MacGillivray being questioned by Dan Stetson

There was Greg MacGillivray on stage in an easy chair telling 200 people how he makes his movie magic and why he continues doing it.

MacGillivray, 62, was the guest star at Dana Point’s Ocean Institute’s Artist By the Sea series with its president, Dan Stetson, the interrogator, sitting opposite in another chair.

Throughout the session, the filmmaker kept returning to his theme of the conservation and the protection of our natural beauty. “Our goal is to enrich people and to change their minds on new ways of thinking.”

Most of the movie-savvy Southern California audience knew the artist came from nearby Laguna Beach and that he made his first film on surfing with an 8mm camera. Perhaps they didn’t know that he met his wife Barbara in high school, and “that she was fun…brilliant.”

That first film, A Cool Wave of Color, took four years to make and was released when he was a freshman at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Shortly afterward the cinematographer-director-producer met another young filmmaker, Jim Freeman, who had already shot a surfing film in 3-D. They decided to work together and Greg dropped out of school—with the support of “the best parents in the world,” adding, “They said not to worry, you can’t starve in California.”

The partners’ 1972 surfing film, Five Summer Stories, was a smash in earnings, just behind Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer. The music track included the Beach Boys.

The duo worked the Hollywood circuit for a while, contributing to Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Towering Inferno before they started on their first IMAX film, To Fly in 1976. Jim Freeman was killed in a helicopter crash shortly before its premiere.

Asked about Freeman, MacGillivray said he kept the name as part of the company to “honor his memory.”

In 1980, director Stanley Kubrick, called MacGillivray from London to work on his film, The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson. He said he learned a lot working with Kubrick. “It was like going to film school.”

Despite that experience, he rejected Hollywood’s siren call and vowed to concentrate on documentaries only. His first IMAX film on his own was Speed, man’s attempt to break speed records in all manner of vehicles.

Now he was on his way.

MacGillivray talked about “how films can make a difference.” Showing his picture Hurricane on the Bayou to Congress following Katrina resulted in a bill two weeks later to save our Louisiana wetlands. And the King of Ghana stopped the deforestation in his country after seeing another film.

“We have to protect our natural resources for our grandchildren to enjoy,” said the filmmaker.

He talked about shooting Everest, the highest-grossing IMAX film ever released. “In making Everest, we had the best financing, the best equipment and best Sherpa guides… In May, when a couple climbing teams were trapped, our team stopped their filming to help the trapped climbers. It became part of our film.”

His latest film, Grand Canyon Adventure—shot in 3-D and 15-70 (IMAX film)—is the story of six people, three parents and their daughters, riding down the river for two-and-a-half weeks. The parents were environmentalists Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wade Davis and Shana Watahomagie.

“The Grand Canyon has some of the best—worst—rapids in the world,” the cinematographer said. “And there are 92 of them.”

Q. Did you ever fall in?”

“No, thank heavens. We had $5 million in equipment on the rafts. I sat with a camera on a chaise lounge in the front of one of them, and Barbara and my son Sean were in back. We got pretty doused in the two-and-a-half weeks.”

In Grand Canyon Adventure, “we show how water can be overused in a particular area or region, and how all of us must learn to conserve water at home and in the fields.”

“Whatever you fall in love with, you want to protect,” he had been quoted as saying earlier.

He had always been in love with the water. The Grand Canyon film is number six in his series of ten films on the ocean and fresh-water environments. His first two films, The Living Sea and Dolphins earned nominations from Oscar. Shooting already has started on numbers seven and eight in the decalogue, To the Arctic and Humpback Whales.

MacGillivray talked about other films and directors, and the audience learned that Citizen Kane is his favorite film and he is quite fond of David Lean who shot Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge Over the River Kwai.

Greg MacGillivray

Greg MacGillivray

Q. “Your favorite fish?”

A. “The cuttle, because it adapts to its environment.”

Q. “What’s your best advice?”

A. “Never give up.” He then advised young film students who would like to intern to continue to send in their résumés more than once—several times a year. “Never give up.”

In answer to another question about digital replacing the IMAX system, he said IMAX would probably be around for the next decade, but digital would begin to arrive in five years.

The last question was from one of his own crew members in attendance:

“When are we going to get a day off?”

MacGillivray’s quick retort: “Thanksgiving.”

Stetson gave MacGillivray the Ocean Institute’s Gold Sea Star Award for his dedicated service in raising community awareness of the ocean environment.