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00:23Two things in the film that I'm really happy about that people tend to bring up a lot is
00:29the cinematography, the camera work, and the music and how well it works together.
00:36And a lot of people who aren't really that keen on documentaries have said they really
00:41love Windfall because of the camera work and the music and also the characters in it.
00:48So I'm happy that it kind of has that narrative aspect to it.
00:58I think the music in the film is fantastic.
01:01I love Hazmat Modine.
01:03They had this album that was great and it just fit perfectly with the tone of the film.
01:07But it wasn't going to be quite enough.
01:10So we did a very early cut of the film and gave it to the harmonica player and composer from
01:17Hazmat Modine.
01:18And what they did is just took all these different types of harmonicas and played it to this very
01:23early rough cut of the film.
01:30I think it works really well to just to have that one instrument, you know, that's very
01:35empty and echoey that goes with the idea of wind and the wind turbines.
01:43When Laura Israel first approached me about this documentary project idea that she had about
01:49some possible wind turbines going up in her area, she had received something in the mail
01:54that kind of piqued her interest from the Meredith Alliance group saying that there might be more
01:58to the story than what we knew about.
02:00The topic of wind energy wasn't something I knew much about.
02:04I always looked at it as a very positive thing.
02:06I'm into alternative sources of energy, so, you know, I thought I'd like to know more
02:11about it.
02:12I was intrigued because, you know, I have a past as an environmentalist.
02:16I, you know, I always use the phrase like, I'm a vegan who drives a Prius.
02:20So Stacey Foster and I and Laura packed up a car and drove up to a town board meeting.
02:26And I remember sitting in there for three or four hours and not being able to digest it all.
02:31It was daunting to be in those meetings, so I can't imagine even what these people in this
02:35community had to go through.
02:37The research that they had to do, the information they had to pull together to make this very
02:42technical and political issue make sense.
02:46There was a bunch of information.
02:47We didn't understand everything that was being talked about during the meeting because it was
02:51so deep in town law and, you know, setbacks and environmental standards.
02:57I think what I picked up on most there was, there was a strong tension in the room.
03:03And you could tell right away, some people didn't want us there and some people were
03:06really excited for us to be there.
03:08I mean, we didn't even have a position yet.
03:10I didn't have any negative ideas about wind energy when we first started.
03:14I felt like everybody else does.
03:16It's good.
03:16It's green.
03:17Awesome.
03:18I was excited actually just to go in to photograph the turbines.
03:21To me, it was exciting because I knew that graphically these things are going to be awesome.
03:24My whole experience with wind turbines was driving through California on my way to Joshua
03:28Tree and passing through Palm Springs.
03:30I remember seeing them and just being like, wow, how fascinating these things are.
03:36Tug Hill was when I started to go like, my attitude about turbines is changing.
03:41And I remember we drove up there and I think it was a seven hour drive.
03:44When we arrived, there was a really heavy fog sitting on the ground.
03:47We knew we were supposed to be amongst these things, but we couldn't see them and you could
03:50kind of like sense that they were there because there was a rumbling sound.
03:54But, and then I remember seeing the base of one of them for the first time.
03:58It was, it blew my mind, like the scale.
04:01And then I remember the next morning the fog had lifted and we woke up and we walked outside
04:05and there they were.
04:06They're everywhere.
04:07Not only are you seeing them out in the distance, but you're seeing their reflections in every
04:12puddle of water that you, every time you reach for something shiny, there's a reflection.
04:16You're driving down the road and you're catching the reflection in your rear mirror.
04:18They're, they're just, they become maddening.
04:21They've become, they've become omnipresent.
04:23And after being there for five days, I wanted to leave.
04:26That's when my attitude changed because I felt like, what about the people who can't leave?
04:30You know, they're stuck here and into, to be stuck next to this would be, it would be a living
04:34hell.
04:35There's a lot of unanswered questions around like, are they good here?
04:38They're not good there.
04:38One thing for sure that I know is they are not good when people have to live next to
04:42them.
04:42Driving through Palm Springs and looking out your window, it's not the same as, you know,
04:47it's actually being amongst them.
04:48You know, go and spend some time around them and not five minutes on the tour bus, get out,
04:52look how neat they are, what a marvel of human engineering they are and all that sort of,
04:56because they are that.
04:57They are these amazing things, like they are graphically amazing to, to be around, but go
05:00and like, spend some time with them and then, you know, see how you, you feel.
05:06All the pieces used in the collage, we collected from all the people in Meredith as they gathered
05:12all their information, so they kept handing it to us and so we had to find a way to display
05:17it.
05:17So I decided that we should like, paste it all together somehow and my first idea of course
05:23was a notice board, like a local town notice board, but we wanted it to be more organic and
05:30have like a film-like quality to it.
05:32So while I was designing the collages for the movie, I was also working on a glass panel,
05:37which gave me the idea for everything to be backlit because I was painting on glass and
05:42firing it and you can't see it unless there's light behind it.
05:45I thought it was a really interesting idea to backlight all the information that the residents
05:50of Meredith had given us and then use it almost like a window.
