By Jim Cavan
In a media landscape where the internet has become as indispensible as it is convenient, trying to find the most effective means of keeping someone’s attention has become as crucial as grabbing it in the first place.

And while that’s easy if you’re going for the cheap thrills – toddler music prodigies, drunken injuries and anything involving household pets seems to work as YouTube eyeball glue – the more serious the topic, the more important it is the interest be immediately piqued.

One Seacoast media company seems to have figured it out. Based in a second story office on Court Street in Portsmouth, Now Or Never Media is changing the way one important issue – global climate change – is not only transmitted, but also how it can ultimately bring us together.

The team: two local activists. The message: climate change is real, it’s happening here, and it’s happening now. The outlet: anything new and exciting.

The goal: nothing short of changing the world.

Arising from their own successful film production and media ventures, the folks at Now Or Never Media – Manager and Producer Melissa Paly and Director Bill Rogers – feel passionately that the time to address climate change is, in a word, now. While they began working with each other nearly a decade ago, it wasn’t until around 2006 when their work began taking on an overtly activist tone. Teaming with third partner, photo-journalist turned filmmaker Peter Vandermark, Rogers and Paly collaborated with local filmmaker Tom Jackson to produce its first video, Out of Balance, in 2007. The film took a more-than-critical look at Exxon Mobile and their role – along with principals in the Bush Administration – in influencing energy and climate change policy.

Energized by the process, Paly and Rogers soon realized that their combined skills, experience and connections put them in a unique position to craft and disseminate a message as powerful as it was universal – and to distribute it as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Using rapidly growing and diversifying internet-based platforms, Now Or Never took it as their mission to convey a palpable conviction that climate change is real, it’s happening all around you, and – most importantly – there’s something you can do about it.

“We’re not really involved in the scientific debate around climate change. For us that debate is settled. We’re really more interested in the deeper conversations happening across the spectrum, including in science,” says Bill Rogers, who worked as a media teacher at both Portsmouth High School as well as UNH before starting his own company. “Much more so we’re focused on the solutions people are working on and telling those stories in a compelling way.”

Indeed, if nothing else, Paly and Rogers are storytellers. Teasing out unique and compelling narratives told by local citizens, business owners, academics and advocates – narratives which at once engage, entertain, and educate – the duo produces and markets compelling film-based stories for a whole host of clients both public and private.

While maintaining a certain division of labor – Paly handles production duties while Rogers does most of the directing, shooting and editing – where the two come together is on the climate change issue itself. Both believe d and continue to believe that, regardless of what actually caused it, climate change was – and remains – a very real phenomenon with very real consequences for the Seacoast.

“I have friends who genuinely think it’s too late,” says Rogers. “It’s hard to hear sometimes, but for me that provides the added motivation to find those people who not only think that it’s not too late, but who – even if they do think it’s too late – really are doing something and have a story to tell about it.”

It’s a professional accomplishment to craft a fine film with a compelling story; it’s another to effectively broadcast the message itself. With years of experience behind them and an ongoing studiousness towards the ever-evolving social media scene, Now Or Never Media have become pros when it comes to disseminating its content, while constantly being open to adapting to the changing media landscape.

Two years after the official launch of Now Or Never, Rogers and Paly began batting around ideas about how to bolster the amount of content on the company’s website. One day, while in his kitchen with his family, Rogers decided to try something new. He used his far from professional-grade cell phone camera to make a short, impromptu video. While neither the quality nor the content was ideal, Rogers was able to make a second video using his slightly more advanced Canon camera. In an act of whimsical improvisation, Rogers decided to bring the audience along to his back yard to show off some home-based solutions he himself had undertaken to combat climate change.

Realizing he was on to something, Rogers, in a casual conversation with an old high school friend, unexpectedly stumbled on the name for the new project. Both Rogers and his friend slightly balding, the latter made a joke about that fact. The next time Rogers fired up the camera, he remembered the moment, blurting out an opening salvo that would soon become his clarion call: “bald guy on climate change here!”

