The Filmmakers

Allan R. Smith Productions is an award winning full service Production Company, with over 30 years of experience in the film industry. We specialize in extreme production environments and have captured stunning footage around the World. Whether it is in Death Valley's 120 degree heat, 110 feet deep on a sunken freighter in Truk, Micronesia, the extreme of Alaska, or the humid jungles of Indonesia, we have been there.

Allan R. Smith Productions award winning team produces outdoor adventure shows for network and cable broadcasts, documentary films, as well as working with adventure travel companies to producing programming distributed on DVD and the INTERNET. With a focus on Social Media, we work together to produce a media campaign to maximize exposure and draw in the client. Our specialty is shooting in the most extreme & hostile conditions, from Jungles, the Arctic, Deserts, to under water videography.

We invite you to meet the Filmmakers of the Rescue Men Documentary. Simply Mouse Over the names and pictures on the left to learn more about these dedicated Filmmakers.

Be sure to visit AllanRSmith.com and check out some of our other fine films and features.

Allan R. Smith
Executive Producer, Producer and Director

At the core of Allan R. Smith Productions is over thirty years of experience in the film and television industry. The company's President Allan R. Smith, is an award winning producer and director who started his career as a child actor at the age of 6, being involved in such films as Chinatown, Day of the Locust and They Only Kill Their Masters.

Television productions include Gunsmoke, the Brady Bunch, Medical Center and Barbury Coast, The Alaskan Experience to name a few.

Mr. Smith has also had the pleasure of working with ABC, NBC, CBS, Good Morning America, Inside Edition, The History Channel, KPAL TV, The Howie Mandel Show, RTP TV and MyOutdoorTV.com.

Allan has filmed expeditions around the world, including the "Lost 49'er Expedition". A 33 day, and over 300-mile expedition on foot in the dead of winter from Enterprise, Utah to Death Valley, California. Member of the legendary Explorers Club, and Past President of the Los Angeles Adventurers' Club. He resides at the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Vivian Callahan
Writer and Post Production Supervisor

Vivian Callahan is a writer, producer and editor. Until recently, she served as Executive Director of Creative Services for FOX Broadcasting Company. Before then, she supervised the advertising and promotion of all primetime dramatic programming for CBS Network. She has written and produced three prime-time specials for FOX, and a series for the now defunct Cable Health Network. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and has won multiple awards and accolades for her work.

Vivian is also an avid adventurer, having sailed to Hawaii through a killer hurricane, survived an onboard fire 900 miles from the nearest land, and successfully used a sextant and tables to navigate. She's also climbed Mt. Whitney (14, 497'), the highest peak in the contiguous United States three times, and is a triathlete, road bike racer, runner, scuba diver, and skier. Most recently, she sailed on a 58' sailboat from Hong Kong to the island of Borneo where she climbed Mt. Kinabalu (13,435'). Then after a side trip across the Equator to become a "Shellback," she continued sailing to Singapore, through the Malacca Straits to Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia, and then on to Phuket, Thailand.

Vivian volunteers for the L. A. Maritime Institute which takes at-risk youth on tall ship excursions and is an active volunteer and member of the Del Rey Yacht Club. She attended Mt. St. Mary's College and USC.

Steve Essig
Director of Photography

As a camera operator, Steve has handled assignments for television documentaries, feature films and commercials under a wide variety of conditions, ranging from sub-zero cold in mid-winter Alaska to 120 degree heat in Bad Water, Death Valley.

Steve, has had the pleasure of working with National Geographic, Hansen/Gervasoni Productions, the California Chevrolet Dealers Association and High Desert Productions to name a few. A graduate of the Brooks Institute of Photography for over 40 years he has captured stunning footage from around the world and worked as the director of photography for the award-winning documentary "EIGHT SUMMITS: The Bill Burke Story".

David Wright
Writer, Associate Producer and Technical Advisor

David Wright is the co-author of "Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers" (Scribner 2001). Fire on the Beach was featured in the New Yorker as one of its notable selections and was chosen by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as one of the "Best Books of 2001."

Wright's essays and articles have appeared in The Village Voice, The Kenyon Review, New York Newsday, Color Lines, Paste Magazine, and elsewhere. He has published fiction in The Massachusetts Review, Witness, The Southern Review, and African American Review, among others, and been anthologized in Gumbo: Stories by Black Writers (Doubleday 2002) and Stories from the Blue Moon Café (MacAdam/Cage 2003).

His work has been recognized with numerous honors, including a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the North Carolina Humanities Council.

He's currently finishing a novel about the 2005 Paris riots. He teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

David Zoby
Writer, Associate Producer and Technical Advisor

David Zoby is the co-author of "Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers" (Scribner 2001). Fire on the Beach was featured in the New Yorker as one of its notable selections and was chosen by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as one of the "Best Books of 2001."

David Zoby was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He attended Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth University. At VCU, he earned an MFA in Poetry under Larry Levis. Zoby has published poems in 64 Magazine, The New Virginia Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Georgia State Review, Blackbird, The South Dakota Review and others. He teaches composition, Wyoming Literature, Poetry, and Creative Non-fiction at Casper College. Zoby has also published fishing and hunting articles in American Angler, Fish Alaska, Retriever Journal and Bowhunter Magazine. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter and the Missouri Review.

Zoby was a scholar at the first Hala Foundation seminar in Washington DC, where young, professional Arab Americans discussed political and ethnic identities. He also earned a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to study religious pluralism in Syria and Turkey in 2007.

Currently, he is the chair of the English Department at Casper College.