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Life & Times Transcript

10/16/07

Announcer>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The Chino Valley is ideal for farming, so why are so many farms disappearing?

Nathan De Boom>> So we're going to see this huge transition from really cows to cars and pastures to pavement and I think we're kind of on the cusp of a really changing landscape here in southern California.

Announcer>> And then, it's not your grandfather's 3-D. Can a new technology help bring audiences back to the movies?

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> Today we take you to the Inland Empire where a twenty-first century land grab is happening. Dairy farmers are discovering that their milk cows can be cash cows. Is that good news? Not for everyone. Sam Louie takes us to the Chino Valley where dramatic changes are happening.

Sam Louie>> For the past fifteen years, Tom Alger has been running one of the Inland Empire's well-known dairies. His thousand cows are milked twice a day with the milk sold to milk producer, Altadena Dairy. The job of a dairyman is exhausting. Tom and his crew work every day from sunup to sundown.

Tom Alger>> We get up about 5:30. We start feeding cows at 5:30. We're done about 9 or 9:30 with the feeding chores. The milkers come in at 9:00. They milk until about 4:00 and then we start again at 3:30 and start feeding and doing the same process again in the afternoon.

Sam Louie>> The tradition started with his father.

Tom Alger>> My dad was a dairyman until I was about twelve and then he decided, for health reasons, to stop the dairy. It was always a dream of mine and, when I was about thirty-five, we started it and it's been great ever since.

Sam Louie>> Tom would also love to pass the dairy on to his sons, a third generation of Algers, but the only way he can do that is to say goodbye to southern California. Tom leases this one hundred acres of land and the property is now in escrow, soon to be sold to a developer.

Tom Alger>> Everybody is either selling or in the process of selling or has moved already, and it's time to leave.

Sam Louie>> The landowner has given Tom two years' notice. He's already bracing for the difficult transition, knowing he'll have to leave California which has gotten too expensive for dairy farming.

Tom Alger>> This is where I grew up. This is where my family is growing up. It's where my friends are. I'm fifty years old. It's kind of scary to start new in a whole different area of the country.

Sam Louie>> While dairy farmers like Tom move out of the area, dozens of developers are moving in. The Inland Empire cities of Chino, Ontario, Corona and beyond are seeing dramatic growth as single family homes sprout up and squeeze in right next to existing dairies.

As recently as five years ago, the dairy industry here in the Inland Empire was a billion dollar business. Nowadays that revenue has been cut in half and some experts predict that it could disappear altogether if development continues at its pace.

Nathan De Boom>> We've seen basically a gold rush when it's come to land development here in the Chino basin. I think, if you're to go east of Los Angeles, this Chino Valley area is one of the last large tracts of really undeveloped flatland in southern California.

Sam Louie>> Nathan De Boom is head of the Milk Producers Council which represents the region's dairy farmers.

Nathan de Boom>> We're seeing a huge land rush and a lot of our dairy farmers are selling out. A lot of them are in escrow agreements. In fact, I think if we look at all the dairies here in Ontario and Chino, about seventy-five percent to eighty percent of them are in escrow right now and being scheduled to be developed.

Sam Louie>> De Boom says that, at its peak back in the early 1980s, Chino Valley's concentration of dairies made it the largest milk-producing region in the country with about four hundred fifty dairies. Today, there are less than two hundred.

Nathan De Boom>> What we're going to see in the next five to ten years is, in the same area where we have over a hundred thousand cows, we're going to have over a hundred thousand people. So we're going to see this huge transition from really cows to cars and pastures to pavement.

Sam Louie>> But the change can no longer be avoided. Syp Vander Dussen is a real estate broker. He works with the dairymen when they're ready to sell to the eager developers.

Syp Vander Dussen>> There's probably about half a dozen that are very aggressive and very interested in this area.

Sam Louie>> Vander Dussen says that he's a former dairyman himself. He's watched the Inland Empire transform itself from a rural landscape into what he considers an urban oasis.

Syp Vander Dussen>> It's just a wonderful area to live. Freeways all around, access to everything that a person could want. We're two hours from San Diego, an hour from Los Angeles. We're an hour from snow. We're an hour from the beach. The Inland Empire is exactly that. It's becoming an empire.

Sam Louie>> And milk producers are discovering that dairy cows can become cash cows. Over the past ten years, the price of an acre of good land has gone up tenfold.

Syp Vander Dussen>> That land sold for fifty to sixty thousand dollars an acre. Today, on a typical two to three year transaction, we're looking at a half million dollars per acre.

Bill Van Leeuwen>> My barn used to be right there, our parlor, then we had cows in a circle around it.

Sam Louie>> Bill Van Leeuwen cashed out two years ago.

Bill Van Leeuwen>> I guess it's just a matter of time when everybody lets go of something, but it was very difficult.

