Watching this documentary was extremely eye opening. I knew nothing about the mining world before this documentary, the only time I have ever heard about coal mining is when something has gone wrong. One of the main reasons this documentary was so powerful was because it didn’t just show random people of a coal town what they thought about the lives of coal miners and their families, it went straight into the homes of the people who live in the coal world day-to-day. The way they filmed the documentary also had an impact, for instance, there were side interview, which was a great way to get the opinion of one person at a time and allow them to truly show their feelings on the situation, but also the tracking shots, where the camera would film the family’s interactions with one another while there was a voice over talking about how their daily lives are different than others. Another important part were the statistics that were shown in text throughout the documentary, that allowed me to truly see the danger that these men are in everyday when they go to work. When they showed the coal miner going to the doctor to get checked for black lung, and he was only slightly concerned as to whether or not he had it, because it is more rare to not have it if you are in the mining business, this was shocking to me because in the area I live in if someone I knew was diagnosed with something as devastating as black lung, they would be beside themselves. The whole documentary flowed nicely mainly because many of the times when people were speaking it was a voice over which made the transitions between scenes fluid.
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