I AM

Director Walter Smith engaged Ridge Road to collaborate on his passion project for Health Stories. Walter, who used his personal funds for this endeavor, wanted to explore the many facets of the significance of good mental health for all individuals. The objective of this project was to create mini-docs that revealed the subjects as much more than the sum of their issues. Each one-minute-long vignette was packaged explicitly for use on various social media, especially Instagram. The raw footage was reviewed, and stories were stripped down to their essence. Sometimes footage was arranged around a single stream-of-conscious statement from the interviewee, a technique of storytelling that made the subjects feel genuinely accessible and authentic to the viewing audience.