THE MAKING OF:

Sometimes documentary topics are planned, shot, and produced as events happen. Think Free Solo, Planet Earth, or My Octopus Teacher. Filmmakers go into production not knowing what lies ahead… And sometimes topics cover people, events, and things from the past, like popular crime documentaries or historical non-fiction (shameless plug: checkout Buchanan’s America: A Nation Divided at LancasterHistory)… A Shot of Hope was a mix of both.

In March 2020, the country came to a complete halt. Everyone was forced inside to protect themselves from an unknown, unseen threat. Nobody understood what would come next, but we saw an opportunity in that moment to capture the empty streets of Lancaster and Lititz on video. We had no plans for a documentary at the time, but knew the footage could be useful one day.

As the pandemic raged on, we joined the Rock Lititz Community in July and quickly learned how every business on this campus supports not only each other, but the Lancaster community as well.

By November, the FDA granted Emergency-Use Authorization to Pfizer and eventually Moderna for their COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Over that time, we completed a few pandemic-related video projects for Rock Lititz and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health (LGH) and cultivated a relationship and familiarity working with Dr. Michael Ripchinski, the health executive eventually responsible for the Lancaster Community Vaccination Center (CVC).

The CVC opened in March 2021 and we were asked by Rock Lititz and LGH to capture interviews and b-roll of the setup. Similar to our COVID-shutdown footage, there were still no plans to create a documentary, rather to simply capture the moment for later use. But we knew there was a story to tell here: The unique story of how the on-pause music industry used their best-in-the-business event setup expertise to efficiently vaccinate our community. The project for a documentary was green-lit, financially backed by LGH and Rock Lititz.

Co-Director and Director of Photography Dan Giangiulio took the torch on pre-production and production. In addition to the initial CVC setup footage and interviews, Dan shot three more days of interviews and b-roll at the CVC including a celebration event hosted on the Rock Lititz campus. In total, we had 23 interviews with a combined 13 hours of footage.

Giangiulio said, “What’s interesting is this project was originally intended just to be documentation for posterity. We were asked to help make record of what was being attempted at the CVC but as we gathered these interviews, we started to see story threads. When Scott got his hands on the footage, a story really started to emerge.”

Following the CVC’s closure, the project moved to Post Production in the fall of 2021. Co-Director and Editor Scott Davies assembled a 40-minute narrative cut comprised of interview footage. “The narrative cut without music and b-roll is always the first step,” said Davies, the Senior Editor at Aurora Films. “Laying-out the narrative gives me a full grasp of the story and helps me identify any redundancies or sub-storylines we could cut in later versions.”

By November, the first cut of the documentary was complete with music, b-roll, and found local news footage. The cut was just over 25 minutes with the goal to cut it down to 20 minutes. “There was never a plan to use local news footage,” said Davies. “The original plan was a voice-over, and as I was researching the pandemic timeline watching news clips on YouTube, it hit me that there’s no better way to take the viewer back to March 2020 than to literally relive those moments through the footage we captured and the news clips.”

FOX 43 and WGAL 8 were contacted to participate in the documentary. Both news outlets agreed to provide footage and/or on-screen talent footage and audio.

As the Post Production process continued, so did the pandemic and the ever-changing public health landscape. Initial vaccines were hard to get, then they became widely available. Eventually boosters were released as virus variants spread through communities, all while we learned more about COVID-19 and how to manage it. These weekly to monthly changes greatly affected the documentary’s story, specifically bringing it to closure.

“Just because the CVC closed didn’t mean the pandemic was over. We knew another conversation with Dr. Ripchinski was needed to try to bring an end to the film. Dr. Ripchinski was very generous with his time and we’re grateful he was able to get back in front of the camera to provide further context about the CVC and the continued work by our medical community. While the CVC closed, the work they did in the timespan they were able to do it in, is truly remarkable. That’s the story we were hoping to tell.”

The documentary went through five versions in Post Production before the final 23:51 run time (including credits). It was submitted to the Red Rose Film Festival (RRFF) and is a 2022 selection for Best Documentary and The Red Rose Award. It will screen at the RRFF on September 22, 2022 from 7-10pm at Zoetropolis in Lancaster City.