TROM II rebooted + awesome help

These past 2 months we (me and Sasha) were able to make some money like we said we should. I was able to make 3 websites for WebApe.site (my new webdesign website meant to help me financially). But that is not enough. Luckily people like Guil, Roma, Aaron and a few others helped the project financially. There is an anonymous donor via LiberaPay (and I suspect is someone I know 😀 ) who donates like 250 Euros a month for many months now….this is an incredible help. There are some who still donate via Patreon, and recently Guil, who we met a few months ago in person and is a long-time follower of TROM (follower sounds bad I think, but he knows about TROM for like 10 years now), helped us tremendously. He donated a ton of money.

And yesterday Roma, the awesome friend, donated 500 Euros…. I met Roma once and I swear he is so fuckin nice! We will meet again this year I hope. Can’t wait!

Me, Aaron and Roma eating some pizza at the beach 🙂

How’s the money situation?

The thing is, that’s the only roadblock….Motivation? I have! Ideas? I have! I have everything except money to provide me with a basic existence.

Sasha managed to get a “job” for these summer months. We do not know exactly how much she is paid (because no one tells you really) but maybe over one thousand a month, which is great. She is so tired but she does some things that she also enjoy, like seeing the underwater world. I hate to see her so tired…we only see each other 1-3 hours a day max. She comes home, she eats, she goes to sleep. That’s all. Such a waste of a wonderful brain. But it is only for 2-3 more months max. She then will release her book and a video series about hiking through the Pyrenees, which will be posted on our Peertube. Awesome series. Many hours long.

This is her, hiking alone for 2 months with a huge backpack.

So. Money?

As I calculated last night with the latest donations and the WebApe monthly support, so all the money we currently have, we are fine. I think. Now we contribute 200 Euros a month for the house bills, but starting October it will jump to 400-450 because my sister will move and me and Sasha will have to split all of the costs with my parents. Even in that situation we will have money up until February I guess. Which is great! These latest donations helped a ton.

If she is to work these 2-3 months and gets paid well, we can go till June or so, next year. Which is great. Again there might be other donations in the meantime and such. Or more expenses also….

But for now we seem to be good. However if you can help us financially that’ be fantastic. Any donation is important. The way we calculate our money is to pay the bills and buy food. Nothing else. So if we need some extra money we are fucked :D.

But I want to scream so loud and say: fuckin’ amazing that there are still people out there who see a ton of value in TROM and help the project (and myself) financially. But also in other ways. Take Alexio, Aaron, Roko, these people help with making new videos, translating stuff, help with TROMjaro, VideoNeat, and more. So awesome. We have a great relationship.

So. The money situation is ok. Next?

TROM II

Last night, before realizing I got 750 Euros in donations from Roma and Guil, I already decided to start the work on TROM II. I worked for several hours already. Then when I saw the donations I was mind-blown…I was like “Yeah, that’s it. We do it!”.

A 2 months break from the documentary is quite good actually since I now can see it with a different mindset. Let me detail a bit the TROM II work and approach. So, the first part is about us, more personal. Us as humans, and us as enculturated creatures. I will show you some bits, for the first time. They are only from the first part. The second part I think is even more interesting. And the next 2 probably even more haha.

This is a sample from where Sasha explains, so fuckin great, about us, the humans. How we evolved. Because I always want to put it in perspective. I cannot simply talk about our society if I do not talk about the evolution of the Universe. So I wanted that in the documentary. We NEED to realize our place in the Universe.

Sasha is amazing when she explains about the natural world, from how awesome it is to how we fuck it all up. She really prepared for the interviews. She also has some great personal stories that we use in the documentary.

Georgi (Gia) talks about the kindergarten and how humans make these little creatures then send them to these institutions for most of the time. This is too small of a sample to get an idea about the message, but it is an example of how I have edited this documentary. I have focused a lot of sound effects too. If you listen carefully you get these little sound effects for transitions and such. And visuals. I made pretty much everything in Kdenlive. I learned a lot!

Gia has a lot of photos/footage from her childhood and she focuses on these personal stories a lot. This is great to have since the documentary will be a mesh between personal stories and hard-core statistics. Plus some rants and such :D. She does a great job explaining about the past, the influence of media, her life, and so on.

