Our Story

This film is about the process in which it is being made. Our documentary will tell the story of the idea's journey from start to finish, detailing how so many people joined together for one moment.

The 1 Second Film started as a side-project in 2001 while I was studying experimental animation at CalArts. But the roots of the idea go back to 1995. Before stumbling into animation I was studying philosophy at a small school in Florida called New College. I remember I was sitting under a tree, reading a book by Sartre, when I came across an idea of 'perfect moments.' The idea struck a chord and I put the book down and started thinking about the power of small moments. Then I started thinking about ways to create one.

One thing led to another, and I decided to make an animated film for my philosophy thesis. I had never made a film before, but I liked the possibility animation provided for compressing a lot into a little; there are 24 individual frames in a single second of film.

The next two years were spent teaching myself how to animate and making my first film. I soon became completely absorbed by the process, and would often spend days drawing just a few seconds of animation. It was during this time that the idea of making a film that was just one-second long first popped into my head. I knew it was a weird idea, but I couldn't shake it.

After graduating, the idea followed me to CalArts, where I went to graduate school to study Experimental Animation. During my thesis concept development class, I asked my professor if I could make a one-second film for my MFA thesis project. He said no (too short). Still, I couldn't stop thinking about the idea, and continued to develop the concept while I was working on my other films.

After a year at CalArts, the idea developed into a collaborative experiment designed to bring everyone at my school together to make one-second of animation. The project was awarded a $1,500 CalArts Interschool Grant, which provided seed funds for organizing the animation painting party. After 6 months of planning, and the help of hundreds of people, the party took place on March 8th, 2001 (International Women's Day), and together we painted the 12 frames of one-second of animation.

The animation event was a ton of fun. Soon after, I started thinking about expanding the concept beyond my school. Then, a few months later, September 11th happened. The idea then developed into a 5 Phase Plan to build a non-profit platform to facilitate global collaboration.

At this point, I felt the big picture goal had a lot of potential, but it also was pretty overwhelming, and I had no idea where to begin. This was still pre-YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc., so the online possibilities for collaborating where still maturing. Also, I still had to graduate, so I put the idea aside for a few years to finish school.

In 2004, after graduating, I decided to start working on The 1 Second Film again. To raise funds, I made a flier and began selling $1 Producer credits to people on the streets. Much to my surprise, people responded really positively. The support encouraged me to keep going, and I used the funds raised to make better fliers. Eventually enough was raised to build our first website and buy a little video camera to document the process.

I was going to film festivals with my other animated shorts, and started selling producer credits on the side. This was a really great venue, so my friend Craig Trudeaux and I decided to start doing this full time. Together, we managed to sneak into lots of film festival parties, and land some big name producers, from Kevin Bacon to Stephen Colbert. We posted some videos of the fundraising adventure on YouTube, and the project began to grow online.

Over time, some of the amazing people I have met along the way helped set up a non-profit, The Collaboration Foundation, to give the project formal structure, and to start building a platform for future projects. We have also continued to improve our website to allow more people to participate.

In 2007, we bought a used school bus on eBay, set up a cross-country tour with our crew, and drove 10,000 miles to ask Oprah for $1. We came up a dollar short, but we passed 10,000 Producers.

After our road trip, we set about developing a new site based on lessons learned. The recession slowed fundraising, but eventually we raised enough to build our new site, which makes the project free to join, and gives our crew tools to participate more.

We're now working toward finishing our documentary while continuing to build our community of participants for future projects. 

To see more details, check out our Production Timeline and follow @1secondfilm on twitter as the journey continues. And please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Thanks,

Nirvan, director

About the Film | Participate | How it Works

What next?

This project is a non-profit experiment in global collaboration. We're making this project in a way that has not been done before, and figuring it out as we go.

Our next goal is to raise $50K toward post-production to hire a team of editors for a year to work on our documentary. Please join our crew to participate.