The Clock
The Clock
Foreword
I think the intent behind most documentary makers is to create long-term change. In order to do that we need to do more than just engage the audience, there has to be a manageable call to action. There needs to be a clear message throughout the film, backed up by a strong social media campaign and a website dedicated to the documentary with simple information on what needs to be done, including helpful information on the all important “how to petition government for change”. Without this support viewers are overwhelmed and left feeling like it’s a lost cause.
I can’t stress how important this is and so in addition to the above, I have structured The Clock in a way where the call to action is also built into the actual film and the thoughts of horror, feelings of being overwhelmed and the all important joy and hope are being voiced as we are taken through the film by our commentators. We have to present the reality of the situation, at the same time we have to keep the viewer watching. Hence using humour and lyrically relevant songs throughout.
I would also like to add that the issues covered in this series or documentary are completely interchangeable. There are (unfortunately) many topics we can cover.
WE START OUR FILM WITH A QUICK CUT MONTAGE TO THOM YORKE’S THE CLOCK.
Quick cut montage of our main topics covering the problems only.
Topics include:
(click to jump to section)
• Deforestation/Re-Forestation.
skip to:
Team
Distribution
[Song fades out — voice over comes in.]
The voice is relatable, conversational, light and funny, more like a radio DJ or commentator than a narrator. Someone like Jim Carrey or Romesh Ranganathan.
A more serious, but still light, voice joins him, maybe Michael Palin.
Our commentators react to everything that’s going on in the film. These two would be an important cast as we would want them to write the dialogue and they will lead us through the series with humour.
(Now what follows is my attempt to write comedy dialogue but as I’m not a writer nor a comedian I need you to bear with me….)
[Thom Yorke’s The Clock montage ends.]
Jim (sounding freaked):
“Ok game over that was depressing…I’m outta here…”
Micheal:
“It’s not all doom and gloom I promise…
There’s some happy stuff coming up … just hold on…
[While Jim and Michael are talking we’ll have calming imagery like a youtube kitten.]
Good?
First we need to look very quickly at single use plastic, then onto the good stuff…promise”
Single Use Plastic
Michael:
“So, Single Use Plastic….now unless you’ve been living on the moon, you must know by now that single use plastic is b-a-d. Bad for the planet yes, but bad for us too.”
[While Micheal is talking there are beautiful shots of plastic pollution. Slow shots fading in and out.]
Michael:
“Did you know that a full 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually is left to flow into our oceans; the equivalent of pouring one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute….every minute!! That plastic breaks down into teeny pieces which the fish then eat…and then we….argh it doesn’t bear thinking about!
& here’s something else that’s crazy …. 2050 there will be as much plastic in the ocean as fish….nice for the kids….”
[Jim interrupts.]
Jim:
“500 million plastic straws are used every day in just America. That’s enough to circle the Earth twice…what?? That can’t be right??”
[Michael continues]
Michael:
So while we’re busy buying & discarding single use plastic, here are a couple of genius inventors working tirelessly cleaning up our mess.
[We hear the sound of Jim slurping through a straw, with Michael Palin berating him]
[While they’re talking a few images of the Ocean Clean Up and SeaBin appear on screen.]
Jim:
“So this is great…we need to know more about these folk.”
Micheal:
“We are….
First up The Ocean Clean Up team who have developed technology that takes plastic out of the ocean and started on the great pacific garbage patch last year, that will be followed by the surfers from Australia who got sick of swimming in plastic and created the Seabin, which captures a staggering 2.2 tonnes of marine litter daily…”
DOCUMENTARY SEGMENT
[Graphic comes up]
“The Ocean Clean Up”
https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story behind the Boyan Slat and the Ocean Clean up team.
“Seabin Project”
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story behind these two surfers from Australia
Michael:
“So if it’s not yet clear what you should be doing here’s KC and the Sunshine band to help inform and motivate you!”
