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When we released one, we always had another ready to go. Our goal was to have two documentaries finished at a time. (Did I mention I also have two boys and a lovely wife with whom I was trying to spend time?) And I was writing scripts, recording voiceover, and editing videos nonstop. Sam Ellis, a Vox video producer, helped with graphics and animations. Christina helped me organize the footage. When I got back, I already knew what the narrative of each episode would be.

I spent three months traveling, collecting footage, and thinking about the stories I wanted to tell. The most important part of making a documentary like this: don’t sleep I never had time to acclimate to jet lag.įor you videographers in our community (and I know there are a lot of you!), here is the equipment I took with me: one camera ( Sony A7S II), a drone ( DJI Mavic Pro), a handheld, stabilized selfie stick ( DJI Osmo Pro), an audio adapter (Sony K2M) and shotgun mic to get audio into the camera, two lenses (Sony 24 - 70 mm f/2.8 Zeiss and 18mm Prime 2.8) and a tripod (Manfrotto Carbon Fiber). I packed all my gear into a backpack and a carry-on suitcase so I could start filming immediately in each place. Christina and I spent a few weeks planning the trips, crafting the itineraries, and developing relationships with local people, including fixers - people who act as guides and translators on the ground.Įach production trip was about a week long - and I was the whole crew. Getting all of this footage required a massive amount of research and planning. I collected nearly three terabytes of footage, interviews, and photos in three months. In the end, we chose the stories that had a combination of powerful visual evidence and relevant context, and that were in a variety of regions of the globe.Īlso key: good gear. Narrowing them down to just six stories was extremely difficult. My producer Christina Thornell and I spent six weeks reading every one of your ideas and doing our own intensive research - interviewing experts, reading history books, examining maps, and seeking additional feedback from the editorial team. We wanted stories that would humanize the map. We wanted ideas that struck a balance between exploring borders through people’s stories and explaining them on a macro scale. By the end of a couple of weeks, we had nearly 6,000 suggestions of borders all over the world, from people all over the world. Within a day, we had more than 3,000 responses. We were also open to invisible borders, like socioeconomic lines that often divide cities. The border didn’t have to be between countries. In early May, we created a survey and published a video on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube asking for those ideas. We crafted a way for people not only to follow the journey but also to participate - I wanted your ideas to fuel this project.

So when I pitched this international documentary series, I knew I wanted to do it on an ambitious scale.Īfter getting the green light from my executive producer Joe Posner, I roped in Vox’s engagement team. It had a huge impact on me, and I’ve had a genuine curiosity ever since about how people divide themselves up. After high school, I lived in Tijuana for two years and woke up every morning to a giant wall that split two countries apart. I’ve been obsessed with maps and borders for decades. So I wanted to close by giving all of you a deeper look into how we made this project and the lessons we learned. You gave us story ideas that we ended up turning into videos, and your feedback and enthusiasm kept me going, whether I was trekking through the Arctic with no coat other than my red Uniqlo jacket or recovering from being hit by a car. The Vox Borders fans - our community on Facebook, on Instagram, and through our newsletter - were an incredible, important part of the process. From February to the end of November, dozens of people across the newsroom were devoted to the researching, reporting, community building, and producing required to publish our six documentaries. Vox Borders is one of the most ambitious projects that Vox has ever undertaken.