Pioneer Books

When you think of a concerned citizen the first thing that pops into your mind is someone who is out doing physical service to make the community better. However, it is important to understand that there are many different ways to serve the community, no matter how small the service may be. For our documentary we interviewed a normal person in our community who is making subtle efforts to enlighten the community with more knowledge about books.

Travis works as a manager for Pioneer Books located in downtown Provo. He is a devoted citizen who cares about the people in the community and making sure that people have access to all kinds of books. He believes that people should read because they want to, not because they have to. We feel that this belief is what every community needs. Pioneer books is an easily accessible book store with thousands of different books at a low cost. This is makes it much easier for the community to become more involved literarily and increasing their connection to the arts. It acts similarly to Storyland as talked about in the article “Human Rights and Culture” but is not as complicated. Storyland is more of an artist collaboration to improve the connection people have with the arts, while Pioneer Books is more of an outlet for people to connect with the arts. Both, however, are there to help the citizens.

The way we approached filming the documentary is similar to the short film “House”, by Eams. The short film is shot in a way that shows the beauty of the home in a simplistic way with different screenshots. This style emphasizes the peacefulness and tranquility that can be felt in the home. We wanted to stylize our documentary so that it would depict Pioneer Books as a warm and friendly environment where one can come to read and educate themselves. “House” doesn’t have any interviewees or dialogue which is where it differs from our documentary, but they both use a specific style to show the effect a place can have on people.   

In the future we hope to see more people taking advantage of the cheap, yet accessible book store in order to further their education in the arts. Hopefully by exposing this business and the people that work there, the community can know of its existence and benefit from it.