We’re excited – and have been for the past weeks – to be prepping for a new documentary project. The series is titled Your Fellow Americans. It’s going to be a (hopefully) on-going web series that will slowly, calmly take a look at what it means to be an American. It will examine issues of race, immigration, and The American Dream.
The challenges that we’re facing are moderate in number. We have ability and a good stack of production gear. We have a small team (Christopher Cook is leading, with assistance for a variety of different filmmakers, as schedules allow). Presently we don’t have funds – for this project or for much else – but we’ll be launching a Kickstarter by the start of January. Calls have been in the works for a while, slowly finding and schedule the first round of interviews. Those will be based her in Kansas City to save money. Once the project is rolling, and funding is achieved, we’ll being broadening the scope and connecting with filmmakers in other cities (if you’re one of them, let us know).
We’ve got the social profiles acquired and half-set-up, but now it’s an issue of getting some funding so we can get a get someone to focus on Social Media. As you may see by the history of posts, we’re Listeners, not so much Tellers. This is good since we’re documentary filmmakers. But it’s not good for audience-building, which is often the un-thought-about production phase called “Distribution.” So, that’s a hurdle.
Facebook page: facebook.com/yourfellowamericans
We’ve got a splash page up at http://yourfellowamericans.com – not too worried about burning time on an extensive site build. Once there are a few videos in the queue, we can paste up a simple WordPress build and worry about an extensive sight if the project “blows up.”
THE FIRST ROUND
Since the issues of race and immigration are capable of being exceedingly divisive topics, the plan is to focus the first round of interviews on families rather than individuals. We’re going for multi-generation families in as many ethnicities/races as we can find here in Kansas City. This will yield two strong positive results. Firstly, the majority of our nation can easily identify with the idea of “Family.” By having the initial interviews focus on this we can avoid the potential push-back that we individualistic Americans often have when we see an individual talking on touch issues. We often react by thinking the person is “preaching” at us, and stop listening. Secondly, by interviewing a grandparent, a parent, and a teenager we’ll have the ability to see how thoughts on these issues change across generations as well as across cultures.
It’s gonna be interesting. In every way.
