As Ali and I discussed what we wanted our video to focus on, we decided that it would be helpful to narrow our video with some geographic location. We chose 5th Avenue, as it includes many iconic elements of the city, such as Rockefeller Center, the Met, and the Tiffany’s storefront from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Fifth Avenue borders Central Park and is accessible to all types of people, not only the ones who shop at Tiffany’s or Piaget. It does not necessarily show stark contrasts in the city, but rather a gradient of different types and classes of people. As it is such an iconic street, it is well represented in literature and movies, and we were able to find a number of works that involve 5th Avenue and also say something about opportunity in New York City.
We decided using a street as our focus was a good level at which to narrow our project. It is more expansive than one single landmark, but more narrow than an entire neighborhood. It also made it practical to film, as we were able to simply walk down the street, and we represented around 60 blocks in our video.
To make this focus clear, we highlighted quotes from the works we used that mentioned 5th Avenue, and overlaid these with our clips of the city in our video.