One of our largest projects this year was in partnership with the Brookings Institution out of Washington, DC. Brookings has taken on the task of taking a close look at rural places in our nation and helping these communities translate their needs and desires to the federal government, and what policies in the future might look like for these people groups - something that has not been done since the Nixon administration. Brookings formed a bipartisan commission of experts from a wide variety of fields from around the country and set out on tour for a boots-on-the-ground approach for their research, called America’s Rural Future (ARF). The group first set out to North Dakota at the beginning of the year and hired a large studio crew from DC to follow their journey. But after the initial video was delivered, they realized they wanted to take the storytelling in a different direction. Next stop on their tour was Mississippi.
We film in a lot of places, but none quite as frequently as the Mississippi Delta. Not only is it Ashley’s birthplace, but it’s a place rich in stories, culture, and history. So when the commission was preparing their visit, they sent out referral requests to their partners to help with finding a new production crew. One of the commission members, Janti Soeripto, is the United States CEO of the global nonprofit Save the Children, for whom we’ve had the privilege of filming many projects all around Mississippi. Word got around from the corporate team down to us through our wonderful network at Save the Children, and we were invited to submit a proposal to Brookings. From there, the Brookings team requested a meeting with us, we pitched them our vision and creative direction, and it was a go. Our signature filming and editing style of cinematic documentary with an intentionally minimal crew/setup was a great fit for this project.
In March, their team from DC plus commission members from around the country traveled to Mississippi. Before the start of the rural tour, we filmed an opening dinner in Jackson at Hal and Mal’s, where they met with Mayor John Horn and former Representative Mike Espy. The next few days were spent traveling around the Mississippi Delta, hearing from local leaders and community members on various subject matters, including how Mississippi went from last to first in the nation for children’s literacy, the severe gaps in our healthcare system, and many other highs and lows of our state. It was important to the group that they get a full picture of a place, not just the complaints, but the good parts of the truth too. That was something we really appreciated about their mission. The conversations and sessions that were organized during their visits were very compelling to us, and we listened as engaged thinkers alongside them, not just showing up and pressing the record button.
We had no idea if they had decided to hire a new local crew for each location, but they liked our style of work so much that they asked us to film their next stop in Eastern Kentucky, and the stop after that in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington in the Pacific Northwest. It was a great privilege to film the journey of not only the commission members, but also the community members who were able to let their voices be heard. We learned about organizations that were helping with the opioid epidemic, the history of coal mining, and relocating neighborhoods after dangerous flooding in Kentucky. In Washington, we heard the stories from several Native American tribes, the timber industry modernization, and the infrastructure efforts for Olympic National Park.
Our college backgrounds (RD, international business; and Ashley, social work) combined with our extensive experience creating films with nonprofits are part of the reason Pioneer Productions was a good fit for this project. The other part is harder to define, but can be summed up as intuition. We wanted our edits to feel like you were on tour with the group, feeling what they did in each location and conversation.
Across all tours with ARF, we had a large group of people, a tight scheduled timeline, lots of moving parts, many locations, many people interviewed, many organic conversations filmed, and meaningful b-roll to catch on the fly in between. We then had to edit three full days of filming down to three minutes that needed to give a full picture of their journey - without getting in the weeds but still making an impact. That ultimately came down to our intuition. This is a part of our skillset that we’d like to communicate better because it is infused in every project we produce.
Intuition, for us, means being able to read the room and how to operate within a specific environment. It is understanding the subtext or what wasn’t said, the context of conversations and interviews, the different audiences for the video, and the heart of the story - what our client needs in an end product. It also means already mentally stitching together segments for the edits in our heads while filming, being flexible and rolling with the unexpected, and catching meaningful b-roll on the fly. One example while filming at Mississippi Valley: we looked up at the sky to film a flock of geese flying in formation after leaving a session about how a community worked together as a collective unit. Ashley pointed to the sky and said, “That’s a picture of them.” Combining the abstract (themes from the session) and the physical (beautiful geese native to that location, not stock footage), that’s how we layer storytelling within our editing and filming. And another reason why we feel it is important to have the editor on location during production.
The approach we had for this series is the same as most of our projects. We like to have just the two of us filming, fly-on-the-wall style, during the main events. Then we find moments in between to pull people away for a few minutes for interviews. We find that for projects like this, where there are people working to find solutions for very delicate topics, it yields much more authentic results having a two- or three-person crew rather than a full crew. We also limit our gear and equipment when possible for the same reasons. Not to mention, there are all of the technical aspects of production, the equipment, and the hundreds of things to juggle and pay attention to in order to make sure it’s going to be a great quality product on that end as well. In turn, this is also more cost-effective for our clients. After visiting the locations and talking with the people there, we edit the videos ourselves so the full emotional impact is felt. Just like it was felt when we were standing there in person. We’ve sort of carved out a niche for ourselves in that way, and we are thankful to have had over ten years doing this together full time. We’ve gotten to meet so many great people during this process, all doing work to move the needle in a positive direction in their own ways for our country and the world. It has been a great experience, and we’d like to thank Brookings for trusting us with this opportunity and believing in our vision.
