Our Story

Hi, my name is Nirvan. This film started as my student project while I was studying Experimental Animation at CalArts. A lot has happened since then, and the project has evolved, while pretty much taking over my life. :)

Timeline

Below are some of the key moments in the growth of this project:

2000 - CalArts Interschool Grant

The 1 Second Film project was awarded the maximum ($1,5000 CalArts Interschool Grant, supplying the seed funds to create the collaborative event. Additional funds were raised by selling $1 producer credits.

March 8, 2001 - Animation Event

On March 8th, 2001 (International Women's Day), the 12 frames of animation were painted by hundreds of people during a collaborative event in the main gallery of CalArts. The event was a ton of fun. Here is some video:

Sept. 11, 2001 - Concept Expands into 5 Phase Plan

After the animation event, I began to think about creating sequels, using the idea as a platform for addressing social issues. A few months later was 9/11. The idea began to develop into a collaborative art project to address the impact of that moment. The idea continued to grow into a 5 Phase Plan to create global collaborative art projects that address various social issues:

I decided to try and grow The 1 Second Film in order to build a platform for these future projects. This is the idea that has been motivating me since. I also started looking into forming a non-profit, eventually leading to the Collaboration Foundation...

February 2004 :: FotoKem and 70mm

After I graduated CalArts, I spent the next few years finishing two other animated shorts, The Box Man and The Three of Us. Once these were done, I started working on The 1 Second Film again. I met with Michael Brodersen of FotoKem to get a quote for 35mm post-production costs. FotoKem had given 'The Box Man' a FotoKem Student Grant in 2002. After hearing the concept for The 1 Second Film, Mike suggested completing it on 70mm (FotoKem had just added 70mm services). This was a huge moment as it gave a unique hook to market the film and start fundraising.

February, 2004 :: Fundraising On the Streets

I made a xeroxed flier and started to pitch the one-second film to people on the streets, fundraising $1 at a time. Here is Flier #1, made in Claris Works.

Even though the flier sucked (I didn't know how to use Photoshop), the idea was well received by the people I shared it with. The positive response encouraged me to make a better flier and keep going. I also started making a website (also really bad!) and began hand entering producer names online.

Celebrities

I started running into celebrities while selling producer credits in Los Angeles. My first celebrity pitch was to George Clooney, who I met by chance in FotoKem's parking lot after making photocopies of flier #2:

I was super nervous; Clooney thought the idea was funny but was hesitant to add his name to a film based on a xerox flier and a street pitch. Ultimately, this was a really good learning experience. After that, I spent some time designing much better marketing materials, including the collectible business cards. I also started carrying a presentation kit with me everywhere I went, so that I was always ready to pitch. As my street presentation improved, more people started to chip in... even the celebrities encountered.

Tom Arnold, Ben Harper, Christina Ricci,and Andy Dick were some of the first celebrities to donate. I didn't own a camera yet, but luckily a nice lady took this picture of Tom Arnold donating $100, and emailed me a copy:

I added the photo of Tom Arnold to a new and improved flier #3, along with the names of the celebrities that had donated. I noticed a big difference when pitching folks on the streets using the new flier:

Buying a Camera

I was having some pretty absurd adventures, but I didn't own a camera, so nothing was recorded. I decided I needed to start documenting the fundraising process. I eventually sold enough producer credits to buy a still camera. The first picture I took was of Samuel L. Jackson buying a producer credit for his daughter Zoe:

Soon after, I raised enough to buy a cheap video camera, and was able to video little moments like running into Andy Dick moving into his house:

Film Festival Fundraising :: 2004 - 2005

I had met Craig Trudeau at the AFI Film Festival in 2003; we became fast friends, sneaking into parties and living the life of short filmmakers. Craig is based in Vancouver; I sent him a bunch of fliers, cards, and sign u sheets, and he began selling producer credits for T1SF up in Vancouver while I fundraised in LA; collectively we raised enough to fund a trip to the 2004 Toronto Film Festival. This was the first time I went to a film festival without having a film in the program; our goal was only to sneak into parties and sell producer credits. In preparation, I made the first full color flier #4, especially for the trip (I was getting a little better on Photoshop):

We had a blast in Toronto, and the color flier really paid off by inciting a bidding war between Tom Green and Andy Dick. Here is Craig and I meeting Tom Green in Toronto:

At this point we had about 800 producer credits, and the making of story-line was really starting to develop; it was at this point that I decided to go all in and create a feature-length making of documentary to play during the credits. Craig and I then began travelling to more film festivals to recruit more producers, while raising funds to keep going.

