ENDURANCE, 2024
National Geographic Documentary Films
Photo Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust
SPEED OF RUST, 2024 WaterBear
SIX DEGREES FROM SCIENCE
Coming Soon
We’re longtime experts in entertainment and social impact, bringing decades of experience in documentary production, audience engagement, and measurable impact.
Our team understands the power of story and knows how to maximize reach and impact. The right films – with the right strategies – reach new and important audiences, spark action, disrupt systems, and give voice to those society would otherwise silence.
OUR APPROACH
We work closely with funders, distributors, and other partners to produce the best possible films and most effective campaigns. It takes vision, savvy, expertise, discipline, and hard work, and it all starts with telling a story that will attract, entertain, and inspire passion in people.
We operate along the lifespan of nonfiction projects, from development to production, from distribution strategy through impact campaigns. Today we’re developing and producing films with talented and celebrated filmmakers, and we’re building multiplatform, global strategies to put content to work in the world.
Leveraging decades of filmmaking experience, we are building production teams and coalitions, managing production and distribution plans, carefully managing budgets and timelines, and overseeing business affairs. Our team can produce and manage films from conception through delivery – and beyond – and our production partnerships come in all shapes and sizes.
In our consulting work, we advise investors, philanthropists, distribution platforms, brands, production companies, family offices, and filmmakers on how to optimize impact with film. We teach all-staff classes, consult with executive teams, and help organizations build their own strategies for developing, producing, and distributing unscripted content.
Oftentimes, telling a story is only the beginning. There’s a lot of talk about the “impact” of documentaries, but not too many people truly understand what it is, how it works, or what strategy is required. Our team has designed, launched, and managed/executed some of the biggest ever film impact campaigns, and today is working with film projects large and small on strategies to reach and activate audiences in pursuit of social change.
ABOUT US
Co-founders Ruth and Ted come from different backgrounds but combine to create unique expertise in film production and campaign strategy.
When we started Consequential in early 2021, we wanted to make great films. We wanted to advance the field. We wanted to break through with real, measurable impact, partner with leaders who share our passion, and we wanted to have fun while doing it. Fast forward to today, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. There are a lot of stories to tell, and a lot more work to be done.
Recent successes include Oscar® winner Summer of Soul, Master of Light, LIFT, Hunger Ward, Anonymous Sister, The Reason I Jump, Lead Me Home, School of Hope, and YOUTH v GOV. Today, we are in production on multiple films, with two upcoming releases and others in active development.
PARTNER
Ruth Johnston
Ruth Johnston is an award-winning producer and executive producer of films ranging from Oscar® winner SUMMER OF SOUL and Oscar® nominees HUNGER WARD and LEAD ME HOME to festival favorites REASON I JUMP and MASTER OF LIGHT. She’s a veteran producer behind hundreds of hours of film, television and interactive digital media projects, including the multiple Emmy winning Cash Cab.
As an executive, she was COO of Lion TV in
New York and most recently General Manager of Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions, where she grew and managed a team that became an industry leader in impact storytelling. Today she’s one of two co-founders of Consequential, a production and consultancy company operating at the intersection of storytelling and social change.
Ruth is currently producing ENDURANCE for National Geographic Documentary Films and overseeing production for Consequential’s other documentary films while developing several projects across the spectrum of the world’s most pressing issues. Consultancy clients include philanthropists, storytellers and platforms optimizing strategies for development, production, distribution, and audience acquisition and activation. An avid traveler, certified rescue diver and sailor, originally from Northern Ireland, Ruth lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest.
PARTNER
Ted Richane
Ted Richane is a seasoned campaigner, producer and entrepreneur working closely with filmmakers, production companies, funders and distributors from development through distribution to assure storytelling makes measurable impact. A co-founder of Consequential, a production and consultancy company operating at the intersection of storytelling and social change, he is an industry leader at building and managing story-driven impact campaigns. He has a proven record of leveraging film to build audiences, change public policy and shift the trajectories of some of society’s most pressing challenges.
At Consequential, Ted is currently executive producing multiple feature-length documentaries, developing several others and leveraging his experience advising philanthropists, storytellers and platforms on how to optimize story-driven impact strategies.
