Producer’s Blog: Sew Valley Featured on The Art Show

I’ve got blood on my hands, and I’m not sure if I should put it in writing.

I’m compiling a-roll (aka, the interview portions of a production) for my The Art Show segment on Sew Valley, a non-profit situated in Cincinnati’s West End Neighborhood, and there’s just so. Much. Coolness. I’m pushing my time limit on this one, and I’m consulting with Executive Producer Ann Rotolante via our work chat channels on how many more of my darlings I need to kill – because, metaphorically speaking, it hasn’t been pretty.

At first blush, Sew Valley seems like nothing more than garment factory. But would you look at that, it’s a non-profit with an emphasis on sustainability and ethical production. Hold on, they focus on small batch production? What’s this about workshops? They’re affiliated with the United Nations? Is that a ravioli pillow?

And they’ve made a dog calendar?

I’ve complained about the cutting room floor before; this time around, I was up to my knees in untold stories. This piece had so many threads (see what I did there?). Studio member Nancy Miller shared stories of the sewn projects she’s done over the years, including embellishing her store-bought wedding dress to truly make it her own. I got to hear about Sew Valley’s workshops, one of which involved sourcing plants for natural dyes from the West End Community Garden. Leadership told me more about their collaborations with the Cincinnati Pops and BLINK.

The best (and worst) part of working on The Art Show is that for every 5-8 minute segment, you’ve pretty much got a short documentary’s worth of stories, perspectives and insights to work with. I won’t say that I have a love-hate relationship with my job, but, yeah, in scripting, sometimes I’m pulling my hair out.

Given my time limit (cruel world!), for this segment, I tried to focus on Sew Valley’s sustainability, education and locality. On the note of locality, it was also important for me to include co-founder and CEO Shailah Maynard’s discussion of Sew Valley’s national, and even international, affiliations. Sure, what Sew Valley is doing is pretty Cincinnati-specific, and that’s awesome, but in bringing things down to a local level, they also don’t shy away from the chance to be part of broader, far-reaching solutions and learn from others’ success stories, which I think equally rocks.

For the b-roll portion of this segment, specifically, we used gimbals (an axis-based device that allows a camera to make rotating moves, creating smooth, cinematic footage) and hand-held cameras to get sweeping shots of all the activities taking place within the space. Here’s videographer Zach Kramer having an absolute blast setting up for a shot of hangers (which we didn’t end up using).

And here’s production specialist Derrick Smith getting up close and personal with a spool of thread.

While so much eye-catching activity was occurring organically, Zach and Derrick worked together to make sure the shots were the absolute best they could be. I wanted to get footage of some steaming – with lots and lots of steam. Imagine, like, the thickest fog of your life; that’s not far off from what I had in mind. Zach and Derrick collaborated with staff to pick a fabric that would contrast well against the puffs of steam, and they made sure it was well lit, too (movie magic, at its finest, if you ask me).

We had a lot of fun filming all the fabrics in the factory and studio spaces on b-roll days, but sometimes the materials made unscripted cameos during interviews. Between questions, we frequently paused to let our subjects lint-roll the little floofs that inevitably found their way onto shirts and blazers. It was at these points I remembered where we were – a working garment factory. But just because we were surrounded by fabric on all sides didn’t mean our subjects had to be linty!

The crew also occasionally stepped in to make sure our interview set-up was as perfect as possible.

Speaking of, I had to kill one darling on the spot during production process itself – a first for me (and hopefully a last). I initially envisioned having Shailah seated in front of Sew Valley’s bustling workspace for her interview and when we set up the shot, it looked spectacular. But after giving it some thought and consulting with each other, we realized that with so much varied activity in the background, there might be continuity issues with folks on the move. We ultimately scrapped the set-up (and came up with an equally awesome one featuring a sample of one of the red jackets Sew Valley made for the Cincinnati Pops). But I preserved the memory with audio engineer Gabe Wimberly.

If you couldn’t tell by the aforementioned calendar, Sew Valley is also a dog-friendly workspace (during our interview, Co-Director of Operations Madeleine Tepe Misleh made it clear that they’re animal lovers of all kinds). We loved talking about the dog calendar with some of our interviewees, and sure enough, during production, Miss October paid us a surprise visit. They aren’t kidding when they say that life imitates art.

Ultimately, this segment clocks in at just under 8 minutes (in case you’re wondering, I don’t know how I managed it, either). I hope that I was able to do justice to the many facets that fall under the Sew Valley umbrella. This was an especially significant project for me, as it’s my first The Art Show segment that I produced entirely on my own. Just the same, I’m still learning – about cutting for time, about proper interview set-ups, about effective means of lint removal. But one thing’s for certain – at the end of the day, I’d rather have too much to work with than be scraping at the bottom of the barrel (or, in this case, the scrap fabric bin). And in this regard, The Art Show has yet to do me wrong.

Nadya Ellerhorst
CET and Think^TV Producer