Director Commentary: Articulating Elaine Sheldons Role Post-Launch

Despite having maintained close relationships with community members via social
media, phone, and email, Sheldon told me she could not get people to move without being
physically present in the community, an issue we discussed at length seven months after the
documentary launched in January of 2014. When I prompted her to share updates on the
project, she explained her frustration at the lack progress in the community and with the
storytellers for their lack of enthusiasm and participation in ongoing storytelling efforts.
Interestingly, she understood and deeply felt this frustration despite the outward, professional
successes of Hollow the numerous national and international recognitions and awards the
documentary had acquired. She articulated these insights as one in the same, and was trying to
make sense of how both were affecting her identity and agency as a documentary filmmaker.
Further as the time progressed after the documentary launch, she began to more fully
understand the nature of her own role in the community. In other words, it wasnt until she left
the community that she was able to see the exact nature and depth of her role as a community
leader. In the following video, Sheldon better explains her role, likening herself to an umbilical
cord as she comments on how she is having trouble supporting the storytellers from outside of
the community: Video One (Umbilical Cord) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vmrw4htprA
Video transcripts can be located at the end of the chapter.
As Sheldon continued to work to understand why storytellers were not continuing to be
involved despite promises to do so, she acknowledged her own shortcomings in terms of the
project design and implementation, noting that even though Hollow was created with the
storytellers at the forefront every step of the wayHoller Home was treated as more of an add-
on to the main stories. As she worked to make sense of why people werent staying involved,
she speculated that many of those involved with Hollow were older and not as interested in
learning new technologies, and those younger participants did not follow through on
opportunities to contribute to the effort. She told me that despite opportunities to facilitate
intergenerational storytelling, she could not get the ball rolling without being physically
present in the community. This sensitivity and awareness of her role caused her to feel guilt
over the ways that leadership role was diminishing as her career carried her (physically) outside
of the community: Video Two (Geographic Distance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD2NPBw5du8
As Elaine articulates in the video, as she built relationships with community members,
she became more sensitive to her own identity as a documentary storyteller and her inability to
assist them in meeting their goals. Later in our interview, she claimed being so closely tied to
the storytellers created inner conflict over her lack of wanting to take on a more activist role,
one she feels is required to help the residents achieve some of the goals Hollow allowed them
to articulate through digital media. In other words, in the production and post-production
phases the need for different levels of social activism became apparent to Sheldon, and as a
filmmaker she felt unable to take on some of those challenges. For instance, in the following
video: Video Three (Identity and Agency) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s056j_otFCs, she
comments on not knowing what to do or how to properly help the residents turn their plans
into action saying, Im not an activist. I mean Im an activist with a camera I guess you could
call me (personal communication, January 2014). Elaines commentary, which she explains
further in the video provides a window into her shifting sense of identity between that of
filmmaker and social activist, the latter a title she hesitated to assume. This sentiment along
with the thoughts echoed in the video showcase Sheldons commitment to the storytellers as
well as her continuing efforts to make sense of the responsibilities she could take on in assisting
them to meet their goals while at the same time continuing to build her own career.
Clearly, Sheldon exhibits a felt sense of deep connection to the McDowell storytellers as
well as a responsibility to assist them in fulfilling the visions she had helped them articulate as
they shared their stories with her. Although she had originally set out to provide a platform to
residents to combat stereotypes and develop plans to save their dying community, she had
not anticipated the bonds she would form with participantsmany of them referred to her as
family during our interviews.
It is the relationships Sheldon works to sustain with the community members that
inform her sense of responsibility to help them better their hometowns as well as her evolving
perceptions about what it means to be a documentary filmmaker working on social justice
issues, a concept she took up in one of her most recent projects, She Does, a podcast aimed at
showcasing women working in media. In an episode titled, Hashtags dont make change,
Sheldon interviews Lina Srivastava, an impact strategist who works with filmmakers to develop
social impact plans, which she advises be built into the work at the very beginning stages of a
project to create momentum that influences the policies and policymakers that are able to
support large-scale, systemic changes. Additionally, Srivastava advocates participatory work,
like that done with Hollow, which charges the community members with determining their own
needs, and then places the filmmaker or impact specialist in charge of helping them fulfill needs
or a portion of those needs. She provides a recent example of assisting individuals in a small
Mexican village in acquiring a new water system. She explains the process further in the
following audio clip: https://soundcloud.com/megadams2/lina-mixdown/s-Ywkil
During a later exchange in the podcast, Sheldon interjects personal commentary to
express her disdain for filmmakers who do not take the lives of those they capture into
consideration in their films, or who do not consider the wider impacts of their work saying, I
understand if youre a documentary filmmaker and you want to make a cool film about a cool
subject, but my problem comes in where youre that person, but you choose a big problem in
society, you cant make a cool film about what you think is a cool subject when peoples lives
depend on that. Here, Sheldon is essentially venting her frustration with films created in
Appalachia by those who come in looking for a particular story, that go on to tell that story
without thoughtfully considering its impact on residentsa practice all too common in
Appalachia (Billings, Norman, & Ledford, 1999; Bradner, 2013; Clark & Hayward, 2013).
The trajectory of the entire podcast episode (shot, edited and co-produced by Sheldon)
centers on these issues of responsibility and social action among members of the documentary
film community. More importantly, it exhibits Elaines continued efforts to find answers to her
questions and concerns regarding her responsibility to the McDowell community. It serves as
an example of how these questions drive her and continue to shape her identity in other media
work. Furthermore, a tracing of the ways involvement with Hollow and illustration of how the
relationships she built with community members impacted her own identity and agency makes
visible the fluctuating nature of each. These sentiments also show precisely how our work often
stays with us long after a project has ended.
 In some of the same ways Sheldon is continuing to ask herself questions about her role
and involvement with the McDowell storytellers as director of the film, I am also seeking
answers about how we can better plan for and execute digital storytelling efforts like Hollow. In
my research, I recognize the potential of new, digital media to help us tell more dynamic,
robust storiesstories that move audiences as Svivastava has noted to get involved (in
Sheldon & Ginsburg, March 2015) or spur momentum to ignite change. As Sheldon and I have
learned from our research on Hollow, eliciting emotions in people and supporting tangible
changes on the ground are two inter-related, but distinctly different tasks. In the following
section, I detail more of the direct lessons we learned through research on the project,
alongside my reflections of how my own identity and agency as a researcher was shifting over
its life.