Avoiding Biting Insects – and Other Dangerous Animals – while Making Videos around the World
Videographers Bill and John Kizorek Tell Stories from 20 Years of Inspired, Often Hazardous, Work in Over 125 Countries
Bill Kizorek and his brother, John, have filmed and produced over 40 video documentaries and features for organizations like the United Nations, Habitat for Humanity, the International Rescue Committee and many others. They have worked in Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, and, occasionally, Bill's backyard. In this interview, we talk about some of their more exciting and dangerous assignments. On many trips, Bill and John relied on Insect Shield's best mosquito repellent clothing to protect them from mosquito-borne diseases. But, as they note, it did not work well on bears or gorillas.
Additional Information
- Bill’s Company: Two Parrot Productions
- Grant program for non-profits
- Two Parrot Productions YouTube Channel – tons of great work here!
- The Perils and Rewards of International Filmmaking Bill and Carly Kizorek
- CAMTRA NGO Raising Awareness About Violence Against Women in Brazil
- UNCHR United Nations Refugee Agency
Explore insect repellent clothing & gear
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Transcript of the Interview
Mark at Insect Shield
Today we're talking with Bill and John Kizorek, who have worked on many nonprofit endeavors. Bill is a longtime friend of Insect Shield. Hi, Bill, how's it going? And John is Bill's brother. And we're going to talk about what they've done in the area of documentary films. Bill is a, as a longtime videographer, and a specialist in the area of documentaries, with video, and also putting this stuff up on the internet.
So John's an author, sorry, And, John, I don't know if you've written books or anything like that. But Bill, you are an author of roughly 10 books, and you've been on television as a featured speaker, and authority. And I take it talking a lot about the nonprofit work that you've done. You've been speaker, which I think we're going to talk about in terms of some of the additional work, and you've produced over 40 documentary films, which are pretty amazing. And we'll talk about those in more depth here [and how wearing our repellent clothes fits into the mix].
So Two Parrot productions you founded in 2001. This is your organization that's responsible for the documentaries. You worked with your daughter, Jessica, on those. And you've got quite a big program that does grants to nonprofits to fund these documentaries. So welcome, Bill and John to our program.
Bill Kizorek
Thanks for having us, Mark.
Mark at Insect Shield
So let's start, I guess, with you, Bill, and you have a connection to Rick Hemmerling, our Director of Business Development, maybe we want to talk about that a little bit?
Bill Kizorek
I probably should say that all 40 of these documentary films that we've created around the world might not have been done had I not met Rick Hemmerling. I saw him speak at a conference. He told me about his charity work. I was just bowled over by what he said. So we went on - we created a video for at that time Northwest Medical Teams [Medical Teams International], one of his favorite charities. And then we went on to create another 40 additional films in Africa, Asia, Europe. So he's been a great inspiration.
Mark at Insect Shield
Yeah, that's awesome. You are kind of a partner with Insect Shield. We've got a page about you on our website. But there's a lot of material out there. You've got a YouTube channel that features a lot of these videos. So we'll put links to all this stuff below this interview. And I think we want to talk about some of the work that you guys have done together and maybe we'll take a look at some of these videos briefly.
Bill Kizorek
And I'll tell you what. I know the first one to do it because John Kizorek saved me in Cameroon. If it weren't for him... He fixed the camera. He saved me from the river blindness. And I would like to show you just a short clip from that first show. This was shot at the Jimmy Carter Center for the Blind.
Voiceover from the Video Being Shown by John Kizorek
The fly breeds along riverbanks. The fly picks up the disease by biting a previously infected human then transmits it to others it bites in the future. The fly deposits little worms, which then grow under the skin and cause intense itching, skin discoloration, rashes and ulcers. Enough bites, and the disease spreads to the eyes, potentially causing blindness. [A resident] lifts his pant leg to reveal flies gnawing on his leg. After years of repeated bites, he is at great risk. Everywhere there are signs of the ravages of this disease. Women with leopard skin on their arms and legs and nodules under their skin. Skin that is scratched raw. Assan, a 10 year old boy, has a nodule on his head, a manifestation of the disease. The disease flourishes in areas difficult to access.
