We’re sorry, Jenny and Kristin can’t come to the phone right now, they’re busy in L.A. schmoozing with fancy producers, financiers, and other highfalutin’ Hollywood pros. Please leave a message and they’ll talk to their people who’ll talk to your people, and you’ll do lunch. K bye!
Well, you guessed it. Jenny and Kristin are off to Los Angeles, this time for Fast Track, one of Film Independent's major programs to help indie productions receive funding. The program is highly selective and only seeks the most inventive, original scripts – like ours! Hopefully we can snag this nice little Sloan Grant, get a few seminars under our belt, and after Kristin and Jenny meet some moneybags at the financing conference, the film will be on the Fast Track to production. Corny pun? Maybe a little. But still! It’s exciting! Oh, and while they’re out there, they might as well check out the L.A. Film Festival with their fancy free passes, right? Right.
You heard it here first, folks!! FUTURE WEATHER just won a second Alfred P. Sloan Grant--this time from the Tribeca Film Institute! We'll be attending the fest next week where the project will be featured in a Sloan Works-In-Progress series. We're honored to be working with TFI and extremely excited to be championed by such an impressive selection committee:
Julie Goldstein (Producer, Proof), Dr. Martin Chalfie (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University), Dr. Patricia Bath (Opthamalogist and Founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness), Anne Carey (Producer, Adventureland) and Dr. Gabriel Cwilich (Professor of Physics at Yeshiva University).
As we prepped to attend the Film Independent (FIND) Producers Lab in early October, we received news that Future Weatherwas selected for this year's Alfred P. Sloan Producer's Grant as part of the FIND program. The Sloan Foundation's mission is to support original work focused on science that they feel will have a positive impact on society, so we were ecstatic to receive such an honor. The $25,000 grant comes with access to a science advisor that Jenny can turn to for mentorship with script research. I had the chance to accept the award on behalf of the project at this year's FIND Filmmaker's Forum.
Model and actress Josie Maran is determined to help the environment. After working in the entertainment industry for a number of years, Josie decided to start a cosmetics line dedicated to eco-friendly initiatives, bio-degradable packaging, and natural ingredients. With a business mission like that, Josie is the perfect person to help kick off our Summer Sale. Seen above wearing the Tree Rings T-Shirt (and she wears it well!), Josie was also kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions for us. Special thanks to Josie and Polly for all of their support and a great blog about Future Weather! What made you want to start an organic makeup company? It was impossible to find high performance and healthy makeup. I wanted it for myself, and I knew other women would too.
How do you balance your career with raising a daughter? I love being a mom and I really enjoy my work. When I get home from work, I'm so happy to play in her world and in the morning I'm very happy in my world. Happiness is key to balance.
What's your "eco pet peeve"? Hardcore eco-people that scare away the mainstream from even coming close to "being green."
What about your not-so-environmentally-friendly guilty pleasure? (For the Future Weather team, it would have to be take-out containers.) Wanting a private jet (but I'm hoping it will run on algae!)
You're an actress. We're a film production team. What kind of interview would this be if we didn't ask you: What is your favorite movie? Harold and Maude.
As we enter the final eleven days of the Netflix Find Your Voice competition, we're glad to report that Future Weather is currently on top! Thank you all again for all of your support in getting us to over 17,000 votes and bringing us one step closer to making Future Weather a reality!
Still, we know that the other semifinalists are going to really pick up their efforts in these last few days, so we're glad that we've been receiving even more additional media attention in the two weeks since our last posts. Most exciting is the recent buzz that Future Weather has generated after winning Showtime's Tony Cox Screenplay award at the Nantucket Film Festival. Top industry publications ScreenDaily.com, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter were all quick to broadcast the news of this great achievement.
We've also had some great support from the blogosphere lately, with posts from long-time supporter Fake Plastic Fish and the Lanalogue helping to spread the word about SAVE THE FUTURE. Future Weather also received a great spotlight piece from Brain Pickings, a blog meant to find "revolutionary new ideas that no one has seen or thought of before". As if that weren't flattering enough, Future Weather also received an incredibly flattering post (part one of three!) on nonpretentious from Philly blogger Melissa J. Sachs, who calls Jenny "the hot Al Gore".
