East/West ME
My name is Mathias Deming. I am a 16 year old photographer and film-maker from Winthrop ME. For the past four months I have been working on creating a documentary film about the East West Corridor. I have entitled this film East/West ME.
For those of you who do not know, the East West Corridor is a proposed 220 mile long, 500 foot wide, communication, utilities and transportation corridor. The corridor is to start on the New Brunswick border in Calais, resting on the banks of the St. Croix river. From Calais, the corridor would snake across the state of Maine, where it would exit into Quebec out of the heavily unpopulated Coburn Gore. This project is a privately funded and owned, 2.1 billion dollar mega project isbeing pushed primarily by Cianbro, a Maine based construction company, and its CEO Peter Vigue.
East/West ME is a documentary promoting awareness about the East West Corridor. Of course many people are passionate on both sides of debate about this proposition, but still a vast majority of Maine citizens are unaware of it’s existence. It seems the knowledge is not dispersed evenly. While driving along route 7 towards Dover-Foxcroft, signs voicing strong opinions about the corridor dot the roadside. However 70 miles south, in the State's capital city of Augusta, the East West Corridor is an unknown project. This needs to change. It is time that Maine is educated about this mega project. My ultimate goal is to make sure Maine has access to easy information. I want people to be knowledgable about this proposition so Mainer's can make their voices heard. I want people to know exactly what they are allowing or not allowing onto their state’s land.
By June of 2014 I hope to have this project completed. The vision is a well rounded, well polished, informational documentary film that will be free for the public. Since the sole purpose of this project is to raise awareness, the film will be posted on Vimeo and Youtube for free viewing action. If there are enough funds I will provide free DVDs as a beta test. If there is enough of a demand for them, I will sell the DVDs in the $5 to $10 range to take care of production. This project is for the people of Maine, so I want to throw away the idea of making money and just focus on spreading the word.
To take this film to the next step, I am going to need a bit of help. Between gear and travel, costs have really started adding up and I cannot support this project on my own. After looking at the gear I will need to purchase to make a quality film, and looking at the amount of travel I will be doing, I have come up with a figure of $1,750 as being able to cover the costs.
The necessary gear is as follows:
A high quality lavalier microphone for interviews- $200-$300
A hard drive capable of handling my footage- $300
Extra memory cards- $80
The rest of the funds will go into a travel fund that will help get me around the state.
*If I reach more then the $1,750 goal, the rest of the funds will go into making physical copies of this film and distributing them. The hard copies of the film that are produced with this money will initially be given to contributors who claimed the "Reserved" perk. The rest will be handed out for free distribution to see if there is a desire for the hard copy of the film.
If you cannot contribute money, you can still help considerably. Please share this campaign with your friends, family, co-workers; anyone and everyone. This will not only help achieve the goal of $1,750 but it will also help get the word of the film out so that when it is completed, a substantial amount of people will be waiting to receive it.
I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart and together, lets help give the East West Corridor the attention it deserves.