John Kizorek
So those nodules that are on those people's bodies and heads are actually little pockets of those worms that they showed in the in the video. So when he's pushing them around, they're a little clumps of those worms underneath their skin. So to give you an idea of how bad it can actually be,
Mark at Insect Shield
I don't know if that many people are aware of what's going on here. But how did you guys come to understand this and get involved?
Bill Kizorek
Through the Lions Club? Yeah. They applied for a grant and they won it. They were like 90 people that went in for it. And we were just, we thought this was very important. The one thing we told the Lions Club and Jimmy Carter Center is, look, we need to be able to edit at night we do these films on location, and, John, you remember what the first day of work was? We started at 5am. We drove for like seven hours. Filmed and then drove back. We were eating dinner at midnight the first day. So, so much for our guidance.
Mark at Insect Shield
And I take it a lot of the work that you do, Bill, is pro bono, right, for these organizations. So they can apply for a grant. We'll put the link to that. That's on your website. There's details about that on the YouTube page as well. But part of that grant is the work that you do. And where does some of the other funding for these programs [come from]? Is that like, in this case, the Lions Club is funding it?
Bill Kizorek
Well, the Lions Club normally what we'll do is we'll supply the video crew, we’ll provide airfares, but once we get to our country, the client like Lion’s Club will take care of transportation. They'll take care of the hotels and they'll feed us.
Mark at Insect Shield
And this particular work, this documentary was done in Cameroon. I don't know if that was mentioned in the video. Is that right? So you've worked in I think what I read was like 125 countries. So not only have you done these 40 different documentaries, but you've also done some production work on video. And your background is quite extensive. I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about how you got involved originally. You said that Rick Hemmerling spoke at a conference, and you got interested in doing the nonprofit, pro bono [work].
Bill Kizorek
So more than 20 years ago, John and I were both private detectives. And that's where I wrote most of the books – about the detective business, and ended up on Oprah and 2020, [the] Discovery Channel, with a detective business stuff. And then bought out over 20 years ago and was basically told, “Stay off to television.” And that same week I was basically fired from the company I sold. That's when I met Hemmerling. And he created the next 20 years.
Mark at Insect Shield
That often happens, right when a company gets bought, I mean they decided they want to take charge. But yeah, so super cool. And from that point on, did you just I mean, I'm sure that a lot of organizations were more than open to what you were offering. So how did some of those initial projects go? I mean, these all go back many years. But I take it you kept in touch with a lot of these organizations.
Bill Kizorek
Yeah, one, one of the clients, Kids of Kilimanjaro, told us that he gave a fundraiser right after we came back from our trip to Tanzania, and he raised $179,000 after he showed our film. That was pretty impactful for him.
Mark at Insect Shield
And back, then, how did you put these videos out? Because you know, the internet really, I mean, sharing video on YouTube. I don't know how long ago you started doing that, but I don't think it was right away, right?
Bill Kizorek
That was up to the client because in the beginning, a lot of times they didn't have fundraisers in person. And we would give them forms of films in three formats internet in person, so they could put it in an IMAX screen and then just email kind of thing. And our job, our commitment was we would produce this usually a three minute to five minute film, give it to the client, and they did whatever they wanted to do, and then we're out of it. So we did not ourselves promote the films. But we got a huge amount of feedback about how helpful it was to document, you know, helping the neediest people in the world.
Mark at Insect Shield
I mean, video has continued to kind of explode over the years. But it was quite impactful, then I think probably anybody that's been to a fundraiser has seen, you know, a promotional video. And John, you did the narration, I think on the Cameroon river blindness video. What other involvement have you had? I mean, you guys are brothers, do you ever get in fights over how things should [go]?
John Kizorek
It has, you know, working with family is always fun. And it's like that pendulum is you know, as much as it swings to the bad side, it swings the opposite way, just as much. And we have had some extraordinarily good memories of extraordinarily bad times. Traveling and having equipment failures, and my brother Bill deciding we, one of our episodes, we had to go in front of one of the local Sultans, and Bill's gonna smile here. I knew that was gonna happen.
