Refitting The Planet aka: Refit Or Die

- serial content
- independent broadcasting experiment
- completed

above photograph by Eric Vogel

REFITTING THE PLANET was my original pitch for a broadcast series on reimagining the world around us through repurposing.
The pilot was very well-received landing me an agent and then soon after, meetings and discussions with production companies. Everything moved into development until the snag of finding the income source for the T.O.M.T. business that the pilot was about. Ultimately T.O.M.T. was being supported by other income made from art directing and design unrelated to T.O.M.T. This was not the type of business model the TV production company wanted to pursue.

As I began to untangle this and figure out a way around that issue, I began to find ideas growing into greater and better developments even more in line with my deeper goals.

I loved the possibility that there could be an artist broadcasting platform that would allow the artists themselves to produce their own content. The first thing to figure out was if artists could create compelling content without having to become skilled filmmakers.

I quickly mapped out a plan, with notes on how I created this plan so I could teach other artists to do the same. I evolved this into a new series called REFIT OR DIE that would help me to make deeper determinations about the effectiveness of this platform.

The new title came about because of my increasing need to lean harder into exploration of human experience and a stronger voice to move my ideas further. I wanted to push my art directing skills to higher levels because I could see the world around me needed bolder clarity in communication on large scales and knew my voice was going to have to be louder in some way. I embraced the brutality of the new title, was fired up by the message (refit or die) and went on to produce several episodes. I confirmed that yes, artists could create their own content and keep focus on their work.

Below are segments of the pitch pilot REFITTING THE PLANET as well as the Commune Network experiment called REFIT OR DIE (a name that really spoke to me and is evolving with my work, art and mission.)

Enjoy!