TREATMENT

FOR AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES

SERIES TITLE: ‘THE MAGNIFICENT THREE AND A HALF’

GENRE: 4 x 60 Minute Documentary Series

LOGLINE: A look at the phenomenon of art when it turns its attention to climate change.
Each artist, each medium, each response from our three and a half artists, is enthralling in its
own right. Ingenious ideas, elegant execution all lead to a greater understanding of climate
change and its effects on the earth’s delicate architecture.

INTRODUCTION

The history of humankind has been shaped by climate. Today, for the first time we are able
to evaluate its effects in art. We present three artists and one software program, representing
four distinct mediums communicating the upheavals of climate change.

Even though we claim to be in charge of our destiny, most of our behavior over time has
been governed by outside forces. Everything we do is a post-hoc rationalization of things we
really do for other reasons. Climatically, we are at a turning point and our series presents a
dynamic band of artists and programmers who are determined to get a message across.

The effects of climate change appear impossible to relay. People can’t conceive it in advance
or prepare for it directly. Evidence in numbers is one thing, but an artist will boil the
numbers down and make the point more succinctly and often with more power. Artists
have the knack for making the complex appear simple.

Who will fight for a consensus about climate change, arguably the dominant subject of the
day? Step forward our magnificent three and a half heroes, with an art lesson worth taking.

Hayao Miyazaki (Film Animator)

Olafur Eliasson (Installation Artist)
Bon Iver (Composer & Lyricist)
The programming team behind ‘Civilization 6 - The Gathering Storm.’

All our artists work for the same cause, conceiving work that will save us from sea changes
and further apocryphal events, as well as a million other dangers that are smaller but no less
important. They employ a diverse range of mediums to engage a world that has a poor
attention span. A documentary lens captures their artistic output with supporting interviews
from the artists in their private studios.

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For the first time, the viewer is given access to the method behind these startling, critically-
acclaimed works.

In total, their art is a call to arms, prompting more public response than any government can
muster. Combating ignorance and in many cases, helping to motivate and drive policy,
rectifying misconceptions with refreshing clarity and originality of thought. In every case,
measuring out just the right level of outrage to get people, and in two cases children, to care.
They are all ambitious, doing a better day’s work for the planet than a politician will do in a
year.

The documentary series explores the heroically independent nature of each artist and the
company behind a climate-themed software program. People who zag when the world zigs.
Each episode profiles one artist and finally one company as a group of individuals. The
work is spellbinding and creatively acute about the threats that face the planet. Meticulous
and always original, making a difficult subject come to life.

There is a tension across all four documentary episodes because the subject is cataclysmic in
nature and so must it be in art. In the case of film animator Hayao Miyazaki and installation
artist Olafur Eliasson the rendering is intense enough to hold the eye. In the case of the
musician, Bon Iver to command the ear, turning the threats of climate change into a new
genre of folkloric music. The final episode featuring the gaming program Civilization 6
ultimately gives control of the planet’s climate to younger minds.

When you open your eyes in the morning, it’s all out there in front of you. But how do you
spellbind people to a cause in art? ‘The Magnificent Three and a Half’ is a series that reminds
us why art matters and why the unique perspectives of the artist are critical to our
understanding of climate change.

EPISODE ONE | HAYAO MIYAZAKI (FILM ANIMATION)

You could spend a year drawing one big vivid picture of the challenges posed by climate
change, or like the animator Hayao Miyazaki render a million smaller ones. Government
organizations are the most complicated bodies of people on earth. Dysfunction is built into
their messaging because of politics but the animator Hayao Miyazaki proves that artists
thrive on simplicity of execution and thought.

This episode circles the incredible, reclusive world of Miyazaki’s ‘Studio Ghibli’ in Koganei,
Tokyo, a creative temple to environmentalism and pacifism.

Miyazaki’s output is a fusion of Japanese history, magic and folklore, with stories that are
often helmed by young, strong female leads. Alongside our protagonists are ranged a
pantheon of adorable creatures and a powerful environmental message, the hallmarks of
Miyazaki’s work.