And we had to go in and get his permission to go into the areas of Cameroon so that we could film the distribution of the medication for river blindness. And they told us whatever you do, don't make him mad because he actually has the authority behead people.
Mark at Insect Shield
That’s a deterrent!
John Kizorek
So Bill decided that he said, so my brother decided it was a good idea to not only go in there, and he took our night vision camera, and filmed us talking to the Salton which was specifically requested not to do. Well, the entire time I'm sitting there in this room, just sweating waiting for somebody to come up behind me and grab us. So we have a lot of fun and, you know, trying to figure out what they're feeding us from day to day, whether it's snakes or tigerfish.
Mark at Insect Shield
Insects?
Bill Kizorek
Yes, insects. You said the right word, because that's the next video. John, play that one. It's called “Bugs” maybe?
John Kizorek
Oh, the bug’s peril?
Bill Kizorek
Yeah, this and we wrote a whole book about this whole series of adventures. John edited the book. He was masterful, and it's an embedded video book. So if you go online, to perils or rewards of international filmmaking, all these videos are there, including….
Voiceover by Bill Kizorek from the Video Being Shown by John
Let me tell you about bugs. They’re everyplace. There's tsetse flies, there's mosquitoes. When we filmed the silverback gorillas in the Congo, we sat in a bug pile. The bugs are all around the gorillas.
When we filmed children in the villages of Ghana, there were so many bugs, you almost breathed the bugs in. The bugs are also in the form of red fire ants in the Congo and they crawl up your pants and bite you every place. They're getting eaten by pretty much all over their faces. I have yet to get a single bite. They’ve got bite marks on their legs…. Oh we can hear the gorillas right now.
Mark at Insect Shield
My gosh. Well, that must have been exciting!
John Kizorek
You're 12 feet away from a Silverback gorilla with no bars between you.
Mark at Insect Shield
Gosh. Yeah. And I mean, how did you wind up in that situation? Were you there to film the Silverback gorillas or? Or what were you uh…
Bill Kizorek
Filming a documentary. There was a charity called DOCS, Doctors on Call for Service, and it was filmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now John did not go with me on that one, but a doctor did, Nicole Lippenbury, and one part of that - talk about dangers - we are walking down the street and she wanted to take pictures in Bukavu Congo of a building. Like a hotel building.
And she was snatched by four people, showing a piece of paper saying secret police, and they wanted to take her away. So I had to jump in between them and save her from being jammed into the car. But part of the trip at the end, the reward for the doctors who went to the Congo and did all these operations, was that we're taken up to see the Silverback gorillas.
Mark at Insect Shield
Okay, and survived, which is good. [Because] we wouldn't have all your additional work after that. Wow. Yeah, I mean, you're working in different countries in Africa. How about South America? Did you did you head down there at all or?
Bill Kizorek
John, thinking back on the 40 or so assignments? Oh, yes, we did trafficking and abuse of women in Brazil we did for the United Nations, a very dramatic film and I hope we will make sure that's on the website as a link because yes, it's very important.
Mark at Insect Shield
Yeah, [we] need to see some of those.
Bill Kizorek
Yes. I’ve been to all seven continents, but we've worked on six.
Mark at Insect Shield
Now I take it your work was pretty intense. When would you say it was the most intense that you were doing all this work? Or is it just like a constant intensity?
Bill Kizorek
John - tell them about the camera thing in Cameroon, because we had one major studio camera which decided it was not going to work when we got the camera.
John Kizorek
Well we when we got to Cameroon one of the cables that hooked to our external hard drive, which is where all of our video was being stored at, for some reason began to malfunction or something was shorting out in the wire. And needless to say, trying to find a Best Buy was not an option for us. Considering that most days we spent about eight hours traveling down these dirt roads that, to be honest with you, I didn't think we were going to make it more than 100 yards down the road let alone drive for eight hours at 45 miles an hour.
Bill Kizorek
Thank you for fixing the camera, John. I can't believe you did it. So that was that was really intense.
Mark at Insect Shield
Wow. I guess sometimes you really have to improvise a lot. Like the documentary work is not so much the test as actually getting around to do the filming.