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
[KC & The Sunshine band plays “Give It Up” cut to a montage of all the alternatives to single use plastic, show the bad and the alternative…also show that plastic is made from petroleum.
Plastic straw vs stainless steel straw, ziplock bag vs stainless steel container, plastic water bottle vs filter at home + Klean Kanteen.
With Text on how to petition government for change.]
[As KC and the Sunshine track disappears we hear Jim and Michael chatting…
** Micheal telling Jim off for using plastic straw, when will he learn etc This should be funny …(obviously…)
They then realise the track has finished and quickly start talking about …]
Factory Farming
Jim:
“…so we’re back…
Ok so this topic is very controversial…meat….well actually we’re not going to tell you not to eat meat and no we’re not going to show you any horrific images of animals in cages, I know that will have you hitting the off switch before I can say “Don’t Eat Factory Farm animals”…BUT…here’s a little montage of a few facts that you didn’t know…or maybe you did…either way I’m going to make this as easy to view as possible by having The Korgis take you through it.”
[In the background we hear Michael saying… “you should show images of factory farming…” Jim disagreeing …their conversation fades away as the song fades up…the song is The Smiths “Meat Is Murder” we start the montage then it comes to a sudden stop]
Jim:
“Sorry! wrong song…here we go…”
[The Korgis “Change Your Heart” comes up and the montage starts properly.]
[Images of deforestation, river pollution, ocean pollution, a very quick shot of not too horrific animals in cages…statistics coming up about all of the above with timelines.]
[As the song fades out Jim comes back in sounding slightly emotional but holding it together…]
Jim:
”Ok so hopefully you’re inspired to at least cut out meat for one day right…aren’t you???“
Michael:
“Or 100% grass fed beef…just look into where your meat comes from, local farmers, hormone free…it’s imperative you do this, not just for the planets sake but for your own heath.”
[Fade out as they chat.]
DOCUMEMTARY SEGMENT
[Graphic comes up]
Impossible Foods
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story of Impossible Foods and the founder Pat Brown and Bill Gates massive investment in the company and why.
Beyond Meat
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story Ethan Brown CEO- Founder . Ethan’s dad bought a farm with Holstein dairy cows. As a kid he started to question the difference between agricultural animals and pets. As an adult, he considered the effect of livestock on climate change.
Jim:
“And I think it’s pretty clear what you can do to help this far reaching problem but here’s a little montage to summarize:”
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
John Legend sings “I Can Change” cut to imagery of grass fed animals, no cages, plant based burgers looking like meat. Meatless Monday campaign etc
With text on how to petition government for change.
Jim:
So I’m seeing this petition government for change coming up…does that really make a difference, I mean do they really care about these things ??
Micheal:
How do you think the smoking laws changed? That wasn’t a bunch of politicians suddenly deciding smoking needs to be regulated, that was a bunch of people en mass over years, writing, calling, emailing…at the end of the day our politicians want to be voted back in, so they’ll push through what they feel their people want…simple as that…
Jim:
Really? Simple as that??
Michael:
Well maybe not exactly that simple but not far off. I could talk for hours about this but we have to move on.
Fast Fashion…I think it might actually be easier to get people to give up smoking that this recent obsession for cheap disposable clothes…
Fast Fashion
Jim:
'“Here’s a scary fact for you 99% of the stuff we buy is trashed in the first 6 months…un-real.”
Micheal:
“That’s not a fast fashion statistic.”
Jim:
“I know but I bet it’s not far off…actually it might be worse.
Ok so you know the drill now, we’re going to show you depressing images of Fast Fashion but you know there’s going to be some good stuff coming up after so hang on in there & to help you through we have The Kills ‘You’re Hard Habit To Break’”
[The Kills singing You’re a hard habit to break comes up and a montage of chemicals being sprayed on cotton, the huge amount of water used to make clothes. Blue dye rivers. Fast fashion landfills, the human cost, workers in horrific conditions, etc.]
Statistics as graphics such as:
The textile industry is the second most polluting in the world after oil.
