Food, Glorious Food

"Today, agriculture is going far beyond nature, to produce new miracles, for an even better, more abundant life."

In this video, made in 1960 by the US Department of Agriculture, a voiceover describes the boom of supermarkets, the use of machinery in food production, and the ease, convenience, and abundance of food resulting from these changes. The utopian feeling of the society it describes fits our dystopian trailer perfectly: in our premise, the government has created federal aid programs wherein anyone whose quality of living is subpar to the national standard receives food handouts. In order for that sort of system to work--and in our society, with the bureaucratic control, it works--there presumably must be a highly efficient food production system. We have written in a short speech and voiceover sequence for our government official discussing the food aid program, and so could hopefully add clips from the video above discussing the intricacies (and miracles!) of the system. The quote above starts at 1:00, and preludes a discussion of everything awesome happening in the society. This video will be great for setting up the illusion of a utopian society in our trailer.

We are very wary of writing too many ideas into our trailer, for fear of it becoming too long, too wordy, or too complicated, but if we are able to, we plan on using archival footage to demonstrate other key features of our society. The disappearance of disease, poverty, and hunger; the yearly census to monitor the quality of living of citizens; the food preparation; even the ubiquitous Nurse Nancy (our chief distributor of food, who goes door-to-door with meals, announcing her presence with a little bell)--all can be introduced through stock footage of hospitals, ghettos, kitchens, government officials, paperwork, and nurses. Archival footage will be critical to the trailer's ability to immerse the audience in its world.