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RIGOR (TAXES)

FINAL CUT, New York / THE NEW YORK TIMES / 2019

Awards:

Grand Prix Cannes Lions
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Film

Overview

Credits

Overview

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This film looks to shed light on the rigor behind journalism and why it's all worth it. It’s a piece of work about pursuing the truth wherever it may lead and bringing that truth back in word form for the world to read. This 30-second film shows the rigor of an 18-month investigation by three ?NYT journalists into Donald Trump’s dubious tax schemes during the 1990s. After following an unfathomable paper trail, they revealed he had taken part in possible fraud and other misdemeanors. The spot was released at a time of overwhelming information (and misinformation), making it even more critical to reiterate the importance of the truth and the value of ?NYT? journalism.

Cultural/Context information for the jury

The film launched after Trump said the press was the “enemy of the people” following a meeting between himself and ?The New York Times? publisher A.G. Sulzberger. ?The script had to put us in the reporters’ streams of consciousness, adopting their tones of voice ?while also maintaining ?The Times’? inimitable house style?. The script, a connected thread of words that appears on screen, creating the effect of a continuously rewriting headline, ?was central to putting the viewer in the psyches of the journalists as they picked their way through an unfathomable amount of information, unravelling the financial history, decade by decade, of America’s largest real estate empire.

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This film looks to shed light on the rigor behind journalism and why it's all worth it. It’s a piece of work about pursuing the truth wherever it may lead and bringing that truth back in word form for the world to read. At the core of the film is a connected thread of animated words that appear on-screen as though a continuous writing and rewriting of headlines. The editing brings this together with sound and imagery to create fully immersive and visceral films that puts viewers in the shoes of the journalists as they unraveled the dubious history of America’s largest real estate empire. The timing of the words and the meaning attached to them were used to make viewers feel like the stories were unraveling as they did for the journalists in real time.

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