Using audio from thirteen early Disney films the True-Life Adventure trilogy confounds traditional nature documentaries by adhering to strict time and spatial limits. A persuasive narrator sets false expectations about wildlife behavior and complicates the role of a passive viewer. Continuity editing dissolves to reveal non-human species as both implacable and highly vulnerable. As exemplified here, in True-Life Adventure III—which documents a broad-tailed hummingbird nest over thirty days within a 0.3 square-foot range—heightened mediation and material abstraction of the natural world weaves itself into my filmic work.
--Erin Espelie, Assistant Professor, Film Studies & Critical Media Practices