Behind-the-Scenes Breakdown: Community of Care

For the past decade, Community of Care has provided services and resources for rural, older residents to “age in place.” From a one-stop service center to a volunteer transportation network, all of its programs focus on reducing the isolation of rural residents and extending their quality of life in their own homes.

But there’s more to the story than just what you see in the finished documentary piece. To get a deeper look at the process—and the people—involved with the creation of this Community of Care video, we sat down director Joe Hubers and producer Andrew Reinartz to talk about it.

What was your mindset going into this film?
Joe: Going into it, I knew I wanted to have conversations with elderly people sharing memories around a table and physically showing photographs—not cutting away to photographs that had been scanned into a computer. Because it’s more personal and real then. It’s them holding their photograph in their hands in their homes talking about their memory. And that made it feel more tangible.

Andrew: And the goal was for it to feel more conversational and less…voyeuristic.

Joe: I think it would’ve been easy to veer off into a very romanticized notion of “elder care,” especially in the Midwest. But if you can tell it through their stories and their experiences, you can avoid some of that.

Andrew: And it’s humanizing. You’re trying to tell this story to create a connection with the subject. And in today’s society elderly people are often dehumanized and marginalized, and this piece gave them a voice…their voice. 

Were there any concerns or challenges you had to deal with in this Community of Care film?
Joe: We were kind of going in blind on some of these. Purely because in the pre-interviews we only talked with the Community of Care staff. We knew we wanted to tell the story through the voices of their clients, but we hadn’t actually met with any of the clients beforehand; we hadn’t seen their homes, we didn’t know what any of the people were like. They brought the clients to the table and we really had to trust that when the staff said, “These would be great people to talk to,” they would be right. And fortunately they were. Everybody they had chosen and their homes and everything all just combined to hit the right tone.

Andrew: I also think this is one where the bad weather helped tell the story. We had some other pieces where the weather worked out in our favor, and this is one where we thought it wasn’t going to work because it was pretty bad outside. But in the end, we sort of lucked out because the cold, snowy weather highlighted the potential for the isolation that this organization is trying to help overcome.

Joe: While we were shooting I was very worried that we were going to have to go back—like in March or whenever it had warmed up a little bit—to get “beauty” shots but the cold and severe weather served the story better.

So is there anything in particular that you really learned or any unique experiences that stuck with you from this piece?
Joe: With each of these videos, you get know people pretty well. A lot of these are small organizations who are excited to be part of the process and they really open up. With this piece, for example, wanting to humanize Frank and his wife, it hits you over the head just how much of a character this guy is. He has such a unique personality…the stories and humor. I mean, you have a conversation with this guy and he’s opening up about really hard, heavy things in their life because he and his wife went through a lot of hardships. But then you can just feel the joy of their marriage and their life now. And it’s really rewarding to be a part of their story.

I think I need to hang out with older people more often. It puts things in perspective pretty quick.

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We hope you enjoyed going a little deeper into the creation of the Community of Care film in the Bush Prize for Community Innovation series. We’ll have more behind-the-scenes breakdowns of Passenger’s narrative short films coming soon.