Filmmakers focus on Sag Harbor carver

When the afternoon sun shines through the half boarded up windows of Bob Hand’s wooden-duck carving shop on a backstreet corner in Sag Harbor, it casts a sepia toned glow across the dust-covered clutter strewn across a room filled with work benches and display shelves, as though it were a hobby shop belonging to Sam Spade.

A ray of light spotlights the flecks of bright color on the wings of an otherwise drab black duck likeness, while the shadows hide the brilliance of a red breasted merganser’s wings. Dust mostly hides the color of hundreds of blue and red ribbons won at decades’ worth of carving contests. It’s a filmmaker’s dream.

Then there is the proprietor. Mr. Hand—gruff on first take, warm and friendly with a quick but gentle wit by the time he’s finished introducing himself—is the picture of a perfect subject. As he hunches over his carving table, eyes hidden behind a plastic magnifying proboscis, an ancient television plays old fashioned tunes within arm’s reach (it doesn’t seem to be the sort that ever had a remote control) and his fingers slide over the back of a white pine duck, discerning where the next feather should be laid. He thinks to himself aloud as he plans each stroke of a needle-thin brush before he makes it. Any question evokes his passion for his beloved profession and pastime.

So, when aspiring young filmmaker Andrew Baris, 24, walked into Mr. Hand’s shop with his parents last summer, the film-ability of the scene nearly smacked him over the head.

“I walked in and the sense of history in there and personality of Bob as a character just made me want to do a film about who he is,” Mr. Baris said. “He’s such a real guy. People walk in the shop, other carvers, just to hang out.”

Mr. Baris, a Maryland native who has spent most summers in Quogue, and an old high school school buddy turned cinematographer, Kieran John Delaney, spent the last week of early mornings and late afternoons, when the light in Mr. Hand’s studio is just right, watching and filming the carver walk through every step of shaping a duck—a hen pintail in this instance—from block of cedar to a texture and paint job that make it nearly indistinguishable at a glance from the stuffed real duck next to it.

His casual protégé, Dr. Edward Feeley, was seated at a bench nearby, working on his own carving. The camera captures Mr. Hand describing almost 
every move of his hand or thought that runs through his mind. The footage could no doubt be edited quickly into a how-to video of carving, but Mr. Baris and Mr. Delaney have their documentarians’ eye more focused on the 
personal story of Mr. Hand and his 
art.

“I have hours of footage of him putting together a duck from start to finish, but I am more interested in him ... instead of what kind of bird it is or how you make a wing or that kind of thing,” Mr. Baris said.

For the two, the film is a self-funded project aimed solely at improving their own filmmaking chops. Mr. Baris has worked entry-level gigs on a variety of big-budget film sets. Mr. Delaney is a photography major at Roger Williams College and works for the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

For the gregarious Mr. Hand, the young filmmakers using him for practice seemed no more a burden than warm breeze blowing through an open window.

“Those kids know their stuff, the shots they got look great,” he said on Saturday morning without looking up from the tail feathers of the hen pintail—which will be part of a three-bird, all-hen display he plans to enter in a national contest later this spring. “They are definitely no dumbbells.”