Behind Pillar
It’s been almost a month since we released Pillar: The People, The Home, The Money. It’s about the closure of an LGBTQ youth emergency housing program in Columbus, and you can watch it on YouTube. I’m very proud of everyone who worked on this documentary. This was a very complicated topic that I went into knowing very little about.
There’s definitely a lot that I learned, though.
For one, I definitely overpromised and underdelivered when it came to the self imposed deadlines. We aimed to have the doc out in early February and, well, that didn’t happen. I’d have to go with my tail between my legs to sources and Trans Experimental Action (who we worked with to hold a screening) whenever the documentary got delayed yet again. Delayed by life, school, technical difficulties, and so on. Next time, I want to blow expectations out of the water by keeping them much more reasonable.
Self-flagellation aside, when I say that I’m proud of everyone, I really do mean it. This was a really important topic to cover and it took a lot to pull off the five interviews, the countless hours of editing, the live showing. I had my face in my hands half the showing because my attention was drawn to many minute details on the big screen. But afterwards, Evan and Shel were like, “Why did you do that?”
Thirty people showed up. Nobody left during the entire 94 minute runtime. In fact, people were watching from outside of the glass door to the library meeting room. And after I was told that, I was giddy the rest of the day.
Behind Goes Station
This topic piqued my interest many years ago, before Ink and Quail or The Rose City Cardinals were twinkles in my eyes. What stuck to me back then was the fact that a such a story unfolded so close to home. A story of labor exploitation, the gunpowder that was used in America’s wars of expansion, a story of torn families.
As with always, I could have practiced the script more and honed my public speaking. Plus, the story structure needed more work to be engaging and less of a mess. That’s something I think we got right by the time we got to Pillar, though.
This was also a fun shoot. It was sporadically raining, which made me nervous about damaging the camera. But otherwise, I got to channel my inner Tom Scott and travel to a brushy location with Evan to tell this important story from the past.
Behind The War on Hemp
This is another topic that captured me before RCC and Ink and Quail were a thing. In 2024, I abandoned a video on my personal YouTube channel about why there were so many smoke shops at the time. I had done a couple interviews, but life was getting in the way. The people at Hedz Up (the smoke shop I visited) were very kind and accommodating, and I definitely learned a lot about how important this industry is to families.
To lay my cards out, I do softcore believe in the American Dream (although it’s complicated). So I have a soft spot for small businesses like Hedz Up. But I also gathered how important regulation is for this rapidly changing industry.
I wish the camera was in focus during the monologue, of course. In that vein, I should dedicate more time to learning how the gear we already have works and truly master it. Otherwise, this is a piece I’m really proud of.
Behind NATO in Ohio
(Wouldn’t let me embed the video for some reason :p)
Covering the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton was incredibly fun. I got to speak to such a diverse array of voices for it and do a deep dive into an issue I had only formed opinions on based on mainstream media coverage.
That all being said, it was incredibly tragic. To editorialize here, I walked away from that whole experience with my mind changed on a lot of things. That topic deserves more than a footnote in this article, but suffice it to say it was astonishing to see so many intersecting issues in just that week in Dayton. Income inequality, the military industrial complex, campaign finance problems. I’m never going to forget the fact that so many people in downtown Dayton didn’t know what NATO was despite the countless dollars of security being poured into the Assembly. I’m never going to forget that the money was swirling in at the same time that the city of Dayton has a 26.9% poverty rate.
As for behind the scenes stuff, Evan and I poured countless of hours and sleepless nights into editing that video up to snuff. To this day, I laugh at the visual gags. As for things to work on, I wish we broke this up into several more manageable videos instead of one gigadocumentary. Also, my public speaking still needs work. And if we used more interesting backgrounds (like, say, downtown Dayton) for the explainer sections, that would’ve added some nice spice. But overall, I think this video is a north star in terms of our post-production quality.