If you haven’t heard yet, my friend Jeremy Beasley’s film is officially available on iTunes and the Small is Beautiful Movie website.

It’s a touching first hand look at some of the lives that have been moved to try on tiny. It follows their journey, pain and accomplishment with personal reflections and moving inspirations. This is one to see!

Q&A with Jeremy Beasley, Director of Small is Beautiful

What the film is about

Small is Beautiful is a documentary thats follows four people as they build their own tiny houses, to try and live a mortgage free lifestyle. Through the process they discover that living tiny is about much more than just the house.

What inspired you to make the movie

The idea of having a 30 year mortgage is not something I’m comfortable with, so I started researching alternative ways to live. How could I live with less material possessions, in a smaller space and I thought what better way to learn about it than to interview the people in the process or already doing it.

How does your documentary differ from other tiny house films?

I wasn’t aiming to glorify tiny house living in ways that has already been done. I explored what it is really like to build and live in a tiny house, sharing the subjects struggle and triumphs.  We see them question their motives, their partners, their relationships with their family and their past. I wanted the film to go deeper than trends or aesthetic. To explore the real human aspect of choosing to live this way. The stories and the people are real. Varied, full of joy, hardship, and humanity. 

How can people watch the film?

It’s available for Download via our website SmallBeautifulMovie.com which is the best way to support us directly. There is also loads of bonus content in different packages with hours of great info and footage that we couldn’t fit in the film. 

It’s also available on iTunes (USA, Canada & Australia), Vimeo on Demand, Amazon Instant and Google Play. 

itunes link: http://bit.ly/SmallBeautifulMovieiTunes

Website link: http://ift.tt/1AfitwL

Did you have previous movie making experience in the past?

I’d been a professional photographer for 6 years, having shot a whole series of short films as well. This was by far the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken though. 

Explain the characters you met

A lot of people want to know if people willingly choosing to live in a tiny house are introverted? The thing that surprised me the most is they’re the exact opposite. The community is so strong, people are constantly helping other people build their own tiny houses or find land to park it. Like when Ben was trying to finish his house, over two days 20 people came to help him work on it and try and finish it. He had people banging nails, painting walls, sanding cupboards – everyone chipped in. 

Do you have a tiny house?

I got so caught up on the research of tiny houses and in making the film that I haven’t actually been able to make my own yet. Who knows, hopefully after we’re finishing touring the film around I’ll be able to build one then. I have definitely learnt a lot about it through the process of making the film and how I’d do it differently from what I originally planned. 

Things you learned making the film

I learned a lot about what goes in to building a tiny house, but the biggest take away for me is that when taking on a massive project, like building your own tiny house, or making a feature length film on them – the projects are a marathon, not a sprint. Ask for help along the way and when you’re setting a time line, multiple it by about 8 and that’s how long things really take. 

Personal relationship with the characters

I’ve developed friendships with all of the people involved in the film. It’s really hard not to. I know we’re meant to kept a journalistic distance when making documentaries, but when you watch someone struggling to build their house over the course of a year it’s really hard to not put the camera down, pick up a hammer and help bang some nails into their house. 

If you haven’t been so luck to have seen it yet, there is still a handful of tickets available online for the Seattle Showing, this Tuesday night at the SIFF Film Center. Following the Screening, there will be a Panel Discussion with some special guests. See you all there!

Special guests will include:

Jeremy Beasley, Director of Small is Beautiful: A Tiny House Documentary
Chris and Malissa Tack, The Tiny Tack House, in Snohomish WA
Hannah Rose Crabtree, Maiden Mansion, in Seattle WA
Brittany Yunker, Bayside Bungalow, in Olympia WA
Kerry Alexander, Hope Island Cottages Bed and Breakfast, in LaConnor WA

via Blog – The Tiny Tack House http://ift.tt/1K14rjh

Only 3 Days left to get your ticket to the screening of Small is Beautiful: A Tiny House Documentary.

Be part of the magic of tiny, at the first ever screening of Small is Beautiful, on Tuesday May 5th at the Seattle Center. Hangout with fellow tiny house enthusiasts and let’s explore tiny together!

Tickets are available till April 28th and can be purchased at: http://ift.tt/1Iapod6

For more information about the film, please checkout http://ift.tt/1xD9fsK

About the crew:

Chris Kamen – Producer

Chris has 12 years experience as a producer. He’s made three seasons of ABC2 TV’s music concert series jTV Presents, numerous short films (including AFC funded Directions by Kasimir Burgess), music videos for the likes of Empire of the Sun and another with the hugely talented Natasha Pincus, an ABC commissioned comedy web series Corn Cobs, along with $10M+ worth of TV commercial production for multinational blue chip clients including MasterCard, McDonalds, and Lion. In 2013, Chris completed a Master of Laws (Juris Doctor) as part of a plan to become a long form producer and independent distributor. Having grown up on the Internet, Chris is super passionate about the opportunities that online film distribution is bringing to the indie film world. Small is Beautiful represents Chris’ third documentary to be released via a direct-to-audience strategy. His first success was in 2012 on Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (deepblueseafilm.com), a film that offered a sorely needed humanitarian perspective on the highly politicised Australian asylum seeker issue and earned $100k revenue through a crowd funded national screening tour and online release. Most recently in 2014 Chris has released music documentary about Grammy award winning Americana icon Jim Lauderdale: The King of Broken Hearts (jimlauderdalemovie.com).

