Back in 2007, Creative Director Dilly Gent was in charge of commissioning environmental short films for Al Gore’s Live Earth project. Wind was among the 60 chosen from more than 500 film concepts. Recently Dilly mentioned a few of the films for that project, including mine, in Videophiles, a curated collection of video clips on the NYT Culture blog.

I remember when she contacted me about Live Earth. This was a dream project from the 
beginning — to do a film on such an important universal topic, for such a great 
organization (Live Earth), and with such enormous creative freedom for me as a 
filmmaker.  Dilly and I began by talking about how much we both loved the time-lapse 
sequences we did at the end of the Thom Yorke video she commissioned me to direct the 
year before.  It got me thinking about the story arc of how we humans have impacted this 
planet we live on.

Early in the conceptual stage, I knew the film needed some sort of nucleus that 
everything could revolve around.  I thought of one of my favorite poems by Spanish 
author Antonio Machado, written in the early 20th Century.  For me, the poem was a 
perfect metaphor for a lack of planet stewardship that would play out in the visuals. 
Robert Bly generously allowed us to use his English translation of the poem, and Alec 
Baldwin was kind enough to lend his voice to the project.

The film starts with imagery of unaffected nature.  Over the course of the film, 
humankind’s footprint is more and more apparent, and not in a positive way.  It ends on 
a somewhat hopeful note though, like maybe we can repair some of the damage if we get it 
together in time.

Most of the movie is made up of this stunning time-lapse photography that my old friend 
Mark Eifert has been capturing over the past 15 years.  He also shot some footage 
specifically for the film, including a great close-up of honey bees.

There’s an interesting story behind the bees.  At one point, nearly all of the film was 
completed, except for a section in the middle that contained the poem.  We were 
initially playing with using animated text, but it didn’t feel right.  I was really at a 
loss for what to do.  Then all of these bees showed up in laurel hedge in my backyard.  
I realized — that was it!  They were the missing link.  We shot a close up of the bees 
in their nest fit perfectly alongside the poem.  Two days after, the bees were gone.  I 
like to think they showed up for their part in the film then moved on.

As she mentions in the NYT interview, one of the main visions of the Live Earth film 
project was that each short would live on after the project to inspire and educate 
future audiences.

Three years out, climate changes is as important as ever. It’s great to see that our 
collective work for the Live Earth project is indeed living on.







“Chel White’s ‘Wind’ is beautiful film, very moving, set to a poem by

Antonio Machado and narrated by Alec Baldwin” – Dilly Gent