With two cups of coffee under his belt, filmmaker Seth Warren was well into a day’s work of editing his new film, ‘Nature Propelled,’ in Missoula, Mont., when Moonshine Ink caught up with him for a phone interview the day before Thanksgiving.
With his first film, ‘Oil + Water,’ Warren found unexpected success at film festivals in 2008, winning the People’s Choice Award at the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival and Best Picture at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival, plus many more. Warren’s next effort looks at the natural energy used to power outdoor adventure sports, and how those same forces can be harnessed to provide alternative fuels. Nature Propelled will premiere at the eighth annual WSEFF in Nevada City on Saturday, January 16, 2010, and is narrated by actor Patrick Stewart, well known for his work in the ‘Star Trek’ and ‘X-Men’ franchises. Read a preview of WSEFF from the December 2009 print edition of Moonshine Ink.
Warren took a break from editing to share his thoughts on filmmaking, meeting movie stars and the importance of developing a fun relationship with nature.
Moonshine Ink: How’s the editing going? How has this filmmaking experience been different from your first film?
Seth Warren: When we made ‘Oil + Water,’ I didn’t know anything. … It was a total shitshow. We just had two low-budget cameras, didn’t know anything about it — there was a 15-tape span where the audio was turned off. [‘Oil + Water’] worked out so well with a beginning, middle and end, but that was totally by luck.
This one I really tried to put it together to make it an education and outreach project. We reached more schools and reached more people, but really focused on making a flow for a real film. Obviously sustainability through action sports will be the theme of any film I’ll ever work on.
MI: What new material does ‘Nature Propelled’ take on?
SW: The new film has those exact same themes. It’s the exact same niche, but focused on broader issues. Renewable energy and nature propelled sport and how those two things intermingle.
It’s not just looking at the sport but actually the energy happening to propel those sports and how we can use that same natural energy to create energy to power everything.
It’s a real uplifting, positive message for real world reform towards sustainability. Real people doing real things, like a water jug outside a house in the sun to heat the house, inventing a way to use farm waste as fuel.
MI: In the trailer for ‘Oil + Water,’ the narrator says that you came up with the idea for the trip in Baby, the Japanese firetruck, but then realized you couldn’t afford the gas. This then led you to biofuels. Do you think a reduction in resources, whether it’s financial or environmental, is going to force large scale changes out of sheer necessity?
SW: There’s a great quote in the film from Erich Bussian at San Juan Bioenergy, and almost directly he says, ‘We’ve had cheap free oil for as long as we can remember, but that’s changing and now it’s time to reinvent.’
I was searching for something to do with my life and stumbled upon biofuels. By no means do I feel biofuels is the answer [to everything] that I’m trying to relay to the masses. We came up with one answer for ourselves, to take [vegetable] oil other people were throwing away and use it to replace something costing us a lot of money. That kind of creativity will lead us into the future.
MI: The theme for the 2010 WSEFF is food and its production and consumption in our society. Why do you think this is such an important topic?
SW: Being associated with things like [my films], working with really cool companies; like, Clif Bar makes all their stuff out of organic [ingredients]. I’ve always read it on the label, but didn’t really think about what it meant.
‘Elements of Food’ is a smaller, unfinished film [of mine] also showing at the fest. It’s not done, but relevant to the discussion, so I was invited to show it. Just making this film completely changed the way I look at the food industry and what I eat.
There are so many people out there that don’t really think about where their food comes from, and with a project like this it forces me to think about that. The bottom line is what you eat pretty much makes you who you are. We really need good people in this world, and I think good food contributes to that.
MI: Why is having fun in nature so important — why do you focus on adventure sports, why do people need to enjoy nature, and how does this contribute to conservation efforts?
SW: I really look at my life as hybrid life, like a tripod, and three legs come together to make a whole. The first is create; I go out and build things, create new things. Second is play; without going out and having fun you’re not going to want to do anything. Without fun, what is point of living? The other one is care; I’ve had opportunity to go to college and travel around world. With all that opportunity comes a responsibility to do something positive for the world.
MI: How do you go from making your first film not knowing anything to having a well-known actor like Patrick Stewart narrating your second?
SW: I was really just making [‘Oil + Water’] as a home movie, to chronicle the trip and show to my family. The more time I put into it, I showed it to some people and they were like, this is awesome. And I just got on Google and searched for adventure film festivals. … Wild & Scenic and Jules Verne came up. I think all four festivals that we submitted to, we were accepted and won, and since then it’s gone on to win all kinds of stuff worldwide.
At Jules Verne, it was insane. Total Hollywood, the whole red carpet thing with the cameras. We were blown away that we made it. … We didn’t even know there was going to be celebrities.
Patrick Stewart presented me with the award [for Best Picture] and he was like, we’ve got to talk after this.
We drank wine while rest of show went on, and got invited to the VIP party, some crazy party with all the actors. … We’re all just hanging out in the back, and [Stewart] sends one of the cronies over. We just kind of hit it off. He’s totally genuine, cool guy, just a normal guy. We started talking, emailed a couple times, I came up with new idea, just pitched it to him in a real matter of fact way, and he was like, I’d love to.
MI: Why did you pick WSEFF for the premiere of ‘Nature Propelled?’
SW: I’ve been to all the film festivals. … Another one that is really good is Telluride, but it didn’t accept ‘Oil + Water.’ Banff didn’t accept it, they told me directly, ‘Well, some film festivals are looking for films with an environmental theme, but we’re not.’
Wild & Scenic brought it in, and it did really well on tour. I’ve had so many people email in, and made so many connections from [Wild & Scenic]. And I love Nevada City; it’s such a classy place to have a premiere. … It’s a great place to bring in important people associated with the film, somewhere I’m happy to take them.
And with that, Warren was back to the editing room before executing more field research in the afternoon, as he has worked his way up to Class III rapids in the emerging discipline of whitewater stand up paddling.
For more information on WSEFF, visit wildandscenicfilmfestival.org or call 530-265-5961.
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