Coming into first-year, I was really obsessed with the idea of like wanting to become a director in the narrative sense, but I think I just kind of had a real sudden shift away from narrative cinema and more towards documentaries just because I think our world is fascinating, people are fascinating and there's a lot of stories worth telling.

"Common Grounds" is a social experiment in the shape of a film that brings together some students from across the political spectrum to talk about different controversial political topics in an effort to also kind of see if they can find any sense of common ground. When you boil the film down to its basic elements, it is composed of individual interviews with UVA students from across the political spectrum, a group interview with some of those students to kind of discuss specific topics, and a final scene taking place at UVA's iconic Beta Bridge where those same students come together and paint a message together that they came up with. It was kind of ironic that the process of making the film was parallel to the actual film itself. 

In addition to having people we asked to participate in the documentary be as politically diverse as possible, it was also important that our group who was making the documentary also represented that wide array of political beliefs. 

"How are you going to ask this question?" "How are we going to frame this topic?" That constant conversation of having students from different perspectives actually create this project together was a key reason it probably works. It wasn't without its challenges. There were definitely several moments of disagreement, misunderstanding. Ultimately in working through those moments we got to experience the value of what it is to collaborate with people who are very different to you who you might disagree with. The documentary itself is very similar in that it challenges students to work on a creative project together. 

The goal of this project was to see if we could talk with each other and it was as simple as that. I didn't expect any minds to be changed, I don't think anyone really expected that. You know, "we'll come together and we'll talk it out and we'll come to some sort of agreement on things," -- that's never going to happen in that short of a time, but for me it was just can all these people who we just saw say very different things talk to each other about those things?

The differences were there at the very beginning and they will always be there, but ultimately it's not about "can we find common ground?" Because the answer is a very simple "yes." If people try they can find common ground, even if it's something as simple as watching a beautiful sunset. I mean, that has nothing to do with your political background or your ideology; a beautiful sunset is a beautiful sunset and we can all appreciate that. But the question is really do we want to? Will we try? And that's why the film does still end with "Common Grounds question mark" because it really isn't "oh find common grounds," like we can do that... it's do we want to?

Just imagine if our collective efforts could lead to a whole new era of cooperation in America. 

Never hurts to dream. You can find more information at the following link. Thank you for watching.