Bill Kizorek
Oh and we did one… John get that “Thank you”, film. There's a very short one, because we just didn’t want to die when we're doing all these. Is that the Ghana one, John? It’s a Thank You to Insect Shield. It's pretty cute.
Video Voiceover
Thank you Insect Shield for supplying us. Yes. We are in the middle… river blindness is everywhere. There's malaria, but we're not worried about it. Take two.
Mark at Insect Shield
Well, we should mention that because I understood that sometimes we just send you guys stuff for your work. Which makes sense. We don't we don't typically talk about flies that much but our repellent does work against flies. So what have you done in terms of areas where you do need that? It sounds like many of them might need the repellent clothes.
Bill Kizorek
Well, this is a story that you're going to love as a marketer yourself, Mark. We did - were doing a shoot for Insect Shield, or I think it was Ex Officio at the time. And we were in the middle of a forest. The model was wearing treated clothes. She ended up at the end of shoot with no ticks. The assistant didn't have anything on and ended up with 17 ticks. I had one pair of white Insect Shield socks. And I get no ticks. That was the difference. I got nothing. A pair of socks, you know is right next to the other person who got 19 ticks.
Mark at Insect Shield
Well, that's how they operate. I mean, if they can get off often just climb up into your pants, then you're in big trouble. So the socks and then we say tuck your pants into your socks.
John Kizorek
Well during our shoot in Cameroon, we actually had to remove our Insect Shield clothing to get the footage that we needed of the black flies on people's legs. Because they kept talking about how many flies there were but we're filming going well, where are the flies? And then Bill and I looked at each other and realized that we had all of our Insect Shield clothing on. So we said well let's take it off and put it in our backpacks. And as soon as we took all that stuff off and put normal clothes on, the flies just appeared and we got the shot that we needed, but it was actually the Insect Shield clothing was a deterrent to our filming since we couldn’t get pictures of the flies!
Mark at Insect Shield
Reality was not working out. Yeah, that's really funny. Well, the clothing does create kind of a halo effect. So it will deter bugs even from landing on you, but if they do land on you they're not happy about the permethrin so it works very well.
Bill Kizorek
Hey, I'll tell you one thing it didn't repel - or maybe it did repel – but John, get ready to show that bear video. You guys we're doing another take (thank you to Insect Shield or whatever). And this was right outside the house I'm in right now. Right behind me is a wild bear 20 feet away. The only thing that John didn't tell me is, sitting down to begin with filming, the bear got up, so, filming, not telling me… John just show this; it's only 10 seconds, but… definitely I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this bear is…?!”
Mark at Insect Shield
You don't want to jeopardize the shot, right?
John Kizorek
Hey, I wasn't gonna ruin the shot. I mean, it was one of those things. It's a one take deal so…
Mark at Insect Shield
Well, it could have been one take for Bill in that situation, like, final! So that's interesting. No. Bears are not… We don't advertise bear repellent as part of what we do. We could get... Yeah, in fact, the EPA does not approve the bear language. So we try to avoid that. Wow. That's really something. That bear was really close. I mean, I don't want to, you know, that was not like a trained bear or something. Like, it was not gonna juggle.
John Kizorek
No, definitely not.
Bill Kizorek
No, that bear came every day to visit us so we… John, I think, named it. What did you name the bear? Emily?
John Kizorek
Sarah.
Bill Kizorek
Okay. Yeah. So, Mark, we do we continue to do this. We continue to serve charities around the world. My brother, John, and I devote our time to it. We thank you for the stuff you've given us to protect us while we're doing it. We sure appreciate Insect Shield.
Mark at Insect Shield
Well, the feeling is mutual. And we'll, as I said, put a bunch of links to what you've been working on below the video here. It's been awesome to interview you both and learn about to parent productions, and your long history of support for nonprofits.
So I want to stress again, that you still are offering grants to various nonprofits. They just have to apply with you. Right, like the Lions Club did. So that's something we hope to promote, as well. So John Kizorek, and Bill Kizorek, it's really been wonderful to talk with you guys today and learn a little bit about what you do. Hope to have you back again.
Bill Kizorek
Thanks, Mark.