Colab“ We Make Videos”
John and Hannah Boggs
~ story and photo by Ryan Stacy
For documentary filmmakers, success can be bittersweet. On the one hand, you’ re glad when your work calls attention to a problem you see in the world; on the other, you’ d much prefer that the problem wasn’ t there to document in the first place. For Nashville’ s John and Hannah Boggs, it’ s their love for the people and the land in Brown County— and not the accolades their documentaries continue to earn— that drives Colab, the video production company the couple created together.
Saving Yellowwood, their short documentary on the sale of almost 2,000 old-growth trees by the state Department of Natural Resources in Brown County’ s Yellowwood Forest last fall, wasn’ t undertaken with front-page newspaper coverage and film festivals in mind. John and Hannah say they felt obligated to act when the Indiana Forest Alliance approached them about“ just getting some footage” of the logging activities.“ They knew we had a video company, so they asked us to come out. But soon we had hours and hours of footage,” John says.
20 Our Brown County • March / April 2018