I had the pleasure of working with Amy Lawday Productions of NYC in creating these intimate portrait films for the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program. The video series provides a look into the stories of some of the Big & Little “matches” that Big Brothers Big Sisters brings together in America’s oldest and most cherished mentoring program.
In September, ARTE's NYC news correspondent Renaud Dumesnil asked me to shoot a piece on gas fracking in Dimick, PA, a town at the center of this controversial topic. Our story began with an interview of Josh Fox, the film director whose award winning documentary Gasland shed a new light on this topic. The following day we traveled to Pennsylvania to see the process for ourselves and interview some of the people effected by the process. It was an educational and compelling story of money verses nature. The methods used to extract these natural gases submerged miles within the ground are potentially invasive to the land and use millions of gallons of water and toxins. Gas fracking is being strongly considered for the Hudson River Valley of New York State. This could be a pivotal moment for the ecosystem of the area and the watershed (supplying 90% of drinking water to over half the state's population). I'm grateful for learning about this important topic through the lens and motivating my civic responsibility.
