Project Rebirth: 9/11, Jim Whitaker, and the Resurrection of Ground Zero

Jim Whitaker is a Henry Crown fellow at the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Formerly the president of Imagine Entertainment, he is also the founder of Project Rebirth, a non-profit organization that has chronicled the rebuilding of Ground Zero in New York City for the past eight years. Employing time-lapse photography along with more traditional documentary content, it is an effort unique in its scope and attention to time, able to compress the colossal efforts of thousands into a feature length film of unusual emotional power. With its hundreds of hours of footage slated to be a permanent part of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum, Project Rebirth is a valuable contribution to both the historical record and the world of cinema.

Project Rebirth from Project Rebirth on Vimeo.

 

I recently had a chance to speak to Mr. Whitaker about his life, his work, and this very important project.

BL: Take us back to the beginning. How did it all get started?

JIM WHITAKER: Well, I visited Ground Zero about a month after September 11th. I'd come to New York City to attend the wedding of one of my best friends from college, Nick Wood. The wedding itself was unusual in that it was an extremely uplifting event -- these wonderful people were getting married -- but later that night I vividly remember seeing some of Nick's Wall Street co-workers crying. When I woke up the next morning, I told my wife that I wanted to visit Ground Zero.

At the site, I remember seeing the destruction and having a great feeling of anxiety and dread. But as I watched people moving around, I had a brief feeling of hope -- a word I didn't use for the first three years or so the project existed -- a feeling that one day the place would look very different. I was curious how I might capture that shift in emotion for an audience, going from dread to hope in a very short period of time. And then I had the idea to literally show it. Put up time-lapse cameras, each recording a frame of film every five minutes, to allow people to see the site's evolution.

The idea was also an outgrowth of the work I was doing with the Aspen Global Leadership Network, which I've been a part of for the past several years. AGLN brings together leaders from a wide variety of fields to discuss how to move beyond success to significance. My colleagues and I were just out at the most recent gathering in June, and we were honored to see Project Rebirth nominated for the John P. McNulty Prize.

Obviously this has been a huge logistical undertaking. What was the first thing you did to get things moving?

The first thing I did was talk to my oldest friend and the Director of Photography on the project, Tom Lappin, to see if he thought it was possible. We did some tests and felt satisfied that it was. Then the really hard work began. I paid to have a location scout go into the site and start looking at perches on the buildings where I was interested in placing the cameras. Nick [Wood] and I contacted another old college friend from Georgetown, Pat Ryan, whose father was the Chairman and CEO of the AON Corporation. Mr. Ryan agreed to give me seed funding for the cameras. AON lost 175 employees at Ground Zero. As Project Rebirth is a 501-3 not-for-profit corporation, we exist on donations.

As far as permission goes, there was really no one in charge of the entire site, so instead of asking the government agencies, we simply went directly to the various building managers. Tom contacted his brother-in-law on Long Island, a very talented carpenter, and he went to work on building the boxes to house the cameras.

How has the project been received by New Yorkers?

I've been amazed and humbled by the reception. From the moment we began, it has grown organically, supported by literally hundreds of people who have invested a great deal of time and energy to see it through. We've received substantial financial support from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and we're partners with the National September 11th Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero.

The film is going to be a permanent part of the museum's archives. What effect do you hope it might have on future generations as they visit and look back?

My kids are now six and three, and I hope that one day they and all future generations will come away with a feeling of hope and a greater understanding of the profound resilience of human beings in the face of unimaginable horror and disaster.

Describe the filmmaking process itself, particularly with respect to time-lapse.

We have fourteen cameras in and around the site, and we're shooting on 35mm film because it's the highest image resolution for historical preservation. A camera assistant unloads and replaces 400 feet of film every three weeks from each of the fourteen cameras. And we have a checklist of requirements to assure that the cameras are in good working order. We're also shooting time-lapse vignettes within the site to capture building milestones.

You're also doing some more by-the-books documentary stuff, interviewing and following the life stories of people who were directly impacted by the events of 9/11. How did you find them? And was it difficult to get them to share their stories on camera?

I wanted the subjects to represent a cross-section of those affected by the day: a fireman, a policeman, someone who was on the impact floor where the plane hit, a construction worker who lost someone, and so on. With the help of a field producer, Danielle Beverly, we began researching the lives of as many people as we could possibly find who were personally affected by the day. Since the project was going to last for such a long time, one of the most important qualities we were looking for was a strong emotional commitment to the project. And we were able to get this from an incredible group of people who opened themselves up and offered to share their life experiences over many years.

Eight years after the attacks, and you're still filming. Did you expect it would take this long?

When I started, I committed to the idea that I would just be holding a mirror up to the site and whatever took place over a given period of time would be the outcome. On a very accelerated rate, I thought it might be completed inside of ten years but we planned that it would likely take at least fifteen years to complete. Of course, it may take more time and we will keep the cameras rolling until the last day.

I often wonder what the real estate situation in the Freedom Tower will be like. Do you get the sense that it'll be difficult to find takers? Will businesses be afraid to inhabit a building at the site of the old World Trade Center?

My focus has really been on the site and the nine subjects we've followed who were directly affected by the day -- combining the emotional and physical evolution of the two -- so it would be hard for me to speculate. I know that downtown is thriving right now.

Has working on the project changed you?

About five months ago, I left my position as president of Imagine Entertainment, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's production company in Los Angeles, to devote myself full-time to completing Project Rebirth. I'm editing a feature-length documentary of the film which I plan to complete by the end of the year. I'm also working with the National September 11th Memorial and Museum on film programming that will be included in the museum. About three years into the project, I realized the project might have the potential to help people in a meaningful way when it was completed. And after showing it to a group of academics at Georgetown University, we also discovered that there had never before been a long-term, filmed study of the effects of mass trauma and grief of this length and magnitude. So Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship have partnered to create the Project Rebirth Center for Trauma and Recovery in memory and support of 911 first-responders and future first-responders to natural and man-made disasters. The outgrowth of this center, which has been lead by Project Rebirth's Chairman of the Board, Brian Rafferty, has been incredibly gratifying. It's given me an even greater sense of purpose in making the film.

What are some of the most memorable experiences you've had while making the film?

One of our subjects lost her fiancé and remarried four years later. She decided to elope to Hawaii and since the marriage was completely private, the members of our film crew were the only witnesses. At one point, the bride and groom asked me to sign the wedding license and that was quite an emotional moment. Every time I go to Ground Zero is memorable in some way or another. We've been witnessing the site's steady evolution over time, which has been remarkable and emotional in its own right.

Any advice for those who might aspire to do work like this?

To those who are interested or might aspire to work like this, I would advise them to follow their hearts and then be prepared to do an enormous amount of work to support that emotional instinct. My mother had passed away six months before September 11th, so I was very open to the idea that life is short and you must seize upon any deeply personal notion you have and follow through with it. I felt a responsibility to complete it at the time, and I still do. Once you reach that stage, it is pretty hard not to move forward.

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