ELEVATING WORLD TRANSFORMATION THROUGH FILM

Elevate: to raise to a higher intellectual or spiritual level

by Jeff Hutner < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >

Mikki Willis is the visionary founder of Elevate Studios, the recipient of the 2008 Conscious Life Humanitarian Award, a member of Jack Canfield’s Transformational Leadership Counsel and serves on the board of the renowned youth program Challenge Day.

In this interview, conducted yesterday, Mikki reviews his life, the development of his values, and the genesis of Elevate Films. I suspect Elevate and its coming projects will geometrically multiply the audience for transformational entertainment which I like to call “innertainment.”

Mikki Willis moved to Los Angeles when he was 19 and began an acting career while studying with master teacher, Sanford Meisner. He became fascinated in exploring the psychology of acting and how it can be used as a tool to help actors transcend their everyday identities.

At 23, he opened his own acting school, The New York and Los Angeles Theater of the Arts (NYLA) in North Hollywood where he wrote and directed plays that were an intellectual and emotional outlet and experimental laboratory for him.

He joined The Player Kitchen Ensemble as its youngest member. Most of its members were veteran Broadway playwrights and actors who wanted to bring more theater to Hollywood. Every Monday night they would read new plays with legends of screen and stage including Charlton Heston, Carol Burnett, John Ritter, Peter Falk, and many new faces. For Mikki, it was an incredible opportunity to learn from these veteran directors, actors and writers.

On September 11, 2001, Micki was in the World Trade Center minutes before the attacks took place and spent three days as part of a search and rescue team. He came out of that life changing experience, put everything in storage and moved to Napa Valley for a year and a half having crystallized how he wanted to spend the rest of his life on Planet Earth and completely lost interest in being part of selling products that were not aligned with his deepest calling.

It was during this period that Mikki asked himself how he could do what he loved, feed his soul, and serve the world. Life began answering his question when he was approached to direct a Spanish language music video and spent the next two and a half years directing them for the same company.

He launched Elevate which had been a phrase he used with crew members who after producing numerous music videos had become burned out. He would say to everyone on the set, “It’s time to elevate! He and the crew would then circle up and recharge by acknowledging how fortune they were to be creating together in an industry where many are without work.

In 2003, Mikki met his wife Nadia, an actress, writer and assistant to a prominent casting director. They began working together almost immediately and have done so ever since providing Mikki with an inspiring producing and life partner. Their first project together was the Elevate Film Festival that was the fulfillment of their mutual desire to be engaged in projects that made them feel proud. This film competition was designed to capture what’s right with the world. Mikki knew after seeing people breathing asbestos without regard for any potential negative health consequences on the chance that they might find a fellow human alive in the rubble during 9-11, that there were many other people around the world risking their lives to do the right thing.  ”And”, Mikki says, “that same spirit is alive in everyone but rarely has an opportunity to be expressed except in dire situations.”

So he thought, “let’s create a game in which people go in search of the greatest stuff the world has to offer.” As a result of his vision, film makers began traveling the globe capturing heroes in action and stories the world needed to know about. Elevate brought the film makers back to the states and hosted a gala screening celebrating humanity’s good side. Because there was a deep hunger for this kind of material, the Festival grew far more quickly and larger than Mikki’s team had imagined moving from a yoga studio seating 500 to the Nokia Theater seating 6000 in three years. What they learned was how to successfully hold an intention and bring large numbers of people together around a deep socially responsible vision without it being diluted by the many offers that were thrown at them. Their guiding idea was to stay true to a heart based mission that allowed everyone to thrive and do more good.

The Festival was put on hold in 2008 when Mikki and his team realized that despite the participation of major celebrities and bands and getting ready to cut a deal for the 12,000 seat Hollywood Bowl, that their true mission was about global impact and extending their reach to millions rather than thousands.

The team has since produced 4 feature films including The Shadow Effect based on the work of Debbie Ford featuring Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson that looks at the individual and collective disowned American shadow; Spiritual Liberation and a PBS Special, The Answer is You with Michael Beckwith and Will I Am; worked on online viral distribution of the highly successful The Secret and helped raise finishing funds for Happy, a film about what makes people truly happy. Today, Elevate helps aspiring film makers get their projects off the ground, raise funding, and distribute their films and has created about 150 short films, music videos and viral video campaigns. Elevate is currently working on a on a viral music video with Pachamama Alliance’s Four Years Go Campaign.

