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C O M M U T E

w h a t    d r i v e s    y o u ?

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Commute is an immersive docu-series exploring the world's myriad modes of transportation along with the diverse people and places they connect.

 

Every day, folks leave their homes to board buses, hop trains, weave through traffic in cars or on motorcycles. They pedal bikes or push scooters to go from A to B and back again. Across the globe, commuters spend significant shares of their lives in pursuit of dream or duty.

 

This adventurous doc series probes the who, how, and why behind that daily grind. Both intimate and expansive, it tells emotional stories from our planet’s most colorful cultures and underscores what links us together as humans. 

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Episodes are driven by vérité footage and on-the-fly interviews, which keep us grounded in the characters' unvarnished realities. Woven with vividly-captured travel sequences and scenic local textures, these stories invite us to view our fellow passengers and their hometowns with greater curiosity and compassion.

 

In our hyper-polarized world, we need reminders of the common things that drive us. We're all going somewhere, after all... This show celebrates how we get there.

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Episodes are 30 minutes, weaving together 3 story strata:

1. The Places

From bustling cities to sprawling landscapes, the show immerses us in richly distinct environments. Streets, rivers, rails, tunnels, oceans, rainforests, and deserts. These are more than just backdrops, they're the DNA flowing through every story.

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2. The Passage

The methods of transportation are our literal and figurative vehicle. They provide the narrative thrust through each episode as we board a bullet train in Tokyo or a longboat in Laos; a city bus in Nogales or a chapa in Mozambique.

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3. The People

At the heart of it all are the humans in transit. A college student with new cochlear implants. A son hauling scrap for the family business. A recently-widowed mother taking her kids to school. More than the who and the where, we become invested in their why.

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Visual Language

In each episode, the vehicles themselves will inform the style of cinematography. 

 

We stay handheld and claustrophobic for a minibus, but go locked off and hyper-composed for a bullet train. For a cablecar's arcing route up a mountain we use only smooth gimbal moves. Et cetera. 

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Likewise, the editing will match the pace and vibe of the environment. Quick cuts for city stuff, long takes for the rural locales. We favor precision for cultures that most value structure, reactivity for those that are more laissez faire. Wherever it feels organic and motivated, we let the place inspire the process.

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Applied consistently (but not slavishly), these methods will give a unique spice to each story and further immerse the audience in the cultures we visit. 

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Tone

The show will strike a balance between earnest curiosity and witty subversion. It's emotional but not saccharine. Anthropological but not stodgy. Fun but not trivial.

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It's never afraid to be bold, even a bit irreverent. But we never let cynicism rob us of our honest, wide-eyed wonder.

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Comps

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The Team

BRYCE CYRIER - Producer, Co-Director

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Bryce is a freelance film and documentary producer known for his versatile leadership and commitment to fostering the creative process. He's made feature documentaries, doc series, shorts, commercials, and music videos, ranging in distribution from wide theatrical release to millions of views on YouTube. He has worked with professional athletes, NY Times bestselling authors, and Academy Award winners like Laura Dern and Golden Globe winners Paul Walter Hauser, Michael C. Hall, and Annette Bening. He is also a screenwriter, a husband, and a proud father to two kids who love movies even more than he does. 

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DANIEL STRAUB - Producer, Co-Director

Daniel is a Los Angeles-based director and producer who has worked in the documentary film industry for more than 10 years. With a sharp eye for stories that give form to environmental racism, injustice in the healthcare system and other insidious issues, Straub has dedicated his career to using film and television as vehicles for revealing systemic problems in order to drive change.

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AUSTIN STRAUB - Producer, DP

Austin Straub is an Emmy®-winning cinematographer (The Migrant Kitchen, PBS/KCET) whose work spans the gamut of the industry. They have lensed theatrical-feature films, as well as specials for Disney+ and Apple TV+, and their documentary-style camera operating has been tapped for concert films produced by HBO, Amazon and Apple. Austin thrives in intimate, human stories bathed in naturalistic light, and they are passionate about placing the audience in the heart of the most pressing issues of our time.

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