Sam Louie>> The former dairy farmer near Corona sold forty acres to a developer for more than ten million dollars.

Bill Van Leeuwen>> The prices of land around here are just absolutely unbelievable. We certainly didn't get the top of the value, but we certainly did it at the time when it worked for us to make that move.

Sam Louie>> So the sixteen hundred acres that once grazed the open land in front of Bill's house have been replaced with this.

Bill Van Leeuwen>> They're building a hundred nineteen homes and they're all single family dwellings. Across the street there, they're building a high school that will house four thousand students. Next to that is a junior high school and beyond that is a new grade school, so that will serve all of these homes here. I think everybody likes to own a piece of America, so I think it's a very positive thing.

Sam Louie>> But not everyone is profiting. For some businesses, the disappearance of dairies spells doom.

Bernie Gabrieles>> Well, for a tank like this, it's a four thousand gallon tank, so this one's probably worth ten thousand dollars right here.

Sam Louie>> Bernie Gabrieles has been in the dairy equipment and service business for almost fifty years. This past December, he laid off almost all of his thirty employees. He's now busy selling his inventory.

Bernie Gabrieles>> The handwriting is on the wall, so it's something that, yeah, we've had make the adjustment. Like I say, I would like to keep doing it, but we just weren't able to keep going any more.

[Film Clip]

Bernie Gabrieles>> I like the way the water falls. It makes a lot of good noise.

Sam Louie>> But Bernie is making a transition, selling locally produced top-quality fountains.

Bernie Gabrieles>> I'd like to keep, you know, selling fountains. That's something we started in August or July of last year and something I very much enjoy, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make a living doing that. So that's something that remains to be seen.

Sam Louie>> And what remains to be seen for Tom Alger is what life will be like in Texas. That's where he has decided to move his family so the family tradition can live on.

Tom Alger>> If my sons weren't interested in the dairy business, I probably wouldn't do it. But they really like the dairy. They love working with me on the dairy. I love working with them, so we're willing to take our roots and move to another part of the country.

Sam Louie>> And as suburban development spreads across the Inland Empire, it's clear that dairies are a dying breed and the area's claim to fame as the nation's largest concentration of dairy farms will soon be another chapter in Chino Valley history. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Things were going just fine for Terry Byland. He had a stable job, a nice family, a good middle-class life. Then he got the word that, within a few months, he would be completely blind and his life changed forever.

But then some technology came along that he's helping to advance, a technology that could offer a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Terry Byland is completely blind unless he's wearing these glasses equipped with a camera that sends light signals to his brain.

Terry Byland>> If that's not a miracle in itself, I don't know what is.

Val Zavala>> Terry and Sue live in a modest home in Corona. He's one of those steady regular guys, a father to five kids, working at a power tool company for nearly fifteen years. He had plans to retire and enjoy his grandkids, but then at age thirty-seven, all those plans disappeared. It started when he began having trouble with his night vision.

Terry Byland>> Finally I went to see a couple of retinal ophthalmologists and they both told me that I had this disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa, which at the time I'd never heard of.

Val Zavala>> Terry and Sue, his second wife, got the test results on their honeymoon.

Sue Byland>> I thought my biggest challenge would be being a stepmother to four children. Little did we know.

Val Zavala>> Retinitis Pigmentosa affects one in four thousand people worldwide. It's hereditary, a disease that attacks the photoreceptor cells that line the retina at the back of the eye. As the cells die, so does a person's sight.

Terry Byland>> I was told that I had probably ten, maybe twelve or thirteen years of limited vision before it would all go. In my case, it was gone in seven.

Val Zavala>> His youngest son Danny was five at the time. That was the last time Terry has seen him. Despite the declining vision, Terry's employer let him stay on for those seven years, but the day came when he could no longer read his own writing. He knew he had to quit.

Terry Byland>> And I went to my boss that day. He looked at me and he goes, "Well, you know, I hoped this day would never come, but I knew it was because I could see you struggling more and more." So I guess it was around the middle of October of 1993 that I walked out that door for the last time.

Val Zavala>> That's hard.

Terry Byland>> Yeah, it was real hard. real hard.

Val Zavala>> The next few years were very difficult. He didn't know what to do with himself. His whole social circle dissolved. He was frustrated and angry and he had to rely on Sue who became his eyes.

Sue Byland>> We've had a few communication issues over the years (laughter). Like I'd forget to say it's a down escalator instead of an up escalator and he thinks he's going up.

Val Zavala>> Then in 2004, eleven years after going blind, he heard about a study at the Doheny Eye Institute in Los Angeles. The world-renowned eye center was looking for people with Retinitis Pigmentosa who could help test a new device. They had found five volunteers. They needed just one more and Terry qualified.