Elevate next decided to focus on solving the challenge of distribution which traditionally involved distributors, theaters and DVD sales and rarely delivered large audiences to socially responsible and transformational film makers. A film online however, can potentially be seen by millions in a few days.

Elevate’s elegant and brilliant solution is Play It Forward, a new viral platform that allows inspired individuals after seeing a film they love to gift it forward at a very affordable cost. There are celebrity endorsements of films whose cause they support. These celebrities will receive 100,000 views to give to their fan base igniting the viral process. In this way, Elevate intends to get these films and ideas out into the world in far greater numbers than in the past. Play It Forward will launch on 11.11.11.

Following the launch of Play It Forward, Elevate will release, The Experience, a new genre of film that has been in development for almost five years. PIF is an immersive participatory spectacle integrating leading edge technologies including vibrational healing, harmonic musical frequencies, and light and color therapies. In the past, film has largely been an escape from life and often a process of checking out. These films are being designed for audiences ready to check in and explore their inner dimensions. The popularity of transformational workshops globally is a leading indicator of the desire for experiences that can transform, enlighten, awaken and empower audiences to contribute their unique creative gifts so they become co-creators in the evolution of our culture and planet. The experience will integrate the fascination of video games, the love of exciting films, the entertainment experience and the universal enjoyment of music to produce a two hour healing experience for the body, mind and spirit.

Elevate has now been based in Ojai for thirteen months with sixteen members of its community sharing four homes and working, playing and living together as well as growing their own food utilizing permaculture principles and composting. In these ways, community members practice what they preach and walk their talk on a daily basis.

Prior to moving to Ojai, Elevate’s offices were in downtown Los Angeles and members lived in surrounding neighborhoods with larger ecological footprints than they wanted. Their driving contributed to pollution at the same time they were producing and distributing films that were all about living an ecological lifestyle and contributing to a better world. They realized they were not in alignment with the values embodied in their films so, for that reason and for their own health and stability, they were called to be closer to nature after spending two years on top of a high rise in downtown LA and having to mop the floors daily to try and remove emission particulates from the daily traffic flow.

After three months of looking and not finding what they were looking for, a friend of a friend mentioned a place in Ojai. Mikki and the community had decided that they needed to move no further north than Topanga Canyon or perhaps Malibu but they had not been able to find the right match. So they wrote a letter in their community newsletter describing exactly what they were looking for. When Mikki got the call about their current location in Ojai, the rest of the community doubted his instincts and no one wanted to go, so he drove up feeling a deep sense of being guided and immediately recognized the place they had all imagined with its circular drive, entrance fountain, salt water pool and multiple homes. Mikki thought to himself, “I feel at home for the first time in 25 years.” He drove back and told everyone that he had found their new home base and asked his skeptical community to please trust him. The next day, the community members drove up, got out of their cars and, after taking in the main house and grounds, together said “Oh my God, this is it!” Within the month, they were Ojai residents.

Today, the Elevate community is living their dream, developing projects that inspire and empower, making a real difference in people’s lives and the world and actually doing it for less than they were paying individually in Los Angeles. They are driving less since there is no commuting to work, everyone enjoys one wireless system and spontaneous meetings can and do happen anytime. They are eating fresh foods from their gardens, practicing morning meditation together and thoroughly enjoying their new life. People regularly show up and are drawn to the warm and engaging feeling that permeates the community.

In July, Mikki and Nadia will welcome their new baby into the world in the peace and tranquility that is Ojai. If Elevate were a movie, its story arc might resemble an ascending spiral that is quite literally helping to elevate the lives of its community members and through its projects, the lives of ever increasing numbers of people around the world. Elevate is a perfect example of compassion in action and doing well by doing good. May Elevate’s spirit act as a happy virus that positively infects the whole world.

Jeff Hutner < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it > publishes the New Paradigm site: http://newparadigmdigest.com/