2 billion pairs of jeans are sold every year.
We send 13 trillion tons of our clothes to landfills in the U.S. alone where they sit for 200 years leaving toxic chemicals and dyes to contaminate local soil and groundwater
We send 13 trillion tons of our clothes to landfills in the U.S. alone where they sit for 200 years leaving toxic chemicals and dyes to contaminate local soil and groundwater
It takes 12 years to recycle what a cheap manufacturer sells in 48 hours.
80 billion garments are made each year — 11 x the global population
One pair of distressed pre-soften jeans needs 9k gallons of water and an enormous amount of chemicals and dyes.
98% of clothing bought in the US was imported from abroad. A single cotton T-shirt transported from Xinjiang, China to Los Angeles results in over 9,000 “clothing miles” and over 2 pounds of CO2 equivalent emissions.
Jim:
Ok so this is just plain wrong. All this destruction for clothes when it’s not necessary to make them this way? Shame on you designers for not thinking about the kids… & you sustainable designers… well we love you.
Micheal:
I don’t think shaming is a productive way forward…
Jim continues ignoring Michael.
So because of you unsustainable clothing companies these hard working genius’s have had to come up with inventions to help deal with your crap, but to be honest the technology is just not there to deal with pollution the Fast Fashion industry is causing as it’s completely out of control, so you really need to think before you buy those jeans that you “can’t believe are so cheap”…well they’re cheap for a reason …
DOCUMEMTARY SEGMENT
[Graphic comes up]
EVRNU (USA)
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story of Evrnu and the co-founder Stacy Flynn.
Before Stacy Flynn co-founded Evrnu, a research and development company focused on creating sustainable fabrics from post consumer waste, she worked in corporate fashion for brands like Target and Eddie Bauer. While traveling to China in 2010 to visit a textile-finishing subcontractor, she could barely see the faces of the people she was meeting with, several floors above ground. Instead, she saw a thick cloud of smog. “I realized what our industry is doing to people,” said Flynn.
Bionic Yarn
Tyson Toussant – the co-founder of BIONIC, making fashion sustainable with textiles and polymers created entirely from reclaimed plastic
In 2007, Pharrell Williams was performing at the Live Earth concert when he learned about Bionic®. “It blew my mind,” he says. “The average person could be wearing something containing sustainable fabric without ever feeling the difference or looking like it’s different. I didn’t look back from there.” Williams was so impressed, he became the company’s creative director three years later. “They live it every day,” Williams adds, his voice rising with excitement. “This is what they wake up in the morning thinking about.”
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Montage of text and imagery of organic cotton, sustainable fashion, responsible factories, happy workers, clean rives etc
Cut to Tony Bennett singing ‘S Wonderful with text on how to petition government for change.
Check the labels:
Polyester = made from Petroleum…yep Oil.
Viscose = treated with chemicals
Non organic cotton = huge amounts of water and & pesticides.
Buy clothes that last. Stop buying so much. Be more individual. Buy vintage. Buy organic. Support designers that are sustainable, there are many more than you think.
Jim:
I never thought about how bad cotton was for the environment.. I always thought it was such a harmless material…I’m going to have to re-think my wardrobe….sigh.
Ok so next up is Energy, this is a subject I feel I’m at least doing my little bit …yes I have a Tesla…love it.
Energy
Jim:
“So let’s start with Elon Musk. Most of us know Tesla and of course his Space X project, but many have criticised him for having a car that needs fossil fuel to recharge the battery.”
Michael:
“Yep but he’s addressing that, by merging with SolarCity… More on that later but for now let’s see the horrors of the Fossil Fuel industry with the late great David Bowie’s A Better Future.”
[David Bowie’s A Better Future plays cut to images of oil fields burning, destroyed land after coal mining, smog, fracking destruction, polluted rivers & so on.]
Jim:
Ugh. How on earth??
