Online Doc Series - Call For Collaborators

thewrittenone

I am looking for collaborators for an online documentary series entitled Building Babylon. The series will be shot in and around the Dublin area over coming weeks and months, with episodes broadcast on a monthly basis.

You can find further information on the series here.

Anyone looking for crew work over the summer months please contact me at thewrittenone@gmail.com.

thewrittenone

2 things happened recently that inspired me to get my finger out and start work on a doc project that has been festering for a few weeks now.


Firstly I attended Down and Dirty DV talk in Filmbase with Anthony Q. Artis. The message of the day? Shut Up and Shoot. Film-making is not rocket science. It is merely a skill that can be learned. The technology today is such that anyone can shoot and get their story into the public arena. Decide on your subject. Get the resources you need. And do the best you can. If you think that you have something to say, the only thing stopping you is yourself.


Secondly I rang a friend who works in a production company I used to do work experience for and I said I was interested in getting involved again. ‘Whats the best way of doing that?’ I asked. ‘Shut Up and Shoot’ he said. Get your story together, grab a camera, rent some gear and do your best. You cant argue with that.


So this thread is about me making a short doc entitled ‘State of Separation or: Why Our Generation Will Never Get to Show Any Real Respect for the Earth’. Its about the contemporary relationship between our way of life and the earth and the hills we will have to climb in order to evolve one of respect.


Ill be following the Down and Dirty DV film-making process step by step.


Stage 1 - Get the idea down on paper.


Stage 2 - Get the gear.


Stage 3 - Get the crew.


After that its all one great mystery wrapped in a riddle. But that’s the fun of it. Right?


Stay tuned and wish me luck.

http://thewrittenone.wordpress.com/

thewrittenone

Finally got my one pager down for this series. Plenty more to follow in the coming weeks. I have to work out all my storytelling tools and outline the potential structure of the series overall. The focus of the story has changed slightly. Rather than merely outlining our contemporary relationship with the earth, I believe it will be far more beneficial and involving if the series follows an ordinary Irish couple attempting to build a way of life in repect of the earth. I can then build ideas of humanity and the earth around this structure. Happy hunting and check back soon.


Synopsis

We find ourselves on the eve of a potentially new and exciting industrial revolution. It is a revolution that will require the involvement of every government official, every corporate spokesman, every blogger, every farmer, every industrialist, every environmentalist, every politician, every housewife and every man woman and child on this great living rock of ours for it to become a reality. Without it, we face an unfortunate and unpredictable future. With it, the human race could take its greatest step forward since it walked across the plains of Africa and out into the world all those years ago.


This series tells the story of one ordinary couple’s contribution to that process and that ideal, in a very unlikely place. From their Dublin apartment, they will attempt to build a unique urban way of life for themselves, one that shows respect for the earth and humanity, both physically and philosophically.


They are not traditional environmentalists, nor are they involved in any movement on a day to day basis; and this is the key. Through them we will witness first hand how hard it is for the average person living in contemporary Western society to live in respect of the earth. We will meet those on the front line of this global fight to rid the world of economic addictions that exploit the earth. We will examine the historical evolution of those addictions. We will map out our contemporary physical and philosophical relationship with the earth.


Follow them as they network online and find inspiration from the many online bloggers re-inventing themselves as green adventurers. They start a Blog and make themselves part of that community. They set out a programme outlining their goals over the coming weeks, months and years. They then begin the process of ridding themselves of the economic addictions they were borne into.
Soon they learn that this process is not just about denial. It is about living an ideal. It is about being involved in something that you believe in. It is about building a way of life that sees humanity as a positive element on earth. It is about taking a stand in the fight to remove the guilt of years of human destruction worldwide. It is about celebrating humanity and the potential of the individual.


Follow them on as they delve into the world of holistic healing and the ‘culture of the body’. They wander through the great cultural under-belly of Ireland’s capital city, asking how this might evolve into something that respects and celebrates the earth. They involve themselves in the contemporary fight to green the city, and campaign on the front line. They look for ways to inspire others. They also find inspiration from individual’s nationwide living the life and promoting a culture that celebrates humanity and the earth.


Through all of this, they will inspire us all to build a healthy relationship between our way of life and the earth.



http://thewrittenone.wordpress.com/

thewrittenone

“Developing goals”

‘Start with a basic question - what story do you want to tell and why?’
I want to make a documentary about contemporary relationships with the earth and the steps we all need to take in order to evolve a healthier, holistic one.