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In 1999, one of his most iconic anime films Princess Mononoke first hit international screens,
introducing us to a stark, bleak world where humans are in an all-out war with one another
and their natural environment. Arguably his bloodiest film remains one of the most
politically striking narratives on the subject, despite being targeted at younger audiences.

As part of the dynamic of this episode, we interview the now adult audience of Miyazaki’s
original film and how it has profoundly influenced the adult personality. As Miyazaki
himself said at the time:

“What children see, and what did they encounter in this film? I think you’ll have to wait for about
10 years for them to be able to grow up sufficiently to be able to articulate their emotions about it.”

Miyazaki’s output is more relevant today than ever before, its message about environmental
protection, a reflection of our current bleak, perhaps even doomed relationship with the
earth, a forewarning about the dire consequences of our accelerated ecological destruction.

Art has everything to do with reality. In Miyazaki’s case his cartoons deliberately engage
younger minds in a deeper understanding of abstract reality. All his films to this day exhibit
hyperbole, exaggeration, even distortion in order to create an effect for the child that they
find convincing.

Underpinning his films’ narratives are themes of purity and harmony in Shinto. ‘Mononoke’
operates on the level of fantasy, yet at its core lies a complex, very adult reality about the
critical balance between man and nature.

Each of our artists has exhibited genius and originality and deployed individual intuition
whether dealing in form or color. Miyazaki has heightened the subject of climate change to
new levels of perception. His fictional, cartoon like characters express a new narrative form
which has lent itself to the climate debate and above all, his films satisfy the artistic
challenge of always grabbing your attention.

EPISODE TWO | OLAFUR ELIASSON (INSTALLATION ARTIST)

If you’ve ever walked along the path of destruction from a tornado, it’s almost impossible to
describe. Yet description, is the job of the artist. Words might fail but the artist will render a
simple image, perhaps of a finger, drawing a line through the icing of the pretty cake,
speaking volumes about the concept of total destruction.

Eliasson’s art raises the world’s temper on climate change. The one episode in the series
which presents a work based on scale. His installations are physically immense,
manufacturing fake stars, suns and waterfalls, challenging your perceptions with the might
of its presence. Indeed, when viewing his work ‘Ice Watch’ you can sense people’s brains
groping for a solution to his perceptual riddles.

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The debates surrounding climate, shifts as much as the weather itself, yet the subject
shouldn’t be an ideological thing. Eliasson insists on this and shares the secrets of his
striking work in an intimate set of interviews, embedded within his Berlin studios. He’s
enigmatic and emphatic. He’s not out to please, he just wants governments to get real:

"I'm afraid we can't wait for governments to do the work for us. They are not going fast enough."

Further interviews with critics and observers of his work dig deep, heralding his chosen
themes of transience as well as his clever use of elemental materials, motivating the observer
to focus on the earth’s future, based on the actions and choices we make today.

Whilst his installations are seismic, Eliasson does not approach his subject like a Hollywood
screenwriter, all cataclysm and doom. The narrator of the episode, decodes his works and
reflects upon its magic. It’s about the less detectable things. That’s where the shock value lies
in the journey to move minds. In other words, the climate risks we should fear most, are the
risks we can’t imagine.

Olafur Eliasson stands at the vanguard of art’s response to climate change. The narrator
continues. Given the enormous amount of research and science being pumped out on the
subject, the role of artist is to translate this empirical, perhaps dry statistical analysis into
human terms, turning the scientific enquiry into an important point.

On a fundamental level, this is information exchange with the addition of an emotional

reaction. We capture those responses from members of the public who see his installations
for the first time. As Eliasson himself reminds observers of his work, “we are the weather”
prompting people to think about what our responsibilities are in protecting it together.

