Mastervision

Mastervision has been producing and distributing award-winning and critically-acclaimed cultural, educational and instructional videos since 1983. Mastervision productions include Audubon Society's Butterflies for Beginners , Audubon Society's Butterfly Gardening, Audubon Society's VideoGuide to Birds of North America , Smithsonian's Great Battles... of the Civil War and Little League's Official How-to-Play Baseball Video . Mastervision productions have been turned into books by William Morrow and Co. and Doubleday, and have aired on The Learning Channel and The Military Channel. Specimens from the Smithsonian Museum, collected June 20, 1953 in Mendocino by J. Willis Tilden. The company's latest production is "Have You Seen the Lotis Blue? a pilot for a projected series called Beauty in Danger, about endangered species and habitats in North America. Videographer and amateur lepidopterist Jim Ebner, a retired science teacher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been traveling around the country collecting close-up video footage of all the federally listed endangered and threatened butterflies. Incredibly, he's collected footage of all but one: the Lotis Blue. "Have You Seen the Lotis Blue? is the story of Jim Ebner's quest for this rarely seen, small blue butterfly that is found only in one small section of the northern California coast. The Lotis Blue was one of the first of six butterflies to be listed, and the only one that hasn't been seen in more than 15 years. Will the Lotis Blue ever be declared extinct? Did listing it help the butterfly's chances for survival? This is a story that invlolves US Fish and Wildlife, Pacific Gas and Electric, Vladimir Nabokov, a junkyard and a fleet of brushhogs, as well as an honor roll of the 20 th century's most respected lepidopterists, some of whom wonder if the butterfly should have ever been listed in the first place.Read More