Video the Vote: Ohio
This documentary about voting problems was apparently filmed on Tuesday, edited on a laptop during the week and made available by Saturday. For a couple of years I've wondered why there aren't more DIY/homegrown/whatever documentaries now that the entire process from taping to editing to distribution can easily be done on home computers. I'm sure there are more than I know about but still you'd think we'd be awash in the things. Perhaps it's just too much work or people think they should be making feature-length pieces or nobody really cares. While they can be distributed on burned CDs and DVDs or over the Internet there's still the problem about getting the word out.
While Video the Vote: Ohio is a good example of the sort of thing that wouldn't be covered otherwise it's not a good example in other ways. Though I do realize this was part of a larger Michael Moore-sponsored project it's still missing some important context. How many polling places are covered? Were the challengers actually operating inappropriately as implied? Jesse Jackson claims the challenges were racially motivated but were there similar numbers of challengers at other places? And the music is simply a bad choice. Using a song instead of an instrumental makes the piece too much like a music video and the song's overall upbeat tone conflicts with the rest. (I just looked up the lyrics which are a bit darker and more "desperate" to quote from them but none of that comes across in the video nor should it.) I don't think Video the Vote: Ohio is necessarily wrong--in fact expect it's probably fairly close to the truth--but like much of Moore's work tends to avoid the hard work of actual journalism.