sometimes i get tired of the narrative that social media arrived in the late 00's, killing the old world wide web, and driving content-driven static sites out of existence. it's an easily regurgitatable story, but it's not what really happened.
i can't remember how i stumbled across it, but in 2010 i first came across the web documentary series California Is A Place. each five-minute episode focused on a tiny subculture of californian life, usually near the poverty line, and drew out the humanity of everyday people doing everyday things.
the presentation was flawless, both in terms of web design and cinematography. it was the first time i had seen someone take a DSLR (in this case, i suspect a Canon 5D mark II and 50mm f/1.4) and document everyday life like it was shot on a $100k film camera. everything was shot wide open, sometimes in slow motion, with a shallow depth of field that gave each face a vivid yet dream-like quality.
within a few years, everyone was shooting pretty youtube vids on DSLRs, when the practice became affordable and tutorialized. but i never forgot about Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari's documentaries that got there first.
the first doc i watched was Cannonball - about a group of skaters that cleaned out abandoned swimming pools during the real estate collapse of 2008. i think about that documentary every few months, and how much of an impression it left on me. it changed what i thought what filmmaking could be, and drew me back into photography after a ten year hiatus.
magical things did happen during the social media era - technologies changed, new filmmaking techniques and styles emerged - we just weren't paying attention while it was all happening in the background.
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