Client: Brookings Institute of Washington DC

Pioneer Services: Filming, Editing, Story Vision

Deliverables: 3-4 minute Mini Doc

We were grateful for the opportunity to accompany Brookings & AEI’s Commission for American’s Rural Future as they toured the Mississippi Delta. The Commission was created to be a bipartisan endeavor to enable rural prosperity by strengthening economic opportunity, resilience, and quality of life across rural America. We filmed their experience across three days as they traveled many miles around Mississippi listening to the stories of community members and local leaders. Their boots-on-the-ground research will inform future policies regarding rural America. The video we produced for Brookings will serve not only as documentation for that experience and research, but also as an impactful tool to share with others. The tone of the video leans into Pioneer’s hallmark documentary style. While filming, we are equal parts “fly-on-the-wall” + teammate. By that we mean, we don’t stage scenes or have people read from scripts; we film everything as it happens naturally without interfering. And we also are fully invested in the mission of the client like a team member. This is how we operate on all of our projects. So for this particular video, it was more than showing up with a camera. We were really listening in on the panel discussions and taking in the information as if we were the ones on the commission who would be doing the research report ourselves. We also provide some consultation on the creative nature of the video and the cultural knowledge of being Mississippians. It’s a niche we didn’t set out to make for ourselves but grateful it found us to land on. Pioneer would also like to thank our friends at Save The Children for this referral project!