The name stuck. The new series, literally entitled Bald Guy on Climate Change, offered Rogers and Paly a way to produce more content –topically lighter and funnier content at that -- without having to worry about splicing and dicing content for days on end.

“With the Bald Guy videos, we didn’t have to spend half a week editing,” recalls Rogers. “We’d spend half a day at most. That allowed us to produce more content in an industry where more content is hugely important. And it allowed us to make things more on the humorous side, instead of being totally serious all the time.”

Shortly after Bald Guy on Climate Change began making the rounds on YouTube and Facebook, Paly and Rogers embarked on another venture. Now that they’d succeeded in providing more regular content, Now Or Never’s next challenge was to find a way to actually stream content live, in the process adding a semblance of improvisation and timeliness to a media library already known for its impressive production value. While attending the 2009 Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) conference in Boston, Rogers and Paly decided to interview some of the attendees, prompting them with nothing but a single, simple question: “What do you do?” They then streamed these impromptu and casual conversations live on UStream throughout the days-long conference.

Christening their new venture !ie TV! (shorthand for “it’s energy! TV”), Paly and Rogers began conducting weekly interviews with well-known green entrepreneurs and other professionals from throughout the Seacoast, in the process giving viewers a candid and unfiltered look at the ways local residents and business owners were helping transform the region into a hotbed of green products, practices, and consciousness.

With so much content now generated and making the virtual rounds, Paly and Rogers are turning the wheels again in an attempt to truly bring this growing green throng of stories to the masses. They’re also in the process of re-branding. Combining these two efforts, Now Or Never hopes to soon launch GreenScreen.tv, a new website which will serve as a catch-all for Now Or Never’s growing content.

One idea the team has to promote the new site is to host a bi-annual screening at a local theater which would feature a series of short clips from local citizens providing their solutions and approaches to the climate change issue. Think of it is a sort of film festival for local greenies.
“We’d start with an initial preview or commercial to invite submissions, and then eventually have a screening, possibly every six months or so,” explains Rogers. “The screening would prime the pumps for people to go to the website, submit content, and really be a part of this evolving network.”

For Rogers, The GreenScreen would be the fulfillment of what Now Or Never has always strived for: a full-on broadcasted network, one that is as bent on promoting green ideas and activism as it is connecting the people behind those ideas.

Being lifelong activists for social and environmental issues, the partners at Now or Never Media are as dedicated to sustainability practices as they are to its clarion calls. According to Rogers, the company’s small Court Street office generates maybe one bag of garbage every 3 months. Lights are rarely turned on in favor of the abundant daylight, and two never fail to fret over things like the “life cycle” of a film cartridge.

In an effort both promote its green practices and media capabilities, in 2009 Now Or Never joined the Green Alliance, a sort of “green business union” that helps raise the profile of sustainability-minded businesses throughout the region. Since joining the Portsmouth-based organization, Now Or Never has produced commercials and short films for a wide range of fellow Business Partners, including: Fresh Local, SEA Solar Store, Energy Audits Unlimited, Simply Green Biofuels, GES Solar Store, Jenaly Technology Group, Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, Ridgeview Construction, Petersen Engineering, MJW Drywall, and Crescent Plowing.

With the Green Alliance, Now Or Never sees a synergistic partnership of growth and purpose. "In many ways the Green Alliance Business Partners are the heart of what Now or Never does", says Rogers. “There are some really vital things about the democratization of media reflected in what the GA does with its blog, the way it helps the business network, the way it utilizes Facebook and other social media networking sites it all helps us reach a wider audience. Just like we try to do, the GA helps each Business Partner tell their own story, which is something we’ve we been really excited to work with them on.”

With climate change legislation squashed at least temporarily on the national level, one would be forgiven for losing hope that the challenge will ever truly be tackled in a meaningful way. But for the folks at Now Or Never, such challenges are the very fuel that helps make their green engine run.

“Part of me sometimes wonders if we’re just whistling on the Titanic,” quips Rogers. “We’re in a very critical place right now when it comes to climate change. But I think the wide range of changes happening around us means there really is something we can all do, and part of finding those solutions depends on transitioning to a true information age where those solutions can be shared.”