Dr. Mark Humayan>> We've been able to implant six patients with such a device.

Val Zavala>> Dr. Mark Humayan is heading up the development of what you might call a bionic eye. It begins with surgery. A microchip is implanted near the back of the eye. The microchip is the receiver for signals. The signals are transmitted from a tiny camera that's attached to glasses.

Dr. Mark Humayan>> With the wearable camera in the glasses, these patients can now see light from dark. They can also see movement in their area. Some of these patients can also distinguish between a plate, a cup or a knife.

Val Zavala>> After more than a year of testing and training, Terry was allowed to bring the retina prosthesis system home. He doesn't wear it around the house because he knows where everything is, but it helps when he's in unfamiliar buildings.

Terry Byland>> And right over there, I can tell I'm looking at a window. There's a lot of light coming from there.

Val Zavala>> He also wears it outside. It works best on bright days when there's high contrast.

Terry Byland>> A lot of it depends on if there's shady areas. The contrast isn't so good. It doesn't work as well. But on a bright day like this, I can look ahead and see the concrete which is a brighter color and everything else is dark on either side.

Val Zavala>> So you can make out the path of the sidewalk?

Terry Byland>> I can see the little edges of each side, yeah.

Val Zavala>> The field of vision is quite narrow, so Terry has to move his head to scan the area.

Terry Byland>> You see how I'm scanning my head? Between the cane and the glasses, I can tell where the borders are at.

Val Zavala>> Now a lot of people would say, "Well, that's not a big improvement." You know, because you say regained sight, they'd think, "Oh, he can see like we can. He can see color and perfect focus and all that." It's not like that, is it?

Terry Byland>> No, it isn't. First of all, there will never be any color. It's always black and white. No, it's not the vision that I remember at any time when I could see perfectly. What it is, it's the kind of vision where you rely at this stage and where I'm at right now on light and dark. So it's not like I'm seeing anything in any shape or form.

Val Zavala>> For those of us who take our vision for granted, it may not seem exciting. But for Terry, a glimpse of light is amazing.

Terry Byland>> They took a totally blind person and, you know, through means of artificial vision, given him something that I can work with.

Val Zavala>> Perhaps the most promising aspects of the retina prosthesis are the advances that the Doheny Eye Institute is making.

Dr. Mark Humayan>> We hope to take this to not only have people gain unaided mobility, but also to help people to be able to read, recognize faces and really bring into their lives the parts that are missing.

Val Zavala>> This technology is still experimental, but Terry and Sue know that it's the future that holds the biggest promise.

Sue Byland>> I've seen some of the prototypes like on a computer what they feel the later chips will be and can see eyes and a nose. You know, I think he's been amazing for these last three years. For someone that's not patient, he has been extremely patient (laughter).

Terry Byland>> Did you lay any tile today?

Val Zavala>> That's certainly been true when it comes to seeing his son. You may recall that, the last time he saw Danny, Danny was in kindergarten. Then one day, Terry was using the system outside his house when Danny and some friends walked by. Terry knew the shadowy figure was nineteen year old Danny.

Terry Byland>> Now I can say that, after all these years, I finally found my son. In a very different way, but there he was. Every time he passed through, then I could see the next person and the next person. So it's only the beginning. I can honestly say that I have every bit of confidence that all the people that are working so hard with all combined efforts, it's going to happen.

One day, some or all of us are going to be able to see. People say, "Well, how can you be so sure that that's going to happen?" I say, "If you'd been through what I was through for eleven years with no sight and to be able to go through this for the last three years, you'd believe too."

Val Zavala>> I'm Val Zavala for Life and Times.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Hena Cuevas>> Remember going to the movie theater and watching those old 3-D films, the ones where they would give you those white glasses so you could watch images jump off the screen? Well, 3-D technology has come a long way and supporters say that it's going to revolutionize the movie-going experience. But there's just one question. How do you convince viewers to give 3-D a second chance?

This new revolution in 3-D is led by Michael Lewis, founder of Real D.

Michael Lewis>> I'm going to show you some examples of next generation 3-D technology.

Hena Cuevas>> And you gave me these shades that look very different from the paper ones that we grew up with.

Michael Lewis>> Exactly. That's the idea. The idea here is to give the audience a very new experience, something very, very different.

Hena Cuevas>> Real D, based in Beverly Hills, uses a high-resolution digital projector to create the effect.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Viewed with the naked eye, the images look blurry. But once the glasses come on, the complete 3-D experience is launched. How is this different from the 3-D technology that we grew up with?

