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Reviews and Quotes from Viewers
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“A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.” – Dante Alighieri The Spark I approached Kind Green Planet’s executive director Mary Max with the idea, and she immediately gave the project her blessing and came on as executive director. With neither of us having any experience in film, we naively thought it would take a year–possibly two–to complete the project. Little did we know, the average documentary takes roughly seven years from inception to completion and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. As I write this exactly seven years later, I can’t help but wonder, if we had known then how much time, money, blood, sweat and tears, would we have started down this road? Probably not. Thankfully, we didn’t, and thus a film was born.
“… the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” – Goethe We Begin Frank quickly proved that he was no intern; he was a full-fledged producer, throwing himself 150% into every task, including casting the project. We had set out to choose one person to go vegan for one month, interviewed 25 people we found through Craigslist and surprised ourselves by choosing three people instead of one. We figured, why give people the chance to write off our film subject, saying “that doesn’t represent my experience; I can’t identify with her/him”? So we chose three people from three different demographics, each with their own challenges in going vegan. We struck gold with Ellen, Brian, and Tesla, who are hilarious, candid, and so easy to relate to. We got an extra bonus in Ellen’s cute and thoughtful kids, Debbie and Mark. We started shooting and realized that with our limited budget and small crew, we couldn’t capture some of the juicier, more private moments, so we gave the subjects camcorders to record more private, spontaneous experiences. We were grateful for this later when the subjects took their cameras with them on their vacations to New Hampshire, Honduras, and on a cruise to England. These vacations were also the reason why the vegan experiment went for six weeks instead of four. Some of the best footage was from their little camcorders, which captured both the real struggles and the unexpected victories along the way. At that time, consumer camcorders and most professional cameras were all standard definition, and HD cameras were still quite new and expensive. With our shoestring budget, we leaned on a volunteer crew and rental equipment from DCTV to fill in the gaps when director of photography John Pierce and his team couldn’t make it to a shoot with his Canon XL2 and Sony Z1U.
“It takes a village to raise a child.” – African proverb
 Intern Yitzhak "helping" with the edit. It Takes a Village These included several shooters and boom operators in NYC, our entire Pittsburgh crew, sound guy Eric Milano (Born Into Brothels, etc.), Emmy Award-winning sound editor Joel Raabe, indie music database owner Malcolm Frances, composer Dave Fischoff, musicians Moby, Joy Askew, and Art Halperin, our animation team from Asterisk Animation, whose productions have won Emmys, Clios and BDAs, editor Sara Leavitt, associate editor Irina Abraham, editing consultant Ellen Goldwasser, creative consultant Jasmin Singer, and many, many more.  Emmy Award-winning sound editor Joel Raabe. If people didn’t contribute time and skills, they contributed cash. In addition to financial support from Mary and Peter Max and Kind Green Planet, we raised thousands from private individuals and received grants from In Defense of Animals, The Animal Welfare Trust, Culture and Animals Foundation, and VegFund. Truly, if it hadn’t been for the generosity of individuals and organizations, there would be no film.
“The real editing begins when you start to screen it.” – Howard Lyman  FilmShop filmmaker collective members weighing in. Photo by Lauren Kritzer Cutting and Re-cutting Over the next two years, I worked with FilmShop and, for a brief stint, the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, a sister collective whose members’ documentaries have been shown on PBS, HBO and been nominated for an Oscar. These collectives were pivotal when we were fine-tuning the fine cut and integrating final music, animation, and text design.
“When you’re passionate about something, you want it to be all it can be. But in the endgame of life, I fundamentally believe the key to happiness is letting go of that idea of perfection.” -Debra Messing
Letting It Go In Fall of 2010, I brought NYC Vegan EatUP (part of meetup.com) organizer Demetrius Bagley on board to co-produce the marketing and release of the film. As leader of the 1400-member strong NYC Vegan EatUP, I knew he’d understand the needs of veg newbies and veg-curious folks. Plus, with a background in project management, event production, and marketing, he’d be a huge asset to the team. Within a couple of months, FilmBuff, a curated digital entertainment service offered by Cinetic Rights Management, had heard about the film, seen the trailer, and approached us about working with them to help get the film find its digital audience. We signed with them in spring of 2011.
“To infinity and beyond!” – Buzz Lightyear Getting It Out There If the production of the film is any indication of its effectiveness as a change-making tool, we’re hopeful about its wider release. So far, numerous people have been inspired at some point during production or post-production process to go vegetarian or vegan, including our director of photography, a camera operator, an animator, our consulting editor, our trailer editor and trailer producer. And just about everyone else has said they were inspired to eat differently, even if they aren’t 100% vegetarian or vegan. We’re excited for our first public sneak peek screening this July at Vegetarian Summerfest, where we shot life-changing scenes with our film subjects. Seven years, many edits, and a whole village later, we will be coming full circle and beginning a new chapter in this journey. Boy, what a ride… 
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