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If you’re like me, and you enjoy exploring local places most people overlook, here’s a neat project you might want to support. Benjamin Woelk (30, Rochester) and Jason Darnieder (Flower City Media) are working on a documentary travel series that focuses on exploring upstate and western N.Y. He’s calling the project “Slow Road” – a documentary series dedicated to sustaining community, preserving the past, and exploring America’s roads less traveled…

If these guys can raise the funds to produce the series (see the Kickstarter campaign here), we’ll all get to go along for the ride as they take a camera crew around to meet local people and businesses across upstate N.Y. that are devoted to improving their small communities and neighborhoods.

Benjamin says the idea grew from his personal experiences as a young single guy traveling across New York while he studied public policy & tourism at Rochester Institute of Technology. “The idea is to feature local communities in a way that the traditional media has failed to do. I want to slow down, let people have a closer look, and introduce them to the world that exists in their own back yards.”

Their goal is to raise $30,000 using Kickstarter to fund the production of the first season – a full nine episodes. According to the Kickstarter page, the documentary travel series will:

1. Honor the integrity and authenticity of who and what is around us.
2. Serve as a guide to your region so that we (and more importantly YOU) can find the places worth discovering.
3. Find and capture every community that has the chance to bring you amazing new experiences and connect you to dynamic new places and people.
4. Leave a lasting impact on the communities we feature by benefiting specific projects, people, and businesses.

Some initial ideas for Season 1 locations include “slow roads” in and around Oswego, Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Ithaca, Auburn, and other cool canal towns and villages.

Here’s a clip from episode 1…

Greentopia / Slow Road from Flower City Media on Vimeo.

Pretty cool. So let’s join them in this adventure by making a contribution to the campaign …because “the roads less traveled lead to discovery.” So true.

Tags: Auburn, Benjamin Woelk, Buffalo, Erie Canal, Flower City Media, Ithaca, Jason Darnieder, Kickstarter, movie, Oswego, Rochester, Slow Road, Syracuse, travel, upstate New York, video, western New York

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 16th, 2013 at 8:12 am and is filed under Art + Culture, Rochester Destinations, Rochester History, Rochester News, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.