"I've seen a lot of videos that seem stiff and predetermined," he says. "My interviews were unscripted. . . . I would just ask, 'How do you feel about your land?' It was very powerful."
An affable, strikingly tall (6-foot-6) Deptford resident who grew up in Glendora, Williams holds a forestry degree from Rutgers University and has worked in his field since 1975.
He says he believes the public generally doesn't understand the complexity of forestry, reducing questions of how best to manage our woodlands into arguments about whether or not to cut particular trees.
Nuances about commercial lumbering, land development, and private stewardship - in particular, management techniques such as controlled burning - get lost amid calls to save it all, he adds.
That's why Williams wanted to film interviews with professionals who cut timber, including officials of a company owned by American Indians in Wisconsin.
"Environmentalists are carrying the day, and during my career I have grown to accept much of what they're saying," Williams says. "But extremists rule.
"We need to understand that our forests are not museums. . . . This notion of wrapping our arms around them and loving them to death is destructive."
To make a film about what he calls "common ground," Williams obtained seed money from the American Forest Foundation.
"I figured I would raise the rest of it later," he says wryly; he contributed $8,000 of his own toward the film's $88,000 cost, which was largely underwritten by forestry-related organizations.
Williams hired Jarvis Video Productions, a company founded in Little Egg Harbor, N.J., by commercial-TV veteran Irv Jarvis and now run by his son, Kirk.
The younger Jarvis, who directed A Working Forest, understood Williams' need to educate the public about forestry using more than just a "walk in the woods."
