Director's Statement

When I first became aware that the United States’ Semiquincentennial was approaching, I started to consider what story I could tell in a documentary medium that would serve as a celebration for Michiganders. I quickly realized that I knew very little about Michigan’s role in the American Revolution, and the more I learned, the more excited I became about the possibilities for a film.

My team and I did a tremendous about of research, and I leaned heavily on the expert historians, professors, archaeologists, anthropologists, and interpreters who I cast in the movie to help me identify the historical timeline, characters, and events. From the very beginning, I wanted to make sure we would tell the truth of what happened without presentism or inserting modern political ideology into the film. It was also important to me for the audience to see the events from many different perspectives, and to see what each group’s motivations were without taking an editorial position.

In particular, I knew the Native American story of the Great Lakes would be one of the most important. In terms of sheer numbers, the European population of Michigan did not exceed the native population until the 1830s—near the very end of our timeline. And perhaps to state the obvious, they participated in every war on the Midwestern frontier. We were truly honored to feature Anishinaabe historian Eric Hemenway and Chief Billy Friend of Wyandotte Nation to tell the story from their perspective, in their own words. We worked extensively with them in pre-production, interviewed them at length in production, and faithfully edited their interviews in post-production.

My own directing style for documentaries never includes voice-over narration. I always use my interview subjects to tell the story. I feel that it gives the film a more kinetic energy, more authenticity, and more immediacy. Using celebrities to read voice of God narration that I have written only serves to remove the audience several layers back from the story that’s happening in front of them. For the same reason, I approached the editing style, music, and sound design much more like and action movie than a historical documentary.

We explore some very challenging themes in Frontier to Freedom. How should I tackle issues around violence, conquest, revenge, enlightenment, patriotism, universal liberties, slavery, economy, and ever-shifting political alliances? My editor Scott McCambridge and I decided early on in the edit room that the Truth would be our guiding light, regardless of whether it made us uncomfortable. The decisions came easier after that, and it gave us confidence that we could celebrate the founding of our country and Michigan’s path to statehood, while acknowledging some of the ugly things in our past.

My archival Producer Kevin Foley and I knew we would have some gaps in our visual imagery. In 1600-1837 there were very few painters on the American frontier. Along with a team of interns from Grand Valley State University, we did an extensive and exhaustive search for every possible historic image to represent the events in our story. In the 120-minute film, we have over 900 that were identified, researched, fact checked, and ultimately made the final cut. Even then, we were left with a few crucial scenes where no archival imagery existed. Scott and I made the creative choice to use Generative Artificial Intelligence to fill in the gaps. This was a learning curve for all of us. These tools are brand new, and only a couple of years ago this would not have been possible for us. We decided that we would only create period accurate impressionist oil painting stills, to match the style of our historical documentary format. We tried many different AI models, but ultimately landed on Nano Banana 2 through our Artlist.io subscription service. For each AI image, we fed in public domain historical references when available to ensure accuracy in clothing, weapons, tools, architecture, geography, etc. Then each image went through dozens of revisions to get what we wanted. At the end of the process, we involved our historical advisors from the University of Michigan, Western Michigan University, and Wyandotte Nation for final vetting.

I’m personally very proud of what my team and I were able to accomplish with Frontier to Freedom. It will stand for many years as the most complete historical record of Michigan and the Great Lakes region from 1600-1837 ever put on film. It has been one of the greatest honors of my life to be trusted to tell this story.