Tell Us What You’re Thinking: The Box (Seattle Public Television)
“The Box” in Seattle
By Pat Ford
Pew Center
It looks a bit like an old-fashioned photo booth: A plain wooden box with a curtain across the entrance and inside, a seat with a swatch of velvet behind it to create a background and a glass window behind which sits a camera. The sign outside says, “Tell us what you’re thinking.”
And people do. Boy, do they.
Seattle public television producer Peggy Case compares the box (called simply, “The Box”) to a modern-day confessional. “We never get to see people alone,” says Case, “especially in the media. People are directed; they’re made into sound bites. But inside the box, it’s like just meeting someone. They’re careful and pleasant and not too revealing at first but as time goes on, they begin to embrace the camera and relate more of their hopes and dreams and the darkest parts of their history.”