In the same fashion Aaron explains about school and puts it in perspective with the universe. Notice the planets I added to the video and the sound effects. These are recorded by me. Sirius, Saturn, Venus and Jupiter and its moons. I used my telescope and a special camera to record. This is a sample of “realism” and “genuine” that I wanted from this documentary. I do not use stock footage at all. I use real footage, either from our collections or from documentaries.

Aaron is great at explaining this trade and trade-free ideas. Many examples, loads of great explanations, so calm, so easy to follow. He did fantastic.

Next is Dima talking about the influence of movies. Exactly after this bit I made a really great (in my view) mix with Dima “fighting” haha, and then sequences from movies where we see the same behaviors, and then a collection of loads of movie scenes that influenced us in the 90s. In essence to showcase with visuals, how movies are so influential of what we think is ok, cool, harmful, funny, and so on.

Dima has some great personal stories too, and does a really great job at explaining this influence of media, especially since he is a musician for so many years and knows a lot about this.

Lastly it is me. In this bit I explain how I got influenced by the computer and Internet era. I have lots of footage with me from when I was like 5. That helps so much to explain and see how the environment influenced me. I have some really great footage from my childhood that fits perfectly in this documentary. Like this is literally my first computer I had. Someone from France who visited us gave it to us. The Internet was limited to 30 minutes a day and you had to connect it through the landline phone.

I remember downloading internet pages (websites) so that I can have them when I was offline :D. I was browsing the online, offline. As you may imagine I talk the most in this documentary. And by the way nothing is scripted. We never read from anything. We did have notes tho so we don’t forget some stats, but that’s all. I wanted this documentary to be very genuine. Us talking to you.

It is more than this!

We talk about the evolution of trade and societies, other currencies, the idea of trade and trade-free, the complete destruction of our environment, and so many things. This is a MASSIVE work. But I feel like it is something special with it. You have to understand that I personally am influenced/moved by certain attitudes: that of Jacque Fresco, of like ranting and saying things as they are. That of Carl Sagan and how wonderfully he explained the Universe. That of George Carlin and his dark humor. That of Richard Feynman and his excitement of the natural world. That of Adam Curtis and his kinda creepy/weird/eerie way of making documentaries. I am influenced by all of these and so this documentary will be sprinkled with such “attitudes” (views) however you may call them.

I tried to use only or mostly music that is more original and copyright free. Footage that is genuine and not stock. And to also leave it more clean: us talking to you. Simple. On top of this I really struggle to make it interesting in terms of audio effects. They add up to the story.

Releasing when?

Now that I have officially started to work on it again I may finish it this year. The first two parts are 90% done. I have to add some new footage to them, so it may take me a few weeks to finish these two parts. Maybe a month. Both of these parts are an hour and a half each. And there are two more parts, same length. These last two parts are only done in terms of cutting and story-line. But I have to add the music, footage, effects, etc.. They may take a month and a half each to finish…..maybe even 2 months each. Hard to say now. But I am excited!

This can be a great documentary to introduce people to TROM and we can use bits of it to share individually. I also have 2 more recordings with me trying to explain it all in 1 go. Those will be published after the documentary is done.

I have a lot of work to do, but I am super excited about it. TROM is not dying off like most such organizations/movements out there. TROM is thriving: new documentary soon (a big one some 6 hours long), TROMjaro, TROM.tf, VideoNeat, our TROM videos and TROMcast, TROMnews, and sooo on.

I’ve been doing this for some 12 years now. I will keep on doing it.

A massive thanks to everyone who is still around TROM, helping out in any way they can. Even if they are not engaged, them being there and interested in TROM is fantastic. And if you can still donate to TROM, by all means here’s where you can do it. Any donation goes into TROMfuel. Keeping this project alive and relevant.

Subscribe

If you want to know when we will release TROM II the best way is to go to TROMsite.com, scroll to the bottom, and choose how to follow us:

The Newsletter is the least noisy one. I send a few newsletters a year only when we release something new or there is something super important I need to talk about.

That’s all for now. I am excited!