IMDb :: 2005

After getting over 1,000 producers, including celebrities like Kevin Bacon, Pierce Brosnan, and Spike Jonze, we began to submit the film's credits to IMDb. IMDb rejected our project at first, but with the help of Stephen Colbert, The 1 Second Film's credits were eventually listed on IMDb! Thousands of people around the world then began stumbling across "The 1 Second Film" while looking up our various celebrity producers. Fundraising began to transition from on-the-streets to on-line donations- though I was still entering all the names by hand. I continued fundraising, trying to save up enough money to build an automated website. *Note: IMDb later removed our 3,000 Producer Credits without notice - Read more about our IMDb saga

YouTube :: May 2006

I posted a video of clips from Sundance 2005, and it was somehow featured on YouTube's home page. In just 4 days, we raised over $7,000 on-line! This provided the much needed funds to develop an automated web site.

The Collaboration Foundation :: 2006

During my adventures, I was meeting a lot of amazing people. I had the opportunity to share the underlying mission of the project with some of them, and began to assemble a Board of Directorsr (Ben Goldhirsh, Stephen Nemeth, Julie Taymor, and Albert Maysles). The goal of the organization was to building a platform for Global Collaboration, starting with The 1 Second Film project, but eventually expanding much further, and addressing various social issues.

In 2006, The Collaboration Foundation was formed as a non-profit organization in the state of California. Pro bono legal services were generously provided by McDermitt Will & Emery.

Launch of Automated Drupal Site :: March 2007

I had been trying to automate the website for years, but had little web deveopment experience. After entering thousands of producer names by hand, I finally discovered Drupal, a powerful open source Content Management System capable of building online communities. Drupal made the development of an automated social-networking site affordable. After a year of fundraising and several months of work, our first Drupal website was launched, giving all of our producers profiles and automating the donation process, freeing me up from hand entering producer names, while enabling the project to start transitioning to an online community.

Pair.com

Before we launched the site, Pair.com donated web hosting and a dedicated server, allowing us to handle an increase in site traffic and provide the start of an online community.

Digg

After launching, the1secondfilm.com was featured on the homepage of digg.com, which brought a ton of traffic.

Kiefer Sutherland donates $600.23

I was at an empty restaurant with a friend when a group of 5 people walked in. My friend recognized Kiefer Sutherland. On our way out, we said hi and I asked if they had heard of The 1 Second Film. One of Kiefer's friends said he had- and that he was one of our Associate Producers! This really broke the ice, and 10 minutes later, Kiefer donated $600.23 to become one of our top 6 Executive Producers! What made this moment so awesome was the organic way it happened; it felt like we had built the opportunity for that moment by having so many random producers. Kiefer was soon outbid and pushed out of the top 11, which was also cool :)

Apple donates $25K in Computers

Apple donated over $25K in computers and software for editing our documentary. This was huge as it finally gave us the tools to edit our documentary.

Road to Oprah :: November 2007

We launched a quest to ask Oprah for $1 to join our producers. After more fundraising, we bought a used school bus for $3K on e-bay, converted it into a bio-diesel RV and mobile billboard, and drove it across America sharing this project with thousands of people.

We sent out a newsletter inviting our producers to help organize the tour. We received invitations from YouTube and Google to present. We also arranged stops at universities, highschools, coffee shops, skate parks, and even a Veteran's Home. We then drove 10,000 miles across America.

When we finally got to Oprah's studio in Chicago, she was in Africa dealing with a crisis at her leadership academy. So we never met her. We are going to edit the footage from the tour to send to Oprah's producers and possibly try gain. Footage will also be included in the documentary... we have over 400 hours of footage to edit...

Donated Office Space :: January 2008

FotoKem donated office space, giving us a secure place to keep the Apple computers, and start organizing post-production. It was pretty cool to not be working out of my home.

What next?

Our goal is to build a platform for global collaboration, while raising the funds to complete this film.

The next big step is to make some major improvements in our webs platform so we can better organize participation and begin to build the community for the Collaboration Foundation.

I've been designing the new site while slowly raising the funds to build it.

For more current day to day, you can follow my blog.

Thanks for reading :)