For my documentary project, my team and I tackled the topic of walkable cities, talking about the benefits they bring and comparing them to unwalkable suburbia, more specifically we wanted to comment on the South Florida cities of Miami and Weston.
The main inspiration for this documentary and the one thing I did the most research on was Michael Moore’s many documentaries, but especially Roger & Me (1989) and Bowling For Columbine (2002). I’m a big fan of his documentary style, his dark edge always engages me thoroughly and I think it’s very effective for telling this type of documentary that is focused on larger issues in a society rather than some of the documentaries we viewed in class like Exit Through The Gift Shop and American Promise which had a focus on an individual level. We knew how relevant and at times polarizing the topic walkable cities was during the time we were making the documentary (the incredibly widely talked about NYC election that had just concluded before we began working on this documentary bringing this topic in particular to the frontlines) so we knew that there wasn’t a way of handling this topic without being a bit political, that's why recreating the style of a Michael Moore feature was so important to me in the making of this, from the narration that can be a bit drab and quiet, to the sarcastic dialogue that is far more biased than you might assume from the tone of the speaker.
One thing I believe we really failed at was at connecting with our audience with these issues we wanted to talk about. Yes we certainly commented on a lot that makes suburbia such a headache but we never really got to the root cause of its many many issues, plus we never really discussed the ways in which suburbia tries to make up for their lack of any real walkability. We originally wanted to comment on Weston’s Town Center which is an incredibly compact area that promotes walkability and community, filled with shops and services which has lead it to be incredibly popular in Weston, and we did actually film a lot of footage while we were there, there was even an event happening where a lot of people set up shops and made a little market area to sell their goods. The problem we ran into was that Alejandro, who was responsible for the script, wound up cutting out a big portion that delved into this aspect of the community. Were we to have added this it would have made the documentary far less biased and probably more informative. That's without even mentioning how we didn’t mention any downsides to living in a city, even if it’s walkable. I understand that documentaries are meant to show bias from the creatives behind it but I think we weren’t able to deliver on our themes to our audience very well and ended up just preaching over teaching.
Another overall issue we had is that the documentary lacked a sense of branding. While most of our peers were able to find a style that suited their documentary and made it stand out, ours felt kind of standard and average, which is a shame on account of how heavily Michael Moore inspired me as I said since his documentaries are filled to the brim with personality, originality, and life. We did have some elements to make some brand identity, for one I always knew I wanted our B-roll to look kind of empty and deserted, especially when filming the suburbs, both because I just like the way it looks, making the footage look cold and distant, reflecting that same aspect of the suburbs and how lonely they can be. This also worked because when we got to the city it was impossible to film without showing multiple buildings and people in a shot, adding to the whole community and walkability aspect of the video.
The conversation surrounding walkability in cities is pretty complex and there is a lot that our documentary didn’t really delve into. We never really went into the aspect of public vehicles and how they do a lot in helping cities be more accessible, even if they aren’t necessarily walkable, we got footage in a monorail in Miami but again that segment was cut out of our script, I ended up editing some of that footage into the final video but all that is shown is more implied than anything. We also didn’t really delve that deeply into the community aspect of the city, we got a lot of footage while getting our B-roll but it wound up going mostly unused. There was certainly a communication error between us, we weren’t able to get a lot of our ideas across and by the time we had the full script finished it was too late to make any changes and I just had to get to editing and finish it.
Overall there were a lot of things that I enjoyed about our documentary, in better hand some of that B-roll and that entire topic could have turned into a better documentary but I’m glad we got to delve into the topic, both because it is incredibly interesting to all of us but also because of how important it is to the world we’re currently living on. I’m sure a topic like this will still be considered relevant in the years to come and documentaries like mine will be seen more and more.
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