Michael:
Stay positive, let’s get back to Mr Musk and SolarCity. In 2016, they merged with Tesla, they’re now well on their way to becoming a totally clean company.
More on this in our doc segment but there are so many companies that don’t hit the headlines as loudly as Elon, but they’re out there quietly saving our bacon.
Jim:
Who?
Michael:
Carbfix Project in Iceland they reduce atmospheric C02 by capturing gases from emission sources and storing it as rock.
Carbfix
Jim:
Seriously?
Michael:
Seriously.
And Carbon Engineering in Canada who create fuel out of air. Direct air capture can remove far more CO2 per acre of land footprint than trees and plants.
And let’s not forget Daimler, the creator of the combustion engine … they are putting it out to pasture.
Carbon Engineering
Jim:
Really that’s incredible.
Michael:
I know, I was reading somewhere that Roger Nielsen, (CEO of Daimler Trucks North America, the largest truck manufacturer on the continent) said The beginning of the end is here for the internal-combustion truck engine….and the replacement for diesel-run trucks will be electric vehicles
[Images of all the above will fade up and down as Jim and Michael chat]
DOCUMENTARY SEGMENT
[Graphic comes up]
Tesla & SolarCity
https://www.tesla.com
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story of Tesla and SolarCity and the story behind their merger. We will interview the founders of SolarCity, Peter & Lyndon Rive. Main topic point being "The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan", which is to expedite the world's move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy.
[We could feature Carbon Engineering or Carbfix or Daimler and the end of the combustion engine.]
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Montage of imagery and text cut to Josh Hoyer “Do It Now”
With text on how to petition government for change.
Make sure you get your electricity from clean energy.
Drive less but if you drive, drive an energy efficient car.
Walk more when you can.
[Song fades out]
Jim:
I love that song, but more to the point I love these guys, I see all this and I feel we might just make it.
Michael:
Brace yourself… We have deforestation coming up which is not easy to watch…
Deforestation
Tyler The Creator “Running Out Of Time” cut to a montage of giant machines chopping down trees on a massive scale, huge overhead shots of miles and miles of empty landscapes, with statistics coming up:
Forests cover 30% of the earth’s land.
25% of cancers fighting organisms are found in the amazon.
Agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation
The rate of deforestation equals to loss of 20 football fields every minute.
It is estimated that within 100 years there will be no rainforests.
Almost half of world’s timber and up to 70% of paper is consumed by Europe, United States and Japan alone.
Jim:
Guys!!! We need trees!! This madness has to stop.
Michael:
I have more madness for you..listen to this:
Over 4 million tons of junk is created online by spamming.
41 pounds of these junk mails are sent to almost every adult in the United States.
44% of the junk mail goes unopened.
People in America spend more than 275 million dollars to dispose junk mails.
Jim:
What on earth?? How can these people sleep at night…
Micheal:
I know right?
Anyway, this is a massive problem to solve & there are of course people out there doing their bit but we all really need to get on board…in short we need trees to breath.
Documentary Segment
[Graphic comes up]
Rainforest Connection
In 2012, Topher White founded Rainforest Connection, a startup which converts recycled cell-phones into solar-powered listening devices to monitor and protect remote areas of the rainforest. Now an established NGO, Rainforest Connection has helped stop illegal logging and poaching operations in Sumatra, and the system is being expanded to three more rainforest reserves in Indonesia, the Amazon and Africa.
With a background in physics and engineering, White worked as web chief of ITER and co-founded Enthuse, a sports engagement and mobile rewards platform. For Rainforest Connection, he’s fashioned a simple device made of discarded cell phones and solar panels that detects and sends alerts when it picks up the sound of chainsaws in protected rainforests, allowing for intervention in real time.
The Great Green (Africa)
Beautiful shot doc piece about the story of an African -led movement to grow an 8,000 KM natural wonder across the entire width of Africa. The Great Green wall dates back to 1954 by an expeditionary Richard St. Barbe Barker proposing a “Green front” as a 30 mile deep tree buffer across the desert.
