‘Discovering Alabama’ premieres Tuscaloosa segment

Doug Phillips’ long-running “Discovering Alabama” returns with a look at his hometown.

For 35 years, Doug Phillips has told stories of man, across time, in relationship to his environment.

That’s a pretty wide field, even when you narrow it to a single state. As host of Emmy-winning documentary series “Discovering Alabama,” broadcast on public television and made available as educational tools, Phillips has delved into topics ranging from bats to space flight, whooping cranes to watersheds, Sylacauga marble to the eastern indigo snake.

He’s produced shows centered on Forever Wild, the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill, and the devastating tornadoes of April 27, 2011; on coal mining sites, the Wetumpka impact crater, Dauphin Island, Little River Canyon, Horse Pens 40, Moundville, the Black Belt, our coastal regions, arts, schools, capitals, archives, rivers, forests, trails, arboretums, soils, swamps, parks, caves, plants and animals, and in Episode 42, Tuscaloosa County.

Tuesday night at the Bryant Conference Center, the latest “Discovering Alabama” narrows focus a little tighter, to the city alone. At 6:30 p.m. in the Sellers Auditorium, “Tuscaloosa” will show on the center’s 4K screen. It’s a project driven by the Tuscaloosa Bicentennial Commission; when approached, Phillips recalled episode 42.

“I thought, ‘Damn, I’m done with that topic,’ ” he said, laughing. “It won some awards somewhere. Davy Crockett came back to town live.”

The King of the Wild Frontier, played by a Chattanooga planning consultant, included excerpts from a speech given to an economic development conference, bemoaning our city’s strip malls swarmed by by sign forests. “Discovering Alabama,” while touting the vast and diverse beauty of the state, has never shied from the need for conservation and human stewardship. In developing the episodes, nearing 90 of them, Phillips leans on the adage “The nature of life is nature.” In other words: Humans are sustained by nature, just as nature must be enhanced by the care of humans.

So it’s no surprise that “Tuscaloosa,” although a bicentennial project, delves back more than 200 years.

“They wanted me to do something just on the city, and I was struggling,” Phillips said. Key to this project was collaboration with G. Ward Hubbs and his also-bicentennial-commissioned book “Tuscaloosa: 200 Years in the Making,” a project with the University of Alabama Press.

“I got with Guy Hubbs, and we wove together the history he told, with some interesting sidebars. Then all that was left to do was add some music and cool sounds,” though he’s ironically downplaying the hard work of his crew, which included for this show bringing longtime UA Center for Public Television filmmaker Mike Letcher out of retirement.

“We cover it from before Alabama became a state, so it’s more than 200 years in 26 minutes and four seconds,” Phillips said, laughing.

In unveiling his home town, where he’s coordinator for environmental information and education at UA’s Alabama Museum of Natural History, as well as host and executive producer of “Discovering Alabama,” Phillips knew to call on longtime educator Shelley Jones.

“We make sure we cover history in an intriguing way, so schools can use it as much as an educational tool as history lesson,” he said.

Phillips feared pixilation across the $600,000 ultra-high-definition Bryant screen. He’ll donate DVDs for public viewings, but only if they’re played on an adequate-sized wall, with decent audio. After all, the gist of “Discovering Alabama” is showcasing the state’s wonders and beauty, so he prefers they be shown on something other than a phone.

Still, would 4K be too much?

“But It’s clearer on the big screen than on a regular size,” he said.

The setup is actually dozens of screens brought together to create a seamless image, said Josh Rivers, assistant director of the Bryant. “It’s just over a year old, installed August of 2018. And in technical terms it is the largest native 4K 2.5 direct-view LED video in the United States.”

The Sellers stage is 42 feet wide, so the display area is roughly 38 feet wide and 19 feet high.

“Because Tuscaloosa does lack the amount of convention space bigger cities have, we wanted something with a big ‘Wow’ factor,” Rivers said. The display’s integrated with a state-of-the-art concert-ready sound system. Sellers capacity, with chairs, is 1,000.

The free, family friendly event will also feature finger foods and live music.

“My good friend Anne Witt lined up a cello quartet, to play as people are coming in, mingling and grabbing an hors d’ouevre,” Phillips said.

Phillips creates the “Discovering Alabama” series around full-time work teaching at UA, and holding in-service workshops for K-12 teachers around Alabama, and authoring award-winning books such as “Discovering Alabama Wetlands” and “Discovering Alabama Forests.” And though for bicentennial projects his budget rises a bit, his full-time staff is just three people.

“I’ve heard that the Denver Museum of Natural History, with a staff of 20-something people,” creates a similar show at the rate of one a year, Phillips said. “We crank out three or four shows every year, on a shoestring budget.

“We are a bargain for this state.”

For more on the series, visit www.discoveringalabama.org.