrific group. I’d love to have them all Yeah. LinkedIn. So, yeah, I’m easy to find online. I have to spend spend a certain percentage of my life there. Although I admit I’m not a big social media.

Scott Cowan [01:20:28]:

I was gonna I just ask. You’re just social media is not not your not your you choose to spend

Jessica Plumb [01:20:35]:

your time in SEO. I like to spend my time. Okay. Yeah. I choose to spend my time elsewhere. You know, I spend let’s put it this way. I spend enough time as in front of a screen as it is. So, when I have free time, my absolute impulse is to head right out into this beautiful world outside my door.

Scott Cowan [01:20:51]:

Well, I’ll tell you what. Let’s wrap this up so that you can go and go for a walk in Fort Wharton, which is a beautiful place. I really appreciate you sitting down with me today. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. And I’m gonna just tell everyone if you’ve listened this far, you absolutely should take a look at the film Call of the Orchids because it is, it is quite moving. I enjoyed and please watch the 18 minute version because it it it’s powerful. And not that the 10 isn’t, but the 18 is very, very powerful.

Scott Cowan [01:21:17]:

So, thanks, Jessica. I really appreciate you being here. Hope you enjoyed the show. You can reach me on Twitter at explore law state. I’d love to hear your comments. You can also visit our website at explorewashingtonstate.com. If you know anyone who’d like the show, it’d be amazing if you’d share the show with them. This is the biggest way that we grow this show.