Inspiration from “Behind the Curve”

By Emily Hoard

“Behind the Curve,” a documentary by Delta-V Productions that can be found on Netflix, inspired me to think about how to produce stories that enhance understanding of people who might be seen as different. This one is about people who think the world is flat. It would be so easy to laugh at these conspiracy theorists and dismiss them, but these filmmakers made a point to portray them with empathy and to hear them out, while making it clear that of course the world is in fact round. I think we can learn from this about how to treat our subjects with respect and understanding, even if those subjects have completely different worldviews — literally.

Here are some of the techniques used to enhance the story:

1. Interview

The documentary follows interviews of several flat earth society members throughout a period of time, as well as clips of their own flat earth videos, and footage of them at different situations and events, including the 2017 eclipse and experiments trying to prove science wrong. It also includes interviews with scientists as well. These interviews are effective in letting us hear from the subjects in their own voices, and it helps the viewer understand where they’re coming from and why they believe what they do.

3. The hero’s journey

Though our hero is a bit misguided, he is still likeable and I found myself caring for him by the middle of the video. His story is one of the classic hero’s journey: he starts out as an everyday guy living on a round earth, but then something changes and he finds a book about the earth being flat instead. (See timecode 7:30 to 9ish). Then, he goes off on a mission to share that “knowledge” with the world and ends up inspiring a lot of people to become flat earthers. This is an effective way to tell his story because though I’m not going to start rooting for his particular mission, it makes me want to root for him as another human being trying to figure out this world.

 

1. Cinema verite

The video also used cinema verite to follow the subjects around and see how they interact with the world see as flat. It was effective in allowing us to experience real moments happening in their lives, like witnessing the main character being amazed by the eclipse (above, timecode 1:04:18 to 1:05:17). This technique gave us a sense of who the subjects really are, and it ended up making them more sympathetic characters.

 

4. The unanswered question

Though we know the answer to the question, this video takes us along the journey of a group of flat earthers who are trying to use scientific experiments to prove that the world is not a globe. The unanswered question here is, “what is their experiment going to show them, and more importantly, how is this going to affect their beliefs?” The video used real footage as well as animation to show this. Spoiler alert from the very end of the video below (the last 2.5 minutes):

 

Here’s what the flat earthers’ wanted to prove:

Here’s what actually happened:

The main person behind this experiment was practically speechless. All he could do was stare at the camera and say “interesting, that’s interesting.” Then the video cut to the end credits. Throughout the credits you hear more from him, trying to explain that the experiment didn’t go his way because there were leaves in the way, etc. Ending the video like this was effective because it gave us the payoff of seeing the experiment and getting the reaction, but also left us with the feeling that even when clearly proven wrong, the flat earth society will continue on anyway.