Bertie County is reportedly the poorest county in North Carolina, as alluded to near the beginning of the film. Youth in the district seem to not be interested in school, and many try to leave the area as soon as they can. Enter Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller, both business partners and a couple.
They create a class called Studio H (the “H” standing for humanity, habitats, health and happiness, as Pilloton explains later), which involves three construction projects, each of which will benefit the community. Pilloton and Miller explain that they aren’t naive enough to think that they can radically change the county, but they do hope to make a difference.
The film starts off in medias res, with the team in the middle of their final construction project. As the credits roll, Creadon chooses to show the excerpt of a TED Talk featuring Pilloton. Starting with a TED Talk is a slightly dangerous way to open the film, threatening to set a hopelessly optimistic tone for the rest of the film. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen — the story of two outsiders trying to implement big change isn’t filled with positives.
The plan certainly seems simple enough. Under the guidance of “Chip” Zullinger, the school board’s superintendent, Pilloton and Miller intend to run a year-long course. The program will cost $230,000 in total — $80,000 to cover the teachers’ salaries and $150,000 in foundation grants.
However, the program is quickly put in danger — Zullinger is fired as superintendent due to his disagreement with the school board, and to keep their program going Pilloton and Miller give up their salaries.
“The school board has an annual budget of $30 million,” Miller explains. “And we get nothing.”
Immediately there is a sense of tension that sets in, amplified as Creadon cuts between footage of the workshops in progress and issues between Pilloton and Miller, as well as in Bertie County and the town of Windsor. Two sequences stand out in highlighting what’s keeping the community down.
One begins with Pilloton saying that the school board makes “odd choices,” as she describes a school that the board spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating, only to shut down a year later. The camera follows Cameron, a student in the Studio H class, as he walks through the abandoned school, now a hollow shell of its former self.
Another sequence shows the aftermath of heavy flooding in the area, which in turn caused major damage to the city’s businesses. “It’s not been a good environment,” explains Vernon Fueston, the editor of the local paper. He says that two businesses opening up made a dent in unemployment, painting a dire picture of the county’s well-being.
Of course, it isn’t all doom and gloom. While the students of Studio H are introduced as being fairly disinterested in education (one particularly jaw-dropping sequence shows several of them taking online learning courses — apparently there is such a thing as online phys-ed), Studio H quickly gets them excited.
It’s insightful to watch simple drawings become models and then the real thing — the first two projects are building a cornhole game, and then a chicken coop. The final, very ambitious project is a farmer’s market building.
Creadon does an excellent job of keeping his presence in the film minimal. Aside from a few instances of text explaining events, viewers will never hear or see him. He wisely lets Pilloton, Miller and others explain what’s going on in their lives, and it makes the experience feel less manipulated than it is.
The major challenge in the film is to accurately convey the characters of the students and teachers, and with a classroom setting it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish the kids. Pilloton and Miller are strong presences, and the few forays into their backstories are helpful, though some threads are left hanging. At one point Miller says “I drive the right truck, I wear the right clothes” in saying that he fits into the county, while saying that Pilloton has three strikes against her as a woman, a half-Asian and being originally from California. The film doesn’t really delve any more into this.
The film balances a sense of the need for change with the reality that change doesn’t come easily. While the ending is bittersweet, If You Build It proves that good design can actually make a difference.
Click here for more information on the film. If You Build It will be screening at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto on Feb. 5 and 6.
