Production Team
Kit Tyler - Senior Producer/Director
Producer, director, and award winning photographer, Kit Tyler’s career spans more than twenty-five years of stage, film and broadcast experience (www.amercury.com). He has held positions as Director, Evening News Producer, and Chief Photographer for large market television stations in California and worked for every major television network including NBC, CNN, and The Discovery Channel. Kit has won three Bay Area Emmys in addition to a host of other regional and national honors. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University.
David Mack - Co-Producer / Director of Photography
David Mack is a director, writer and cinematographer who has worked in a broad range of documentaries, national commercials and feature films. He spent many years as a pre-production location photographer for many of the luminaries in the film and print industries, including Ridley Scott, Errol Morris and Annie Leibovitz. He has been on board the feature films What Dreams May Come and American Beauty, and worked on countless commercial spots for domestic and international clients. His award winning direction, writing and cinematography appear in the PBS documentary Obsidian Trail and his work in high definition video was nominated to the Cannes International Film Festival.
Richard York - Writer
Richard York is a journalist with over 30 years of broadcast experience. He has covered news in California, the United States and abroad – from the conflict in the Middle East, the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Geneva, to Greg Lemond’s first Tour de France triumph. For the last 15 years, Mr. York has focused on California politics, measuring the ups and downs of the last four governors, from George Deukmejian to Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a journalist for KCRA-TV in Sacramento, he has served as writer, photographer, editor and field producer. Richard York is an accomplished writer, having written over 20 stage plays, with productions in Sacramento and Los Angeles, as well as a number of feature length screenplays. Mr. York and his wife divide their time between their home in Sacramento and their studio on Salt Spring Island, B.C.
Richard Tsai - Art Director / Animator
Richard Tsai is principal owner of Field of Vision, a design visualization firm based in San Francisco. He has twelve years of experience producing highly crafted computer-generated models, visual simulations, and animations for projects involving issues of transportation planning, urban planning, infrastructure, resource management, land reclamation, and landscape ecology. He has extensive experience with visual simulations and visual impact analysis in accordance with CEQA and NEPA having worked on over 20 EIS /EIR documents for projects based in California. Prior to forming Field of Vision, Mr. Tsai was a visual simulation specialist at BRW Inc., focusing on simulations and animations for transportation planning projects including the South/North Light Rail DEIS in Portland, OR. His experience with simulations continued at EDAW Inc. from 2001 – 2004 in San Francisco, CA where he founded and led the Design Visualization Group serving EDAW’s entire western region.
Pat Metheny - Jazz Musician / Composer
With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), Pat Metheney reinvented the traditional "jazz guitar" genra for a new generation. Since his debut, Metheney has performed with artists as diverse as Steve Reich to Ornette Coleman to Herbie Hancock to Jim Hall to Milton Nascimento to David Bowie. He has been part of a writing team with keyboardist Lyle Mays for more than twenty years – an association that has been compared to the Lennon/McCartney and Ellington/Strayhorn partnerships by critics and listeners alike. Metheny's body of work includes compositions for solo guitar, small ensembles, electric and acoustic instruments, large orchestras, and ballet pieces, with settings ranging from modern jazz to rock to classical. Metheny has won countless polls as "Best Jazz Guitarist" and awards, including three gold records for (Still Life) Talking, Letter from Home, and Secret Story. He has also won sixteen Grammy Awards spread out over a variety of different categories, including Best Rock Instrumental, Best Contemporary Jazz Recording, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, Best Instrumental Composition. The Pat Metheny Group won an unprecedented seven consecutive Grammies for seven consecutive albums.
Jim Baxter - Executive Producer
As creator of Reinventing California and co-founder of the California Environmental Legacy Project, Jim Baxter has long had a passion for enjoying, understanding, and protecting the natural world. As an Assistant Professor of Biology at Sacramento State University, Jim Baxter teaches ecology, natural history, and plant ecology, and chairs the department’s graduate program. His passion for nature, teaching and research have inspired him to explore meaningful ways of communicating scientific understanding about the natural world. He has an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and received his Master’s degree in Ecology and Systematic Biology at San Francisco State University. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University. He lives with his wife and three sons in Davis, California.
Jeffrey White - Executive Producer
A science educator and biodiversity specialist, Jeffrey White’s career in teaching and learning about the natural sciences began in middle school and was deepened by work in Brazil conducting ecology studies and surveying human impacts on rainforest systems. He has taught in California public schools. He is currently a biology professor at Humboldt State University and Co-founder and Executive Director of the Redwood Science Project, a natural science education institute. His passion for teaching and learning about natural history led him to co-found the California Environmental Legacy Project and co-create Reinventing California. With a BA in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Jeffrey earned a teaching certificate from California State University, Los Angeles. He later received a Ph.D. in Botany from Michigan State University. He lives in Arcata, California with his wife and two sons. |