05:55I wanted the maps to look not just representative of plots and margins and land.
06:02I wanted it to be like about the spaces that the people were living in.
06:05You know, some people had cows, some people had chickens, I wanted those in the maps.
06:10It was also that all these people were neighbours and that they'd lived next to each other for
06:15a long time and the conflicts they were going through, so one image would overlay another.
06:20When we were thinking of ideas for the poster, I wanted to use a stencil because obviously
06:25a stencil is something that can be reproduced and this reminded me of the turbines because
06:30there's millions of them and they all look exactly the same.
06:33And then of course I wanted it to be black and white because people perceive it as a very
06:37black and white issue, but in fact it isn't.
06:39We used the yellow to represent caution or danger, this powdered yellow from Peru.
06:46So I actually mixed it up and used it.
06:48So it stained everything, the floor, my hands, my clothes.
06:51How did you get it off your hands eventually?
06:53I didn't.
06:57Well, I grew up in a small town and we pretty much spent the summers going
07:02to the county fair and the big night was the demolition derby.
07:07There was always like a traffic jam getting into it.
07:10You know, it was just this really exciting thing to do.
07:13When we saw that there was a demo derby this night in Meredith at the county fair,
07:17it was so exciting to the idea of shooting it as part of like the whole theme.
07:23And people have questioned that part of the film.
07:26But for me it really does illustrate the whole spectacle that the issue becomes for the town
07:31and the people in the bleachers also start to seem like the people in the meetings.
07:36And I think that that is sort of an exciting thing for me to see that parallel played out in
07:42the film.
07:44After working for over a year shooting, researching, you know, putting the film together in a rough cut,
07:49we decided that we needed to spend some time in Tug Hill where there's over 175 turbines.
07:56Laura, Brian and I, we went up there and we spent about five days in and around the area.
08:01Upon pulling up, you know, you kind of expect them to be on the ridge lines and see them,
08:06but it was kind of a foggy day.
08:07So we missed out on knowing that they were around us until we were right up on them.
08:12And the fog kind of cleared out and it was like sharks in the water.
08:15Like all of a sudden this thing, this really crazy presence was just right there.
08:20And the further and further you looked up, it was still going and cutting through the fog.
08:25It was pretty intense.
08:27We started shooting right away.
08:28We pulled the cameras out.
08:28We pulled the car over.
08:29We got the microphones out.
08:31And these things were a visual sight, but also the sound was, it's unforgettable.
08:36You don't, you don't forget it.
08:47I came home and I, I was starting to have heart palpitations, something I've never had in my life.
08:52And I remember sitting on the couch next to my husband and going like, my chest feels weird.
08:55I don't know what's going on with this.
08:57Then I talked to Laura Israel and she said the same thing, but she was having ringing in her ears
09:01and she didn't know where it was coming from.
09:02We were only there for, you know, five days, which for us was a good chunk of time as filmmakers
09:07to document what we needed to get.
09:09We were able to leave.
09:10We went home.
09:11And it was just pretty emotional to know that there's people that have to live there for the rest of
09:16their lives.
09:18Time-lapse is something that I've all, I've been doing for years and I love it.
09:21And I think it's a great device.
09:22Just a series of still frames is all it is.
09:24I use it a lot in my work.
09:25But in this instance, I thought it was particularly useful because it allowed us to bring out the wind
09:29when the wind wasn't as obvious and to show, yes, you know, the wind is always around us.
09:35It's always there.
09:36The way that the grass flutters or the way, you know, just something subtly moved really made the wind
09:42like a central character throughout the film.
09:46I love being outdoors.
09:47I love spending time outdoors.
09:49And here's an opportunity for us to go to this amazing place, Meredith.
09:52It was all about how this thing was going to affect the outdoors and how it was going to affect
09:55the landscape.
09:56You know, I would go by myself and I would spend weekends there and just wait for the right moment.
09:59Month after month, you start to accumulate all these really pretty shots.
10:03And I think by the end of it, we were all pleasantly surprised that we had this great little library
10:07of Meredith.
10:11Well, a lot of people ask what's happening currently in Meredith.
10:15Unfortunately, what's happening is they're faced with another issue that is way more challenging than wind energy,
10:22and that's hydrofracking.
10:23Natural gas companies have come in and started signing contracts, leasing people's land to drill for natural gas.
10:31And a lot of people in Meredith that were organized around the wind issue are now organized around the hydrofracking
10:37issue
10:38to get the information out.
10:40These towns are going to try to outlaw hydrofracking.
10:43What happened in Windfall is probably going to happen for hydrofracking in upstate New York
10:48in the fact that it's about land use, it's about a company coming in and just taking the resources
10:54and not involving the community in the decisions that are being made about it.
11:01It's not an anti-environmental film at all.
11:04And if anything, I think it could be considered a hyper-environmental film because we're not asking for short answers
11:11that are going to solve our long-term problems.
11:14What's the quick fix, right? Why can't we just buy ourselves out of this situation?
11:18We can't. That's just the hard answer. We can't.
11:22You can't just keep purchasing your way out of this problem. That's what got us here.
