Premier Update!

Symphony of Soil was just chosen to premier at The Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capitol! March 25th 2012. Be there or be square!

A touch of color

This week we entered one of the finalizing stages- color correction. Lead by the skilled hands of Gary Coats, we fixed red noses and over exposed shots- we toned down colors for broadcast and looked for scenes that didn't match. Onwards towards completion- on! on! on!

Fine-ally

Another update on the elongated finishing stages of a Symphony. Today, our esteemed editor Vivien Hillgrove, handed in the fine cut of Symphony of the film. This is the beginning of the end. All our crew are glowing at this idea. Five years in the making plus, we are one step closer to completion. Next... graphics, animation, music, color correction and..... you get the picture.

Are we there yet?

If we imagine the film making process as a family road trip- we are at that point in the trip where the kids in the back seat are pushing their feet into the back of their parents chairs- and constantly asking, "Are we there yet?"

Folks, after nearly 5 years in the making, the next few months till completion seem to stretch on before us ad-infinitum. There seem to be a an inordinate amount of tiny, precise processes that must be carried out in a specific order, lest we stall. Final cuts, graphics, color correction, music, sound mixing... the list goes on. I swear, one doesn't realize, but for every credit on a film, there are a hundred phone calls, a thousand emails, and hours of racking ones brain.

So, for all of you fans-to-be who have emailed in the last month with questions like "when will it be done?" and "how close is it?"... We'll give you a lolipop if you just chill for a bit, and take your feet of the back of our chairs- we're almost there.

Farm Bill Take 1

Last night we showed a part of SOS at a Farm Bill briefing for supporters of CALCAN, the California Climate Action Network, an umbrella organization for a tight group of California non-profits that are coming together to organize around the Farm Bill.

Deborah spoke briefly about the imperative that those aware of what a sustainable Farm Bill would look like have in the next year. She mentioned the need to respect the soil at the base of any solutions that may change the way the US treats and funds agriculture.

Together with Tom Philpott, and Dan Imhoff, Deborah made powerful case for the support of CALCAN, and for everything that needs to be defended by supporters of Sustainable Agriculture.

Last Pre-Screening

Last night we concluded the last in a series of pre-screening events. Scientists, agriculturalists, editors, and directors came together at the Saul Zaentz Media Center in Berkeley to lend us their eyes and ears for the evening. 

With enthusiasm, they patiently waded through the latest version of the film- saving their comments until the end, when we handed out questionnaires and pens. 

About Symphony of the Soil

Symphony of the Soil is a multi-film projects by award-winning filmmaker, Deborah Koons Garcia (The Future of Food, 2004). Symphony of the Soil is an artistic and scientific exploration of the miraculous organism which is soil, an often overlooked protagonist of our planetary story. 

The project consists of a feature film, Symphony of the Soil and various short films or, Sonatas of the Soil, such as Soil: In Good Heart, Portrait of a Winemaker, Transition Town Totnes, and Sekem Vision. The project is currently in production with an expected US release in late Spring of 2012.


Please stay informed by following this blog and by joining the soil community. 

Racing towards the finish line

Today at Lily Films, we are lining up one of the final steps in the film-making process, pre-screenings. At this point in the film making process, everyone on the film team has seen the cut so many times, it's hard to distinguish what end is up and what end is down. Additionally, we're so in love with the film as is, it's hard to imagine it changing, even if the length continually ekes over our mentally set length limit.

So, we are calling in back up. Several teams of fellow directors, producers, editors, soil scientists, and aggies will be viewing the film over the next few weeks around the bay area, giving feedback on where to trim and what parts inspire them most.

We're looking forward to this first round of formal feedback. Another leap closer to the finish line!

Final Shoots

In the making of any film there comes a time to, as we say, wrap it. Symphony of the Soil has been in the making for nigh-on 5 years and we are rapidly drawing to a close. The film is close to fully edited, the score is being written as we speak, and last week we went out twice more, to shoot the filler for the interstitial gaps we have left. 

In waiting with shot list

A central piece of that interstitia, the bond of aggregation, is Dr Ignacio Chapela (featured earlier in Soil on Ice.) We traveled with Ignacio to the western edge of the continent to film some of the final shots in Symphony.

