Over the past few weeks we have developed a video project with Holstee, a New York company which sells life style goods designed with a conscience. The video is based on their wildly popular Manifesto, which starts, “This is your life” and ends “Live your Dream, Share Your Passion”. The products they sell are often repurposed or reclaimed materials, their manifesto is about reclaiming your destiny.

In my ten years in NYC I have witnesses a sea change on the streets, bikers have rallied and reclaimed public spaces. This is a new century, that will be defined by cities, and the automobile paradigm will no longer be adequate. The machines that once represented freedom have become steel prisons for one, that choke the roadways like fat in an artery. We need to be agile and change directions quickly.

Life(cycle) is about reclaiming the city and our destiny. We are still in preproduction and we need your help! If you would like to be in the video sign up here: http://www.lifecycle.holstee.com/. We will be shooting in NYC on Oct 8th, 2011!

A portrait of Jeff Richey, environmental specialist at a water reclamation plant by day and jazz musician by night. A film exploring the intertwining of separate lives of one person – one man’s way of sustaining his living and making his art in Denton, Texas.  Directed by Juliette Richey

Watch it now!

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Filmmakers Get Social: Prepping your Doc with funding:

Navigating non-profits, fiscal sponsorship, and raising

funds using social media

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 7:30 PM (ET) @ The Roger Smith Hotel

Is this progress? Do we really benefit from the denial of self?

The truth is that our waste never really goes away. It goes down a gravity fed eight inch pipe, connects to a sewer pipe which leads to a waste water treatment plant, which is generally at a geological low point in the region.

When filming Transposition at the Municipal Utility District in Trophy Club, Texas, I was able to see the entire operation first hand.

Two products are exported from the plant: reclaimed (non-potable) water and biosolids. Various mechanical processes separate the solids from the liquids. The water is sifted and treated with bacteria and travels under a UV light to kill the bacteria and finally pours into a lake. This water is almost safe to drink. After spending a few months in the lake it is pumped into a water treatment plant. The water goes through the same processes as in the waste water plant, but the digesters and purifiers are all enclosed. It gets sent up a pipe, back into your house, or to a factory to be put into a bottle and sold to you.

Jeff Richey sums it up nicely in Transposition “We clean it up and you’re drinking it again.”

The solids are laid out to dry, out of direct sunlight. If the solids are laid in an enclosed building, they are eligible to become fertilizer and resold. In the case of Trophy club M.U.D. they simply truck the stuff out to a dump.

 

While looking at the piles of solids, a Trophy Club City Council member remarked, "Who planted these tomatoes?" Jeff answered, "Everybody".

When early man noticed that his favorite edible plants began growing from his latrine, it sparked a revolution called farming.  The bushes that we were squatting behind, actually grew out of our waste.  Civilization as we know can from this very simple observation of a natural processes, of which we are all a part.

We have systematically removed ourselves from bodily knowledge, like a reversion into the utopia garden of eden. We don’t want to know that 91% of the cells in our body are microorganisms and that 85% of the DNA we can call human is identical to mouse DNA. We want to feel special and self sufficient. The fact that we need to evacuate smelly brown stuff from our bodies is a secret we want to keep from others and even ourselves, but it is the truth.

Jeff Richey on Jazz: “I think it should sound pretty… and sometimes it sounds darn, right ugly!”

Good morning from SXSW! I’ve got just over a full day left at the fest, and I’m starting it with screenings of two IFP films in competition – Miao Wang’s Beijing Taxi and Cameron Yates’ The Canal Street Madam.

Both have had outstanding marketing schemes at the fest. At the Beijing Taxi party – Beijinger 80s-style punkrock bands playing in a Mexican bar – Miao (with her parents as assistant marketers) sold t-shirts and one-of-a-kind flipbooks showing scenes from the film. The Canal Street Madam branded condoms, including their screening times, were a huge hit at all the parties. Looking forward to seeing both films at the Alamo Lamar today. I am in love with that theater chain (thou I am certainly not their only suitor) – there’s nothing quite like being served pizza, beer, and a chocolate peanut butter milkshake during a film.