By 2030 the ambition of the project is to restore 250 million acres of degraded land and bring security to one of the most impoverished regions on earth; stemming conflict and stopping the mass migration to Europe witnessed in recent years. Around Lake Chad it is hoped the wall can bring stability: both in the most literal sense, by holding back the desert, and by providing opportunity for those who have watched their main life source disappear before their eyes.
Already $8 billion has been pledged to build the Great Green Wall. Among its high-profile backers is Fernando Meirelles (director of City of God and The Constant Gardener), who is the executive producer of a soon-to-be-released documentary following the route of the Great Green Wall, which is being screened at film festivals this summer. *** this might mean you don’t want to feature it hence the back up.
Back Up:
Bio Carbon Engineering (UK)
CEO Lauren Fletcher spent 20 years as a NASA engineer, is pledging to plant 1 billion trees using industrial technology.
The method? Drones.
Current tree-planting programs "are just not fast enough,” said Irina Fedorenko, a co-founder of the company. “But our technology is automated, so we can scale up quite realistically and quite quickly.”
Trees are critical to absorbing the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Without them, the speed and severity of climate change will continue to escalate. But for their part, BCE has dubbed their strategy “industrial-scale reforestation.”
“If you re-forest a large area of land, you bring back not just fertile soil, but you can really impact local climate, improve the water table, carbon sequestration, increase biodiversity, and, of course, landscapes are never empty so you always have people who are benefiting from the ecosystem,” Fedorenko says.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
[Montage of text and imagery]
Cut to Eddie Harris singing “It’s Alright Now”
We see shots of reusable cloth bags, tree-free paper products, recycled paper products, hemp, Rainforest Alliance food, flowers and coffee.
Sustainable building materials.
Sign up to stop Junk Mail
With text on how to petition government for change.
Jim:
Thanks for watch our small but immensely important film. For those of you that have stayed with us we want to reward you with a serious injection of hope cut to maybe one of the most beautiful songs about the our planet…
[Michael interrupts.]
Michael:
You should have hope.
Jim:
I do have hope, because quite simply we love & want the best for our kids don’t we?
Call To ACtion
[Louis Armstrong “What A Wonderful World” plays
Cut to a montage of our world corrected.
Clean oceans, filled with fish, corals bursting with life. Lush landscapes, clean energy being generated, solid ice caps. Kids with clean water. Flowing clean rivers. Trees, trees and more trees. We’ll also feature all our inventors.]
Micheal:
[v/o and caption over URL]
Everything we’ve discussed is on the website www.xxxx.org and with the simplest guide to do all the things we have suggested….we can do this but we have to do it together.
www.xxxx.org
Team
PRODUCER
Dilly Gent (LA & London based)
Early on, Dilly gained a reputation for her ability to match the right people with the right project. She’s been the secret sauce behind many of them - steering artists in the right direction and inspiring others to take up a rather that rings more true. Artists like Radiohead, have depended on her to craft their visual narrative. Working as their Creative Director for 16 years, she commissioned all their music videos and photography, as well as their visual content, including the Grammy nominated feature documentary “Meeting People Is Easy”.
From her TV show, “From The Basement” to the 60 short films Dilly produced for Al Gore’s Live Earth, Dilly has had the good fortune to work alongside many passionate individuals who share her love for the planet.
Founding Son&Heir is a deliberate move towards continuing that journey, creating content to encourage social change and working alongside brands and artists with a purpose to illustrate what they truly care about: the next generation.
EDITOR
for overall film & sound mix and sound design:
Jerry Chater (London based)
Jerry Chater started editing in the early days of music videos, alongside directors such as Godley & Creme, Derek Jarman, Lindsay Anderson, Wim Wenders, Brian Eno, Mark Neale, Roman Coppala and Grant Gee. Highlights included videos for U2, Radiohead, Blur, Nick Cave, Coldplay, Counting Crows and Peter Gabriel, amongst numerous others.
