12. A Story Can Change A City — John Paget

Show Notes In this episode Wesley sits down with John Paget in Buffalo, NY for a conversation about the work he has done for the city to help transform the narrative that Buffalo tells itself.  His film Buffalo: America's Best Designed City has over 1 million organic views on YouTube.  We talk about the process for making that film and the impact it had. We talk about why you sometimes need to break the rules to go "viral" in the podcast. Stories that acknowledge past wrongs and are viewed collectively, can act as a form of confession for moving forward.  In the podcast we explore how his film did just that. Quotes: "I've heard is like, if you don't, if you're not doing exactly what you want to be doing, if you can't get hired, doing exactly what you want to be doing, just start doing it and, you know, build that library of work, build that experience, and then that will lead to the connections to do that kind of work." "I've always, throughout my entire career have always tried to be on the cutting edge of innovation, in terms of what camera tools are available and being developed a new techniques. But the techniques should never just be for their own sake, they should serve somehow the creative strategy, and the story." "If you have a calendar, or a deadline for filming, usually if there's three months or a year, depending on how long you have, I like to mark off a third of that, just for creative development. Thinking through. "Okay, what is the strategy? What is the script, the concept" and perfecting that before we pick up a camera and go shoot. Referenced Links: Buffalo: America's Best Designed City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBsi5FGbY2Y www.pagetfilms.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFv2bgL27hf49DrVPyVnbGQ