Why? Because ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by the earth and nature. I once had the usual quaint countryside idea of nature. I grew up on a farm, attached to a butcher shop and a slaughter house. Nature to me was this wonderland at the back of our house, secretly tucked away from the town. As kids we were dragged away from ‘Home and Away’ to feed the cattle, and in summer time a whole crew of us would gather to get the bails in during the hot summer days.


You can thank David Attenborough for a profound change in my attitude. The ‘Life Collection’ and and anything else he made just sucked me in. I began to see and feel not the ‘countryside’, but the ‘earth’. Every blade of grass and every robin was as important and dramatic as the migration of the humpback whales or the lifestyle of the lions on the Serengeti.
Like most people, the pollution and ‘replacement’ of this great earth by humans infused the idea that we were somehow a n unfortunate virus, destined to destroy ourselves and bring the earth’s systems to the brink of meltdown. Every house and every road was a scare on something far greater.


But throughout my later teenage years I digested a disgusting amount of earth history, human history and human culture, and that picture of us as a virus just didn’t add up. Despite all the conflict, suffering, pollution and anything else you choose to throw at the human race, the simple natural fact is that we are the earth.



There is nothing ‘unnatural’ about pollution. Volcanoes pollute. I am sure I read somewhere that there is massive evidence to show that global volcanic activity once brought about the kind of system collapse that our own out-dated idea of burning fossil fuels is.


Nor is there anything unnatural about war, genocide, suicide, urban sprawl, cityscape’s, computer chips or bad 80’s hair-cuts. Of course the argument is that with the intelligence, consciousness and information we have, we should know better. But these are questions of how we choose to live, not whether or not we belong or are natural.


We are an element on this earth, just like any other. A very unique and important one. We belong, just like every kangaroo, butterfly and blade of grass. We bring with us our natural attributes, along with our uniquely human ones. We are natural beings, with natural desires, and we live very natural lives, despite the fact that we don’t live ‘among nature’. Indeed you could argue that we live our daily lives in spite of the physical natural world around us.


So how did this happen? Obviously the tale is too long to tell here. But the angle I would take on it is that historically, certain ways of life emerged without a healthy respect for the earth and by chance the ideals and practices of these ways of life came to dominate the human experience over time. This to me is the reality of our contemporary global relationship with the earth.


The story for me is one of loss over time. There is a great way of life we could all be living. It’s an ideal, sure. But so were Capitalism and Christianity at one time or another. A connection with the earth in our daily lives is a healthy one for ourselves in the same way that a healthy relationship with our children and our community is. We gain from it in a very real and profound way. We live for it.


The central greatness that we have as human beings is that we are natural, we belong, we are part of something so large and wonderful that it beggars believe, and we have the consciousness to realise and celebrate it.
I believe in a way of life that see us as part of the earth, and respects that relationship. I believe that we could gain from that relationship physically, philosophically and spiritually. I believe in killing our addiction to that which causes harm to earth’s balanced systems because it is as much a problem for the earth as it is for our own souls. Killing the addiction is merely a primary step, to be taken in parallel with so many other things that will be highlighted in this documentary.


So to conclude the answer to the original question, Why? Because I want to examine what it would take for somebody in a contemporary ‘first world’ city to go about building such a life, and maybe inspire and inform people along the way.

http://thewrittenone.wordpress.com/

Hugh_C

thewrittenone wrote: »

Despite all the conflict, suffering, pollution and anything else you choose to throw at the human race, the simple natural fact is that we are the earth.

Tell that to the insects which will be the only surviving life-form after the next massive meteorite impact ...

I suggest that you need to narrow the focus of your doc a bit, you're too broad-spectrum.

Hugh

thewrittenone

Cheers for the feedback Hugh - like the photos by the way.

These early posts are just an attempt to give some background to the piece overall. Ill be putting up specifics in the next few days so stay in touch. Google was down for some reason last night lost a night.

The focus is a couple greening their lifestlyes and blending into the green cultural scene in Dublin. If you have any 'leads' on this it would be great to get them.

Hugh_C

thewrittenone wrote: »

The focus is a couple greening their lifestlyes and blending into the green cultural scene in Dublin. If you have any 'leads' on this it would be great to get them.

I have a lead but he's down in Kinsale. There's a huge collaborative effort arising out of some course that's being run down there, not too sure of the details but it's an environmental topic. There are some pictures of the project here.

