When we hit upon our plan for making this movie, we knew we’d need to engage the same kind of forces it takes to fire a star.

But what does it take to fire a star?

To become a star — to emit a light all can see, and even the blind can feel — the most important component is mass.

Let’s start small, with the mass of the Earth.

We might look teeny-tiny from space, but the view from here to the horizon stretches out so far it’s hard for our eyes to search out its limits.

To put it mildly, the outer crust of land and water at which we gaze is beyond heavy.

To imagine just how heavy, think of the stress you’d cause your cat were you to accidentally put your weight on its tail. 

Now multiply that stress by the weight of mountains, oceans, and all the rock, sand, water, land, and people, on a whirling gravity well so strong it holds our moon in thrall, fixed in its inexorable pull.

Trust us, no proper cat could easily forgive you after being subjected to that degree of force.  (Did we mention there’s a cat in our film?  Big one too.  Very important to the plot.)

But back to our truly immense, almost-impossible-to-imagine weight, whose force is directed into downward pressure, compressing everything beneath it.

Back to the kind of pressure which forces coal into its finest possible forms.

Past coal which has turned to mineral we fly.

Down toward a molten core not even diamonds are compact enough to survive.

Down to the center of the Earth, where the pressure for matter to fold and compress itself into its smallest possible forms transmutes it into liquid lava.  There the forces of mass pressing down have become so great, so compressed, that the mass is forced to convert itself into the thermal energy which makes life as we know it on Earth possible.

But the Earth is not the size of the Sun.

The sun is much, much, larger.

A star like our sun is so much larger than the Earth that, even at the point on the sun’s surface where it becomes molten and transmutes itself into thermal energy, there’s still so much pressure moving towards its center that the only way it can compress any further is to turn itself into pure energy by turning to light.  And then, yes indeed, a star has been born.

Now that we have new respect for the forces involved in creating sunlight, you may rightly be asking yourself… but what in the known universe does this have to do with the making of a movie?

The answer is: it has everything to do with making a movie, because to emit enough light to transmit our script to screen we need our own critical mass.

We need you!

We need the thousand points of pressure your $5 tickets put upon this movie.

We need the critical mass your attention and money can bring to bear on all the immense costs associated with making a high-quality film.

And unlike your cat, when you put your pressure to bear on us by buying a ticket, or suggesting a script change, we won’t make a baffled mewling noise.  No sir, no ma’am, we’ll give you our heartfelt thanks for caring and move to turn that $5 into light.

What about it?  Want to make light with us?

Be a mogul.  Make a movie.

~ One Bird Mocking