Weaving together some strands
... or why you don't see so much of me here in The R-Word lately
Editor’s note: I’ve been quite busy with other projects—beyond The R-Word—lately. So I’ll mostly be posting other people’s writing here for a while. (Please send me your submissions!) The following short article is an update about just one part of what I’m currently working on. It was originally published in the Deep Transformation Network (DTN) forum.
Regular readers in DTN know I've had a long time love of documentary films and that I'm a writer with a passion for bioregionalism, permaculture and other eco-cultural movements. Well, now I'm weaving all of these strands together in service to the making of short documentary film about the work of Earth Regenerators, a community of bioregional restoration activists emerging out of the work of Joe Brewer. My role is that of writer / director, although I fully intend to do both of these in full collaboration with others with the appropriate talent, experience and skills.
The project is very real, solid, established, but also emerging and evolving at the very beginning stages. I plan on using one of my favorite documentary films, Fools and Dreamers, by Happen Films as an example of the sort of film I'm aiming for (when talking with film editors, cinematographers, writing collaborators, etc.). Stylistically this film is the ideal standard -- great lighting and sound, great B-roll, perfect storytelling, visually brilliant! It has it all. Even the music, subtle but mildly tangy ... and not the least overbearing, lingers in the background perfectly, just as it should.
I have a committed film editor working with me who will, I am sure, help in lots of ways beyond editing -- such as helping to shape the story we want to tell from the beginning. And he will soon be living in Barichara, Colombia, the setting of most of the film. My editor friend is deeply engaged with the Earth Regenerators community there, and he has already assembled a significant amount of film footage for us to work with (B-roll, mostly). We also have ample existing interview footage to choose from. So perhaps half of the film is already made (?).
This film will be made available for free streaming / downloading on the web. So its budgetary and financial considerations all arrange themselves around this spirit-of-the-gift (gift economy). Odds are, there is no other way for me to realistically function as writer / director of a documentary film, as no one has any reason to take me seriously as a filmmaker. I've never made a film. I don't have a masters degree from a film school. Etc. So asking investors to give me money up front is a preposterous proposition.
In any case, there will not be a large budget for this film, because so much of the footage is already existing, and an abundantly greater supply will be coming soon -- at no cost to this film project. But I do need to hire someone local to me (I'm very far from Colombia, working in Santa Fe, NM) to collaborate with myself and my primary editor in Colombia. This other person will have to have made his or her own documentary film/s, and I have to respect and appreciate their work. So he or she will cost money. And there will be other costs, too, but it's honestly impossible to even roughly sketch a film budget at the moment. I still have to learn about all of the expenses which will come, but which I cannot know of at the moment.
I'm going to create a little media (including film, but other media too) non-profit, which at its initial stages will be held under the umbrella and fiscal agency of an already existing non-profit. But that's yet to be done. This will be the second non-profit organization I've helped to form, so that process won't be a complete mystery to me.
If anyone here would like to apply for the role of co-writer of this film with me, I'm all ears.
I'm going to sell my bicycle, my expensive guitar, and perhaps hundreds of my books to help pay for ... you guessed it -- a fundraiser. Unless someone with the professional skills and talents of a bona fide professional fundraiser wants to volunteer.
If you have a musical instrument, an antique desk, an old bicycle ... you'd like to sell to help raise funds to pay for a fundraiser ..., or if you'd just like to send us a check or money order (or PayPal) ... just make a donation pledge here for now. (You can private message me or send me an email at jrivermartin at gmail dot com .) Any amount helps!
If you'd like to offer your talents and skills to the project, and you have talents and skills you think I ought to know about, same. Just send me a note. And thanks!
In the gift,
James