Elemental
Pulling Threads
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The Backstory
The making of these films is not a short story! But in case you’re wondering, here’s the quick version. Film and videos have always been a part of I’m Determined – mostly in more of a documentary-style. After successfully trialing a single narrative-style video about problem-solving, we realized that video case study are an extremely effective teaching tool, and decided to push to create one video for each of the I’m Determined Elements.
After some long meetings, research, and script-writing, we landed on a nine-part series that follows three storylines involving high school aged youth, their families, and their attempts to wrestle with the intersection of disability and identity. Each storyline spreads across three of the I’m Determined Elements, and is interwoven with the other storylines. We call this series Elemental.
As soon as Elemental was ready, our team started showing episodes at conferences, classrooms, and part of presentations. Audiences made up of youth, educators, and family members loved the episodes, and were eager to see the next one after stopping for discussion. We soon saw the power that these films had, and explored ways to get the films out there to more people, including communities and those attending film festivals.
While we could have entered the Elemental series into a festival, we thought a full-length feature film would work better, so we asked the directors and editors if there was enough footage to edit it into one film. We did need to shoot one more scene to help round it out, but in the end, Pulling Threads was born.