Roger Nygard’s journey to search for THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE began at age seven when he realized that he would die some day. That discovery shocked him. Then at the age of thirteen when his father died, it brought the concept of mortality home, and Nygard continued wondering what the point of everything was. It wasn’t until the events of 9-11 shocked an entire country into considering their own mortality that Nygard conceived of doing a documentary on the big questions. He finally did something about it when he was invited to a STAR TREK convention in Tel Aviv, Israel in October, 2004. “I often attend conventions when they screen my documentaries, but this time was different. I thought that if I didn’t start shooting some footage while I was at the source of the major Western religions, I’d never do it. The trip forced me to get organized.”

Nygard began preparing his questions and formulating the documentary’s framework. He tested his questions on his friend, composer Billy Sullivan. Sullivan had worked with Nygard, composing music for his previous documentaries, and was interested enough in the subject matter to come on board. According to Sullivan, “When Roger asked me if I believed in God, and I said I did, he responded, ‘I hope God shows up during the making of this movie.’ I immediately thought… how do you not support that?”

When Nygard arrived at the Tel Aviv convention, organizers put him on stage for the traditional introduction, “I used that opportunity to announce the start of my new project, saying, ‘Hello, everybody. Uh… I need a Rabbi!’” The Star Trek fans helped arrange a meeting with Rabbi Baruch Kaplan in Jerusalem, who explained the concept of God being in a state of constant “isness,” and that events like the Holocaust are “a challenge to find God in that event.” This became the first of 175 interviews over the next four years, across 4 continents.

The interviews averaged two hours each, and some went as long as five hours. “One of the hardest things for me to comprehend is how we can all firmly believe things that are so different, often contradictory. My goal was not to debate everybody, but to ask questions and let the answers fall where they may.” In choosing his subjects, Nygard researched and found experts in all the major belief systems. But he didn’t limit himself to the specialists, he included as wide a demographic as possible, so that the film would be a collection of many ideas.

When Nygard began assembling the footage from the first interviews, he screened some of it for fellow filmmaker, Paul Tarantino. Nygard had met Tarantino at the 1998 USA Film Festival in Dallas, Texas. Nygard was there to screen his first documentary, TREKKIES, and Tarantino was unveiling his first feature, COURTING COURTNEY.

Tarantino suggested that Nygard insert himself into the story. Said Nygard, “I knew there had to be a narrator, someone to lead the viewer through the journey–and since it was my journey, I reluctantly stepped in front of the camera for the first time. The audience learns what I learn as I learn it.” He couldn’t very easily film himself, so he asked Tarantino if he could learn to use a camera too. Nygard had read the manual and taught himself how to shoot – mainly because he couldn’t always rely on anybody else while traveling over a several year period.

Tarantino read that camera manual too and then joined Nygard, shooting the second camera, learning the most important rule for a cameraperson: HOLD IT STEADY! “Making this documentary is the kind of life changing event that sneaks up on you one interview at a time,” said Tarantino. “Each and every interviewee has left a mark on me.”

With 450 hours of footage to sort through, the intensive editing process took two years. Simply watching that amount of raw footage would take one person eleven 40-hour weeks. The first cut was almost four hours. The time it took to put a cut together was frustrating. “People talk about what ended up on the cutting room floor, let me tell you what’s on ours – two sequels and the first season of a compelling television series,” Tarantino only half joked. “I looked at every frame we shot,” said Nygard. “As we selected which footage to keep, my goal was not to judge people, but to try to understand them. I hope the film helps people understand their own neighbor a little better. Maybe that will help make it a little easier for us to get along too.”

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