Klaus is a mate of mine and I can contact him on your behalf if you like. He's based in Kinsale as I said earlier, so that may scupper it.

thewrittenone

Brilliant thanks - as the series progresses I hope to send the couple around the country - there are a number of bloggers i am following that are living the life outside of Dublin and it would be great to make them part of the series.

It would be later in the summer but if you would like to introduce Klaus to the idea - maybe direct him to my blog http://thewrittenone.wordpress.com/ - I could contact him later to arrange an interview or a visit from our couple.

Cheers

Hugh_C

thewrittenone wrote: »

as the series progresses

two things:

(1) How will it be funded and (2) that's not how introductions work (Klaus and I are Old School, you need to be proactive).

thewrittenone

Slight change of tac here but its all good.

This project started as a way for me to go out with my camera independently and record the reality of our current relationship with the earth and to ask ‘how did we get here?’ and ‘how do we get out of here?’

I called this little project ‘State of Separation OR Why our generation will never get to show any real respect for the earth’. But then I thought - how cool would it be to follow somebody (a couple) as they investigated this world and explore completely different ways of thinking and living. I called it Building Babylon after another not dissimilar TV series I pitched a few years back. I’ve been playing with this for a while but its just a monster for me now logistically.

So now its back to the original but I am bringing alot of the elements developed for Building Babylon - we’ll call it ‘State of Separation 2.0′. Here’s the logline:

Follow our intrepid reporter as he struggles to ‘go green’ while investigating the contemporary physical and philosophical relationship between Irish people and the earth, and attempts to understand how that relationship has evolved over time.

Its a structure into which I can pile every arguement I have ever had about humanity and the earth.

ALOT more to follow.

thewrittenone

THE FINAL ONE PAGER

Logline

Follow our intrepid reporter as he struggles to ‘go green’ while he investigates the contemporary physical and philosophical relationship between Irish people and the earth and attempts to understand how that relationship has evolved over time.

Synopsis

We find ourselves on the eve of a potentially new and exciting industrial revolution. It is a revolution that will require the involvement of every man woman and child on this great living rock of ours for it to become a reality. Without it, we face an unfortunate and unpredictable future. With it, the human race could take its greatest step forward since it walked across the plains of Africa and out into the world all those years ago.

But what are the Irish people doing about it? How much damage has been done? What is the reality of the problem facing us? How did we get to this point? What barriers are standing in the way of us achieving the ideal? In short, how separated are we from the reality around us?

In answering these questions, our reporter intends to show how hard it is for the average person living in contemporary Western society to live in respect of the earth. He will meet those on the front line of this fight to rid the country (and the world) of economic addictions that are by their nature designed to exploit and pollute the earth.

He meets and follows individuals from different backgrounds and ideals whose lives are affected by, and are affecting, the problems we all now face. He hangs out with the old gardeners and the young shoppers, the yummy mummy’s and the down and outs, the champagne environmentalists and the average Joe’s who don’t have the time or the money to give a damn. He lets their voices reveal the heart (and the harsh realities) of the issue.

He sees all the warning signs and the attempts to provide both quick fixes and long term solutions. He accepts how ‘in vogue’ green issues have become among certain sections of our global community. But he questions how much the ordinary people on the street understand the real issues and the problems we face. He searches (in vain?) for a people who have the time or the inclination to do something about them.

He ponders the elements needed to allow for this new industrial revolution, and wonders whether any of them are indeed in place. He asks, ‘what does it mean to live in respect of the earth?’ He worries about how the issue is being used to fuel existing prejudices and power struggles. He tries to understand the views of the new ‘holocaust deniers’. He regrets that our ‘Celtic Tiger’ may not have prepared us enough for the inevitable.

Do we value the earth in any philosophical way? What has led us to this point? How separated are we in Ireland from the earth? And taking into account the global moral and environmental challenges that faces us, are we doing enough to kill our economic addictions.

Do we have what it takes?

That Girl

Hi there,

I am very interested in your project and I would love to help out where needed. My production experience to date is limited; I have worked as a trainee assistant director on a Spanish feature partially shot in Dublin and I have shot and edited a short film, but I will be doing a diploma course next year and my interest in documentary film making is growing my the minute!! I am keen to learn all aspects of film making but if you see the need for assistance in any area specifically please do not hesitate to contact me.

I will e-mail you my CV which further details my previous work experience and educational background to the address you sited in your initial post for you to have a look at.

Thanks and I hope to hear from you soon regarding this opportunity!

Marie