“We lost a friend,” recalled John Higgins, a longtime Minneapolis resident after a freak storm destroyed a beautiful, 180-year-old bur oak tree in his Lake of the Isles yard. The canopy was lost, but a large section of the trunk remained.
John Higgins reached out to Curtis Ingvolstad, a chainsaw sculptor, to shape the wreckage of the oak tree into something new.
“If you put the right intention in, it will affect people.”
Together, they figured out the proportions—a pencil with 2/3 of its resources remaining—as well as the tilt—the pencil needed to feel as if it were in motion, or perhaps about to fall. As Curtis puts it, “There’s no drama in the pencil unless we put it in the pencil.”
After much planning and five and a half weeks of sculpting, the #2 pencil began to appear.
The sculpting of the pencil was only the beginning. John decided that the pencil itself would become an event, not just a single moment of creation, but an ongoing performance through annual sharpening ceremonies that attract thousands.
One foot of the pencil is sharpened away every year, and kids eagerly wait beneath to run and catch the giant shavings. With each passing year, the sculpture evolves, just like a pencil does over its life with a student.
INTERVIEW STYLE
The interviews with John and Curtis are incredibly important to the doc and will carry a lot of the storytelling weight.
The interviews will be complemented by verité to carry us around the neighborhood and through the sharpening ceremony.
ANIMATION STYLE
For moments that archival footage may not exist, a combination of pencil-sketched animation and stop motion animation will fill the gaps.
TILT-SHIFT STYLE
Because much of the story plays with scale, tilt-shift cinematography can further lean into scale as a theme. These shots will help establish the area and Minneapolis as a character in the story.
TIMELINE
The annual sharpening ceremony will be on June 7, 2025. Ideally, our team would be present for the days leading up to the sharpening ceremony to conduct interviews, and gather b-roll of the area, the setup for the event, and the sharpening ceremony itself; as well as a few days following the event to capture any additional footage.
RELEASE
The completed film will be submitted to a variety of film festivals both in the United States and internationally. During the festival run, we will seek out the ideal distribution partner for wide release.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
When I first saw the story of the giant pencil, I was merely entertained by it as an object. Scaling a pencil to match its source material (the wood from a tree) felt like a simple, playful art piece, but it captivated me—and as I started to think about the context in which it was created, it became more than just playful reinterpretation of an object, it was a reclamation of something broken into something whole.
As I read further into the story of the giant pencil, I was struck by the language used around this piece. Viewing the sharpening as not just a ceremony but a promise to continue. Seeing the pencil itself as a chance to change our minds. Seeing the broken tree become an object of a community to rally behind. Accepting change, through sharpening off one foot of the tree per year. It all felt like what I needed to believe in the time we’re entering—that good things can still be ahead, if we do the work to create something beautiful from the brokenness around us.
My hope is that the audience is taken on a similar journey—the immediate captivation of the pencil as a visual that sharpens into a message for all of us.
TEAM
DANIEL STRAUB - DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
Daniel is an award-winning Los Angeles-based director and producer who has worked in the documentary film industry for more than 10 years. With a sharp eye for stories that give form to environmental racism, injustice in the healthcare system and other insidious issues, Straub has dedicated his career to using film and television as vehicles for revealing systemic problems in order to drive change.
AUSTIN STRAUB - DP, PRODUCER
Austin Straub is an Emmy®-winning cinematographer (The Migrant Kitchen, PBS/KCET) whose work spans the gamut of the industry. They have lensed theatrical-feature films, as well as specials for Disney+ and Apple TV+, and their documentary-style camera operating has been tapped for concert films produced by HBO, Amazon and Apple. Austin thrives in intimate, human stories bathed in naturalistic light, and they are passionate about placing the audience in the heart of the most pressing issues of our time.
BRYCE CYRIER - PRODUCER
Bryce is a film and documentary producer known for his versatile leadership and commitment to fostering the creative process. He’s made feature documentaries, doc series, shorts, commercials, and music videos, ranging in distribution from wide theatrical release to millions of views on YouTube. He has worked with professional athletes, NY Times bestselling authors, and Academy Award winners like Laura Dern and Golden Globe winners Paul Walter Hauser, Michael C. Hall, and Annette Bening. He is also a screenwriter, a husband, and a proud father to two kids who love movies even more than he does.
JAMES ELLINGTON - COMPOSER
James is a lifelong musician, composer, producer and music supervisor with an eclectic music palette.
Ellington's latest project is Out of Plain Sight, an unprecedented feature documentary produced by the Los Angeles Times, for which he composed the entire score.