Three Walls: a documentary about the Office Cubicle shoots in New York, Chicago

Director Zaheed Mawani and I spent some time in New York City and Chicago in June shooting footage for his new documentary project “Three Walls: a documentary about the Office Cubicle”. The film takes a humourous and poignant look at the changing shape of white collar work in North America. The style has been a pleasure to work with, as I have been picking up where other talented DPs have left off and continue to share the cinematography on the project with Jared Raab. The visual concept of the piece is to highlight the spaces in which people spend the majority of their adult working lives, the office cubicle, by placing the subjects within static frames composed for the office environment that surrounds them.

In New York we met with architects who lent us their insights on various office models and the psychological effects they have on employees. We also spoke with cube and pod workers, explored their workspaces and found surprising beauty and visual interest in their own personal corners of the corporate world. In Chicago we covered the NeoCon exhibit of office furniture and adopted a fly-on-the-wall approach to unveiling some of the latest innovations in office design.

Post-production on the documentary is expected to wrap in Winter 2010. In the meantime, here are some screen grabs of our scenes from New York City and an office furniture manufacturing factory in Albany, NY: