Things About Us
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Hi! I'm Kelly-Sue, I am a passionate birder (basically someone who is obsessed with looking at birds), filmmaker and story teller. I have sat on the board at the Toronto Ornithological Club as the Communications Councillor, I'm Vortex Canada Ambassador and I founded a project called Birder Brain where I explore the connection between birding and mental health. Previously I was also on a Bird Friendly City Team before I moved to a rural area. When I'm not birding I'm still thinking about birds and putting my time towards conservation efforts and citizen science projects like Christmas Bird Counts. I write science songs for kids and Mike and I published a children's book last year about animal rescue/adoption starring our first pet together, a little canary I saved on the streets of Toronto. Together Mike and I combine my passion for birds and conservation with his incredible animating skills to tell a touching and compelling story.
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Mike Gatti is a freelance animator, illustrator and character designer with over 17 years experience in the industry. He honed his skills working at Cuppa Coffee Animation Studios in Toronto, Ontario as a stop motion animator, creative director and character designer on many diverse projects that ranged from television series, music videos, commercial spots and film. Some of the clients include, Walt Disney, TVO kids, HBO, Capitol Records, MTV, PBS, CBS and Alliance Atlantis. He served as creative director on a few spots for HBO including, HBO Millennium Bug and HBO Family 411, which were nominated for awards at Annecy, Houston, and won a British Design Award.
Side note: The film's style will be paper cut out stop-motion animation.
Why Is This Story Important?
What if I told you that between a million to a billion migrating birds die in North America every year due to light pollution? Window strikes are inevitable without intervention. Education and awareness is key to get people involved in making change. There are currently a few organizations who are working on that. The purpose of this film is to reach even more people and to touch their hearts with the story of the Canada Warbler a species of special concern due to its rapidly declining numbers. In fact, Canada Warbler's have declined 70% in the last 40 years and 85% of the global breeding population happens in Canada. These warblers have been victim of many window strikes resulting in death. Thankfully because of concerned organizations and volunteers some of these birds can be saved and rehabilitated but our goal is to lessen strikes. That is the only sure way to save our birds.
The film follows the story of a Canada Warbler born on it's Boreal Shield territory. After a long migration from South America to Northern Canada the female warbler carefully prepares it's nest in a fallen log. The eggs begin to hatch and we follow the story of these warblers as they learn to fly and forage for food over the summer. When fall is upon the forest the bird's instinct to migrate tells them it's time to leave it's breeding grounds and begin it's journey back South. As the Canada warbler migrates it faces many dangers, the most dangerous of them all, light pollution and window collisions. This is a story of obstacles and survival but the sad reality is that many birds do not survive.
By supporting our project you will give us the opportunity to spread this very important message to people all around the world. Because there is no dialogue it can literally reach anyone, anywhere, online and hopefully through film festivals. After that, we want to be able to provide free use to any organization who needs and wants to educate others.
What We Need & What You Get
PRE-PRODUCTION: $8,000
Timeframe: 6-8 weeks
This is the bare minimum we need to start the film .
We will fundraise for each part of production separately. The total amount we will need to raise is closer to $65,000 and will take a year to complete. We will be breaking down costs for you in each fundraising segment.
OUR ANIMATOR /VISUAL DESIGNER/ILLUSTATOR/SET AND PUPPET BUILDER/EDITOR: Mike Gatti
In this stage all supplies will be bought for creating the characters and backgrounds. All aspects of the film will be designed, puppets built and storyboards completed. Mike will need to design and build all the visual pieces of the project. That's a lot of sketching, storyboarding, colouring, painting and paper cutting!
SUPPLIES: Paper, paints, coloured pencils, armatures, glass, lighting and other tools/crafty supplies, lighting.
Other Team Members:
OUR BIRD EXPERT: Mark Peck who is the Manager of the Schad Gallery of Biodiversity and the ROM Director of the Environmental Visual Communications program with the ROM and Fleming College. Mark is the Program Director for the Toronto Ornithological Club, ROM liaison for the Ontario Bird Records Committee, a consultant for Ontario Birds/Ontario Field Ornithologists, and a member of the Ontario Biodiversity Council.
COMPOSER: not yet decided but in the works. This piece is incredibly important because there is no dialogue. The music will help carry the entire story through it's emotional ups and downs.
The Impact
Your support means we can creative an engaging and emotional teaching tool to educate people around the world about light pollution and bird collisions. We believe it's really important that the message can be easily shared around the word by having no dialogue, purely just the emotion felt by following this Canada Warbler on it's migration.
We have successfully funded a short animated film before as well as a fundraiser for a music festival and for filming on my project Birder Brain.
Risks & Challenges
Our only true challenge is not securing enough funds to make the film. Our only true solution is to complete the film anyway but it will take much longer if we can only put part time effort into it.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you can't contribute that's okay!
We ask for you to support us in other ways...
-share our campaign link on social media
-join and follow our social media/ like and share our posts
-pass the campaign on to people who will care about this project
-in kind sponsorships such as supplies for making the film
-have ideas? send us a message!