Ignacio at the Pacific Edge

Becoming Soil Conscious by Deborah Koons Garcia

This fall I will be completing my new feature length documentary, Symphony of the Soil. Along with this exploration of soil, I am creating several short films, Sonatas of the Soil, each of which goes deeply into one soil-related topic like dry farming grapes, as is depicted in Portrait of a Winemaker: John Williams of Frogs’ Leap. Yes, I have become a soil freak or soil geek or soil lover or all three. How did this happen?


For the rest of Deborah's full length article originally published in: Edible Marin & Wine County,

Little Hands, Lots of Dirt

Today we encouraged kids to do what kids do best: get dirty. In a rousing session at Singing Frog's Farm in Sebastopol- Deborah directed kids to rolick', dig, toss, and generally muck-about in our favorite protagonist: soil.

Photo by Laurent Alfieri

Photo by Laurent Alfieri

Photo by Laurent Alfieri

Photo by Laurent Alfieri

And guess what?
They had an awfully good time.

Who knew kids like SOIL so much? Parents who looked on watched their kids enjoy themselves by touching, smelling, and tasting some good old fashion dirt.

Yale Environmental Film Festival

One of the Sonatas of the Soil, Transition Town Totnes, took best short at the Yale Environmental Film Festival over the weekend. Hurrah for the growing importance of building soil based communities!

SOS in Fresno

Symphony of the Soil had a very successful Work in Progress screening at Cal State Fresno this evening. Over 700 students, farmers, faculty and community members attended. A rousing discussion about soil management techniques and pressing issues in the surrounding San Joaquin Valley ensued. 

Intervale

In Burlington Vermont there is a long standing agricultural develpment projected called the Intervale that stands as a beacon for communities wanting to redevelop their local food system.

Will Rapp has spearheaded the project for nigh on three decade, and he has led the way towards a sustainable local food system for Burlington. Beginning in the 80's, Rapp took 350 acres, which had been essentially a community dump and over time developed a city composting site, farm incubation program, community supported agricultural subscription, and a non-profit. At the outset of the venture, Rapp projected that one day, the space would be able to provide 10% of Burlington's food supply. Now, in 2010, the are very close to meeting that goal.

Will Rapp in interview with Deborah

The Intervale is an incredible example of what happens when someone with a vision sticks with their full cause. When Rapp first started, the community was incredulous about his mission, now they are full fledged believers. Will's project is s staple of the Burlington identity. Produce from the Intervale farms are featured in the local super markets and highlighted on menus of downtown restaurants. Everyone in town knows his name.

The Intervale is just one of the incredible projects that Symphony of the Soil was privileged to film with. As our two day shoot came to a close- Will gave us a list of Burlington restaurants to visit for the evening. As we poured over the menu for our late night supper- local, sustainable, community based Intervale vegetables were prominently featured. 

Stone Barns

Stone Barns is one of those places where we wish the world could exist. It's beautiful, the air and water are clean, the people are healthy, and need we mention- the food is amazing.

The Stone Barns Greenhouse

A Taste Test with their Interns

Sekeem

In the middle of the desert, hours from the center of Cairo- is an Oasis. Lush fields of camomile, calendula, and oranges. Date palms line the roads, expansive lawns run to the edge of the large white buildings.


Sekem which means "vitality from the sun" in ancient egyptian, is a company and campus dedicated to naturally grown products and sustained community development. The company produces skin care products, tea, baby toys, cloths, processed, and non processed food stuffs.

They do all of this biodymically, employing thousands of members of the community around their main site, as well as 8,000 small scale farmers around the country.

Filming children in their half-day job (the other half they are in school) of picking organic camomile.

At their headquarters they have a school, mosque, workshops, and a medical clinic that are all free for their employees and the surrounding community. Everyone who worked for them that we saw, and met, and filmed, was happy, healthy, and educated- a huge contrast to the rest of the country. The food and products that are produced by Sekem is top quality, and most of it is exported to Europe markets.

Every morning employees gather in a circle

What we saw at Sekem was what can happen when a company understands that to take care of the people is to take care of the soil, and visa versa.

The Palouse

Filming in the Palouse was a constant reminder of how rich our country's soils really are. For hundreds of miles, in every direction, lay these golden green rolling hills of wheat. As far as the eye could see. Our host in the Palouse, renowned soil buff Dr John Reganold, never failed to point out the value of these highly productive loess soils, brought in by wind from the prairie to the west and south. 