Jeremy Beasley – Director

Armed only with his DSLR and field sound recording kit, Jeremy is the epitome of the modern day one-man-band filmmaker. This nimble and light weight methodology allows Jeremy to ease himself into the most intimate of scenarios to capture fascinating human stories. Relatively new to the film world, Small is Beautiful is Jeremy’s first documentary feature. Prior to film, Jeremy gained six years experience as a photographer, shooting weddings in Australia and internationally. His photographic work is widely celebrated for its un-staged documentary aesthetic. It is through this experience behind the lens that Jeremy has honed his unique skill to coax his subjects to lower their guard and open up with their most intimate thoughts, hopes and fears. The result is a delicate and genuine insight into the human condition.

Originally trained as an engineer, Jeremy also has a natural fascination with design, making, and problem solving – all central aspects to the challenge of building tiny. Upon discovering the tiny house world, Jeremy’s first impulse was to design and build his own tiny house. Yet after meeting many of the eccentric and alternative minded characters from this world he became fascinated about the story of an empowered community intent on creating their own housing.

Accordingly, Small is Beautiful was conceived: is the tiny house dream merely a naive and trending fad, or is living tiny a serious solution to today’s pressing issues of housing affordability and sustainability?

Following the screening, there will be a panel discussion for Small is Beautiful. So come out and support your Tiny House Family!

via Blog – The Tiny Tack House http://ift.tt/1Iapm4P

I hooked our solar setup several months after we moved into the house.

At first, I had the power going in directly into the breaker box. Once I was ready, I switched that over to the inverter & from the inverter back into the breaker box.

You can always add the solar at a later time as long as you plan for it ;)

One of the first things to familiarize yourself with is the types of solar setups (off-grid, grid-tied, grid tied with battery backup, grid fallback). Our setup is classified as a grid tied with battery backup (we are not set up to sell power back to the grid). 

During the winter months, the sun does not visit enough for us to rely on our solar exclusively here in the greater Seattle area. On the other hand, when it’s sunny, we are almost exclusively off-grid. In 2014 for instance, we got all but about 4 days of our power needs from solar mid-April through early November!

For more details on our specific solar setup, take a glance at a blog post I did a while back & let me know if you have further specific questions on it. FYI, we purchased an inverter that cost quite a bit more and can handle around 10 more solar panels than we currently have, giving us the opportunity to add more panels later. Be aware that batteries cannot be added later as combining new batteries with old ones will shorten the life of the new ones to match the older ones :o

I wish I had an easy answer for all of your energy related questions…Unfortunately, it is not an easy thing to figure out. We ended up going through Whidbey Sun and Wind to assist with sizing our system. Also, some solar equipment manufacturers do not sell retail meaning you have to go through someone to order your system.

One of the most important things you need to figure out is how much electricity you currently use. You can do this one of many ways…you could grab your current monthly utility bills & subtract how much you are using in your current living situation that would not be brought into a tiny home (i.e. furnace, massive hot water heater, etc.). The other (and more accurate method) would be to use a solar sizing spreadsheet to calculate the power consumption of each of the specific items you plan to use (computer(s), monitor(s), hard drives, hot water heater, heater, fridge, tv etc.). Be honest with yourself…list everything! Even your hair dryer / straightener…even if you only use it for 2 minutes per day, it may require a huge amount of power! All of your appliances should list how much power they consume on them. If you have 2 of the 3 (volts, watts, amps), you can figure out the missing one. Most appliances list the Volts & Watts on them A = W / V or W = A × V

Once you have each of these items listed, you need to come up with a realistic number of hours that you use each of these items to calculate daily usage (be honest with yourself on this ;).

Once you have your power consumption figured out, you need to plug that all into a solar sizing spreadsheet & figure out how large of a system you need based on your geographic location (sun-hours/day). 

Here is a good resource to check out: http://ift.tt/17PfjOV

I would definitely recommend you consider your appliances carefully if you want to be off-grid completely. You can find on-demand hot water heaters that use propane. You can also find propane refrigerators. By wiring our 4-gallon hot water into a switch, we leave it turned off when not in use. We also take military-style showers (water on long enough to get wet…back off…soap up…rinse off…done). This in conjunction with our low-flow shower head saves oodles of unnecessary power to heat water.

Hope this helps! Feel free to post in the comments section below & I will do my best to get any questions answered.

via Blog – The Tiny Tack House http://ift.tt/1Qd9qSV