For six years, Ted oversaw publicity, audience engagement and impact strategy for Paul
G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions, where he was responsible for maximizing reach and social change for projects spanning ocean health, conservation, climate change and beyond. He combines his 15 years in unscripted entertainment with nearly a decade of experience in Washington, D.C. working in communications for numerous political and advocacy campaigns and serving clients ranging from non-profit organizations and filmmakers to Fortune 500 companies and foreign and local governments.
Ted has a Master of Public Diplomacy from the University of Southern California and an undergraduate degree from Syracuse University. He’s a founding board member of the Impact Guild, a backpacker and youth soccer coach and referee, and calls Los Angeles home.
AS CONSULTANTS
We develop and produce cutting-edge films and campaigns, leveraging original storytelling to inspire, educate and activate.
AS PRODUCERS
We advise philanthropists, distributors, filmmakers and others on how to thrive at the intersection of story and social change.
PROJECTS
We are “issue agnostic,” always on the hunt for character-driven stories bringing to life the most urgent challenges facing our world and the people directly connected to them.
Endurance
In a legendary feat of leadership and perseverance, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton kept alive his crew of 27 men for over a year despite the loss of their ship in frigid pack ice. Over a century later, a team of modern-day explorers sets out to find the sunken ship.
From National Geographic Documentary Films and directed by Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin and Natalie Hewit, ENDURANCE tells the inspiring stories of these two landmark expeditions, bound by their shared grit and determination. Consequential’s Ruth Johnston is producing.
PARTNERS
National Geographic
Little Dot Studios
History Hit
Little Monster Films
STATUS
Releasing Fall 2024
DISTRIBUTION
National Geographic Channels
Disney+
Six Degrees from Science
A feature-length documentary directed by Emmy and Peabody winner Marilyn Ness, immersing us in the lives of passionate scientists who work in environments where competition for resources is fierce, institutional barriers abound, and their focus is constantly directed away from science to survival. What are the stakes if and when these scientists leave the field, frustrated by the challenge of earning a living? What potential cures and discoveries leave with them?
PARTNERS
Aspen Institute
STATUS
In Production
DISTRIBUTION
2025
Speed of Rust
In this short eco-horror hybrid documentary directed by Oscar® nominee Skye Fitzgerald, a Yemeni engineer recounts from a hospital bed what happened to the FSO Safer, a massive oil tanker moored off the coast of Yemen.
PARTNERS
WaterBear
Spin Film
Bray’s Run Productions
STATUS
Post-production
DISTRIBUTION
WaterBear, September 2024
Rebel by Design
A cinematic documentary revealing the extraordinary life and pioneering work of Burt Rutan, the maverick aerospace designer whose innovations redrew the boundaries of air and space travel. It is an unprecedented look at the iconoclast behind some of the most revolutionary aircraft in history—from the record-breaking Voyager to the suborbital SpaceShipOne.
PARTNERS
Antenna Films
STATUS
In Production
Peak Flow
This film follows athletes, researchers, trainers, and influencers who are working to flip the narrative on menstruation. Their stories prove that working with their cycle, they can train harder, recover faster, and have longer careers. They will show us that the menstrual cycle is not a handicap but a superpower hidden in plain sight.
PARTNERS
Blue Gray Films
Voice in Sport
STATUS
In Development
Summer of Soul
In his acclaimed, Oscar®-winning debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten–until now. SUMMER OF SOUL shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes never-before-seen concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The 5th Dimension and more.
PARTNERS
Searchlight Pictures
Hulu
Onyx Collective
Concordia Studio
Play/Action Pictures
RadicalMedia
Vulcan Productions
STATUS
Released by Hulu and Searchlight in June 2021
The Reason I Jump
Based on the bestselling book by Naoki Higashida, THE REASON I JUMP is an immersive cinematic exploration of neurodiversity through the experiences of nonspeaking autistic people from around the world. The film blends Higashida’s revelatory descriptions of his autism, written when he was just 13, with intimate portraits of five remarkable young people. It opens a window into an intense and overwhelming, but often joyful, sensory universe, a rich tapestry that leads us to Naoki’s core message: not being able to speak does not mean there is nothing to say.
PARTNERS
Vulcan Productions
The National Lottery
BFI
The Ideas Room
MetFilm
Runaway Fridge
Kino Lorber
Picturehouse Entertainment
STATUS
Released June 2021
CONNECT
Partnership and teamwork are central to each of our projects and we try our best to work with genuine people who want to tell consequential stories and achieve meaningful impact.
Drop us a line. We’d love to hear your ideas.