Thanks to all of you again for your continued support! And remember, we still need your help spreading the word and getting out the vote!
With the launch of the Netflix FIND Your Voice competition, FUTURE WEATHERhas been receiving a lot of good attention. As of right now, we're in first place of the ten semifinalists, and we're hoping to stay that way! The support we've been receiving from all of you has been great and we can't thank you enough.
FUTURE WEATHER has also been lucky to receive some attention from media outlets across the country recently. This past Thursday, Dan Gross of the Philadelphia Daily News gave us a shout-out in his column. SAVE THE FUTURE was also the subject of a great article in the Asheville Citizen-Times (look for a great quote from Chusy!). The Philly Goes Solar blog was kind enough to write about the short. And finally, our executive producers, Cora Olson and Jennifer Dubin, were interviewed by IndieGoGo about their film GOOD DICK.
As the Netflix competition keeps going, we're looking forward to getting more people excited about FUTURE WEATHER! The competition doesn't end until July 5, so keep spreading the word and help us rock the vote!
Being selected as a semi-finalist for the Netflix FIND Your Voice Competition was kind of easy compared to the challenge that came next: create a 2-3 minute short that "powerfully conveys your vision for the [feature-length] film". This could be anything, the contest admins maintained - a scene from the feature, a trailer, or "a self-contained short with thematic ties to the feature." In four weeks. For public voting on a website with 8+ million subscribers. Not intimidating at all.
We assigned ourselves the task of creating a provocative short that would grab your attention and leave you with a sense of mystery. SAVE THE FUTURE was finished last Friday and will premiere June 5 at www.netflixfindyourvoice.com. But what the hell is it about, and how did we get it done in four weeks?
Kristin, Cora, Jen and I decided to limit the script to one character from the feature, in order to cut down on casting time. Luckily, Perla Haney-Jardine, a 12-year-old actress we'd been in talks with for playing Laduree, was interested in coming on board for the short, and her family (filmmakers Jennifer MacDonald and Chusy Haney-Jardine) graciously invited us to shoot it in their hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. FUTURE WEATHER takes place in a rural setting, so after researching Asheville (a small, eclectic city tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains) and watching scenes from Perla's parent's feature, ANYWHERE U.S.A., I knew this area would provide the right milieu for our short.
With one week for prep + shooting and one week for editing, I had one week to develop a script. I started with two basic sketches - both exploring Laduree's life before the feature begins - and we picked one to develop. It was the more high-concept of the two, so I went through eight drafts before shooting and also rewrote it a bit during shooting and editing. It's called SAVE THE FUTURE, and while it contains a few motifs you'll find in the feature, it's a slightly more stylized, and frankly, commercial (in service of the concept, you'll see) depiction of Laduree's crux: her fear of environmental apocalypse as a stand-in for her absentee mom.
With our two central characters (Laduree and Asheville) established, Kristin and I drove down to North Carolina on May 13 for two days of pre-production and two days of production. The photos that follow are highlights from our trip, location scout and shoot. It was an experience we'll never forget. We hope you enjoy the show!
And don't forget: your votes can propel FUTURE WEATHER to the big screen. Slap us five stars June 5th at www.netflixfindyourvoice.com.
If I could create the blog equivalent of head-banging to Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, then that's what you'd be experiencing right now. On Monday, we found out that FUTURE WEATHER was chosen as one of ten semi-finalists for the Netflix Find Your Voice competition. The ten projects were officially announced today. Read it and weep, suckaaazz!!!
I forgot I'd even entered last February when I got an email from competition co-hosts, Film Independent, saying that they wanted to arrange a call with our production team. That was last week. Not a lot of sleeping went on after that for Kristin and me. Because we knew that if we got it, we'd have to drop everything to create the 2-3 minute short Netflix wants posted on their website by June 5 for public voting.
As if we weren't already in overdrive with our new online store, a fundraiser, an Earth Day bazaar, IgnitePhilly, and two grant applications. Not to mention arranging babysitters, selling a house and producing a flash mini-site for Drew Magazine.
