The Interledger Community 🌱: Zach Johnson

Anemoia: Scenes from the Future — ILF Grant Final Report

Zach Johnson — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 20:59:28 +0000

Brief Project Description

Anemoia is a portrait of the near-future that asks challenging questions about access: who gets what they need and why? or how to utilize access and privilege for the benefit of all?

Like The Twilight Zone and La Jetee, two prime inspirations, Anemoia uses a sci-fi premise to explore not outer space, but inner space--human issues that, even with recent technological advances, are as old as time. As we "advance," it's important to explore the impact of advancement. The cost of it. Is it really advancement if those that need access the most still don't get it? What is the psychological toll of deprivation to access that could change your life? Allow you to follow your dreams?

Anemoia imagines a future where humanity receives a simple gift--an access--that becomes complicated by humanity's tendency to divide itself. That's the commentary: how access can be wielded very differently in different hands.

Project Update

We're nearing picture lock in the coming weeks: based on actor/crew schedules, we have a final pickup day with a skeleton crew to shoot a small scene that ties the film together.

This will complete principal photography and we will move into post-production with vendors we've secured: final sound/ADR mixing, score composition, color grading, and vfx.

We intend to have the film fully complete by end of August, at which point we'll begin our festival run.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

We strive for well-written story, strong characters, and representation in all our work. Story comes first, and we populate our narratives with characters not typically seen in genre fare. We uphold this missive behind the camera as well, employing talented BIPOC cast & crew whenever possible.

Anemoia is no exception. It's an ensemble piece with characters entering from a wide spectrum of culture, ethnicity, and background, all coming together to face a force that refuses to let them remain divided. Our crew is equally diverse, with Afro-Latinx culture front and center.

This gives Anemoia an organic appeal to wide audiences, and particularly those seen in prominent character arcs. We feel that depicting BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ characters in central roles, with a sci-fi premise that centers around access, is a perfect way for us to reach people who love thought-provoking science fiction that reflects contemporary issues, while not having seen themselves in the work before.

From the beginning, we've understood Interledger as a tech-based collective dedicated to mitigating financial inequity. And while we can't code an internet protocol to save our lives, as artists we seek to build bridges between imagination and reality.

We hope Anemoia and our fellow grantee projects inspire through creativity the drive to solve real problems--to bring theory and philosophy to the world of practical solutions.

Communications and Marketing

We have not discussed our project publicly yet, though we have created an Instagram page to tease its release, with a full website page dedicated to it, as well as an IMDB page that credits our cast & crew.

We want to have the finished piece to begin screening at film festivals and do press runs through those channels as we release publicly.

What’s Next?

As mentioned above, once the film is complete, we'll begin our festival run, traveling where we need to to best represent the film and its aims.

We obviously hope it sparks conversations in the audience, and interest for potential expanded form from production companies. It's a big story, far more than its current 15-minute runtime -- and we'd love to tell more stories within this fascinating, challenging world.

Community Support

We appreciate Interledger's support in the process, as well as that of our fellow grantees. It's been a journey, and this project has had sincere feedback from all, as well as a real connection to other artists working in different mediums that still bring creative sensibilities to our endeavor; and we hope we had that same impact on the rest of the group.

From peer filmmakers to pottery artists to 3-D printers, it was a real joy to listen and learn from other creatives, particularly with a central theme of equity, access, and inclusion.

We couldn't have asked for a better opportunity or focus for our own creative aims.

Additional Comments

We're very excited to release the project in final form very soon!

An almost complete circle double rainbow we shot while on location -- it looks SOOO cool in Black-and-white in the film!!

Relevant Links/Resources (optional)

https://www.instagram.com/anemoia_movie/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28774587/

Anemoia or Scenes from the Future — Future Money Progress Grant Report #1

Zach Johnson — Sat, 02 Dec 2023 04:55:50 +0000

Project Update

We made significant progress on the film, and it started, simple as it sounds, by going back to the award itself. Sometimes, writing dilutes your own vision, you start with a simple idea, but for every question you ask yourself, you come up with at least ten answers. While we're proud with those early results, peeling back and going to the initial concept has made for interesting decisions that we believe broadened our scope while maintaining the spirit of our proposal. The project now has a greater sense of direction, the script nearly complete. We originally planned to shoot in the Philippines, but pivoted to a co-production. Shooting most of the film here in the states, and another part, a sequence we're very excited to integrate into the whole film. The Dominican Republic also works because we have collaborator opportunities there that better fit the original vision and intent of Anemoia. It's an example on how film can be a powerful way to showcase numerous influences at work in the way a person's economic life plays out. That theme is evident in the structure: a film of mostly stills and dialogue as commentary that then morphs into moving imagery that explores the way the photograph came to fruition and the elements outside of that one small snapshot that shaped it.

There was always an element of Sci-fi to Anemoia. But its commentary feels so grounded. We've found an interesting way to tow that balance and showing the very thread of potential in human society everywhere.

Progress on Objectives (KPI’s) (progress on project)

Short video (3-5 minutes) Describing the conceptual thought around the process.

https://vimeo.com/890528649/473daf1be6?share=copy

We are currently building a website that will synthesize the project and host/showcase it (after both a successful film festival run and potential distribution deals) for free. Like many of our projects informed by social commentary, we want to share it in the most accessible way possible and provide additional commentary to the film. That's not always our style, but with this film, we're open to a wider discussion about inclusivity, financial stability, and tangible solutions for the future.

We're also interested in finding spaces that might be interested in doing write-ups for the film, and that will soon be one of our focuses as we move into post-production.

What’s Next?

Now that we're through the development phase, pre-, production, and post- are the next steps.

In pre-, we'll do location scouting, casting, production budgeting, and final selection of all crew. But what's most compelling, and mostly because it's a first for us, working with miniature models to build out this museum-like experience and then comping that in later in post, that's taking a lot of our time. In this particular case, and as you'll see with the images above, much of our research has been in finding other talented photographers that might lend a hand in France, in Tokyo, and here in the US -- really large urban landscape photography that we could use in the very 1st act of the film; in production we'll shoot during February, with much taking place in Los Angeles for the still work/collaborating with selected artists and some, as mentioned above, shooting in the Dominican Republic/Haiti.

Post-production will follow during March and April, with editing, score, VFX, and final format processing occurring in time for our deadline.

Community Support

We appreciate the feedback thus far from Interledger and our fellow grantees. Even if our mediums of creating are different, it's been humbling and inspiring in tangible ways to discuss strengths, challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned.

At the end of the day, that's the takeaway from collaboration: seeing others' experience, listening to their feelings, and better understanding the way our lives impact each other, socially, economically, politically, and so forth.

We look forward to more dialogue, more encouragement, more support from this team and hope to give that back in kind too, even if it's just simply being there to listen.

Though, there are connections we'd love to make. If anybody in the community happens to know anybody that's tied to New Yorker Mag or any other editorial magazines that do write-ups about short films, any writers in general out there, we're very interested in taking them out for coffee!

Additional Comments

Excited for May to deliver the final product. Unlike other mediums, film can be hard to show off until production happens, so having that accomplished in the next few months will be a huge update and way to crystalize what's in our heads/on the page.