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Principal photography for Common Ground has been completed, and the project is currently in post-production. You can get a behind the scenes look of Common Ground by checking out our blog.

Overview

Animals that have been symbolically embedded into our cultures for centuries are now disappearing at alarming rates. The importance of these animals in our lives is often overlooked, but animals are truly symbols that not only inspire us, but are essential for a healthy future. Animals are religious deities and majestic icons. They have provided companionship, carried us on their shoulders, and plowed our fields. Few are as awe-inspiring as the elephant.

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For thousands of years, across Asia, humans and elephants have lived side by side in a relatively peaceful coexistence. That relationship is now being threatened due to increasing human populations and loss of elephant habitats. Elephants and humans are being forced to compete for resources, a problem that has been defined as Human-Elephant-Conflict. This predicament poses a serious threat to the elephant's continued existence. While this is a widespread concern all across Asia and Africa, it is nowhere more apparent than in the small island of Sri Lanka. What lies beneath the often-destructive consequences of human elephant conflict is a common story that both man and animal shares. That story is about family and survival.

The core of the film is an emotional narrative weaving together the lives of both sides of the conflict. The film will juxtapose the struggles of wild elephants and rural farmers, exploring the correspondent family dynamics, and portray that both man and animal are living remarkably parallel lives, and each is searching for essentially the same things; family, security, food, water, and land.

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For rural farmers, their crops are their livelihood. They spend each day tending to their plots, because the health and safety of their yield will determine how well they and their families will eat. As more land is annexed for agriculture, the territory of the elephant grows smaller and smaller. These vast fields of crops are fertile grounds for an animal that is searching for food. In one night, a single elephant can destroy an entire annual harvest for a farmer, which often means disaster for their family. This type of crop raiding has been identified as the primary form of conflict. Not only do these raids deplete food stocks and cause financial distress, farmers are terrified of elephants who come into villages at night, and when startled will knock down houses, charge people, and create general havoc. These encounters breed resentment against the elephants among the farmers, and are the main cause of elephant mortalities in Sri Lanka. While conservationists, animal rights activists, and the urban elite cherish this beloved animal, subsistence farmers are the ones who bear the brunt of human elephant conflict.

There is an interesting cultural paradox here, of a people, who in one hand regard the elephant as a deity but in the other live in fear of this rogue creature who terrorizes villages when the sun goes down. The elephant has been such an integral part of Sri Lankan culture, dating back to the origins of Buddhism and Hinduism. HEC is a relatively new problem stemming from the fact that a population the size of Australia is crammed on an island the size of West Virginia, and the once vast stretches of land have been reduced by logging, urbanization, and unsustainable agriculture.

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The solution to HEC is not easy, but there are many people working on finding a peaceful balance. Community-based-conservation has replaced the older approach to conservation, attempting to tackle human problems while securing a sustainable future for elephants, and create what researcher Gay Bradshaw describes as a mutually benefiting interspecies culture. We'll discover some of the difficulties and hazards of doing conservation work within a conflict zone, with restricted access, un-cleared mine fields, and the threat of terrorism.

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The final chapter of the film focuses on these new innovative approaches that combat Human-Elephant-Conflict. We will follow conservationists on the ground, learning about some of the community-based programs being developed. Some of these projects include solar fencing projects, habitat enrichment programs, elephant alert systems, and a few of the more unusual initiatives where domesticated elephants are being trained to paint and elephant poop is being sold as paper. We learn how conservationists work with local stake-holders, government and development agencies, international donors and politicians to implement these new programs.

Crew

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Director/Cinematographer, Phil Buccellato

After graduating from the NYU Tisch Film Program, Phil Buccellato founded Greener Media LLC, a multi-media production company specializing in non-fiction content, ranging from direct-to-web travel series to feature length documentaries. While Phil has years of experience working in the art department for a host of notable directors like Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and Mira Nair, his true passion is documentary. In September 2007, the feature documentary Calvin & Sweetpea, a portrait of a family faced with Alzheimer's which was directed by Jon Fletcher and shot by Phil Buccellato, won best documentary at the Boston Film Festival. Phil also recently shot and co-produced another award winning feature documentary entitled I Think We're Alone Now, a pop culture tragedy about obsession.

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Advisor, Ravi Corea

Ravi Corea graduated from the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University in New York and is the Founder and President of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society, which he formed in 1995. Ravi's mission that is also reflected in the organization he founded is to enable rural communities to balance ecosystem protection and economic development by pioneering a model for sustainable conservation. All SLWCS in situ and ex situ conservation, community development and field research projects are conceptualized, developed and initiated by Ravi. Presently he is working to develop progressive, innovative and forward thinking concepts for wildlife conservation in Sri Lanka through sustainable development and is also involved in promoting a Responsible Tourism Ethic to support sustainable environmental conservation. Ravi was one of the seven committee members appointed by the Department of Wildlife Conservation of Sri Lanka to conduct the first official post-tsunami ecological assessment on protected areas. Ravi was appointed as the first Coordinator of the Human Elephant Conflict Task Force of the IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group.

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Field Producer / Field Sound, Jon Schmid

Jon Schmid has been an important part of Greener Media since 2003. His broad set of skills has allowed him to wear many hats throughout the years. He has been there from the early days of Jon Fletcher's award winning Calvin & Sweetpea to most recently acting as field producer / field sound for our documentary about human-elephant-conflict in Sri Lanka, Common Ground.

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Sri Lanka Producer, Chandeep Corea

Chandeep has a B.Sc. in Marine Biology from Eckerd College, Florida, USA, and he is currently working towards a M.Sc. in Forestry and Environmental Management at the University of Sri Jayewardenapura, Sri Lanka. Chandeep is an experienced GIS specialist and has received extensive training in advanced GIS from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Inc., of Redlands, California, USA. He also has experience and training in the Strategic Environmental Assesment (SEA) for incorporating environmental factors into national policy and has consulted for the UNDP-SL and the Govt. of Indonesia (Wildlife&Forest Service of Bengkulu Province). For the past 12 years he has been functioning as the Operations Director of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society and was the Editor for the Geo-Informatics Society of Sri Lanka. He is the Sri Lanka Representative for the Society for Conservation GIS (and recipient of their global award for training in 2007), a member of the education committee of the Institute of Environmental Professionals of Sri Lanka and a former board member of the Natural History Society of Sri Lanka. He has extensive field experience working in Sri Lanka on wildlife conservation and research projects. He ran a website design company and continues to operate green tourism ventures and organize documentary film productions and international workshops and symposia. He has held photographic exhibitions and has won several awards.

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Associate Producer, Jesse Ash

Jesse Ash is an award winning filmmaker and a vegetarian. He most recently won a Webby award for his animated short "Magical Cure." Along with Greener Media he's produced numerous works for clients such as the Sustainable South Bronx, Six Points Fellowship, Cancer and Careers, and the Green Apple Festival. At his previous post with Zoomari Films, Jesse associate produced "A Moveable Musical Feast," a documentary/concert dvd of Loreena McKennitt's An Ancient Muse tour. Jesse is in development on numerous projects that hopefully will inspire change in the world.

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