11:27We're past peak oil. I mean, we have plastic in every single thing that we have around the world right
11:32now.
11:32It's really a very scary thing. We're going to have to adjust the way that we live.
11:37It's not convenient to be green. It's not convenient to be environmental.
11:40It's going to change our lives.
11:42People, you know, say, well, what am I supposed to do?
11:44I say, do everything. Do everything that you know is going to make a change.
11:49Don't rest and wait for someone else to do it. Just do it now.
11:54There's a discovery process that you go through with any documentary.
11:58And with this documentary, we were going to go up against an already conceived idea
12:04that this technology of wind turbines was something almost sacrosanct.
12:09As we moved through the project, we found that it wasn't so much about the technology of wind turbines.
12:17It was more about researching the topic and taking a reasonable approach
12:22to how do we go into the future with sustainability.
12:26In addition, we had been developing another project that was also based on sustainability
12:32with the way you treat animals, with the way you eat, with the fishing of the oceans.
12:37You have to think about what you're doing to the earth and what you're doing to the animals.
12:40But I think windfall fit right in there and that you had to also think about
12:44what were you doing to the people on earth when you were thinking of sustainable concepts.
12:51As we progressed with finishing both of those projects, they both ended up in the same festivals,
12:58being talked about at the same time in the same places.
13:01And I think that is a testament to what's current and what audiences want to see in the future.
13:08After screening the film all over the world for a year, from Toronto to Vancouver to New York to Amsterdam,
13:17I started to realize how many people are affected by the issue.
13:21Actually, my aunt and my grandmother, once I told them that we were filming about wind energy,
13:26started to fill me in on similar issues that were happening in Traverse City.
13:30I was really hopeful that we would get into the Traverse City Film Festival
13:33because I really wanted these people to see what the people of Meredith were going through
13:38and how they were dealing with it.
13:39There hasn't been one screening where somebody didn't come up to me and say,
13:44this is just what happened in our town.
13:46If you change the names and the faces, this would be my town.
13:49I knew this happened in Meredith. I knew that the wind developers came in in a certain way.
13:54But I was quite surprised by the fact that it was happening in so many other places.
14:00And it is happening. It's still happening in small towns all over the world.
14:05The biggest problem with shooting turbines is the scale.
14:07It's almost impossible to, like, capture the scale of these things.
14:11The feeling that you get standing next to them.
14:12If you put a person in front of it and then by the time you back out far enough to
14:15get the windmill,
14:15you can't see the person anymore. So you get these, you're kind of in this strange place.
14:20But how do I really show how massive these things are?
14:23The one shot to me, there's some power lines in the foreground.
14:26It was really pretty, like the sun was coming across and it was, like, golden.
14:29And that image in the film is probably, for me, one of the only ones that truly gives you a
14:34sense of, like,
14:34the massive scale of these things. You know, everybody knows how big a power line is
14:37and how tall they are off the ground. And then you see the windmill in the background
14:40and it's towering over this.
14:42I think we got really lucky that day in those couple of days we were up there
14:45and the way the weather had moved in and we had that fog that kept rolling in.
14:49It was so pretty and yet had such a dark feeling to it, you know, and I was really happy
14:55with that
14:56because it ended up, I think, playing beautifully with where the narrative went.
15:01There was these great letters to the editor and some of them we do have in the film as, like,
15:06a chyron,
15:07like you read it over the film, but we really wanted to convey some of the personalities in the film
15:13and what was happening and we kind of felt that these letters to the editor could really contribute to that.
15:18So I have a friend who's an actor and his name is Chuck Coggins and he did the voiceover.
15:24It was amazing because he just said, play me some of the voices of the people in the film.
15:29And he said, I'm not going to do an accent, I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going to
15:32do their inflection.
15:34And he did it in the first take.
15:36And I think it's amazing because people who know him really well, I can name like four or five people
15:41who have seen the film and still don't know where his voiceover is.
15:46Turbines were just starting to really be built close and closer and closer to people in the Midwest.
15:51So we were getting a lot of information from people.
15:53And once people knew we were doing the film, then other people would send us stuff.
15:58Chelsea Smith at Double Wide and Stacey Foster also at Double Wide helped get all that information on a drive
16:03and boil it down to 83 minutes because we could have made a 20 hour film.
16:07I think one of the biggest challenges of the film was how to give people so much information that was
16:14so complicated
16:15and do it in a way so that people wouldn't get bored or overwhelmed.
16:19So I have a friend and a colleague that I worked with for a long time, Dean at Modena.
16:24He had done these black and white sort of schematics of like screws and these machines working.
16:30We thought that would be a perfect way to show some of the information about wind turbines that we couldn't
16:35do in collages.
16:36We just wanted to make it informative and kind of a little fun to watch.
16:41So he was able to do that.
16:42I just wanted to mention some of the people who were really instrumental.
16:47Lisa Linose at windaction.org, Linda Barry at Better Plan Wisconsin, windwatch.org.
16:55They really helped us out a lot and sent us footage and photographs and really, you know, immense amount of
17:01research.
17:02Thank you very much.
17:02Thank you very much.
17:04You
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