Introducing Anthropocene
Anthropocene is a new digital, print and live magazine in which the world’s most creative writers, designers, scientists and entrepreneurs explore how we can create a sustainable human age we actually want to live in. The publication is a reboot of Conservation Magazine, led by a phenomenal group of journalists and thought-leaders from the sustainability and conservation space. We were asked to create a launch film for the publication’s debut at the Habitat 3 conference in Quito, Ecuador.
Technically, the Anthropocene is a proposed new epoch of geological time in which human activity has changed the environment so significantly that we’re now leaving a mark in the rock record. Stratigraphers are currently debating on whether to make this official and many are leaning that way. Josh Tewksbury, one of the scientists we interviewed for the film, told me that “to acknowledge the Anthropocene is to acknowledge that all environmental solutions involve people.” And it is these solution stories that are at the heart of this new publication.
It’s always a challenge to film something that doesn’t yet exist. When we started in on this project the concept and advisory team were in place, but the publication had yet to be created. However we had two formidable resources: the collective eloquence of the founding team and the stunning animation work Félix Pharand-Deschénes of Globaïa had already created to illustrate the Anthropocene epoch.
During a series of working meetings in Washington, DC, we filmed three days of interviews with the advisory team, founders, funders and journalists. Sara wove these together to form the narrative thread and establish the conceptual foundation. A huge thanks to Jason Houston and David Rochkind for helping to run the cameras for these shoots.
Next we started to illustrate the Anthropocene concept. Globaïa, a team we’ve worked with before, produces some of the most sophisticated global projections of our human footprint that we’ve ever seen. These became an instrumental part of the visual narrative. We also utilized the Google Earth Engine which allows one to view a 20-year time-lapse of LANDSAT data from almost anywhere on the globe. And whether one looks at Las Vegas, the Brazilian Amazon or Saudi Arabia the rate and scale of landscape change is overwhelming. There’s a huge amount of technical magic behind both tools and we’re immensely grateful for the team that helped us integrate them into the film.
The first issue is now online and in-print. Find it at anthropocenemagazine.org.