SXSW has have commissioned a series of 30-second intro reels, magical realism hazards of filmmaking, from filmmaker David Lowery (his St. Nick is a Narrative Lab alum and premiered at SXSW 09). SXSW’s originality has made the filmmakers here step up their game. Life 2.0 had a Q&A via Second Life, the Happy Poet team parked the vegetarian food cart that is the center of the film in front of the theater (I’m pressing them to put recipes on their website), and to my glee, everyone seems to have clever 1/2″ buttons with images from their films.

The entire experience of going to the movies is magical to me.  From the moment your ticket stub is ripped and you settle into your seat, the lights dim and the projector heats up, and you are transported away.  There is a desire to be captivated by these stories, a chance to escape into a world different from our own if even for just a short time.

But there is also for me a connection from this magical world to the real job I do every day. As much as I succumb to the magic, I wonder what happens if your audience isn’t going to the theater to watch your movie?  How will anyone see it?  What are the opportunities to tell stories and make media in new ways, taking advantage of new forms of communication channels that will resonate with twenty-first century audiences? How is social media transforming the film industry?

The increasing need for dynamic content especially in movies has become a connecting force for people everywhere.  A trend of higher levels of engagement from audiences through the web has opened opportunities for filmmakers all over. With so many new digital platforms like Hulu, iTunes and Netflix, how do we know which ones matter right now to this new generation of VOD (Video on Demand) and instant entertainment? This ongoing conversation between content producers and a content consumer is renewing how both sides are connecting and communicating with one another.

Independent filmmakers are creating, promoting, and screening their films by utilizing new forms of digital camera technology, social media, and digital distribution -completely bypassing the hurdles of traditional filmmaking. They have tapped into broader audiences, higher levels of engagement, and ultimately found homes for their stories.

Audiences are now discovering and experiencing movies through the Internet, with digital downloading and streaming.  Netflix reached 10 million subscribers in 2009 and with their ”Watch Instantly” function people are accessing media directly from their computers, T.V.s, and video game consoles.  Hulu is the 3rd most popular video site in the US, with a 14% growth in uniques and a 20% growth in overall streams.  iTunes has a record 100 million credit card accounts purchasing digital music, television and movie downloads.

Pioneers heading this movement of social media, digital distribution and the future of film like Lance Weiler of the Work Book Project and Arin Crumley of OpenIndie have developed a few tools to help us navigate this shift. They are producing ideas to connect with audiences and enlist their support pre and post release by making the available content even more engaging.

Here are a few methods they are promoting:

• Cross-Platform Storytelling. Allowing the story’s character(s) to live in other platforms before the film is released, and while the film is being made, gives the character a larger/broader life and helps with publicity and continued engagement from viewers.
• Getting Fans To Promote. These interactions are done in an organic way – people who are interested in the content are naturally inclined to promote it.  Instead of manipulating people to work with them, they are working with the very people who would be most helpful by creating Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts. These give behind the scenes status updates during production. Have your audience become part of your team each step of the way.
• Live Streaming. Streaming provides a simple way for filmmakers to communicate with their audiences. Sometimes a simple video podcast won’t be sufficient, and you may want to build a more interactive experience around your message.
• Create your own Social Network. Ning is a free service that enables you to easily create your own social network that includes many of the features found in the most popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.  Utilize this interaction to find an audience for the story you are trying to tell.

Both Weiler and Crumley will be continuing this dialogue at “The Conversation” this month on March 27th in NYC.  “The Conversation” is a dynamic series of overlapping discussions led by speakers and moderators from all corners of the filmmaking industry who will be shaping the agenda around social media, the web, digital distribution and how to increase audience engagement.  I’ll be there, will you?

Blind father plays games with Daughter using a low res tactile display on his tongue.  She seems bored by this and tries to cheat in Tic-Tac-Toe.  He catches her deception with his

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A portrait of Jeff Richey, environmental specialist at a water reclamation plant by day and jazz musician by night. A film exploring the intertwining of separate lives of one person – one man’s way of sustaining his living and making his art in Denton, Texas.

Produced and Directed by Juliette Richey
Produced and Edited by Cooper Miller
Cinematography by Alex Volkov
Music Recorded by Jim Clouse and John Bailey