As soon as you turn a camera on, you are changing the environment around you. I use documentary techniques, but I’m definitely not a documentary filmmaker. Russell: This is where I diverge from most documentary filmmakers. SLUG: Was there ever a question of, “by observing this, am I changing it?” It’s exhilarating to be capturing something real.

For me, it’s generally not fun unless it’s hard to shoot-if it’s not emotionally draining, I feel like I’m not doing anything. Russell: I’m pretty seasoned as far as having shot pretty extreme stuff. What was the hardest subject matter for you to shoot? SLUG: There are scenes of very graphic material in the film including violence and drug use. You have to be thankful when you do capture something that’s never going to happen again. I would leave and someone would get shot down the street-something that could have been of interest to the story, but when you’re shooting a movie like that you’re bound to miss things. Whenever I was with, I would have it on, but there were things that were missed. Russell: Yeah, and they did a good bit of filming when I wasn’t around, which was cool, ‘cause that’s some of the best stuff really. SLUG: I was surprised by the amount of footage, it seemed like the camera was basically glued to your eye for the duration of filming. While Hollywood gangsters are often cartoonish and lack dimension, Snow and Russell have created an authentic American story about struggle and survival. The result, a film called Snow On Tha Bluff, premiered at the 2011 Slamdance Film Festival and immediately evoked questions about the truth of the events involved. When robbery boy and crack dealer Curtis Snow approached Russell to make a movie about his life, he jumped at the chance and spent the next year and a half filming documentary-style footage around Atlanta’s most dangerous neighborhood, The Bluff.

Having produced and worked on reality-based television series like MTV’s Made and A&E’s The First 48, Damon Russell is no stranger to the drama that occurs when cameras capture real events. The line between reality and fiction can get blurry while making a documentary.

Snow on the bluff 2011