The first phone call was surreal - having people show genuine interest in something that is so close to your heart, that you've been protecting and fighting for to the distraction of everything else is like stepping into an alternate reality. The one you've been dreaming of.
The second phone call came, and before I could really process the news, we went into immediate strategy mode. Difficult decisions had to be made. Troops to be rallied. And after careful consideration, we decided to shoot new material for the short. (More on that to come.)
Now that the official word is in, and the boat is leaving the shore, I'm beginning to feel the gorgeous breeze of the creative opportunity at hand. What a blessing. Even if we don't win, I feel very lucky that I've got one month to focus on the art part of filmmaking, which is exactly why I started this journey in the first place. Thank you to everyone who's helped sustain this dream for the last three years! Here we go!!!
Trees! I am so excited to be a part of this project because I have always been somewhat obsessed with this idea of tree rings. I find it so interesting that within these rings all this information can be revealed about a tree’s life. Like living with your very own road map to your life right inside of you...I love the idea of that, of each year marking you in some way. I think it’s such a beautiful visual representation of a life lived. I wish people had rings we could see!
xxx e
e bond is an artist, bookmaker and designer for Anthropologie in Philadelphia. A graduate of Moore College of Art and Design, e is now teaches a class at Moore called Words & Pictures: The Book. Last spring, e took a trip to the Scottish Highlands where she planted Scots Pine seedlings in an effort to restore the Caledonian Forest. Read more about it here.
We are proud to launch our very own line of eco-swag: organic cotton T-shirts and tote bags sewn from "pre-loved" T-shirts, all illustrated by the talented e bond. Please visit our store to learn more!
On Sunday, Kristin, Meg and I, along with a crew of volunteers, spent the day at Greenfest Philly, where we curated the Eco-Film Forum. Here are some of our pics:
Our tent next to Headhouse Square. You can see the I.M. Pei towers in the background.
Our banner, made from recycled plastic bottles and donated by Dream Green Banners.
Our fundraising swag: socially-responsible dolls donated by the Untours Foundation, seed packs and plantable butterfly necklaces.
Bag Monster & me. His costume is made from 500 plastic bags - the number the average American consumes in one year.
At 4pm, I presented the Future Weather fundraising trailers. They garnered a controversial response from one audience member who called them "dystopian," "negative" and "irksome". He seemed to feel that a family drama with environmental themes should be more cheerful. While I didn't agree with his assessment, it did spark a very good conversation about the function of narratives.
The day was jam-packed, so unfortunately, I didn't get to see as many of the other tables as I would have liked. But I did experience the free water-filling stations. The idea was to bring your own bottle and refill as needed. It may be a good option for providing water on-set, so I'll report more soon.
We finished the day off with a fantastic line-up of local filmmakers and environmental organizations including Marisa Miller of Kind Green Planet and Philly's own Big Tea Party and David Kessler. Thanks to our volunteers Holly Maher, Joyce Wright, Carolyn Richardson, Amy Coleman and everyone who came out and supported us!
Prepping our table at Mamapalooza with recycled newspaper toys.
In getting the script ready for Sundance, I haven't been able to dedicate much time to the blog in the last few weeks. Now that I'm back, it's difficult to know where to begin. Al Gore's gutsy speech notwithstanding, it's quite possible that I'm suffering from a touch of green fatigue. Our initial research period is over. Our final topic, waste & materials, was difficult and raised more questions for me than it answered (corn plastic is not our savior). We'll be lucky to scrape up enough money to make the damn film. Can we really make it green, too?
That remains to be seen as 1) we aren't fully financed, so 2) we don't have a production start date. Without those factors in place, it's difficult to plan our production logistics. There is still a slim chance that we could shoot in October, but the more likely scenario is that we'll begin Spring/Summer 2009. The upside is that timeline gives us plenty of time to figure this green production out.
The thing I have to remind myself is that this began as an experiment. We're not making any promises to be 100% green. I don't think there is such a thing. What we are planning to do is learn as much as we can and ask ourselves difficult questions along the way: is this the most sustainable choice? can we do it better? with less energy, waste, and fewer toxins? We may find that we have to prioritize, compromise, and content ourselves with doing just a few things more sustainably than films that came before us. But at least we'll be more environmentally conscious than before we started, and our experience can be a foundation for future sustainable productions.
