the idea, so far (schoolife #2)

it's been fairly easy, so far, to work through our ideas.

my first idea was to make a documentary film to speak back to "waiting for superman".  the movie was powerful!  but i don't think it told enough of the story. it's not that the facts are wrong. . . it's just that there weren't enough facts.

when i thought about it, though, it seemed like i wouldn't be able to tell the full story of one school year in one documentary.  it would require too much simplification.  we'd be forced to shape a specific storyline. . . so i thought it might be more powerful if we filmed weekly episodes.  i talked with one of my friends, and he explained that the cost to film weekly episodes of whole lives would be astronomical.  it would be too much.  "the idea was great," he said, "but it might not be possible."

so i explained the idea to min.  he said, "you know what?  that's perfect! you could do it for radio."  ("i don't know if you know," he said, "but that's what i did.  i was in music.  i went to school for it.")

i know!  nobody listens to radio, anymore.  i told my students, and i think they thought it sounded like the most boring idea ever.  but when i thought about it, it just made sense.  it feels like a perfect match.  i remembered listening to ghetto life 101 by david isay.  it would be perfect!  plus, it would be much easier to produce, to get started at all, and a bunch easier to get permissions.

for now, we're thinking through how to do episodes over the year.  there are forty weeks in a school year and 180 days.  there's a bunch of different options:

1)  we do the full monty!
2)  we echo morgan spurlock: 30 days
3)  we echo ghetto life 101: 10 days
4)  we follow a full unit: 6-10 weeks

the key thing is: how much time do we need to record in order to get across the idea?  what time frame is able to show enough character complexity and also be realistically possible to record and produce?  if you're here, what do you think?