Last summer I posted a clip of artist Chris Jordan doing a TED talk, and since that time Grant and I had held a lofty goal of snagging an interview with him for our documentary.
Well, last week our wish came true, and we got to visit Chris at his studio in Seattle!
There we got some insight into his Running the Numbers series, a collection of large scale digital prints that give perspective to mass consumption, bringing otherwise incomprehensible statistics to life. The series includes, among other things, images of plastic, paper, and electronics consumption in American society. In short, it’s one thing to read that there are two million plastic beverage bottles used in the US every five minutes, but it’s another another thing to actually see it.
Chris also filled us in on his latest project visiting the remote island of Midway. His sobering images of deceased albatrosses, their stomachs full to bursting with deadly plastic scavenged from the ocean, are nothing short of shocking. I won’t go in to too much detail since I want to save something for our film, but you can view the photos on his website here.
Much thanks to Chris for having us over to visit his lovely studio and for spending so much time answering our barrage of questions.
On a side note, maybe at this point you’re thinking “interview? I thought you were almost done your documentary? What are you still doing filming?”
The guilty truth is that, although we finished our project last summer, we are still finishing off filming interviews and B Roll (you know, like when we talk about plastic bags, we need to show plastic bags on the screen) in addition to doing mounds of editing.
Well, one of us is doing mounds of editing. And filming. . . and writing. . .and scoring. Yup, Grant is a multi-talented guy. My role is more along the lines of working my day job and then coming home and critiquing what he did.
In any case, here’s my official response to the ubiquitous question “When the heck will you be done?”
Let’s just keep it upbeat and say “soon”.
The Clean Bin Project Blog 