Some interviewees take the viewpoint that we’re better off not being warned, although they
are in a minority. The rest, are all Eliasson’s audience. The narrator concludes this episode,
reflecting on the great prize of executing the vision right, which also means getting the
message across. And that extends at the very least to global co-operation on the subject, as
well as renewed public spiritedness. Eliasson’s work ticks all these boxes.

EPISODE THREE | BON IVER (COMPOSER & LYRICIST)

Three of our artists, through trial and error, through intuition, through genius, have ignited
figural, primitive feelings in us to care more about climate. Tapping into these feelings so
that what emerges is a caring, proactive response from the observer.

Bon Iver is the only musician in the series and because he’s a composer and a lyricist, we are
now adding music and language as part of the artist’s armory in the fight against apathy.
Iver employs subtleties and nuances and a recursive embedding of phrases and words,
creating a new, sophisticated musical art form. The documentary picks out his lyrics in
animated graphic typography, to underline this point.

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As an artist, Bon Iver has always had a singular relationship with the environment. He
emerges from the ranks of musical folklore, recording solo songs that create a pathway of
consciousness about the effect of climate change, tempting the observer to abandon old
thinking for new. He shares his music and inspiration in set-piece interviews, anchored in
the intimate wilderness of his father’s Wisconsin cabin.

The relationship between people and their government is problematic. Bon Ivor explains
how personal identity has moved away from the ‘citizen’ to the ‘consumer.’ This makes
communicating the effects of climate, harder. His lyrics face off the listener with hyperbolic
language. On the track ‘Jelmore’ he challenges:

“How long will you disregard the heat?”

He is talking specifically about climate change, with images of gas masks and slow-moving
depopulation. The track is played live within his cabin surroundings as a multi camera set-
up, followed after interim conversation, with a performance of his track ‘Holyfield,’ with its
prayer-like incantation:

“Dawn is rising, the land ain’t rising.”

A lyrical invocation to the planet as it slowly chokes beneath our feet. Numerous great
humanistic themes continue to abound in conversation with the artist, as he walks through
his own forest and like our other artists, stresses that human kind needs to be protected from
its inherent power.

Intelligently exploring how the ecological balance has been destabilized and indicting
governments who have yet to make serious economic sacrifices, Bon Ivor is insistent on this
point: we should fear ourselves.

We accept his solid reasoning as we leave the cabin at the end of the episode, listening to his
musical experimentation from the cabin studio, deep in the forest layers.

EPISODE FOUR | CIVILIZATION 6 | THE GATHERING STORM (VIDEO GAME)

Artists are not there to minimize your feelings. They’re after the maximum.

In reality, climate change effects almost everything. Food security, nutrition, safety of food
supply and in the series, we demonstrate how our artists are setting out to make the difficult
points. For example, how erratic rainfall patterns can force adaptations in crop growing, as
well as increasing the prevalence of airborne diseases.

These subtle but hugely significant points lie at the heart of the turn-based strategy game,
Civilization 6.

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In this final episode of the series, representing the ‘half’ in the ‘Magnificent Three and a Half,’
we anchor at the studios of Firaxis Games and the team behind ‘Civilization 6 - The
Gathering Storm.’ The theme of this episode is bridging the gap between gaming technology
and art, transforming the subject of climate change into clever symbolic representations of
objects and events in the real world.

The game play is stimulating and the rendering artistic, stabbing at ideas for fun and in
every case, placing the challenges of climate in the hands of the player. They don’t apologize
for the gamey speculation because somebody needs to think like this. An imaginative
excursion into what might be true.

We interview different members of the team in their creative studios in Hunt Valley,
Maryland in the US, unpeeling their creative and artistic reasoning whilst enjoying samples
of original work and conceptual sketches.

What alarms one illustrator is that we have no exact idea of the event that will finally rattle
the earth’s thermometer. Climatically, the earth has been yanked from the very hot to the
very cold for millions of years. What we do know is that the current stability of the Halocene
period, won’t last long. Less than twenty years. This is where art, as an experiment in game
play, has a supreme role to play. Civilization 6 faces our climate challenge by handing a
player ultimate control of the earth’s fate.

