My friend Josh and I worked on a video project last year for a non profit called Bogg. They distribute meals to neighborhoods that are in need of food support and in doing so help establish genuine community in the area. The two guys who head up the organization are good friends of ours and over the course of a few months we spent time volunteering and hanging out at some of these events. It was a truly perspective shifting experience for me. I think the biggest thing I learned through this whole deal is that hunger has little to nothing to do with food and almost everything to do with community and people. These communities are amazing things to watch grow and its the core of their ministry to catalyze that growth. Feeding people is their catalyst.
The video we made for them was surprisingly but fittingly not all about food. In the past the videos they’ve had made have been focused mainly on their operations or on the food they distribute. This video was different as they wanted to show the “people” side of what goes on at their multiple locations every week. We also wanted to take the video a step further and convey a positive message about the city we live in with some contrasting footage of good and bad parts of Dayton.
One of the hardest things about living in Dayton is hearing the negative rap it gets from a large part of the population for being a dirty, boring, vacant, empty, (insert subjective negative vibes here), run down, city. We wanted to pull that negativity to the front of the viewers mind at the beginning of the video and destroy it by the end. We wanted to show people the Dayton that we have experienced for the past few weeks, a city thats growing and who’s culture is rich with community, interesting new niches, and a history that breathes innovation and invention. But before we showed people that, we wanted to pull the all too familiar “dismal Dayton” vibes out. And we did. This is what we came up with.
Making this video was a ton of fun and I can’t even begin to list all of the things we learned making it. Dayton is a great city and Bogg showed us that more than anything else. Check out their website and if you are in Dayton, drop by and give them a hand helping people or if you need some food pick some up. The Jasons are the best kind of people.
MICHAEL MONGIN 