In 1989 Jerry edited 'JFK, The Day the Dream Died'. Directed by Godley & Creme for Channel 4's Despatches. By all accounts the documentary inspired Oliver Stone to make 'JFK'.
In 1998 he started a long creative relationship with film maker Grant Gee. Starting with Radiohead's 'Meeting People is Easy' - a '90-minute noise symphony' Uncut Jan '98. The film was also sound designed by Jerry and he received a credit for incidental music.
Other films with Gee included Gorillaz 'Demon Days Live' and 'Don't Crash', an hour long documentary into the making of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.
Grant Gee's films 'Joy Division', 'Patience, after Sebald' and 'The Innocence of Memories' were subsequently edited and sound designed by Jerry. The former winning
the prestigious Grierson Award for the Best Cinema Documentary in 2008
Jerry is an established commercials editor working on numerous campaigns. In 2014 the Mumford & Sons film 'Road to Red Rocks' was Grammy nominated, edited by Jerry with Fred & Nick of Pulse Films.
In 2014 Jerry was co-lead editor on Mark Neale's latest film, 'Hitting the Apex'. Set in the world of the MotoGP and the story of six fighters - six of the fastest motorcycle racers the world has ever seen. The film was exec-produced and narrated by Brad Pitt and was released in Autumn 2015.
Grant Gee's film 'Innocence of Memories' which Jerry edited and sound designed was premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2015 and had it's British premier at the London Film Festival in Jan 2016. Narrated by Nobel Prize winner Orham Pamuk and featuring his novel 'The Museum of Innocence' and the museum in Istanbul of the same name.
In 2016 he edited PLACEBO: ALT. RUSSIA, directed by Charlie Targett-Adams and fronted by Placebo’s Stefan Olsdal. The film followed the band’s tour through Russia, meeting artists, architects, animators and musicians on the way, investigating the alternative culture in Russia. It had its World Premiere at the Beat Film Festival (Russia) in May 2016. It won Japan’s IDFA 2016 Grand Prize Award and the Doc N Roll Film Festival’s Best Music Documentary Award.
In 2017 he took the reins editing George Michael's 'Freedom', broadcast on Channel 4 and Showtime and in 2018 he was on the edit team for 'John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky' for Channel 4.
DIRECTORS for the documentary segments:
Adam Patterson (London based)
Adam Patterson is a director and photographer.
Originally working as a documentary photographer Adam covered hard hitting health and social issues such as drug addiction and teen gangs. Resulting work was published in iconic publications such as Time magazine and The Guardian and is exhibited globally.
In 2015 he shot a 1 hour BBC Panorama special following Syrian refugees 1500 miles from Greece to Austria. “Europe’s Border Crisis: The Long Road” was fronted by veteran journalist John Sweeney. Other recent films include producing a film in Iran and Channel 4 foreign affairs strand Unreported World and most recently producing “Belfast’s Buds” - a hard hitting observational film about prescription drug addiction for BBC 3.
In 2017 he won a silver award for directing at the Kindle Shark awards in Ireland. he has made several short films and frequently produces content for NGO’s and corporations across Africa.
Vern Moen (LA based)
Is an adventurer. He has worked on documentaries around the world. With a history of collaborations with bands and artists, including the likes of Radiohead, his work is musically inspired.
Moen is the director of “A Shepherd” and the feature documentary Material of the Future. In 2010 Vern set sail with David de Rothschild from San Francisco, CA to Sydney, Australia on The Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled PET plastic and waste products. The end result was a feature length doc called Material of the Future which was narrated by Alec Baldwin. He also directed and edited Season 3 of From The Basement including a one hour Radiohead special.
He has just completed a short film about Puffin Inventions, for Not Impossible Labs.
graphics
Statistics and information need to be presented in a simple clean graphic form.
I haven’t locked down my graphics team yet, but here is an example of simple typography and design illustration.
