Road Trip for Obama – One Year Later

It’s been a year and two weeks since my trip down to inauguration. I stopped in a few cities along the way to D.C. and asked folks what they thought about the President Barack Obama. It was an eye-opening fun project, and it’s definitely going to be interesting to hear what people think these days of the President. Perhaps I can look back at this project a few years from now, and I hope to retrace my steps and see what the consensus is in the communities I stopped in.

But for now, I want to direct your attention to the Vimeo Channel that features all the episodes of the series.

Check them out, and see how people’s hopes turned out in the first year of the Obama administration.


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Road Trip for Obama: Inauguration Day

I cut together some of the footage I got January 20, 2009, of our little trip from the Hotel to the Mall. It gives you a little perspective of what it was like to be down in D.C. during the inauguration of President Obama. Enjoy the footage! This is the final video of the Road Trip for Obama web project, from here, I’ll be using this footage in a future documentary that I’m working on. I thank everyone for tuning in, and I appreciate all the comments and well wishes we got during the project.

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Road Trip for Obama: Pics from Inauguration

It was a crazy day today, we got up around 2am to get ready to be at the train station by 3am. We were pretty sure most people wouldn’t be as crazy as us…turns out, we weren’t crazy enough. When we got there, people had been lined up all night waiting to get on the train. I’d say on a whole, the D.C. metro handled the transportation of everyone in fairly well, they were letting people into the station in bursts.

Once we got on the train, it was an hour ride, when we got out, it was a sea of people walking towards the mall. Then the long wait till the ceremony began. The amount of people as you looked around was staggering, the excitement and energy was moving. I shot most of the reactions of the crowd during the speech.

When I set out to do this project, I knew that the main part of the film was to get different perspectives, but the eventual documentary I’d like to make has been evolving as I’ve been going through this experience. I have an idea of the finished product, and will start working on it as I return home.

It’s been a very long day, I digitized all my footage but haven’t been able to cut a little recap of it. Look for that in the next few days. Tomorrow I leave early for home. This has been an eye-opening experience that I’ll remember the rest of my life.

I thank you all for sharing it with me.

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

-President Barack Obama

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Road Trip for Obama: The Night Before Inauguration

The excitement was in the air everywhere we walked to this afternoon/evening in D.C. We popped over to get some b-roll, and just scope out the scene for tomorrow. We found people everywhere, but despite the crowds, there was a spirit of peace, happiness, and excitement.

We’ll be up EXTREMELY early tomorrow to get over the subway, and hopefully be on one of the first trains in to get our spot on the National Mall. I’m going to try and post some pictures via my phone here on the blog so check back tomorrow, and be sure to watch history from wherever you are tomorrow.

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Road Trip for Obama: ‘We Are One’

I cut together a little highlight reel of what we saw yesterday at the inaugural concert! Like I said in the previous blog post, it was an amazing scene, though we were fairly far back, it was great to share the experience with so many other people. We’ll be going in the city today to shoot some b-roll, tomorrow is going to be an amazing day, we can’t wait.

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Pics from ‘We Are One’ Inauguration Concert

We got to Washington D.C. early this morning, heading in from a quick tourist stop in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. After checking into the hotel, we went into town to check out the Inauguration Concert, how could one resist a free show that features U2, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Pete Seeger, and countless others under the same bill?

The crowd started from the Lincoln memorial, and continued past the Washington Monument. Following President-Elect Obama’s speech, Bruce Springsteen took the stage with Pete Seeger and sang “This Land is Your Land.” It was moving to hear the crowd join the chorus. I’m glad we came early to witness this, it got me even more excited for Tuesday.

I captured much from my P.O.V, I’ll be posting that tomorrow morning. For now, here’s some pictures to check out.

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