Crew and John Reganold, on a Butte in Eastern Washington, overlooking the Palouse.

Soils like this, he reminded us, are what the US has built its empire upon. Without owning the majority stock of the world's productive soils, we would not have the world prowess that we have today. Rich soils give us the ability to not only feed ourselves, but also be one of the largest exporters of two of the world's staple crops; corn and wheat. 

DP John Chater and Soundman Ray Day catching the day's warm glow.

 One of the best parts of the shoot was when John took us to a giant road-cut, to see the different layers of soil that supports the relatively thin layer for loess top soil. If you look real close beneath our feet you can see a tiny strip of dark top soil. A stark reminder that however rich in soil the US and eastern Washington may be, the most productive soils are just a thin layer- the skin of the earth.

Soil on Ice

"You must come to Norway and witness the birth of soil!" Ignacio said excitedly over the phone. And that was it, our trip to the northern tip of European civilization had begun.

To film in Norway in July was a directors' dream. 24 hours of sunlight, an endless dawn and dusk quality light. Perfect. And then there's the natural surroundings, northern Norway was (and is still being) carved by glaciers. Glacial recession not only leaves behind amazing sloped mountains and fjords, but also glacial sediment, pure rock dust, that, as Ignacio alluded to, forms one of the base parent materials for soil. 

So there we were, a four day trip to Norway, following Dr Ignacio Chapela up and down the sides of mountains. One particularly grueling day was spent hauling our film equipment up one of these monstrous glacial valleys, to film on a live glacier. 

Ignacio Chapela, mountaineer, tries to assuage the fears of some of the crew about the still long (and steep) road ahead.

A healthy combination of over-estimating our collective abilities to carry heavy equipment, and underestimating the amount of time it would take to transport and hike meant we spent a full 10 hours just reaching the glacier.  

Daniel Chater, Assistant Camera,(center)scouting the glacier

The birth of soil, as Ignacio had described it, was indeed majestic. A silver river, colored by the granite sediment it held, rushed from beneath the glacier. Every crevice in the ice led down to the water below. Year markers marked the steady regression of the glacier, and highlighted the fact that it's been receding far more quickly in recent years (an allusion to climate change, need I digress).

Deborah, John, and Ray on Ice

Ignacio standing at the birthplace of soil

   In the end, despite the fridid temperatures, and the grueling hike in, the magic of the glacier and witnessing the 'birth of soil' put our qualms on ice. Not one of us balked when Ignacio, the only one with a sense of time in a land of 24 hours of sun, showed us his watch on the way down. Both hands pointed directly up, the direction of north, the direction of the sun. In our glacial trance we'd filmed all the way until midnight.

Visualizing Perennials

In Kansas people are doing the unthinkable. In the midst of the corn-belt, in a sea of annual grains that stretches as far as the eye can see, The Land Institute has breeders working around the clock to re-structure our agricultural relationship with plants. Through traditional breeding practices, they are attempting to perennialize our basic food, oil, and fiber crops- corn, wheat, sunflower- the list goes on.

Their vision for replanting the landscape with perennial crops- whose roots will hold down the prairie top soil, is inspiring.

Lead Scientist Jerry Glover being interviewed in a field of perennial wheat

Perennial Sunflowers and Silo

Jerry Glover and Leopold Center's Fred Kirschenmann

Rodale

The Rodale Institute is the longest running organization promoting sustainable and organic farming practices in the U.S. Their organization is smart, tactical, and scientifically sound. Tim LaSalle, (now past) CEO, is one of those people that, with every breath, forces his audience to pause and think about the interconnectedness of global issues, and how simple and clear the solutions really are. 

Tim LaSalle being interviewed by Deborah

Set against the verdant background of mid summer Pennsylvania, it's hard not to be swept up in hope for our collective agricultural future. Rodale is proving, step by step, that through careful soil fertility management, such as the addition of organic matter, we can solve many of the world's large problems.

John, Ray, and Deborah in situ 

 As we walked through their field of wheat, held their soil in our hands, and witnessed the clouds of beneficials (including fire flies might I add)- it was hard not to imagine a world where agriculture is sustainable, where life is well managed, and where the soil is alive.

No Till Corn