Distribution
There are so many routes open to feature documentaries and episodic these days:
Theatrical, network, streaming and digital.
There is no one direct route, so we need to start with the film’s purpose, what do we want to achieve?
In this case it’s to educate, inspire and motivate the viewer to take action.
For this reason the distribution partner has to be passionate about the film and its message. This way they will look at the best and most creative ways to promote and sell the film.
Traditional theatrical:
I don’t really see this film as being traditional theatrical, but it could still have an unconventional theatrical release.
(UNCONVENTIONAL) Theatrical + event:
I was reading about the distribution for the film Abacus, that PBS Distribution acquired for the US.
As PBS have a local voice (they have a station in every city in the US) they set up 700 event screenings with talks that were relevant to that area. They also licensed the film to all the major streaming platform and education partners.
It originally had traditional theatrical distribution but didn’t do too well but ended up being a huge success because of this unconventional distribution model that followed.
This could be a very good model for The Clock, and could work globally with a different network partner for each territory.
Festival route.
If you decided you wanted to put the film into festivals I highly recommend getting a sales agent and a publicist.
Films get buried at these huge festivals without.
But, this is the place where the networks, streaming platforms etc come to go shopping. Every global network imaginable does the tour during festival season.
Direct to network/digital.
If you decided to go this route, again I would recommend getting a sales agent.
For my TV series, From The Basement and for my documentary Meeting People Is Easy, we negotiated our own deal for the UK and later the US but used a sales agent for ROW.
Whichever route you take you will most definitely need a strong social media and digital campaign running alongside.
* Please see social media marketing further below
For digital there are so many routes we could go that the social media campaign would support.
As there is a strong music component to the film, we could work alongside musicians to get the message out. Musicians have a strong and loyal following.
For example:
We could make a music video with John Legend to his song “I Could Change”.
Lyrically this could work with a narrative about him changing his life to be more sustainable.
Giving up single use plastic, fast fashion (I doubt he buys fast faction but you get the idea!). I know his manager well and we could ask him to change the lyrics to be a tighter fit.
We could do this with many artists.
These videos could live on youtube, where there can be all the information about the film and its mission and direct viewers to the website where there will be information on the call to action. The musicians we work with can also post about the call to action, that way we can reach a huge audience in whichever demographic we want.
Lastly I would like to mention Episodic.
In one film we’re only scratching the surface of this issue and the call to action.
If we went the episodic route we could go far deeper into each topic and cover many more subjects. Sustainable Building is an extremely important issue that I couldn’t fit into this 90 mins but again with episodic it could have 30 minutes to itself.
Social Media Overview
More than ever before, social media has become a quintessential facet of the film world in motivating audience awareness & engagement, frequently resulting in elevated success upon release. With the two worlds settling into a groove in recent years, social media campaigns are now orchestrated months in advance of release, helping the content and messaging stand out in people’s minds and driving audiences to the screens.
Social Media Roll Out
(1) DEVELOP assets & material
In alignment with the documentary’s mission statement and overall branding, and months prior to launch, develop a robust archive of assets, descriptive material, articles and messaging that tailor to the docu’s end goals - inspiring long-term change - which provides opportunity to map out the launch in detail.
(2) Catapult universal presence
Launch social media pages with cohesive branding, top-tier wording and usernames/handles. Example: @theclockdoc across all channels:
Instagram (inclusive of Instagram Story / IGTV)
(3) Integrate scheduled activity
Establish a heightened, active presence by:
Scheduling frequent posts based on a) the various themes and topics in play, and b) the big picture strategies in each phase of the docu’s journey.
Releasing behind-the-scenes interviews, photos, teasers and snippets surrounding the content within the docu.
Leveraging celebrity reach with shared posts on cast and influencer pages, including like-minded activists in a similar space.
Setting representative geotags, hashtags and account tags in place to further the project’s outreach.
Intertwining content with related news, both in direct correlation with the docu and in relation to the betterment of the earth.