All team members at Firaxis agree on the starting point. We are more curious about
ourselves than anything else and art and game play can use this knowledge to get to the
heart of the issue by asking the fundamental question: ‘What kind of person am I?”

Alternating a player’s mind from happy to sad and back to happy again, is the point. Made
all the more potent when you imagine that the game is primarily engaged by younger
minds. How else do you get a teenager to consider a very mature question like: ‘How does
climate change effect your health?’

‘The Gathering Storm’ reduces the subject of climate change to first principles, posing simple
visual questions and ideas that adults would find hard to answer and yet younger minds
find easy. Arguably, a younger mind might be ignorant about the threats of climate change,
but when you take your seat and run ‘The Gathering Storm’, you start with a baseline of
ignorance but aim to learn and mature very quickly. The very core of the adolescent mental
dynamic.

One of the game’s programmers explores in her interview how this prophetic game was
originally structured, that when you start, climate change really isn’t anything that you have
to worry about. Even when you start finding coal and oil, it takes some time before it really
impacts the game in a meaningful way. That is, until you get the tile warning that sea levels
are about to flood you. Unless of course, you take actions to stop it.

Pause for a moment to consider the significance of that game manoeuvre.

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The Civilization team are a harmonious bunch. They are not the sort of people who throw
their arms up and say it’s not their job to save people from their own stupidity.

We don’t exactly know if we are facing a future of either perishing frigidity or steamy heat,
but at least in the video game ‘Gathering Storm,’ younger minds are beginning to halt that
collapse.

CONCLUSION TO THE SERIES

Of course, our Magnificent Three and a Half didn’t start out as climate change artists. They
hadn’t expressly planned to be at the spearhead of the cause. In all cases, it became a fate
thing and each explain their very personal reasons for tilting that way in their interviews.
Simply put, they see the planet as being on the cusp of a climactic transformation and want
to do something about it. Bending their natural talents to the task.

At the start, many were bewildered. The dominant theme of the series is that their journey to
high art is as informative as the art itself, proving that the mission to create art is a complex
one. The producers go out of their way to trace the lineage of each artist’s approach,
carefully unwrapping the magic as something precious.

The art featured in the series is ‘impact based.’ Showing people what would happen if they
didn’t protect the planet before they protected themselves. It’s great television.

Our ‘Magnificent Three and a Half’ firmly understand the agency of their art in the climate
cause, aware that they manage powerful tools for moving opinion. All announce a
frustration that art is being mishandled as a force for supreme good.

And all perceive the world as not caring enough on the subject, their mutual starting point.
Their art, a bright spot analysis on distinct issues, trying hard to build a constituency of
interest through their chosen art form. For them, time is running out, solutions that don’t
pay off for decades, are no good to us. Only art can lead us to instant change.

There are many ways to explore climate change in art. Our series explores four of the most
profound. None blunt the mind with the idea of cataclysm but are highly selective in the
tools employed to render their message.

Pulling the lens back at the end, the series proves that art has always played a key role in
innovation, able to make the more difficult, specific points, as opposed to the more prosaic,
generalized ones. Leave that to the politicians. To all four of our artists, managing climate
change is an act of the imagination. They understand that people only react to a crisis that
has happened, less likely to react to a crisis before it happens.

It’s in that intimate space that our artists operate to great effect.

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If climate has played a significant role in human evolution, so has art. It’s the central
hallmark of our species in what we call culture. Art relies on influence and imitation and we
can only trust that the sum total of the work of the ‘Magnificent Three and a Half’, will
continue to move and shape future minds on the subject. Their dogmatic stamp is that
climate change is real. The second one, is the implication of that reality.

In many ways our artists are scratching the surface of the subject. But the aesthetics of
climate change have now been born. Our series goes a long way to bridge the huge gap
between the fact of climate change and our inaction.

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