Question And Answer Session With OCEANS Executive Producer Don Hahn Part 3

April 25, 2010 | by Disney Dreaming

Below you can read the third part of an interview with Disneynature’s “OCEANS” Executive Producer Don Hahn. Click here to read Part 2.

Q: My question is, has this movie affected your view of the environment?

A: Yes, it really has. On a very personal level it has, partly because I really didn’t have a macro view of the environment and by being able to work with people like Sylvia Earle, who is an oceanographer and scientist – you might consider her the Jane Goodall of the ocean world – and hear what they have to say about the oceans, it’s affecting. In one hand, there is a crisis going on and there are a lot of issues that are facing the oceans, in the other hand they have great optimism and great hope about the ability to preserve environments and preserve species out there in the world.

So much of it starts and ends with us. Why do we care about the oceans? Because every drop we drink and every breath we take relies on a healthy ocean. That was an eye-opener for me because you never think of it in those terms. You think, well, yeah, I’m not going to litter, but you realize no, we make choices as human beings. It can be choices from the kind of plastic we use and recycle to the kind of seafood we might order off of a menu.

Those choices have consequences, good, bad, or indifferent. Just to be aware of those consequences and the choices that we face as human beings is really eye-opening and I think something that people are becoming more and more aware of. That’s certainly why we’re here talking on Earth Day is because it’s a film that just brings up our responsibilities as human beings, as audience members, as residents on the planet to make more informed decisions and preserve the planet for generations to come.

Q: Does this film talk any about the problem with plastic pollution in our oceans?

A: It does. It does. I mean there is a – as you know there is a huge raft of plastic garbage floating out in the middle of the Pacific and probably dozens of other places around the world. So many times it’s not literally plastic bottles floating out there; it’s microscopic plastic that’s broken down over years of exposure to the elements. It’s certainly dealt with in the movie in a fairly direct way, just the issue of animals and habitats coexisting with some of the issues of pollution that we’re laying over the top of the oceans right now.

Again, it’s not meant to be punitive. You’re not going to the movies to be anything other than entertained and informed, but part of that is the joy of seeing these species out there in their natural environment and then a sense of responsibility for you really can do something. There is tremendous hope and optimism about how we can reshape our habits to affect the oceans.

Q: What is your vision, with the other movies coming out in the future that you’re working on, for the green movement? What is your overall goal as an individual who cares about the planet?

A: The issue of the environment is something that’s intimidating and overwhelming if you take it on as a whole. I think what’s encouraging to me and what’s fun for me is to take it on one-on-one. For example, now I’m at Disneyland actually doing this interview and I just walked out of a screening full of school kids. There were probably 400 school kids in this theater watching Oceans and each one of them will take home a piece from that movie: a memory, a sense of responsibility, a sense of awe or wonderment at it. I think that one-on-one relationship with a filmmaker and an audience or an adult and a child, or a teacher and a student is really crucial and important to changing our mindset.

I don’t think there are any single broad stroke measures we can make. Certainly, at Disney, with this film, we’re very careful to contribute directly to the preservation of the coral reefs off of the Bahamas and be able to do something very specific. I think we can do something much grander if each and every one of us takes a little responsibility of our own in our own neck of the woods.

Disneyland does it. We just drained one of our Rivers of America here, for example, for a normal maintenance job and that water wasn’t just released. It was put into an aquifer and very consciously preserved so that that huge deal of water was preserved. It’s little choices like that on a corporate level, on a school level, and on a personal level at home, that together make a huge, huge, huge difference in our personal lives and the lives of the creatures around us that really have no control over these things the way we do.