“The idea for TIME CAPSULE MOVIES began with my ongoing love for the play OUR TOWN and how that masterful play both has a scene about a time capsule, and is a time capsule. And I thought: can I take my experience as a documentary storyteller and translate that to personal portraits? Not made for wide release, but made for and about those who love and know us most. Capturing special people, moments, landmarks, and preserving them, like a time capsule, before they are gone.”
How It Works
Time Capsule Movies are created in collaboration between the family and our filmmaking team.
First, fill out our very brief Time Capsule Questionnaire. Upon our review of that, we will set up a call to discuss it in more detail. On that initial call, we will discuss the most important elements you and your family want for your movie, such as:
– What do you want your audience to feel at the end of the film?
– What genre/style of documentary would you like?
– How many characters/family members will be in the film?
– How much archival material does your family have?
And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a filmmaking expert to answer these questions. Everyone knows what movies they have loved, and how those movies made them feel.
After this initial call, we will put together a proposed budget and schedule. Once that is approved, we would move on to the actual production starting with an initial meal (or Skype) with you and your family to help us get to know each other. This will be followed by one to three or more days of filming and culling of archival materials, then several weeks of editing to craft the materials into a movie.
You will have the opportunity to see an early cut of your film to give one detailed round of notes/comments for suggested changes, followed by one shorter round of notes before we finalize and master the film. Once the film is mastered, we will deliver the film as:
-An HD streaming link (such as Vimeo)
-A full resolution Quicktime video file
-A DVD and Blu-Ray master.
-The original footage on a hard drive for your family’s archives.
All Time Capsule Movies are produced with professional production qualities compatible with the best documentaries on the market. Our budgets are determined by maintaining that quality, and adjusted according to the needs of a particular movie such as length, locations, number of shoot days, original score, or any other elements you desire.
THE FILMMAKERS
Scott Hamilton Kennedy
Academy Award ® nominated filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy is a writer, director, producer, cameraman, and editor who has worked on everything from documentary and scripted film, music videos and commercials to motion capture animation, scripted and reality television.
His theatrically released documentary work includes: The Garden, which tells the story of the complicated struggle over the nation’s largest community garden. OT: our town—about the first play in 25 years at Dominguez High School in Compton. Scott’s latest documentary, Fame High, follows four students through one of the most respected and competitive public arts high schools in the country. Scott is putting the finishing touches on the feature-length documentary, Food Evolution, about the global struggle to feed two billion more people by 2050 and to do it without destroying the planet.
Scott resides in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles with his wife, Catherine Borek, and their two daughters Tessa and Eden.
To learn more about Scott and Black Valley Films, visit his website here.
Dana Nachman
Dana Nachman’s 2015 film Batkid Begins was bought and distributed by Warner Brothers. Previously she wrote, directed and co-produced the documentaries Witch Hunt, which premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival; Love Hate Love, which premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival; and The Human Experiment, which screened at the Mill Valley and IDFA Film Festivals. She has won three Emmy Awards, Edward R. Murrow Award, Heartland Film Truly Moving Picture Award, Common Sense Media Seal, Certified Fresh Award: Rotten Tomatoes, the Dove Foundation Seal and more than a dozen Jury and Audience Awards at film festivals.
To learn more about Dana, visit her website here.
ON TIME CAPSULE MOVIES: As filmmakers we’re constantly on the search for compelling stories. The longer you do this, the more you realize that everyone has an important story to tell. It is our job to tell these stories in the most engaging, creative and visual ways possible. This is where the magic happens for filmmakers and where making films switches from a career to a way of life. Time Capsule will allow us to constantly be doing what we love between our theatrical projects. We can’t wait to tell your story.
Kurt Kuenne
Kurt Kuenne is an award-winning filmmaker and composer of both fiction and documentary films. He is a recipient of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting whose films as writer/director/composer include the teen drama Scrapbook (1999), the PBS documentary Drive-In Movie Memories (2001, premiere: Telluride Film Festival), the award-winning short film series of Rent-A-Person, Validation, Slow and The Phone Book (2003-2008, winners of 40+ awards at 120+ film festivals), the acclaimed documentary Dear Zachary (2008, named one of the 100 best documentaries of all time by PBS POV) and the Frank Capra Award-winning feature film Shuffle (2011), starring TJ Thyne of Fox’s Bones. He co-wrote, edited and sound designed the multi-audience award winning documentary Batkid Begins (2015), directed by Dana Nachman and released by Warner Bros.
ON TIMECAPSULE MOVIES: I love telling stories, I love preserving a moment before it’s gone, and I love meeting new people and learning about their lives – and one of the things that has been most rewarding to me about documentary filmmaking is seeing the reaction of subjects when they see their lives turned into a story, to see how much it means to them to have a portion of their life captured forever as a beautiful narrative that they can share with others. Time Capsule Movies gives me the opportunity to continue to have that experience in short bursts between bigger projects, to create a piece of art from someone’s life of which we’ll both be proud, and which will live on for future generations.
