Greetings. Over a year ago “Abode” was completed.  The stark reality of a saturated distribution market is apparent by the limited number of people that have viewed the documentary Abode. Over the course of its debut year, it was shown publicly three times.  At the Living Room Theatre in Portland, OR, at Tulane University in New Orleans, and at the Portland Art Museum’s NW Film Center, in addition to a private screening at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As a producer of content, distribution remains an area I’ve offered limited vision or creativity. Eventually this website will host chapters/episodes of the full film for download.  May you enjoy the film one day at a local screening event or by purchasing a copy from this website.

I’ll be leaving Portland in April of 2010 in search of a new location for my creations.  While it will mark the closure of a major chapter for Abode Productions, Portland will remain my epicenter for discovery, and the parting is intended as perhaps a temporary goodbye.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“It’s in the can!”  Or the film will be if we can successfully compress the HD footage to DVD for jury submissions.  Run Time ~ 103 minutes.

Congrats to Brian Gervais, musician and graphic artist for taking on a fantastically rad ambitiously artistic web design job of www.abode-film.org.  The website is currently under initial stages of revamp with intention to launch by April.  Just maybe we’ll bring back the old journal entries dating back to 2005.

Also congrats to McKenzie Kerman for finishing the last piece of animation.  We had to call him back to our house this morning to finish out the very last piece…check his other stuff out at www.catsarenotdogs.com.

In other news, we bought a few books on indie film distribution.  I now realize we know nothing about the business world we are entering.   Supposedly I need a “Producers Agent” or “Sales Agent.”  Hint Hint.  Of course we knew very little of filmmaking when we started…hooray for the process.  Ah curiosity, I succomb to you.

Festivals also want a 50 word logline…

Abode – Sustainability is likened to a religion. To emerge from the consumptive cycle seems larger than mankind – each life feeds on the other.  Yet a man reconciles this guilt in a voyage to the frontier of climate change.  He discovers an inventor who promises utopia, and an industry that promises hell.

We have a final scene to shoot, and about one day’s worth of work on narration recording remaining, and minor touch ups on the credits.  We are beginning to prepare (hopefully for real this time) for our first festival submission!!

The festivals want us to encapsulate our film in 20 words, otherwise known as a “Logline.”  They say you should write one before you write a script…

Tonight’s logline rendition:

Abode – A man’s quest for a sustainable life crashes upon the aged intent of the power industry.

Yes. We are still working on the same film.  A full three years and growing.  No, we don’t know exactly when we’ll be finished.

This website will grow once the film is finished.

The formula below holds the key to the largest inherent problem in United States Energy policy.  The film will help guide why and how.

RR = O + T + d + r(V-D)

RR = An Electric Company’s Revenue Requirement

O = Operational Expenses

T = Taxes

d= Annual Depreciation Expenses

r = Profit Percentage, or Rate of Return the Utility can make

V = Gross Investment the Utility has paid to Generate Power

D = Accumulated Depreciation, the amount V has dropped in value

Greetings.  I could write about the past, the 700 miles of beaches, campfires, hot springs, forests, and mountains that have been, and will be my home again.  The sore knees and ankles that carried my person from then to now.  But there is a film to be brought to an audience…and today the water will move the stone another inch.

Refreshed, recharged, and with new perspective I return to the work in progress, “Abode.”  I had the pleasure of watching the award winning documentaries of 2008 this weekend.  Exactly when did I lose my patience for their template nature, when did I begin fast forwarding million dollar budget films without looking back?  I find myself trying to draw comparisons with my own work.  Comparisons can assist in communication, but they propagate a competitive  ego…so I should leave quietly and resume creating what I promised to deliver.

Speaking of egos, I mostly believe I’m writing to myself with this blog…although it does have thousands of readers. (by thousands I meant milli-thousands)  So enough of this, time to move the stone.

On Sunday June 22nd, exactly a year after the editing process began, on the solstice, Abode was viewed in full for the first time by myself and 12 other friends. The rough cut run time worked out to be 123 minutes. We learned we can greatly reduce the duration from all the wonderful feedback.

Unfortunately, we were also advised to utilize the Narrator with more frequency to help the audience gain clarity. It’s apparent that Abode is not ready for public presentation at festivals and the like. We hoped to submit to the Telluride Film Fest, but we’ll just have to exhibit further patience and trust the subject matter is timeless.

The state of affairs is bittersweet, in that we (the filmmakers) feel very happy with the state of the film, and what it will become. Yet we are not as near DVD press as thought two days ago. Abode will effect the audience when we can make it clear that the story is about them, not a filmmaker’s self. Time is needed for detachment, for James and I to distill the current rough cut to the core pieces we want imprinted in the audience’s mind.

I (Justin) have decided to begin life outside of Abode. The process that has taken the film to its current status is a direct conduit of my life, my consciousness, and the realization of my potentiality. I feel transformed, ready to begin life anew. It’s time to return to The Mother. I’m setting out onto the Pacific Crest Trail, with an eye for a future home. I’ll walk with the transcript in hand….editing with ink from moon to moon amongst the diverse species.

My direct consciousness is transparent in the rough cut…within the 123 minutes, within the 7,380 seconds, within the 221,400 frames that have each been mindfully generated. I trust the woods will let me critique the writing from a new perspective. My daily routine will consist of survival chores, a choice environment to edit a film on the nature of sustainability.

I encourage writers and editors to inquire with James or myself via contact info listed in “Who” to work with the content. Perhaps you can help find its essence.

“I simultaneously deal with both process and idea in order to realize how the manipulation of the image may affect the content. Of what value is an essay with excellent grammar that lacks content, or conversely, an important idea expressed in an inarticulate manner. The problem is coming up with an image that has some kind of substance or resonance that challenges the viewer with elements of enigma and mystery.” – Jerry Uelsmann

Many blessings…

Inexperienced at the inception, an observer attempted to dissolve behind the lens. The observer exerted as little influence on its subjects as possible. The art of the “Abode” documentation became stylistically imprinted as transparent. It was thought that after edits, only answers and insight from the subject would be entertained. Subconsciously, as is always the case, another story was being shot. The ensuing plot would be dishonest if it presented the events as though the observer had no influence on the subject. In fact, John Archibald Wheeler says it best in describing the impossibility of purely observering.

“‘Participant’ is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the ‘observer’ of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can’t be done, quantum mechanics says it.” and further, Pinchbeck explains, “That consciousness is embedded in the process it perceives, continually changing them while it is changed by them.”

As we approach thoughts of outreach, or distribution, our influence will not be sold, as though economic in ends, but strategical. Such was the conversation of the Abode Productions board meeting this weekend, assigning the first thoughts and goals of how we will participate in our story. Without question, synchronicity will evolve the outreach strategy. There are specific events curtailed in the film that will transpire as our film releases. To be clear, both the events we speak to, and the subject matter of the film may appear timely, but we say synchronous, timeless, or an infinite now.

“Synchronicities, epiphanies, peak, and mystical experiences are all cases in which creativity breaks through the barriers of the self and allows awareness to flood though the whole domain of consciousness. It is the human mind operating, for a moment, in its true order moving through orders of increasing subtlety, reaching past the source of the mind and matter into creativity itself.”