STORE WARS: The Making of the Movie

By JULIETTE ROSSANT What are the ingredients that go into the making of the "Years Most Important Movie: STORE WARS? First, you need motive, and if you're a service organization like Free Range Studios, that means you need a client. And so late last year, the Organic Trade Association approached Free Range late last year about doing an internet film to get their message across. Founders Jonah Sachs and Louis Fox, and Director of Strategy Tate Hausman who have been playmates since they were three years old in Woodstock, New York, brainstormed about what to do. Star Wars was their game. "I was Luke, and Jonah was Han Solo forever," said Tate. After mulling over various metaphors, they realized that Star Wars fit perfectly. It's about the Jedi ruling in harmony with the Universe and then the Evil Empire (of machinery and technology) taking over and destroying the Force (family farms). A small band of rebels (organic farmers) fight back. It took a month of script-writing, a week of filming, and three weeks of post-production to get the live-action film onto the Internet. Free Range chose live puppetry rather than the flash cartoon technique they had used in previous films. According to Tate,"It's got to be new on the internet, new technology. Flash is a little old -- though it is not dead. It burst on the scene three years ago. With faster speeds people are able to access live-action films on the web." Live-action puppetry is more expensive and more difficult to do, but a lot more fun, according to Tate. They filmed Store Wars in two supermarkets in San Francisco. In one scene, as egg troopers and rebels veggies were battling it out, they put a fire cracker inside one of the eggs... and spent the next few hours cleaning up the sticky mess from the market's ceiling. "I think we went through four Cuke's, one Ham... It got pretty gnarly at end of the shoot. We used twelve dozen Cannolis: they were ver fragile and broke easily, so we had to keep making them." They worked at night in the markets and paid for all the organic food they used. Previous articles: Year's Most Important Movie: STORE WARS Tags: Star Wars --> back to superchefblog