UTG X Kansas

How every story gets built

1. 01Open with tensionStart where something’s off or about to happen.
2. 02Put it in contextShow who and what’s at stake through small actions, not explanation.
3. 03Build empathyLittle human details make you care before the story asks you to.
4. 04Hold back the revealGive peeks, not answers.
5. 05Small emotional payoffAn action and a reaction. Understated beats a big swell.
6. 06End on meaningThe name just labels what the story already made you feel.

Inspiration

• YETI — Don’t Get Them A YETIA cooler with a bow flies out of the back of a truck in slow motion under a gruff voiceover, cutting away to wet dogs, sand and slideshows and always back to the cooler. Sells a world, not a product.youtu.be/1mpZZZkrgAU
• Gare du Nord music videoMatch cuts of Kansas topography.
• YvnisMatch cuts of roads and topography.

The feel

• “All outward. No shots of the hosts or the podcast.”
• “Not a golf promo. Appreciating the work behind what everyone gets to enjoy. Setting of the table.”
• “It really makes me want a yeti.”On the YETI ad.

The arc

• SmallDew, grass, plants, a mower wheel. The course before anyone is on it.
• LargeAerials of the course, the town, the roads, the plains.
• The keeperThe crews: the hole crew, three men crouched over one patch of grass, the cup change at dusk.
• The land and the work rhymeRoad lines, mower stripes, turbine blades, contours from above.
• Ends on the nameSix course cards over dew, then Know Thy Keeper, then the rake clears the frame.

Shots

• Dew at dawn
• Grass and plants, close
• Mowers at work
• Wind turbines
• Storm light
• The crew
• The shop
• Flagstick and cup
• The road
• Signs
• The dog
• Golf, glimpsed

Match cuts

• Roads and topographyYvnis style. Dirt road 0:03, POV 0:38, road lines 0:49.
• Course from aboveCourse layout 0:06 into the town grid 0:07.
• Drone on the mower1:16 to 1:20.
• Drone dirt roads0:03.
• Flowers0:40 to 0:41.
• Round thingsFour-face street clock 0:47, the ball, the cup.
• Tee and ballStriped tee 0:51, practice ball 0:52.

Texture and titles

• VHS grainOn the dusk turbines and through the split screen.
• Four words on screenpausing / searching / receiving / contemplating, 0:18 to 0:22.
• Split screen, east and westA dark-cloud course against a field of yellow wildflowers, in Polaroid frames. 0:30.
• Archive televisionA putt and a celebration off an old broadcast. 0:11.
• StatuesA figure at a blown-out window 0:24, a bearded man with a club 0:55.
• GCSAA pin0:54.
• “It shall not trouble me”Title over the mow. 1:08.
• Course cardsBallyneal, Buffalo Dunes, Kansas City Country Club, GCSAA Headquarters, Prairie Dunes, Salt Lick, then Kansas Loop, Know Thy Keeper, Under The Greens.
• The rakeRack focus, legs walking, the rake clears the frame to the dunes. 1:29.

The voiceover

1. From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
2. Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
3. Listening to others, considering well what they say,
4. Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
5. Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
6. I inhale great draughts of space,
7. The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
8. I am larger, better than I thought,
9. I did not know I held so much goodness.
10. All seems beautiful to me,
11. I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
12. I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
13. I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
14. I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
15. Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
16. Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, section five. Read by my dad, uncut.