Michael Lewis>> It's kind of like comparing the Wright Brothers with the space shuttle. It's digital technology, for starters. It's the same technology that was used by NASA and the military for 3-D visualization. It's like you're in the movie. It's like you're there. It's the most real lifelike experience you can have.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Real D is counting on this lifelike experience to take the technology beyond films. Lewis says that movie theaters could use it to show live sporting events, documentaries, commercials, as well as performances. This fall, U2 premiers its first concert in 3-D.

[Film Clip]

Michael Lewis>> We really see the cinema of the future, or actually today, as being able to program that theater much like you program the television station. So every hour of every day, there will be something that the audience can enjoy, whether it's putting you on the field for a Super Bowl game, putting you on stage with Bono at a U2 concert. It's really about suspending that disbelief which is what cinema is about anyway.

Hena Cuevas>> Lewis says this is also a way to get people back into the theaters and to provide an alternative to the internet and home theater systems that have stolen audiences away from the movies. It's similar to what happened in the early 1950s when people started staying home to watch television instead of going out to the movies.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> The development of 3-D technology then was also seen as a way to bring audiences back. It was in 1952 that the first American 3-D production, "Bwana Devil", was released.

Michael Lewis>> I didn't see it as a kid, but "Bwana Devil" was the first 3-D movie I ever saw. Then I remember, of course, "Jaws 3-D" in the 1980s.

Hena Cuevas>> Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten that there was a "Jaws 3-D" that the shark basically came at the audience.

Michael Lewis>> Right, and I think that killed 3-D for the next twenty years, so now we're starting again.

Hena Cuevas>> The new 3-D technology is already attracting interest from the big studios. DreamWorks, for example, has announced that, starting in 2009, all of their pictures will be in 3-D.

Michael Lewis>> It's usually been a gimmick used to somehow help bad movies that were produced. This time around, we have the top filmmakers in the world that say, you know what, this is much like color and sound. The technology is now bulletproof. It works perfectly every time. The capture technology has gotten a lot easier as well. What we want to do is take people into those movies and we want to make them a part of that experience.

Hena Cuevas>> How difficult has it been, or do you think it will be, to convince people to give 3-D a second chance?

Michael Lewis>> Well, seeing is believing in experiencing it. What we've found is that, once we show someone five minutes of the new Real D technology and experience that it's so real and so lifelike, I think it's very hard to go back.

Hena Cuevas>> And the public seems to be responding. Take Disney's "Meet the Robinsons".

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> On opening weekend, theaters showing the conventional version made an average of six thousand dollars per screen. Those with the Real D version brought in twice as much, twelve thousand dollars a screen. That's because, according to Lewis, theaters can charge more for a 3-D film, almost twenty-five percent more per ticket. And because it's easy to convert regular films into 3-D, old movies are being re-released.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> "The Polar Express" from 2004 --

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> And "The Nightmare Before Christmas" from 1993 are both getting another run at the box office.

Michael Lewis>> This is the way it's worked in the last hundred years. This is obviously film and it's cumbersome and it comes in canisters like this down here. You know, every other part of our world is digital, so this is one of the last holdouts, film projectors.

Hena Cuevas>> Lewis says that it's a simple process to convert a movie theater into Real D, only taking about fifteen minutes.

Michael Lewis>> The average for a Real D upgrade is about twenty-five thousand dollars a year. It's an annual license fee that we charge and that includes all the maintenance and all the hardware and software upgrades over time.

Hena Cuevas>> The only equipment a theater needs to have is a digital projector.

Michael Lewis>> So this is the 2-D digital touch screen right here. The entire projector is controlled from this screen right here. We have the Real D drive module. This is the software component of how this system works. Then I'm going to show you the hardware upgrade here in front of the projector.

Hena Cuevas>> In front is a movable arm which holds a screen.

Michael Lewis>> We move the arm back and that's in 2-D mode. So what's happening here is now we're showing 2-D, now we're showing 3-D, and that's one of the things that we've really focused on, making this technology as simple and elegant as possible.

Hena Cuevas>> And Lewis points out another advantage to the studio's bottom line from showing those blurry images. What are some of the benefits of the technology when you talk about copyright infringement? Because you mentioned the camera not being able to videotape or to shoot on a screen.

Michael Lewis>> Normally, piracy happens when someone walks in with a camcorder and they start filming. Well, if you film a Real D image, it's not really worthwhile to show it. And once you do capture it, there's no place to show it anyway. So this is one of the great benefits of Real D and 3-D technology.

Hena Cuevas>> Currently, eighty-five percent of digital projectors in the country are equipped with Real D. And the same way sound and color revolutionized the movie-going experience, Lewis believes this 3-D will be more than a fad.

Michael Lewis>> This time, we think it's here to stay. At the end of the day, it's about great storytelling. So if we can provide technology and experience to the customer that is very different from anything they can get anywhere else, then I think that's where the future of this medium is going to go.

Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala in 2-D. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Sponsored in part by:


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