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The Happen Films team is made up of Jordan, Antoinette, Anna and Nick. Read more about us. ABOUT HAPPEN FILMS We’re currently living through an exceptional time in human history, where what we’ve known as normal is breaking down due to environmental, cultural, and social limits being reached. This metacrisis has created the conditions for a massive global shift in the way we relate to the world and each other. We need to transition to not just living ‘sustainably’, but in a way that heals and regenerates the damage that’s being done. So how do we go about this? Exploring this question is what Happen Films was founded upon. We make films because we believe it’s the most powerful way we can share new ways of thinking, being, and doing. Happen Films has been our way of contributing toward creating a new story for humanity to live by, so that all of Earth’s creatures can thrive. Currently we're taking a break from making new films. We'll update the website if there are new releases coming after 2026. Meet the Happen Films team Jordan Osmond In his mid-teens, growing up in Ballarat, Jordan was struck by how documentary films were having an impact on how he saw the world and lived his life. He wanted to get behind the camera and have a positive impact on the lives of others. Show More Antoinette Wilson Born in Tasmania, raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, Antoinette left university for a career in book publishing that lasted 20 years. As her understanding of the state of planet and human health developed, a journey of exploration led her towards a change in career that began with work in a market garden and completing her permaculture design certificate. Show More Anna Veale Anna fills the role of Editing Assistant alongside her soundie role when she’s able to join on film shoots. Growing up in Christchurch listening to Radio New Zealand and pottering in her mother’s vegetable garden Anna developed a love for the environment and public broadcasting. Show More Nick Tucker Nick uses his skills in communication, positioning and strategy to the production and promotion of Happen Films content. Growing up on the family dairy farm in southern England, Nick’s love for the outdoors – and the plants and creatures that live there – began early. Show More

Find out about how Happen Films is funded and how we access funds from different sources like philanthropic funding, audience donations and YouTube ad revenue. HOW IS HAPPEN FILMS FUNDED? This is a question we’re often asked when people learn we choose not to take conventional film funding routes and make most of our films free to view. It’s a big subject for us and the ethics around how we fund our lives and our business have been deeply thought about. How do you make ends meet? We refer to our funding model as Community Supported Filmmaking, because we are almost entirely reliant on our audience for the funding of both our films and of Happen Films as a business. For the sake of resilience, we don’t have all our eggs in one basket; our sources of income while we were making films from 2015–2025 were Patreon, Open Collective, YouTube ad revenue, screening licences, and one-off donations. How are funds used? Our major costs are the usual ones for a film production house, with the less usual element that we prioritse buying film gear secondhand (except for batteries and hard drives). The conflict between our films’ messages and the high energy/mining/waste involved in creating the gear we use is not lost on us and each purchase is thoughtfully made. (If you’re in film yourself and have a geeky interest in the gear we use, we’ve added the list on the FAQs page .) As we both lead relatively simple lifestyles we haven't needed to fund luxuries. We paid ourselves a good wage whenever the business could afford it and contractors received standard industry rates. From 2022–2025 we committed to two paid employees working a few hours each a week. The rest of our costs, outside of film production itself, go to platforms that enable the maintenance of this website, cloud file storage, subscriptions for editing and other post-production programmes and music libraries, and of course our accountancy programme and fees, gear insurance, and general home office costs. It all inevitably mounts up, even when you think of your business as tiny! In total, our monthly outgoings in our last few years making films amounted to between NZ$7000 and $10,000, not counting film production, where each film has a separate budget. Usually NZ$15–20,000 for a short film and NZ$40–80,000 for longer-form films. Ethics We want to live in a world in which all of Earth’s creatures can thrive in the way they’re meant to. At present this feels far from the reality of the world we live in but we try to live our lives in a way that contributes to making it possible. We’re white, middle class, educated, and a great deal of privilege and responsibility comes with those things. We were born and raised and live in countries that were colonised by our ancestors – Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We don’t believe colonisation ended sometime in the past – we see that it continues around us and that we can easily play a part in its continuation if we’re thoughtless enough. We’re committed to being allies to indigenous cultures wherever we are, and we have much to learn for that commitment to be in action. Part of the learning is understanding whose stories it’s appropriate for us to tell and how to tell those stories respectfully. This is a constant work in progress. We came to filmmaking with a mission to share stories that contribute to creating a new narrative for humanity to live by. It’s profoundly important to us, but it’s not a mission that sits above our drive to create beautiful, engaging films – it’s on a par with it. We live in a way that is aligned with the message we share in our films: low waste, minimal long-distance travel, growing as much of our own food as possible, and we prioritise secondhand and/or local for pretty much everything except underwear 🙂 We strive to be useful and connected members of our communities and we support initiatives and movements that promote a move towards energy descent and a degrowth economy. We welcome your questions about Happen Films, whatever they might be. Please feel free to be in touch! Photos by Wild Feet Productions

Read the Happen Films Accessibility and Inclusivity statement. ACCESSIBILITY AND INCLUSIVITY At Happen Films, we’re committed to making our films and this website accessible to everyone and inclusive of all. We’re actively learning in this space and acknowledge all the learning still to come, so let us know how we’re doing. You can use the form on this page at any time to send us feedback, highlight areas that need more work, and help us better serve your needs! How are we doing? Use the form below to provide any feedback about how we can improve accessibility. Your name Your email Subject Your message * Required Submit message Your message has been submitted Our commitment to accessibility and inclusivity “Through our work, we want to make a tangible impact. Not just through films that inspire us to live more simply on the planet, but in embracing and encouraging a culture of inclusivity and diversity.” Antoinette Wilson & Jordan Osmond, Happen Films More inclusive representation Part of that commitment is to continuously strive to represent a wider range of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, and physical abilities. We want to more inclusively represent our audience, enable more people to see themselves reflected in our work, and make it easier to access that work. One step towards this goal has been in making changes to this website to make it more navigable and readable for people of all abilities and preferences, and in all situations. It’s a work in progress, so please bear with us as we learn what is needed to truly meet everyone’s needs! Audio-described film versions We’ve released two films with audio description (AD). Fools & Dreamers and Together We Grow can now be played with full AD , making them more accessible for people with visual impairment or those wanting to listen, not watch. Our aim is to continue adding this feature to future films where we can, along with closed captions (CC) in one or more languages, and we’ve already started to build this into film budgets. Whose stories are ours to tell? Another step is for us to consider inclusivity as part of the pre-production process for each film, and in how we operate as a company in general. Whose stories are ours to tell and what is the most appropriate way to tell them? Whose stories are missing from our past work? In what ways can our films express our commitment to being good Treaty partners (Tangata Tiriti) in Aotearoa New Zealand? We welcome your thoughts about the ways we can achieve these goals, and how you feel about the changes we’re making. All feedback is welcome – use the form on this page at any time. 🙂 Working to improve accessibility and inclusivity Implementing the changes we want to make is a big process and will take time. Below is a list of what we’ve done so far towards meeting our accessibility and inclusivity goals, what we’re currently working on, and what’s in the pipeline for the future. Work completed so far New brand identity fully compliant with W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 to meet AA standards for colour contrast. Release of first Happen Films audio-described films. Improvements that are in progress Fixing heading structure, adding alt-tags, and readability issues across the Happen Films website. Including funding for audio-described versions in budget proposals for all new films. Building stronger relationships with those sectors of our community who have been poorly represented in our films to date. A list of future work What would you like to see here? Please let us know and we’ll add it to the list.