A short documentary on food delivery in NYC

The Pitch

Email killed the fixed-gear bike messenger punk, but New York City still relies on two-wheeled deliveries to stay running. "Food Delivery (working title)" is a short documentary following the neo-bike messengers who ride their high-tech e-bikes across the boroughs to deliver food to your door.

The Why

Bike work is one of the most dangerous occupations there is in New York City, with eighteen occupational deaths in 2022 alone, and as gig workers, they are particularly vulnerable to exploitative labor practices. While it's important not to lose sight of this, it's also important to recognize that the lives of workers are much more than toil and struggle. There are elements of joy, and pleasure that arise from work. We want to show these aspects of bike work: the elements of pleasure, play, and community.

The Team

Lee Emmerich: Lee Emmerich is a documentarian specializing in ethnographic media with an MA in cinema studies and an advanced certificate in Culture and Media from New York University. Lee’s past film work includes “Portraitportriat”, co-created with Matt Moment, on the nature of portraiture which premiered at the 2022 Hudson Valley Film Festival, and “Homegrown” on the relationship between filmmaking and farming which premiered at the 2023 Docs on The Edge screening event and has screened at the Ridgewood Off Kilter Film Festival and the Black Bear Film Festival.

Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan: Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and co-editor of the Multimodal Section of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. He received a joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and Education from the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on global hip-hop and digital cultures.

Griffin Deutsch: Griffin Deutsch is an experienced director of photography and director trained in cinematography at the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. In 2021, he shot and directed Building Home, a documentary about an eclectic homesteader in Maine. He is currently developing a documentary on human-animal relations.

The Brief

Food delivery bikers will be interviewed about their bikes, how they have customized them, how they use the apps (Uber Eats, Doordash, Grubhub, etc.), and what a day of making deliveries is like. We will spend time with them as they play soccer at public fields, and socialize at bike shops and street corners. Some bikers will be given small action cameras to put on their bikes to record footage of them traveling around the city to make deliveries. The aim is to show the vibrant work cultures surrounding contemporary bike work.

The Budget Breakdown

Equipment and Media: 15.6%

Funds for rental equipment including lenses and camera media, along with hard drives for footage storage.

Food: 10.4%

Funds for meals and crafty for crew for the duration of the project.

Distribution: 10%

Funds for festival submission and impact-producing expenses.

Miscellaneous expenses: 4%

Expenses include transportation costs for crew rides and subway fares and unexpected costs that may arise during production.

Crew & Participation compensation: 70%

Payment for crew (Director of Photography, Sound Mixer, and Translators) and compensation for delivery rider participants.