PORT ANGELES — The movie is not long, but its maker sought to go deep.
Eliza Goode’s film, a visual love letter to Olympic National Park, will light the big screen in the Little Theater at Peninsula College, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd., this Tuesday evening.
Along with a performance by the Bellingham band Rabbit Wilde, it’s January’s episode in the “Perspectives” speaker series, which the park will present free to the public at 7 p.m.
Creating the film and premiering it in a particular way have, for Goode, been the realization of one fond hope after another.
The Missoula, Mont., native had always heard about Olympic National Park. So, while completing a master of fine arts degree at Montana State University in Bozeman, she got in touch with Kathy Steichen, then the park’s chief of interpretation and education.
Goode wanted to make a movie about the beaches, the trees, the mountains — and how it feels to stand still among them.
Steichen said “yeah, you’d be very welcome to come and do that,” recalled Goode, who proceeded to film many hours — more than 1,000 video clips — during October 2014 and in January 2015.
The edited result is “The Smell of Cedars Steeped in Rain,” 12 minutes and 25 seconds of immersion in the wild ridges, shores and forests of the 922,651-acre park.
The soundtrack has natural elements such as wind and rain. It also has soft music and vocals from Rabbit Wilde, whom Goode happened to discover while visiting Bellingham a couple of years ago.
She found their folk-rock-bluegrass sound “amazing,” and mustered her courage to go up and ask the foursome, whose name was then Br’er Rabbit: Would you be interested in doing music for my film?
Rabbit Wilde went ahead on the project, which became Goode’s master’s thesis film. She graduated from Montana State last spring, and has been working on other films — and submitting them to film festivals — since.
When planning this week’s premiere in Port Angeles, Goode’s ideal scenario included Rabbit Wilde appearing on the Little Theater stage to play the soundtrack live.
That part came together too.
“I’ve fantasized about making this happen,” she said, adding that Rabbit Wilde will play some more once the film and a question-and-answer session are finished.
Olympic National Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum hails the film as a fitting one to start 2016’s “Perspectives” series.
“We invite our visitors and neighbors to kick off the centennial year of the National Park Service,” she added, “by experiencing Olympic National Park through film and music.”
Three more “Perspectives” programs are set for 7 p.m. Feb. 9, March 8 and April 12 at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road, while details are found at www.nps.gov/olym via “Calendar of Events” on the right side of the home page.
With “The Smell of Cedars Steeped in Rain,” Goode sought to assemble a kind of meditation, the feeling of walking into a quiet landscape, soaking up everything you see and letting your thoughts melt away.
It’s a sense of renewal, something she has felt in the Olympics.
“When I was thinking about making this, I felt like the best thing I could do is encapsulate the best experiences I’ve had,” Goode said.
It’s about sharing not only the beauty, but the feeling of connection with it all, the feeling that “you’re part of it too.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