So if we're not ready to take you behind our "green scenes" just yet, what will we be blogging about? Plenty. I'd like to show that environmentalism is not just a short-lived trend of the new millennium but something that everyday people participate in in their own personal ways, whether they label it the now ubiquitous "green" or not. So we'll be inviting people to tell us stories about nature, share hard-fought knowledge of sustainable issues, express their own feelings about global warming, and go out into their communities and report back on inspiring examples of activism.
Meanwhile, we'll assess how our sustainable efforts have been going so far, and identify areas in which we can take the next steps for forming a green production plan. We'll begin to answer questions we raised over the last few months and find more resources for other filmmakers who want to make more sustainable choices. And we'll continue to update you on our production – the highs, lows and creative challenges.
I consider Future Weather a beginning place. Not just for me, but for anyone who cares about our habitat, about film, about positive change. If you'd like to contribute, please email me, jdeller@futureweathermovie.com.
One of the problems we expect to encounter with shooting a movie on location is a lack of readily available water. One idea that we've been floating around is purchasing reusable water bottles. Slate did a really great article last year where they tested the various bottles and gave them a rating. Unfortunately, they also gave a price. With the cheapest bottle being around $8.00, this is a cost that can add up pretty quickly, especially if we need to figure in at least 40 units. They do have a really cool corn-based water bottle though that easily bio-degrades. Just make sure you don't put it in the dishwasher.
Along the same lines, it's also possible that we can just re-use glass bottles. Think of something like Snapple. It's a perfect glass bottle with a screw-on lid that can be washed and reused often. It's also fairly easy to fill at the tap. Karyn also made a great point that crew members can think of a water bottle as one of the tools they're expected to have on set and bring their own. This means it can also be a tax write-off. And at around $15 for a durable stainless steel bottle, like a Sigg, it's not as much of a liability.
If we go with BYO bottles, then we've gotta come up with a source for water when we're away from a convenient tap. One idea we have been tossing around is a bottled water cooler, as in the old office water cooler. But the more research we do, the less it seems like a good fit. One, you have to plug them in. Depending on the office we set up, we'd have to take into account the amount of energy that would incur. A quick Google search shows that it can be a lot, sometimes using more power than a fridge (yikes). Two, if the shooting location is nowhere near the office, we will have to continuously send people back and forth to fill their water bottles, which is a waste of our time and resources.
What seems like the smartest, most convenient idea may be an old-school, insulated water jug - the kind they used to have at football practice. While we obviously won't be using the paper cups, this may be the best way to get water to the set. Buying and filling a few containers with tap water or a hose won't cost nearly as much as a bottled cooler and it doesn't use anywhere near as much energy (just our own). A problem with this, though, is not just the location of the water source itself, but also the potability (that means quality) of the water in our locations. Ultimately though, it may come down to cost and what will be most useful for our production logistics.
But I want to open up this discussion to you, faithful readers. What are some ideas that we're glazing over? What do you think would be the most effective way to keep our crew hydrated and happy without creating a lot of waste?
Jessie Magee, writer extraordinaire, has written a fantastic article about us, just published on Ecospace.cc, a great new venue for green news and activism. Check it:
As I groggily take the train to and from work every morning, I've noticed a new ad campaign that's being pushed heavily by SEPTA. They've embraced the green trend, trying to let the commuter know that public transportation is the best alternative to helping reduce your carbon footprint. Another reminder will greet you as you step off the train. Faux-grass posters have been placed over the escalators that lead to Market East Station. But as my tired eyes fix on those ads on the train, knowing how great it is that they're making this push, the only thought that goes through my mind is this: Isn't that printed on non-recycled glossy paper?
This week, we're going to tackle transportation. One of the main goals for our production is to supply the most fuel efficient cars for the film as we can, be from a high mileage rate or through alternative fuels. We'll discuss the many forms of transportation, some of them obvious, some not so much. We'll take a look at Philly Car Share and let you know if they have some alternatives that are right for you. Also, we'll finally see some biodiesel in action!
